Dangerous Dousing Deceit

I just found out via SomethingAwful about something that just completely blows my mind. I am flabbergasted. Some jackass sold thousands of glorified dousing rods to the Iraqi government for $85,000,000, claiming that they detect explosives. The Iraqis made no effort to verify that the equipment did what it was supposed to. They spent $85 million on devices they relied on to protect their citizens (and some of our soldiers) without any evidence that they worked, and people have been potentially avoidably blown up since. This level of irresponsibility and stupidity astounds me. The guy also sold junk to Thailand, Pakistan and Lebanon; not countries that come to mind when thinking about scientific cultures.

The BBC article continues with information that highlights our ubiquitous cultural need for an environment of skepticism and accurate evaluation of information:

Major General Jehad al-Jabiri said, "Whether it's magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs," while expressing his belief that his opinions are more correct than those of the company that evaluated the bogus devices. Obviously he does not care if the devices detect bombs anywhere near as much as he cares about his pride.

Read this quote: "They don't work properly," Umm Muhammad, a retired schoolteacher said. "Sometimes when I drive through checkpoints, the device moves simply because I have medications in my handbag. Sometimes it doesn't - even when I have the same handbag." Someone responsible for educating children can't tell the difference between correlation and causation. There's an applicable legal (Latin) term also: post hoc ergo propter hoc. "After something, therefore because of it" presented as illogical and not good evidence. This teacher thought the device sometimes responded to medicine. A rational person would not make such a statement. We see quite a dearth of reason all around.

Our own FBI had to be told in 1995 to stop using bogus devices, and reminded in 1999. At least it seems that they get some independent verification of devices now.

No one has gotten James Randi's money yet! There's been $1 million on the table for decades waiting for anyone to demonstrate real dousing, ESP, or whatever else.

Demand evidence! Don't just believe marketers! Don't blow money on dietary supplements and Airborn and fortune tellers and security measures that don't improve security.

New York City Murders - 2009

The Jan 11, 2010 issue of TIME, in its "Numbers" section, reports that NYC had 461 murders in 2009 as of Dec 27. It then says that this is the lowest number of murders there "since the city began keeping records in 1962." Is that good? We can't really tell without additional information that is not presented.

Remember, when you see raw numbers presented like this, that they are almost meaningless alone. We need to calculate proportions, for starters, and also consider contextual changes. For example: if the population of NYC decreased, then it is possible that the murder rate per capita actually increased, despite a decrease in the raw number of murders.

Some poking around at the Census Bureau and the NYC Dept. of City Planning shows that NYC's population has been growing recently (from about 8.0 million to about 8.4 million between 2000 and 2008). A look farther back, however, shows that the population dropped significantly in the 1970s, and did not return to the 1960 level until perhaps late in the 1990s. Because of this, it is less interesting that the murder raw number is the lowest since 1962 than it is that it is the lowest raw number since around 1980, whenever the population was lowest. These comparisons are still inferior to knowing the true murder rates per capita.

Why was NYC singled out? No information is presented that makes NYC seem special for its decrease in murders. In fact, the Department of Justice Crime Victimization Survey (I love it) shows that the 2004 murder rate of the country as a whole is down to where it was in the mid-1960s.

It is interesting to note the sharp decline of the murder rate during the Great Depression of the 1930s, eh? That bit of context helps put the current dip into perspective as well. Perhaps affluence permits a greater demand for illegal drugs, which contributes to homicide among competing sellers. Or affluence permits more carousing, which presents more opportunities for interpersonal conflict than if people only stayed home. Affluence certainly permits a greater ability to purchase guns. Most murders are impulsive acts of anger by armed persons with poor inhibition.

My remaining question concerns the consistency of data collection. Over time, have there been changes in classification of murders versus manslaughter, for example? Did the numbers (not the DOJ numbers) come from individual police precincts, and did they all report, or the CDC, or somewhere else?

Hopefully this helped put Time's poorly presented number in a context that provides it with more meaning and utility.

Church Safety

I was extremely disappointed in Time magazine for its November 30, 2009 article about church safety and crime. This article was two pages long, which is two too many. It is just more media shock sensationalism, preying on people's irrational fears and lack of understanding of prevalence and probability to get attention. Here is some perspective and context for the numbers that the magazine so irresponsibly presented as "a flurry of violent crimes".

# of murders in churches since 2008 as reported: 5
# of murders in 2006 (most recent year for complete data, CDC): 18,573
# of violent crimes in churches in 2009 (10 months): 40
# of violent crimes in 2006 in USA (DoJ): 5,858,840

If the average church visit lasts about an hour and a half (~1/6000 of a year), we see that the murder rate is about average, and the violent crime rate in churches is minuscule. When you factor in that many people staff and visit church beyond the weekly services, the relative rates of violence are even smaller. When we further examine the murders that did happen, two were going to happen regardless of the church setting (spurning wife and abortion provider), and the church was just convenient. The situation with the stabbed priest is a mystery, but the other shootout was some ignorant redneck who wanted revenge on liberals for his unemployment and targeted a Unitarian Universalist church. Bizarrely, Time doesn't specify the type of church, and continues on to say that a conservative Christian group reacted with polls of church security measures. As I discuss elsewhere, conservatives tend to be overly fearful and less able to usefully evaluate information. "Security experts" go on to talk about churches' vulnerability, but they stand to make money off of scared congregations, so their biased comments should be taken cautiously.

The article includes an anecdotal church in Houston that experienced many burglaries. Far, far from being representative of all churches, this story probably serves more as a warning for churches that sit in bad neighborhoods. If you're in an area riddled with drug addicts, you're going to get robbed whether you're a church or not.

This pathetic fear-mongering is shameful. There is no crime epidemic among churches, and churches are not at high risk for violence. I expected better from Time.

Determinants of Good Parenting

There was a decent Time article in the November 30th, 2009 issue about how "helicopter parents" need to chill out. The first page talks about how irrational it is that parents have become so intrusive and safety-conscious over the last couple decades despite drastic decreases in injuries and violent crime. What the article fails to address is the possibility that injuries and violent crime decreases BECAUSE parents have been more intrusive and safety-conscious. There is no evidence presented in the article of causality in either direction, nor of possible confounds that could explain both correlated phenomena. This is terrible and misleading writing.

The rest of the article is great. It correctly points out that parents have been generally irrational when it comes to risk evaluation. It is vastly more dangerous to drive your kid to school than to let him walk to the store alone. It is worse to take your kids to visit family than to let them eat Halloween candy that hasn't been x-rayed. The sensationalistic media has thoroughly confused people who do not understand or seek out real information about event probabilities.

Finally, the article references the Freakonomics authors Dubner and Levitt, who say that three of the biggest determinants of well-raised kids are: parental education, spouse selection, and waiting to have kids. This is also misleading.

There are very clear factors that contribute to all three of these variables and child-raising. As I write about repeatedly, people are on a continuum of what psychologists call "executive function", the abilities of the frontal lobe: planning, inhibition, predicting consequences, problem-solving. People at the low end (due to complex interactions between genetics and early experiences) are more impulsive and have trouble understanding information. These people are more likely to get pregnant early, do poorly in school, have rocky relationships, be hostile, etc.... Of course their children are raised poorly and have the same genetic predispositions and vulnerabilities, perpetuating a cycle that cannot be interrupted by visits to museums or reading books. Change has to come from long-term exposure to positive relationships with other people that provide models for security, patience, reflection, and compassion. This rarely happens, even when social services are involved, because impulsive ignorant people are often oppositional to services. These people drive away good spouses with hostility, and are more likely to end up in bad relationships due to impulsivity and a lack of understanding of options and the effects of their own behavior. There is a lot of believed futility because they lack exposure to positive behaviors and the ability to accurately evaluate behavior and consequences in general. These people are more inconsistent due to impulsivity, and authoritarian because they can't handle complexity.

People at the higher end of the continuum are more thoughtful, understanding, planning, and calm. They have better relationships because they are in the habit of engaging in intentional goal-oriented behavior that weighs probably consequences. They can think about people's feelings, including their own, and take effective action instead of relying on maladaptive impulsive reactions. They do better in school, are better at delaying/planning parenthood, and are more likely to raise their kids with compassion and productive interactions. They are more consistent with their kids, and less authoritarian.

The saddest part is that the bad parents tend to blame all of their children's failures and problems on the children, and refuse to accept their own roles in their children's development. They often refuse to change because they believe they do everything right. They tell schools and therapists to fix their kids, then blame everyone but themselves for the inevitable failures.

Don't worry so much about museums and reading books and whatnot. Just be a calm, patient, compassionate, responsive, thoughtful, empathetic, planning person, and the rest will tend to fall into place.

Beer and Relative Rates

Someone forwarded along this article about marketing research for beer. The article and its reader comments highlight the importance of understanding what relative rates mean. Remember, just because one event is more likely than another does not mean that it always happens. It just happens more often.

The article starts out with the unfortunate title, "What Your Taste in Beer Says About You". Your taste does not say anything definite about you. It only says what you are more or less likely to be like than people with different tastes. Projective psychological tests, such as the famous Rorschach, are the same way. The subtitle "How Choice of Brew Relates to Personality, Politics and Purchases" is better in that it uses the word "relates".

The mix continues. "The beer you drink says a lot about you..." Not necessarily. "Your choice of beer can be as telling about your personality as what kind of clothing you wear or the car that you drive." Yes, that is correctly written. Again, this form of marketing research is similar to some psychological tests. It finds patterns among people's choices and behaviors, and these patterns show up in the forms of relative rates. "People who do A tend to also like B more than people who do not do A" means just what it says, and does NOT mean that all people who do A like B, nor does it mean that all people who do not do A hate B.

Depending on what teacher a psychologist had, many psychological reports are written with definitive language, but other reports are written more accurately to portray the true nature of the information's relationship to the client. This article goes back and forth. Overly definitive: "There's a slang term that could sum up Heineken drinkers: posers." Accurate: "The personality traits of people who prefer Blue Moon... tracked similarly to the same type of people who prefer craft beers...." I won't even get into the argument about whether such a thing as personality exists or how it should be defined.

The comments left for this article show the confusion and ignorance that I want to try to correct. MattCrill wrote "Wow...what a bunch of hogwash. Couldn't be further from the truth. I'm a craft beer lover and absolutely none of your descriptions fit my profile." He failed to understand that the study results are about the trends among large groups of people, but his confusion was aided by the inconsistently definitive wording in the article. DarcyBaily had an equally wrong understanding of the article: "This couldn't be further from the truth. I am a craft beer drinker and none of that fits me." Just because you are in group A, but you don't do activity B that most people in A do, does not mean that it's a lie to say that most As do B.

Msalup said, "This article falls squarely on the "Uri Geller/Pseudoscience" arena. Can't believe that someone takes this kind of "segmentation" seriously." These are real statistics based on practices that multi-billion dollar corporations have used for decades because these segmentation practices are effective at guiding marketing and product development decisions. I don't know if it qualifies as science, but it's not just made up nonsense. GaryBuck commented on this article's "meaningless generalizations". Though the article does make some overly definitive statements, they are still not meaningless. The differences between the groups of beer-drinkers are meaningful, which is why the research was conducted. There are some good comments farther down the page.

So, the article could have been written more accurately, but I think many people would have had the same misunderstandings even if it were. Many people do not understand the qualifying language of statistics. This misunderstanding causes problems in people's decision-making and evaluations of the world around them. I am sure I will have more examples in the future.

For the record, I am a major explorer of craft beers (I keep a spreadsheet of what I've had with my reviews), and I do fit the mentioned trends except for buying organic.

Divorce and Remarriage

Pew, a company that does many surveys, came out with this interactive map of proportions of married, divorced, and 3+x remarried men and women by state. Here is what is remarkable about the rates:

Conservative parts of the country have higher proportions of divorced and multiply remarried residents. The "Red" states that often refer to themselves as the "Real America" and bastions of "family values", homes of the "moral majority", are quite divorce-happy compared to the more liberal states.

Top 5 states for 3+ marriages:
Arkansas (10% men, 10% women)
Oklahoma (9% men, 10% women)
Tennessee (9% men, 8% women)
Alabama (8% men, 8% women)
Mississippi (8% men, 8% women)

Bottom 5 states for 3+ marriages:
Massachusetts (2% men, 2% women)
New Jersey (2% men, 2% women)
New York (2% men, 2% women)
Connecticut (3% men, 2% women)
Minnesota (3% men, 3% women)

Top 5 states for currently divorced residents:
Nevada (13% men, 16% women)
Maine (12% men, 15% women)
Montana (12% men, 13% women)
Wyoming (12% men, 13% women)
Oklahoma (12% men, 14% women)

Bottom 5 states for currently divorced residents:
New Jersey (7% men, 10% women)
New York (7% men, 10% women)
Massachusetts (8% men, 10% women)
California (8% men, 11% women)
Virginia (8% men, 11% women)

The consistently higher proportions of currently divorced women compared to men is probably due in large part to child custody inhibiting remarriage. Women are overwhelmingly granted custody in divorce courts. Divorcees with children in the home have more trouble finding new spouses, and may also be less inclined to try to find a new spouse as the process can cause problems for the children.

As I have written about more extensively in another blog, there is a clear relationship between conservativism and bad decision making that I understand to have a neurological foundation. People who grow up with fear in a strict and belief-based environment develop brains that desire very simple and concrete information (e.g.:America is good. Homosexuality is bad. Muslims are bad.). They are overwhelmed by ambiguity and complexity, and depend on whatever very simple dogma they've been indoctrinated with, or their immediate emotional reactions to make decisions.

This emotional impulsivity, combined with a characteristic avoidance of contemplating the many possible ramifications of actions because that would be too overwhelming and complicated, leads to the following phenomena that we see happening at much higher rates in conservative states than in liberal states (check out GapMinder):

Teen pregnancy
Infant mortality
Violence
Pollution
Divorce (related to young marriage, also in the Pew map)
Poor education
Higher drug use
Earlier death
Obesity

I am sure the list can go on and on. These things all are rooted in impulsive behavior that focuses on emotions and immediate gratification without consideration for consequences and the long term. Conservatives are very hostile towards liberal ideas and values, but the outcomes are clear. The outcomes show us what attitudes and behaviors are best for our country. We need to stop the lies and hypocrisy, and focus on implementing best practices to bring about the good and sustainable outcomes we want for our descendants.

Call for Contributions

Over the course of my life, I have encountered many news articles and clips that misrepresent or confuse information, and advertisements that mislead and manipulate. I started this blog to explain how information has been misused, and provide explanations of the real meanings of the information. However, I have also improved my life by avoiding the more heinous offenders (e.g.: Fox News, commercials, conservatives, etc...), so I rarely come across examples to write about. I have no television, and I limit my internet consumption. I get most of my news from Jon Stewart, since it is easier to handle with some humor. Though I enjoy picking apart incorrect information use and providing accurate interpretations, I will not spend much time looking around for the junk.

If you find an article or video clip that uses statistics to make some claims, and you'd like me to examine it, feel free to send it to me. You can also write your own post and I'll put it up here, totally credited to you.