From an article by David Freeman in The Atlantic, (h/t Biggest Guy):

But beyond the headlines, Ioannidis was shocked at the range and reach of the reversals he was seeing in everyday medical research. “Randomized controlled trials,” which compare how one group responds to a treatment against how an identical group fares without the treatment, had long been considered nearly unshakable evidence, but they, too, ended up being wrong some of the time. “I realized even our gold-standard research had a lot of problems,” he says. Baffled, he started looking for the specific ways in which studies were going wrong. And before long he discovered that the range of errors being committed was astonishing: from what questions researchers posed, to how they set up the studies, to which patients they recruited for the studies, to which measurements they took, to how they analyzed the data, to how they presented their results, to how particular studies came to be published in medical journals.

This array suggested a bigger, underlying dysfunction, and Ioannidis thought he knew what it was. “The studies were biased,” he says. “Sometimes they were overtly biased. Sometimes it was difficult to see the bias, but it was there.” Researchers headed into their studies wanting certain results – and, lo and behold, they were getting them. We think of the scientific process as being objective, rigorous, and even ruthless in separating out what is true from what we merely wish to be true, but in fact it’s easy to manipulate results, even unintentionally or unconsciously. “At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded,” says Ioannidis. “There is an intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.“

Perhaps only a minority of researchers were succumbing to this bias, but their distorted findings were having an outsize effect on published research. To get funding and tenured positions, and often merely to stay afloat, researchers have to get their work published in well-regarded journals, where rejection rates can climb above 90 percent. Not surprisingly, the studies that tend to make the grade are those with eye-catching findings. But while coming up with eye-catching theories is relatively easy, getting reality to bear them out is another matter. The great majority collapse under the weight of contradictory data when studied rigorously. Imagine, though, that five different research teams test an interesting theory that’s making the rounds, and four of the groups correctly prove the idea false, while the one less cautious group incorrectly “proves” it true through some combination of error, fluke, and clever selection of data. Guess whose findings your doctor ends up reading about in the journal, and you end up hearing about on the evening news? Researchers can sometimes win attention by refuting a prominent finding, which can help to at least raise doubts about results, but in general it is far more rewarding to add a new insight or exciting-sounding twist to existing research than to retest its basic premises…after all, simply re-proving someone else’s results is unlikely to get you published, and attempting to undermine the work of respected colleagues can have ugly professional repercussions.

[Emphasis added]

Thomas Kuhn talked about this: when he talked about “normal science” and said that “”No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomenon; indeed those that will not fit the box are often not seen at all.”

A pretty good description of what Ioannidis is demonstrating about healthcare research. One wonders where else that problem might apply…
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Tuesday – Stephen Perlstein: Wage cuts hurt, but they may be the only way to get Americans back to work

There is, of course, a way out of this bind: produce more without consuming more. For all practical purposes, that means grabbing a bigger share of global markets, either by exporting more goods and services, or replacing some of the stuff we import by producing it at home.

Which brings us back to the story of GM’s Orion plant. There are lots of reasons why American companies like GM have lost market share (yes, I wrote about currency manipulation last week), but one is that in too many industries, our labor costs are now too high to be globally competitive. Reducing wages and benefits in those industries would not only help to create and save jobs, but would also force a further reduction in consumption and living standards that is necessary to bring the U.S. economy back into balance.

The question is not whether this is an ideal outcome – obviously it’s not. But for the 1,550 auto workers who would be called back to work at GM’s Orion plant, the real-world choice is to either accept a 20 percent wage cut or remain unemployed with little prospect of getting another job at the old union wage. For them, and for the economy as whole, the better choice is to take the jobs at the globally competitive, market-clearing wage and hope to build back up from there.

Wednesday – Ezra Klein: What to do about state pensions

There’s also the obvious prophylactic measure: States need to stop deferring so much of their employee’s compensation. The current deal for most state employees is that they get worse wages than they would in the private sector and better benefits. Politicians like to cut that deal because it means they don’t have to pay for anything right now. And when the market was making everyone rich, such deals even seemed affordable. But the faith that the market will continually hand you back 10 percent a year is now shattered, and so compensation schemes that relied on it have to be rethought.

Unions might not like that, but nor will taxpayers. There are two sides to deferred compensation: costs later, and savings now. We’ve been paying our public employees less than we would’ve needed to pay them in the absence of these pension promises. That means that going forward, we’re going to have to pay wages closer to the true cost of our payroll.

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From the Petrelis Files, here’s Valerie Jarrett talking to gay journo Jonathan Capehart:

Capeheart: One of the things you’ve put a spotlight on, and to veer sharply away from infrastructure, and that was on the rash of suicides of gay youth. You gave a speech to the Human Rights Campaign annual dinner, where you named the victims. You talked about the President’s commitment to making a more inclusive, tolerant, accepting country. Why did you feel it was important to deliver that message, and deliver it there?

Jarrett: Well, I think what we’ve seen over the last few months are some very tragic deaths of young people, our children. And avoidable deaths. They were driven to commit suicide because they were being harassed in school, and driven to do something that no child should ever be driven to do. And in many cases, the parents are doing a good job. Their families are supportive. Before I spoke at the HRC dinner, I met backstage with Tammy Aarberg, her son Andrew. These are good people. They were aware that their son was gay. They embraced him. They loved him. They supported his lifestyle choice.

[emphasis Petrelis]

If a whiteboy GOP staffer made a comment like that, I’m thinking the gay community would be out for blood. Here’s Petrelis:

What an outrage to claim that the 15-year-old Aarberg made a choice to be gay, and that sexual orientation is a lifestyle. Did she get her talking points from Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council? It’s doubly offensive that Capehart makes no effort to point out how dangerous Jarrett’s thinking is.

It’ll be interesting to see how far this goes.
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My son’s platoon, and their final patrol. From the Atlantic

I need to digest this a bit and then I’ll write a bit more.
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Apparently, a guy who managed to become a well-regarded GOP Congressional candidate has an interesting hobby – he dresses up as a Waffen-SS officer and participates in WW II re-enactments.

Now I don’t know enough to judge his choice of character (I’m sure there are Redcoat re-enactors who don’t wish the Yankees lost the Revolutionary War). But I do know enough to wonder “what the hell was he thinking?” How in the wide, wide world of sports can someone get to a position where they are running for Congress and not think “Hmmm. Maybe I need to do a statement explaining why there are all these pictures of me dressed up as a SS officer.” Or that a political party is so clueless that they wouldn’t have an intern spend an hour doing Google-fu to check out candidates they were touting.

So the next time someone from Washington adopts a superior attitude, and suggests you should listen to them because of their superior wisdom – think about this.
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Proposition 21 restores a vehicle tax that was cut some years ago, and sets the funds aside for parks and wildlife programs.

First, I’ve got an immense problem with these “special fees” that pay for things that our basic taxes are supposed to pay for. Beyond that, the financial structure that we’ve erected in California with special fees, setasides, and voter-enacted budget restrictions.

I’d support an initiative to clear all those away and simply let the Legislature and Governor budget and if we don’t like their work – fire them. We make a difficult job impossible with these kinds of restrictions (think Robocop2 and the list of rules they put on him – “Don’t walk through puddles”, etc.), and we give our leadership excuses for failure.

Second, this is a clear example of the cynicism of our political class and the fungibility of cash – from the “No” statement a quote from State Sen. Alan Lowenthal (D) – “Why would anyone vote for the park pass (Prop 21) if we’ve already fully funded the state parks?“

A hearty “NO” on Proposition 21.
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From On War And Words, an Israeli video on social media, negotiation, and terror.

In today’s Washington Post, Professor of Climate Science Michael Mann:

The basic physics and chemistry of how carbon dioxide and other human-produced greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere have been understood for nearly two centuries. Overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is heating the planet, shrinking the Arctic ice cap, melting glaciers and raising sea levels. It is leading to more widespread drought, more frequent heat waves and more powerful hurricanes. Even without my work, or that of the entire sub-field of studying past climates, scientists are in broad agreement on the reality of these changes and their near-certain link to human activity.

Burying our heads in the sand would leave future generations at the mercy of potentially dangerous changes in our climate. The only sure way to mitigate these threats is to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions dramatically over the next few decades. But even if we don’t reduce emissions, the reality of adapting to climate change will require responses from government at all levels.

Challenges to policy proposals for how to deal with this problem should be welcome — indeed, a good-faith debate is essential for wise public policymaking.

But the attacks against the science must stop. They are not good-faith questioning of scientific research. They are anti-science.

At the climate skeptical Watt’s Up With That blog, Professor of Physics Hal Lewis:

… a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind…simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

Here’s where I struggle with the whole AGW issue. I think it’s certainly possible – maybe even likely that AGW is real. I’d support, unforced, a bunch of low-cost, high-impact policy changes that would have an impact on atmospheric carbon and (incidentally) the domestic economy and national security.

But every time I turn around, the folks promoting radical action in the face of climate change based on “incontrovertible” science can’t show processes that actually support – you know, through open inquiry – an absolute consensus that would support remaking the world economy (coincidentally, remaking it in ways that those making the arguments are predisposed to support for ideological reasons…).

And, sadly, Professor Lewis will never get a platform to tell his story remotely comparable to Professor Mann.

But we can tilt the balance a little bit here in the blogs.
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Today’s news is all about Crusty (the nickname that local commentators have given Brown) or one of his aides muttering that eMeg is a “whore” in an inadvertently recorded conversation.

My reaction is a little contrarian on this, for two reasons – I think it’s nice to see politicians when they are human (and they’re all human) – and I really, really dislike the “cloak of perfection” we expect our candidates to wrap around themselves.

But mostly, it’s about substance. The call that Brown was making was to the Los Angeles Police Protective League – the union for LAPD officers – and the issue was that they were endorsing Meg because she carved out an exemption in pension reform for law enforcement.

With evident frustration, Brown discussed the pressure he was under to refuse to reduce public safety pensions or lose law enforcement endorsements to Whitman. Months earlier, Whitman had agreed to exempt public safety officials from key parts of her pension reform plan.

“Do we want to put an ad out? … That I have been warned if I crack down on pensions, I will be … that they’ll go to Whitman, and that’s where they’ll go because they know Whitman will give ’em, will cut them a deal, but I won’t,” Brown said.

So for all the folks hammering on my endorsement of him in the comments below…how do you square that circle??

Here is Brown – doing the right thing and challenging the sacred cows – and here’s Meg, milking them.

Brown is a much more complex figure than he is being credited as on the right. And from my point of view – when I make my vote – it’s about the bet that Brown is more likely to take on the sacred cows effectively than eMeg, who has shown both that she’s likely to be ineffective, and that she’s scared of them.
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…smoke two joints at night.

I went to freshman orientation at LG’s high school last week, and in his opening statement, the principal mentioned that by the end of their sophomore year, 50% of the high school kids in the nation have tried marijuana. So – de facto – it’s as legal as alcohol.

Let’s be clear. When I was in college, I did inhale. And when I was in grad school, I has a roommate for a year who was unstoned for – maybe – a week in the whole time we lived together. He’s since written a book about his life and addictions (My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life: An Anti-Memoir
); being stoned didn’t appear to work out so well for him – although we’ve communicated recently and he seems to be doing more than OK. But I’ve used him as a cautionary tale for my sons, two of whom survived high school and college so far and all of whom seem to be doing just fine.

So I’m not exactly pro-chronic. But I am someone who thinks that the drug wars are wars we should withdraw from; I’d rather live with treating more addicts and fewer shot-up gang members, and the best way to deal with the various cartels in Mexico is simply to defund them. We’re trying harder and harder and accomplishing less and less about drugs using the “ban them” approach. So it’s time to try something different.

Proposition 19 isn’t remotely a perfect law. But it’s a good-enough law that’s come at the right time.

It will doubtless trigger massive court battles, and a serious political conflict; at the end of it, if we’re lucky and sober enough, we’ll have drug policies that actually work. As a step in getting there, I encourage you to vote “YES” on Proposition 19.
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