Flashback – Need for Speed

It is no wonder that anxiety and depression are increasing as a combination of constant bad news, the threat of the coronavirus and political tensions are compounded by the breathless urgency of the media’s presentations. Everything is top priority, and everyone is fighting to be the first to tell their version of every story. No one can wait until tomorrow for a more thorough or accurate story, because by tomorrow there will be a new crisis.

Almost nine years ago I warned of this trend:

[It's Monday morning and I find a news story about a news story. The news of Whitney Houston’s death was on Twitter 27 minutes before the mainstream media broke the story. A whole 27 minutes! That’s unbelievable! How could people be kept waiting so long? Shouldn’t there be some kind of law to prevent such unconscionable delays in communicating these life-changing events?

Of course I’m being sarcastic. It is rather amazing that Twitter has such a web of interconnections. The article goes on to cite statistics about the number of tweets and retweets, suggesting that Twitter may become the new source of breaking news. (The power of the social media is the power we give it.)

My question is: What’s the hurry? Why the urgency? It’s too bad Whitney Houston died. It’s too bad she had all those personal problems. She was a great entertainer, admired by many. But what’s the big deal about finding out 27 minutes later?

First, we have been conditioned to expect “breaking news” as soon as it happens – even news that does not affect us directly. Television and the Internet compete for our attention, and the way to get it seems to be to promise instant gratification for our news craving. Details can be filled in later, but the important thing, we are told, is to find out about it now. As implied by a series of recent smartphone ads, if you are the last to know, you are considered some kind of loser. It’s cool to be able to respond that you already got the word.

Another part of the problem is that people place too much importance on the roles of entertainers. They spend so much time, money and emotional energy following the output of their favorite performer, group or team that they consider them close friends. Stars can’t go out in public without people hassling them for autographs or selfies. Stars want privacy while fans demand their attention.

This behavior, the importance we place both on celebrity and on instant news, is a symptom of a lack of perspective in our society that leads to problems elsewhere in our lives, poor decisions and misplaced priorities.

When my father died, my brother called to give me the news so that I could make travel arrangements to attend the funeral. This news was important and personal to me, but if I had gotten it 27 minutes later, it would have made no difference at all.]

Why Do They Bother?

I often wonder about news agencies. They publish flashy headlines, but the details later in the stories turn out to be much less interesting or conclusive. Here is a recent example from CNN health: “People with blood type O may have lower risk of Covid-19 infection and severe illness, two new studies suggest.” (At least citing two studies is better than their frequent practice of citing one unnamed source in their political news, but let's get into it.) 

 

The studies concluded, “People with blood type O may be less vulnerable to Covid-19 and have a reduced likelihood of getting severely ill.” To compound the weakness of this conclusion that they “may be less vulnerable” they add a disclaimer that “Experts say more research is needed.”

 

What we know so far, provided we read the headline carefully, is that something “may be” going on, and even if true, the connection is not clear.

 

A study from Denmark found that of a sample of 7,422 people who tested positive, 38.4% were blood type O, whereas 41.7% of a separate non-tested group of the 2.2 million Danish people has that blood type. The article doesn’t explain where that 2.2 million came from. The population of Denmark is about 5.8 million. Were those 2.2 million representative of the entire population?

 

It is likely the results were statistically significant or they would not have been published. Still, statistical significance is overrated, and the difference between 41.7% and 38.4% does not seem to be of any practical significance to a CNN audience. 

 

The difference for Danes with type A blood goes in the opposite direction, 44.4% ill compared to 42.4% of the population. But the Type O and Type A does not account for everyone, only 84.1%. The remaining type B and AB people must comprise 15.9% of the population and account for 17.2% of the cases, which is actually proportionally higher than the type A cases. Why they reported what they did, the way they did, is puzzling.

 

The second, a Canadian study, looked at a much smaller sample, only 95 critically ill patients. Of them, 84% of those with blood type A or AB required ventilators compared to 61% of type O or B. They didn’t make the same comparisons under the same conditions as the Danish study. The only common finding was the better performance of blood type O.

 

The final conclusion of the CNN article is that no one should worry and no one should become complacent. Blood type does not supersede other risk factors. The information is useful only to researchers in this narrow field of trying to discover a link between blood type and COVID susceptibility or seriousness. They “don't yet know what mechanism could explain the link” or if a link exists.

 

The fact that they were published in a journal called Blood Advances reinforces how narrow the focus for the studies was. It wasn’t really intended for the general public. Which brings me back to my original question. Why do they bother? 

 

Not to pick on CNN. The same useless information appeared in Forbes, NBC, UPI Health News, Science Focus and others. The pressure to fill airtime and Internet space must be overwhelming. We get such news with its exciting headlines whether it adds any value to our daily lives or not.

Flashback – (Mis)understanding Insurance

If they learn economics in journalism school, they must quickly forget everything upon graduation. Furthermore, when the facts don't make a compelling story, they resort to the usual tactic of trying to make stories fit their worldview or make things look scarier than they are. Here is a prime example I gave in December 2016.

[As I was reading the transcript of Scott Pelley’s "60 Minutes" interview with House Speaker Paul Ryan, I noticed that he seemed uninterested in hard news or in-depth information so much as he was interested in tripping up the Speaker, trying to put him in a position of disagreeing with his new boss, making one or the other of them look bad, or uncovering something potentially embarrassing.

He asked how often the two speak on the phone and who initiates the conversation. The answers were almost daily and both. No news there. How does he answer the phone? “He doesn’t say, ‘This is the president-elect?’” No. “Have you told him being president is not being CEO of the United States, that the Congress is going to have a say?” 

Instead of asking how the two got together after a contentious election, he asked, “Who apologized to whom?” It’s clear by now that Pelley has no liking or respect for Donald Trump, thinks he is a bully and a racist, and is searching for evidence to back up his views. Better yet, he would like to get Ryan to agree on any point that might make it seem he is of the same opinion.

The silliness and self-serving finally comes to a close, and Pelley asks a number of questions about policy issues. Soon he gets to the details about possible changes to Obamacare and the sniping continues. At one point Pelley says “And women will pay the same as men? That didn’t used to be the case.” This is a question designed to get an answer that will incite outrage. He is trying to get some admission of Republican bias against women, but showing in the process that he does not understand how insurance works and counting on the fact that many Americans don’t either.

Insurance usually works by assessing the risk and charging premiums accordingly. If you have homeowner’s insurance you expect a discount for having a working alarm system. Teen drivers are generally less safe than more experienced drivers, but boys have more accidents than girls. Auto insurance for a young man 16-25 is higher. There is no outrage there. It’s not unusual for companies to charge smokers more for their health insurance benefits. Owners of cars with higher repair costs pay higher premiums. Older cars are cheaper to insure due to the lower replacement cost. Those who don’t drive as many miles sometimes pay lower premiums. Costs of auto and homeowners insurance vary by what part of the country and by the size of the town or city you live in. And since women outlive men and take fewer chances, they pay less for life insurance. Older people pay more, as do those who participate in dangerous hobbies like skydiving or juggling chainsaws.

This all happens without a stir. Everyone seems to understand that certain classes of people are at a higher risk for either the frequency or the size of insurance claims. Hence they should pay more. The ones in the classes with higher premiums don’t like it, but they pay. So why would people be upset that some women, especially those of childbearing age, might have to pay more? That “used to be the case” and it didn’t have anything to do with prejudice or victimization.

Apparently the government and some group of citizens have now decided that charging women more for health insurance can be explained only by prejudice. Everyone must purchase the same insurance for the same cost or there will be an uproar. And Scott Pelley and others in his profession are more than happy to incite and later fan the flames of that uproar, because it makes their job of reporting the news so much easier. Their job is not to inform or to educate; their job is to attract views and clicks. Nothing does that better than a good demonstration or protest, even those grounded in fundamental misunderstanding.]

P.S. I have often said that problems with healthcare costs must be solved on the basis of costs, not by tinkering with health insurance, but that’s for another discussion.

More Idiocy From the Media

Not wanting to break the spirit of Flashback Fridays, I refer to “Why Aren’t We Insulted?” from just a few weeks ago, but this is really a slightly different subject.

On March 1 I wrote, “When companies and politicians treat us like compete idiots or pander to us by latching on to the latest trends, I think we should be insulted. We are being manipulated, but continue to respond predictably.” Equally insulting is a new trend in reporting on the coronavirus. The media treats us like fools and idiots without any pushback from readers and viewers.

I’ve heard it many times on local TV news as well as national network news, and I see it in print: “The death toll from coronavirus continues to rise.” Here are just a few quick examples from CBS, US News and the Baton Rouge Advocate.

Think about this for a minute. The death toll from anything is always going to rise unless there are zero deaths. The latest death toll, the one they refer to and display on the screen, is calculated by adding new deaths to the ones already reported. If there is only one more death, the toll goes up. And unless someone miraculously rises from the dead it will never decrease! In the middle of a pandemic, few additional deaths would be cause for some optimism. But optimistic news takes a back seat, and breathlessly reporting of “continuing to rise” is more frightening and better serves their purpose of keeping everyone in a panic, tuning in and anticipating their next breaking-news bombshell.

As critical thinkers, we should be insulted by such misleading headlines, but apparently we are not. We get the news that they want to serve up in the format they want to use and with built in bias. Journalism is, for the most part, dead. We get the news we respond to (or at least tolerate). We get the news we deserve.

They keep advertising "We are all in this together," but imagine the shock and surprise if just one reporter at the daily press conference asked the simple question, "What can we do to help?"

Who Will Tell Us the Truth?

When a large number of people are convinced that certain incorrect facts are true, it is not in the interest of politicians or advertisers to try to talk them out of it. If many people thought the sky was green, Congress would likely pass a resolution praising the greenness of the sky in an effort to garner support. 

When the food industry learns that many people believe that gluten has negative effects, they begin printing labels touting the lack of gluten in their products or take the gluten out while raising the price. They will reinforce errors for votes or sales with no interest in education, while the myths are spread and supported by the news media and social media contacts.

I have written many times before about misunderstandings around the health benefits of dietary supplements, the dangers of GMOs and an irrational fear of everything from power lines to nuclear power plants. All these misconceptions have a cult-like following. 

Likewise, as crime statistics continue to improve, the news media’s search for more and more isolated incidents to report with breathless anxiety leads people to the opposite conclusion. Fear sells. (This is very apparent from the coverage of the coronavirus where they search out and report as typical, anecdotal examples of flaws in the system then ask the President what he is doing to quell the anxiety and comfort the fearful.)

Now here are a few more examples where commonly held beliefs are inconsistent with the facts. 

The first is a campaign trail mantra: the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer. This is clearly not the case. Income is tracked in quintiles, five groupings from lowest to highest. Between 1979 and 2015, real income for all quintiles has increased. 

The Congressional Budget Office reported that, adjusted for inflation, taxes, welfare payments and Social Security, the income of the bottom 1/5 rose by 79%, while the top 1/5 rose by 103% and the middle 3/5 by 46%. There may be more inequality, but the poor are not getting poorer. Furthermore, research shows that the population in each of those segments is less stable than most believe. Individuals freely move up and down, so some of the formerly poor are much better off.

The second case has led to draconian laws in every state ruining the lives of individuals and their families, sometimes with threats of violence and death from incensed vigilantes. Laws require every sex offender to be named on the same registry regardless of the seriousness of their offense. 

The idea is to protect the public, especially children, from these monsters who are likely to strike again without notice. But reliable research shows that people who commit sex crimes are very unlikely to repeat. And a study in New York showed that 95% of those arrested were first offenders – who would not have been on a registry in the first place. 

Finally, is vaping is as bad as smoking? Johns Hopkins says that it’s less harmful than smoking but not completely safe. Most cases of lung injury (EVALI) “appear to predominantly affect people who modify their vaping devices or use black market modified e-liquids.”

The CDC opinion is that “E-cigarettes have the potential to benefit adult smokers who are not pregnant if used as a complete substitute for regular cigarettes....”

The majority of cases of EVALI are strongly associated with Vitamin E acetate added to THC. Vitamin E acetate has not been found in the lung fluid of people that do not have EVALI. 

 Although it’s not legal to sell e-cigarettes to minors since August 2016, and the federal government has just banned flavored e-cigarettes to try to discourage kids from getting hooked, kids have always been able to get cigarettes. Despite new laws, the country is stressing over a teen vaping epidemic. The result of these bans will likely increase EVALI cases as adults and kids that still want the flavors will be shopping on the black market where the real danger comes from. Meanwhile, everyone feels virtuous about leading the fight against another vice and protecting our kids.

It is so easy for people to get extremely upset about invisible threats, e.g., diseases and radiation or threats to our children like abductions or school shootings or rape culture on campus or differences that play to our sense of social justice. When this kind of artificial hysteria takes hold, no one stops to ask: what is the real danger; where did they get the numbers; who conducted the study; was there a study at all or did someone make it up to support their own agenda, job security or beliefs? 

The government reacts with stupid, purely symbolic actions like banning plastic straws. Advertisers print labels or adjust products to meet a demand generated by information with no scientific backing. Myths and misinformation distract from solving real problems. All for lack of critical thinking.

Coronavirus Fears

The fears, more so than the virus, are leading people to do strange things. The toilet paper and bottled water hoarding is just one example. I stopped by the grocery store today and it was packed at 1:30 in the afternoon. Schools announced they would shut down for 2 weeks to disinfect, and apparently what you do when the schools are closed to keep the kids from infecting each other is take them to a crowded grocery store instead.

And what the schools are disinfecting is a mystery, since there have been no reported cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) in this or any of the surrounding counties. But I guess the schools will be as germ-free as they have ever been.

I don’t think the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is doing anyone any favors. He is undoubtedly very knowledgeable on the subject, but his bedside manner leaves something to be desired. With the country in a panic he told Congress, “things will get worse than they are right now. ”

That is the direct truth, perhaps a little too direct. It is understandable from a purely clinical point of view that diseases spread, especially in a population without immunity, but words like that don’t do anything to get people to calm down. They have the opposite effect (to the great delight of the news media). 

So here is another way to think about it. America is very likely better at dealing with such a problem than China. The first case in China was traced to November 17 of last year.

By February 29, we were seeing headlines like this from NPR: “As New Coronavirus Cases Slow In China, Factories Start Reopening.” They were still having some economic problems, but the future seemed brighter.

By March 12 Reuters was reporting: “The Chinese city of Wuhan, ground zero of the coronavirus outbreak, reported just five new cases on Friday, the second day in a row the tally has been less than 10, while no locally transmitted infections were reported in the rest of the country.” Less than four months after the initial outbreak they seemed to be getting a handle on the problem.

That should be encouraging for the rest of us. Though it will likely get worse as Dr. Fauci stated, the first case of coronavirus was already detected in the US just about two months ago. “On January 19, 2020, a 35-year-old man presented to an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington, with a 4-day history of cough and subjective fever.”

Now extrapolation can be a little dangerous, and no one can guarantee that we will be out of the woods less than two months from now. But judging from progression of the disease in China and subsequently in Italy, it seems like a decent assumption. Whether it is or not remains to be seen, but taking that point of view is certainly more comforting (and realistic) than listening to the evening news and then hauling the kids off to the store to buy more toilet paper. 

The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Baader-Meinhof is the name given to the phenomenon of a thing you've just noticed, heard of or experienced “suddenly cropping up constantly from different sources.” A common example is when a person becomes interested in buying a particular brand of car. Suddenly she begins to notice them everywhere. Or a friend mentions a popular song and later it comes up two or three more times in a short period. Also known as frequency illusion or recency illusion, it could be the result of a new awareness or a subconscious reaction to new information causing the brain to become selectively attentive.

Lately many news stories seem to follow the same theme. It wouldn’t be surprising for the entire society to be feeling a sense of this phenomenon and reacting to it. Are examples really more common or just more noticed?

Take for example, the recent story of the female TV reporter covering a fun run in Savannah, GA. The Huffington Post reports that one of the runners, a man wearing a hat and sunglasses, “smacked her backside as he ran past.” The offender “has been banned from future races after a video of the incident went viral.”

Then slapping became groping in this and several other stories: “Runner who groped reporter identified as local youth minister. Instead of a slap, CBS and others began to use the term grope in an effort perhaps to increase outrage.

The New York Post referred to him as the “pervy” jogger and a “creep.” 

In the wonderful world of new technology, technology that carries with it as many disadvantages as benefits allowing, for example, bullying to be raised to a new level of viciousness and relentlessness or one thoughtless comment to incite protests, boycotts and job losses, this grew from a localized incident of bad judgment into a national example of the prevalence of sexual harassment. 

This incident has created another celebrity victim: “It’s not playful. He hurt me both physically and emotionally.” The perpetrator, pervy jogger, creep, groper was given a national platform to apologize not only to the victim, but “to her family, her friends and her co-workers,” saying, “It was an awful act and an awful mistake.”

He’s lost his volunteer position and faced nationwide pillorying to his character and reputation based on a single misjudgment. Had it remained a local issue, he might have been charged with a misdemeanor. Instead he is another offender in the records of the Me-Too movement where examples are “suddenly cropping up constantly from different sources.”

What if a woman runner had done the same to a male reporter? I have met several women over the years who would have thought it both playful and funny. But that doesn’t fit the mold. It’s not confirmation bias or Baader-Meinhof. We are not sensitized to it. It wouldn’t have gone viral. 

And then, there was this story from the Business Insider, although ABC, the New York Times and the Washington Post as well as many other news organizations covered it. “West Point and the Naval Academy are investigating students giving hand gesture tied to white supremacy during Army-Navy broadcast.”

These are not new, unique, hateful hand signals. “Students from West Point and the Naval Academy were seen giving the ‘OK’ sign…during a pregame show.” A hand sign that has been used for almost 2000 years to mean OK (or something similar) was, as of three months ago, “added to the Anti-Defamation League's online database of hate symbols used by white supremacists and other far-right extremists.” I guess if they use it, it’s now off limits to everyone else. 

Talk about tyranny of the minority! According to a site called The Wrap, “White power groups are still decidedly on the fringes of society, especially compared to the prevalence of religious groups that preach positivity and acceptance.” And contrary to popular sentiment, the Southern Poverty Law Center lists fewer hate groups today than in 2013. But when hand signs at a football pregame make the news, the issue comes up again. There has to be an investigation into the intentions of these students.

Who is looking for and reporting hand signs on TV? Who thinks a local incident of acting like a complete jerk warrants national attention? Is life so easy or so boring in America that we have to search for problems, go out looking for reasons to be offended and upset? Do we have no perspective?

So Much Filler

With so much time dedicated to news, the media faces the choice of either saying the same thing over and over until people get sick of hearing it and it loses its edge, or trying to come up with enough extra items to fill the time available. The trend has been to accuse “cable news” of this use of filler (and other things, like using unverified sources), but it's found on the networks as well.

The practice of using filler goes beyond the cute animal pictures from the Internet and the feel-good, human-interest stories at the end of evening newscasts. This explains why every time I hear a newscaster start with the words, “A new study shows,” I tend to roll my eyes and tune it out. It is there to fill airtime and is either incomplete, inconclusive or both, featuring words like linked to and may cause and leads to or simply a rehash of common knowledge – often both.

A prime example turned up last week. It appeared not only on network news, but on CNN and Time.com. Napping is good for you.

 “In a new paper published in the journal Heart, researchers found that Swiss adults who took one or two daytime naps per week had a lower risk of heart problems, including heart disease and strokes, than non-nappers.” They followed about 3500 people between the ages of 35 and 75 for eight years, dividing them into four groups based on self-reporting: no naps, 1-2 times per week, 3-5 naps per week and about daily. 

They drew the conclusion by sorting that data by the 155 people in the study who developed heart problems. (Except their conclusion did not apply to people over 65.) Time also reports: “The study was limited by its observational design—which allows researchers to find only patterns, not cause and effect.” There, late in the article come the disclaimers. 

CNN's piece was a little more forthright at the beginning with the headline: "Daytime naps once or twice a week may be linked to a healthy heart.” Their expert doesn’t think changing habits to conform to the study findings will improve heart health. It may be more about overall choices behind those sleep habits. It is “far better to aim for regular good night's sleep and to follow usual lifestyle advice of good diets and decent activity levels.”

The whole story is very heavy on may be linked and no definite cause and effect, concluding with common advice on healthy lifestyles.

One wonders why it even considered newsworthy when the study itself gives the same vague information: “Nap frequency may help explain the discrepant findings [in other studies] regarding the association between napping and [cardiovascular disease] events." [Emphasis added.]

The researchers acknowledged limitations: reliance on self-reporting, the small number of subjects with CVD events (155) – especially in the 1-2 naps per week group, the possibility of underestimating morning napping due to the questionnaire’s wording and the possibility of residual confounding, which means that other factors not included in the study could have affected the results. Therefore, “these results should be interpreted with caution,” and generalizing conclusions beyond the Swiss population “is not guaranteed.” 

Looking into the details confirmed my suspicions. This study may have been of interest to other research groups working on napping-related questions, but it was very limited and of no value at all to the American public. Why then did 76 news outlets pick up the story with some providing more thorough and accurate information than others? – Filler!

Get a Grip

Several years ago I knew a woman, the manager of an office, who would occasionally remind her workers to “get a grip.” She meant that she couldn’t discuss a problem or issue with them until they could calm down and approach the subject rationally. This tendency to fly off the handle about trivial matters or about things we have no control over is a good indicator of a temporary failure of perspective.

This is what comes to mind when I read about threats from strangers. It’s likely that the person mailing bombs to leading Democrats was just a crazy person motivated by some kind of warped sense of their role in politics. That may also apply to the man in Pennsylvania who threatened to shoot up a polling center on Election Day after finding out he wasn’t registered to vote or to the man in Florida who threatened to blow up an elections office building because he was fed up with receiving too many robocalls. I wouldn’t call these folks typical.

 But there have also been some recent examples of people, who are probably otherwise fairly levelheaded, who needed to be reminded to get a grip.

The first example comes from northern Indiana. On the day before Halloween, a “9-year-old girl and her twin 6-year-old brothers were struck and killed by a pickup truck as they crossed a road to board a school bus.” It was a tragic and heartbreaking accident that made national news. The driver of the pickup truck has been charged with three counts of reckless homicide and one of passing a school bus causing injury.

Only a couple of days afterward the sheriff was forced to go on Facebook and local television to ask people in the community to stop threatening the woman, saying, "No good can come from the harassment and the threats of violence against individuals involved.” What made those people think threatening this person was a good idea or that it would have positive results? It was obviously more than one person.

In a similar situation at about the same time, professional football player Ty Montgomery and his family were receiving threats. Why? He made a mistake during a football game. Instead of taking a touchback in the end zone after a kickoff in the fourth quarter, he tried to return the kick. He was hit, fumbled and lost the ball, blowing an opportunity for his team to make a last effort to win the game.

You don’t have to look any further than the last word of the last sentence - game! And this again was obviously more than one person. He told the press, "People are sending messages to my wife, people are making comments on posts about my son. I'm getting phone calls, people offering their houses to stay [at] because apparently people are making threats online."

There are a lot of benefits to the current level of technology, allowing mass communications and giving anyone the ability to contact others instantly anywhere in the world. Through social media we can pass along good news or amusing pictures and stories to groups at a time. One downside of the same technology is this ability to express outrage, often in the form of threats. These threats serve no purpose, accomplishing nothing, except possibly making the perpetrators feel a little better about themselves. What’s worse is that it can be over something as trivial as a sporting event.

Maybe everyone needs a sign over their television and computer screen reminding them, when the awful news or the awful sports decision is broadcast, to “get a grip.”

Practical Health Advice

I have written in the past about the health advice on TV or the Internet from reputable sources that usually boils down to eating well, exercising, getting enough sleep, not smoking and drinking alcohol in moderation. It includes many of the behaviors showing strong discipline and is never a new revelation. (The health advice from not-so-reputable sources includes all the magic herbs, oils, supplements and ancient secrets and is best ignored.)

One good piece of health advice that is often not mentioned or only hinted at is to minimize stress. Although stress can be good and energizing, most stress is harmful and can lead to serious health problems. WebMD lists these facts about stress:

• Seventy-five percent to 90% of all doctor's office visits are for stress-related ailments and complaints. 
• Stress can play a part in problems such as headaches, high blood pressure, heart problems, diabetes, skin conditions, asthma, arthritis, depression, and anxiety. 
• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) declared stress a hazard of the workplace. Stress costs American industry more than $300 billion annually.

 One of the most stressful situations is that of an abused spouse or partner, and it doesn’t even have to be physical abuse. “Nearly half of all women and men in the United States will experience psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime. (CDC, 2017)” The abuse and manipulation puts a terrible strain on the individual. Friends often rightly advise her (or him) to leave the relationship for their own good. To the outside observer, it’s a no-brainer, but the person in the relationship has trouble seeing it clearly.

That’s what comes to mind when I see people freaking out on social media and in person over the latest breaking news (whatever that happens to be).  They are feeling stress similar to being psychologically abused and manipulated.  They put their health at risk by taking those news stories personally and reacting just as they have been calculated to react.  (Nothing seems to please a reporter more than the chance to get someone crying on camera.  The viewer reaction drives ratings.)

Nothing brings this home more clearly than the Time Magazine article that required correction when a “photo of a crying Honduran girl used as a symbol of the Trump administration's policy of separating undocumented migrant children from their parents turns out to not be as representative as originally believed.” Though the Time editor-in-chief issued an apology that the original version of the story “misstated” what happened, he stood by the overall reporting behind the story and the “larger issues” represented by the photo. So it doesn’t matter if it’s true or accurate, as long as it elicits the desired response.

Another source called the story accompanying the photo “factually incorrect, wildly misleading, and lacking important context” and accused Time of standing by the story because of its “Propaganda Value.” And the photographer didn’t seem to mind that it was misrepresented.

There has been much other, less blatant evidence that the media is less interested in informing than in molding opinions. But if this admission from Time doesn’t persuade people that they are being manipulated, they are like the abused spouse who refuses to see the truth and leave.  The media is not our friend.  They are trying to sell you ideas and sell you products through the ads they can get by keeping you hooked on their soap-opera-like presentation of what they decide to report as news.

It takes a lot of critical thinking – leading with your head and not your heart – to see through this psychological game playing, but your health is at risk.

What Do These Stories Say About Our Country?

I was stunned when I saw an advertisement in the local grocery circular for Spaghetti O’s Organic. I have written many times about how organic foods are no more nutritious than the non-organic, how pesticides used in organic farming can be more dangerous than conventional pesticides and generally how consumers are paying more for a mythical “healthy halo” associated with words like natural and organic.

Intrigued, I went looking for those Spaghetti O’s at the store and found, as expected, that the price was about 35% higher for substantially the same product: same size can with very similar ingredients and nutritional value.  (The original had 10 more calories and a little more sugar.) Taking that 35% and applying it to the average family grocery bill of $600 per week* gives a potential waste of $210 per week or nearly $11,000 per year. Of course it is currently impossible to substitute organic for everything on the grocery list, but each individual choice is contributing to a part of that potential of $11,000. 

* Estimate is based on the low end of the Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home, “Thrifty” Plan, U.S. Average, April 2018, so the potential waste for many families could be higher (up to double).

But we are not just talking about kids’ food. This equally shocking report came from the CBS Sunday Morning show a few weeks back. Celebrities are endorsing recreational marijuana in states where it’s legal. Tommy Chong, from the Cheech and Chong marijuana movies, Willie Nelson, Snoop Dog, Melissa Etheridge and Whoopi Goldberg are putting their names on products as a marketing ploy to enhance sales. As the pot marketing expert told CBS, “stores can basically charge an average of a 25% markup over the same type of product that doesn't have a celebrity name on it."  

So people are willing to pay 35% more for canned pasta and 25% more for their weed, based on the packaging, with no substantial difference in the product.  These are the same Americans who stress about retirement insecurity.  Fifty percent don’t have $1000 set aside for an auto repair or a medical emergency and one in four couldn’t come up with $100 in a pinch.

Meanwhile, instead of offering advice on how to live a more financially stable life, the news media fills us with more reasons to spend money needlessly, because Americans are so focused on celebrity endorsements and fads.  We are fed stories about how the Mediterranean diet is being replaced by the Nordic diet as the healthiest way to eat, apparently because it replaces the focus on olive oil with a preference for rapeseed oil/canola oil.  New fads bump out the older ones, but some can't even keep up. Things are changing so fast ; the news cycle and the viral cycle have accelerated to the point where it is no longer profitable for companies to print today's memes on t-shirts. By the time they hit the shelves, they are out of date – and no one wants to be seen in a shirt with a wise or funny saying or image that’s no longer relevant!  What would your friends think?

These are just a few examples of a serious shortage in critical thinking and perspective. Doesn’t it make you want to roll your eyes, shake your head, and hope that people come to their senses soon?

Not Enough Babies!

Oh, no!  We're running out of people!

The Washington Post, along with several other news outlets reported a few weeks ago that the birth rate in the US is down. It fell 1% from 2015 to 2016. Why is this news? Is it a problem?

 Apparently it is. The article says we are “in the midst of what some worry is a baby crisis.” The birth rate has been declining for years and is now at a historic low according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some predict it will result in “economic and cultural turmoil” and that “there's a danger that we wouldn't be able to replace the aging workforce and have enough tax revenue to keep the economy stable.”

The workforce issue could be a worry if the birthrate falls and stays below the replacement level, unless robots fill some of those jobs that the aging workforce leaves. Of course, the idea of robots taking jobs is another of the worries that the news media presents as a potential crisis! But maybe it would be a good thing.

With robots doing the work, there would not be enough human workers to pay into the Social Security fund that the retirees draw from. But that is already a problem, a flaw in the design of the program rather than a crisis brought about by not enough babies. It is compounded by the inadequate savings of many older Americans, but fewer children would cost parents less and with a little more discipline the may be averted.

Then there is the fact that as economies strengthen and the standard of living improves it is natural for parents to have fewer children. Populations migrate from farm to city, and the childhood survival rate improves as healthcare improves. It happens in every country, not just here. According to the article countries that already have low birthrates are fighting this trend by putting “pro-family policies into place to try to encourage couples to have babies.” 

That smacks of yet another government attempt to sway individual decisions – there is already a tax break for having children and assistance payments are calculated on a per child basis.  Now should programs like mandatory parent leave be added? Do we have people in Washington (or anywhere) capable of fine-tuning the birthrate by turning on and off programs and regulations? Even if we did, is it politically realistic to expect that such benefits could easily be turned off? 

At the same time we have a distress call every summer that children are out of school and will be going hungry because they no longer get free breakfasts and lunches. Charitable organizations are putting together programs to address this problem.  Would more babies compound this problem?  

Finally, since everyone is worried about climate change, isn’t having fewer people burning fossil fuel, otherwise adding to greenhouse gases by eating meat and generally using up the earth’s resources a good thing? Technically, your children and grandchildren are part of your carbon footprint. Maybe this is another case of wanting to clean up the planet by letting someone else do it.

The news media are always eager to pick up on the worries of certain experts even if they seem to conflict with the worries of other experts.  This sounds like another crisis where the experts have already made up their minds about the problem and course of action without looking at the many trade offs and contradictions – puzzling.

Are We Getting Too Lazy About Truth

Since the latest presidential race, the expression “fake news” has become widespread; not only for politicians, but everyday people use it either as a joke or a jibe or a serious comment.  So when I saw an article about news, particularly fake news, on Facebook a number of questions came to mind. How many people are getting news from Facebook? And why do they expect Facebook to do a better job of vetting the news than anyone else.

A little over a year ago Facebook began putting red flags on news stories debunked by third-party fact-checkers, labeling them as fake news. Unfortunately the scheme backfired causing them to change tactics late last year. “Users who wanted to believe the false stories had their fevers ignited and they actually shared the hoaxes more.” Instead Facebook began showing related articles from trusted news sources. Now, instead of calling attention to news they decide is incorrect, they reduce the size of the link post in News Feed.

But I thought Facebook was in the business of bringing the world together (or something like that) so they can earn revenue by delivering eyeballs to ads, not serving as a news source.  Apparently it’s both. And more people seem to be getting news from there.

A Pew Research poll from the summer of 2016 gives a fairly up-to-date picture.  Overall, most people still get their news from television, though that doesn’t apply to the under-50 crowd who rely more on the Internet. Newspapers, especially among younger Americans lag far behind.  

The survey goes into a lot of detail about news sources.  For example, those who“ever get news on a mobile device” rose from 54% in 2013 to 72% three year later. Of online news consumers, 36% say they often get news from professional news organizations and about 15% from friends, but they trust both sources about the same – having either “a lot of trust” or “some trust” at a level of about 76%. Trust in social media as a source of news is much lower, but still at about 34% in the combined categories of “a lot of trust” or “some trust.”

There seems to be trend, and Pew Research is tracking that trend. Overall, television is losing ground to the Internet, radio is stable and newspapers continue to fall out of favor. As far as the Facebook question, from 2012 to 2016 the number of U.S. adults reporting seeing news on social media rose from 49% to 62% and then up to 67% by last October, with those citing it as a frequent source moving from 18% to 20%. So apparently Facebook is right to be concerned about fake news, as more Americans move from newspapers and TV to the Internet and social media for their news and Congress is eager to grill them and others about why they didn’t intervene when the fake news appears.

This brings up a couple of concerns. First, the worry that people trust news from their friends as much as they do news from professional news organizations, while at the same time some of their friends are more likely to share bogus information that happens to agree with what they want to believe than to share true stories.

The second is the notion that the government holds these companies accountable to, in a sense, censor the news they pass along. With ¾ believing that the professional news sources are biased, what guarantees that the Internet companies can be more responsible?  What prevents them from mimicking their own customers and be more prone to pass along “facts” that agree with what they want to believe?

As everyone gets so busy that they leave these decisions to others, critical thinking goes away and we move closer to the concept behind 1984.

What To Do About The News

Last Monday a local news reporter informed viewers that if they hadn’t filed their taxes yet, they had only one day left to file for an extension.  He added that some, but not all, states give an automatic extension based on filing of the federal form without filing additional paperwork.

This brought home an important point.  The report was local and an overwhelming majority of viewers lived in the same state. Why did the reporter not mention, by the way, into which category our state falls?  It would have taken maybe five minutes on the Internet.  It brought home the point that those so-called journalists are merely reading from a script.  When the one story is over, they move on to the next.  They don’t do their homework.  They aren’t interested in details.  They are not in the business of explaining or enlightening.

They are in the business of passing along dry facts, which are sometimes not even factual, or of repeating someone else’s opinion.  The biggest waste of our time is the speculation by experts, politicians or even fellow journalists on what might happen at a meeting or as the result of a certain decision.  The second biggest waste of our time is reporting on something we all knew would be happening anyway, just to rehash the original event.  An example is that when someone dies in a horrible or unexpected way, we are sure to hear mention of the funeral a few days later just to revisit the original story and reemphasize how horrible or unusual it was.

As the nation gets further and further divided, the bias of the media becomes more obvious.  They decide both what to tell us and how to tell it. Do they put a spin on certain news that will appeal to their viewers or do they omit certain stories that favor the opposition or reflect unfavorably on their political view?  If you don’t believe it, as an experiment, look at the headlines on the CNN website and then go directly to the Fox News website.  It’s almost like reading news about two different countries!

The science stories can be as bad, no depth or research, just a reading from the press release. There may be a comment from their science correspondent that puts things into perspective, but don’t count on that being totally accurate.  Remember, the primary objective of the media is to scare or manipulate customers with the goal of promoting their product and beating out the competition.  These are not a bunch of altruistic enterprises intent on dolling out the truth to all.  They are in business to make money.

That leaves two alternatives:  rely on the news from friends and newsfeeds on social media or critical thinking.

The first alternative may look unlikely, but as of 2016, 62% of adult Americans – get at least some of their news from social media, up from 48% in 2012 according to the Pew Research Center and others.  “I know it’s true; I read it on the Internet” used to be a joke, but today nearly one in five rely on social media exclusively for news.  Whereas network news organizations once required two independent sources, those who post or repost on Facebook don’t feel obligated to check the accuracy or timeliness of any information.  The same false rumors on health or politics recirculate every couple of years.

Unless you are going to count on the cute cats and puppy-dogs seen both on social media, and more and more on the mainstream, critical thinking is the only solution. Some stories make no sense on the surface. Some are not consistent with other known information that does not accompany the story.  Some are just made up stories to fit a particular worldview.

The critical thinker approaches all these with a skeptical mind and does research to find more information or different sides of the story. It’s impossible to find out the truth in every case, but as some sources prove to be more reliable and new subjects are often related to others previously researched, it becomes easier to narrow things down and sort out what's correct.  Also, our scope must be limited because it is impossible to be scared of everything.  Perspective helps focus, while critical thinking helps discover the truth.

Fake News

Last week some real news came out about fake news.  A recent study at MIT using Twitter data from 2006 to 2017 found some surprising and somewhat shocking results – and should be of interest to anyone that believes critical thinking is not a necessary part of everyday life.  “False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth.”

The Washington Post reports:  “In a statistical model that kept variables like Twitter followers and account age equal, falsehoods were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than the truth. The study authors hypothesized that falsehoods contain more novelty than truth.”  The theory is that new and different items are more interesting or amusing than the dull, boring truth so they spread faster and farther.

Some blame the proliferation of fake news on automated computer programs, “bots” that are built with the intention of spreading rumors or pushing certain stories to go viral.  But the MIT researchers also considered this and discounted the impact of such tactics.  “Using techniques to identify bots, they determined that software-run accounts spread falsehoods and truths equally. Put another way, only human activity could explain the preferential spread of false news.”

But this report is in a sense also misleading.  The headline read: “Fake news spreads ‘farther, faster, deeper’ than truth, study finds.”  But the original study carefully avoids calling it fake news because “the term has lost all connection to the actual veracity of the information presented, rendering it meaningless for use in academic classification. [The authors] have therefore explicitly avoided the term…and instead use the more objectively verifiable terms ‘true’ or ‘false’ news.”  They distinguished between true and false by looking for a consensus of fact-checking agencies.

Both MIT and the Washington Post see no easy solution to the spread of this false information.  Twitter, Facebook and the rest can’t and shouldn’t be expected to police the Internet.  Not only would this be an infringement on free speech but also an inordinate amount of power held by a few to define truth.

Furthermore, the study does not consider the overall failure to distinguish between news and opinion as well as the frequent attempts to disguise advertising as news.

So, as I have argued many times in the past, it’s left up to the individual ability and inclination to separate fact from fiction.  Though the study focused on fears of false news affecting elections, stock market swings and reactions to terror attacks, the dangers are closer to home and more within our personal control.

We continue to be challenged by outright false or unverified claims about health and wellbeing.  Despite advances in medical science, the presence and the reach of the “snake oil salesmen” is greater than ever.  Not only outright fraudulent products but also many so-called alternative and complementary products have no scientific basis and may be dangerous, yet many Americans are devoted to them.  A majority of Americans believe GMO foods are not safe, while most scientists strongly disagree.  The battles about chlorinated drinking water and vaccinations rage on in small segments of the population.  All these erroneous beliefs are reinforced by false stories reflecting firm opinions.  The physical and financial health of individuals and societies rise and fall on the ability to show strong behavior in the dimension of critical thinking.

As I wrote just a few weeks ago (and many other times), in this modern age as we are overwhelmed by half-truths, misrepresentations, misinterpretations and sloppy reporting; critical thinking, being skeptical and doing good research from reliable sources, is more urgently needed to protect your health and your wallet.