Do Seatbelts Really Save Lives?

 A little over a year ago, I retired this blog with a final summary. But I just can't keep quiet about some of the craziness out there.

I know the news agencies thrive on picking and choosing what they tell us and then telling us in a way that supports their political narrative. That can be expected. But when they, apparently unwittingly, present real information in the form of misleading headlines, it appears someone is not thinking things through.

Recently CBS (and others) came out with this news story about inadequate seatbelt warnings. The headline reads, "47% of people killed were not wearing a seatbelt." This gives people who do not want to wear their seatbelts a perfect argument that 53% percent of people killed were wearing a seatbelt - very little difference. So what's the big deal? The headline is not only not persuasive, it can be turned on itself to draw the exact opposite conclusion.

What needs to be said is that about 10% of people choose not to wear their seatbelt, but people not wearing seatbelts account for almost half the people killed in auto accidents. That means your chance of dying are about nine times higher if you don't buckle up. That's quite a difference from the implied comparison of 47% to 53%!

With use of seatbelts actually declining in recent years, wasn't anybody at CBS paying attention to the possible misinterpretation of their message? Poorly presented news is little better than fake news.

A Nation Divided

Well, here we are again; behavior has consequences. Poor personal behavioral choices grow into societal problems.

 

For four or five years, responsibility for a divided America has been pinned on Donald Trump. The media and the opposition party led the way, giving him no credit and all the blame. Citizens were drawn in and equally divided by the merciless news coverage and personal attacks on one side and by the bombastic self-promotion and polemic tweets on the other. The media expect everyone to agree that he had not one single redeeming quality or made one good policy decision? 

 

There certainly was a middle ground, but no one was interested in finding it. After the 2020 election, those who claimed to be distressed by the Trump-inspired divisiveness did not let up on their mocking, criticism and name-calling, while those backing the president were equally combative. Neither acted as if unity was an important goal. It's like a habit they can’t seem to break. Irreconcilable differences drive the chatter on social media and in the streets. 

 

Looking dispassionately at the record reveals that President Trump made some good decisions and some terrible ones. Employment and the economy improved at a rapid pace. Operation Warp Speed cleared the way for a rapid approval of vaccines. There's more peace in the world with fewer American troops overseas. But frequently his personal behavior was appalling. 

 

No doubt President Biden will likewise make some good decisions and some poor ones. Those on his side will praise the successes; those on other side will heap on the criticism.

"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts.”  – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from The Gulag Archipelago. 

Unfortunately, Americans are not in the mood for a nuanced, nobody's perfect, stance toward our leadership. They are fighting mad and will continue to choose insults over rational debate. The media revels in this attitude, and they will do everything they can to promote and stir it up to keep their ratings high and their audience on edge. By abandoning perspective, discipline and critical thinking, we allow ourselves to be whipped up into these ideological frenzies.

We can choose to be influenced by these one-sided presentations or see them for what they are – blatant manipulation and propaganda. In many cases, journalism has been replaced by editorializing pretending to be reporting along with outright scare tactics. Americans could stop reacting, take control and demand better, but they don't seem interested.

 

Yes, the nation is divided with no end in sight, but it’s no one’s fault but our own.

Critical Thinking in Crisis

American critical thinking is hard to find and completely disappears in the face of a crisis. During the virus scare last spring, two types of info emerged. One, often from the medical professionals, was the calm reasonable kind. It was right to be careful, practice social distancing, wash hands frequently and wear a mask. That message was typically drowned out by the breathless, panicky pandemic warnings seen on the news.

 

We got the daily numbers of cases and deaths. We watched stories of people hoarding Purell, toilet paper and water. During the first week of the 15 days of voluntary lockdown, there were a shortage of coconut water and cellphone videos of fights in grocery stores over paper goods! Even before the disease got to the US, diners shunned Chinese restaurants. Then we were asked to stay in and practice social distancing, but some college students on spring break and others couldn’t be bothered. Today’s fun and freedom took precedence over the possible spread of the disease tomorrow or in a few weeks.

 

On the first Monday that the schools closed to protect students, I went to my local grocery store to pick up a prescription. It was overrun with parents who brought their school-aged children shopping. Did they think a good activity to keep them “isolated” and protected was a family shopping trip?

 

Day 12 brought this from CBS News: “Egg prices triple in 3 weeks amid coronavirus panic shopping.” This wasn’t price gouging; it was a genuine shortage. At the same time the price of regular gasoline dropped to around two dollars a gallon, also a result of supply and demand. Most people were driving much less and, for some reason, stocking up on eggs. Only the first makes logical sense. The CBS headline got it right, calling the run on hand sanitizer, paper products, bottled water and eggs “panic buying.”

 

Politicians and media commentators capitalize on this tendency toward fear and panic, encouraging the same reaction to win elections on one hand or to keep ratings up on the other. It has gotten progressively worse. Manufactured fear quickly turns to anger, then to hatred and to more fear. It makes people easier to control. Thus, politicians count on citizens leaving their brains outside the polling place and voting based on fear and hatred while the media counts on them to be glued to the TV for the next shocking update. Since we fail to remain calm and rational, we no longer receive calm, rational messages.

 

The same kind of "thinking" applies to everyday situations as technology gets more and more sophisticated and the people using it don't. We discover nuclear power and use it for bombs and submarines: but try to use it to produce pollution-free electric power and NO! No one can be serious about climate change and not be a advocate for nuclear power. Chlorine gas is deadly; chlorine in a swimming pool is safe. Nuclear bombs are deadly; nuclear power plants are safe. But the opposition is led by politicians and activists who are either well intentioned and ignorant or who have a financial interest in alternative energy sources. Regardless, they use fear and panic to sell their position, and it works.

 

The internet and cell phones allow rapid communications and information, but they lead to a lack of privacy, more sophisticated scams, cyber-bullying, targeted marketing for legitimate and bogus products, a mindset of finding people guilty before evidence is submitted and without a hearing. This technology which has so many positive applications, is used to incite riots and demonstrations and to spread misinformation and whacko theories.

 

We have more food, and people are overeating. We have more prosperity, and people are going broke. We have more leisure, and people are more stressed. We vote based on fear and hatred. We never calm down to think things through. That’s the America we live in.

The Power of Numbers to Deceive

Large numbers are impressive, so people often fail to put them into perspective. That’s why advertisers and advocates love to use them to get more sales or to garner support for a cause. Examples pop up daily, especially in this age of COVID-19.

 

Every day the local and national news media blast out the latest coronavirus totals. Millions of cases and over one quarter million deaths get our attention. In fact, relative to other causes they are very big numbers. It is a serious problem, but no one reminds us that 15 million is less than five percent of the population. Furthermore, I have never heard a news organization report on the number of people who have recovered. It’s sure to also be in the millions. It seems that people come out on two extremes: they either don’t take it seriously enough or they are unnecessarily terrified of catching it and dying. Perhaps if the news gave a more honest, measured account, more people would have an appropriately moderate reaction.

 

I found another example in a health report. “The Federal Trade Commission is sending 70,142 checks and PayPal payments totaling $3,864,824 to consumers nationwide who bought Quell, a wearable device that supposedly would treat chronic pain throughout the body when placed below the knee.” The company was fined almost $4 million for misrepresenting their product! Consumers who were gullible enough to buy the product will be reimbursed. That’s about $55.10 each for a device that is advertised on sale for $99 – not exactly a money-back guarantee – but the $4 million fine seems impressive.

 

Class action lawsuits are also typical. Chipotle, accused of falsely advertising its food as GMO-free, settled for $6.5 million. After the lawyers took 30%, that left their customers with a claim of $2 per meal with a cap of $30 per household, but it “could be less than this depending on how many claims are made.” Again a big number reduced to peanuts per person.

 

Similarly Johnson & Johnson, a favorite target for lawsuits, was ordered to Pay $6.3 million in the Infant’s Tylenol Settlement. That came out to $2.15 a bottle.

 

The number of home burglaries in 2018 was 685,766, about half of total burglaries (1,230,149), and about half of those happened when people didn’t lock their doors. But when buying a home security system you will hear, “A burglary happens once every 26 seconds.”

When big numbers are spread across many people, it doesn’t add up to very much.

 

In some cases, the news media implies big numbers just in their tone. A couple of years ago they wanted us to believe that school shootings were common, but what happened to school shooting news when the presidential campaigns got into full swing? The problem didn’t go away, but the news did. 

 

According to Education Week, twenty-five incidents occurred on school grounds or during school-sponsored events resulting in five student deaths, only one under the age of 14. Any such deaths are tragic, but that’s five out of 56.4 million students. Should anyone panic over such minuscule probability?

Headlines about these extremely rare events like shark attacks are easy to ignore, but when kids are involved, it’s different. Parents are terrified at the prospect of their child being abducted. Nosey neighbors report them for letting kids walk alone and authorities respond. An elementary school in South Carolina won’t let the kids whose mother wants them to walk home, leave school without an adult. “Today, only 10% of American kids walk to school, down from about 50% in 1969.” 

Reuters tries to assure parents: “Kidnapped children make headlines, but abduction is rare….On average, fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year since 2010.” Then Parents.com tells them, “Every 40 seconds in the United States, a child becomes missing or is abducted.” But they don't tell them that 0.1% are abducted by strangers, over 95% simply ran away and 99.8% are later found alive. 

 

It’s an endless battle against the media, politicians and charities selling products or ideas and raising  funds using big numbers. The best defense is perspective.

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.]

Flashback – Does Luck Have a Half-life?

This takes us back almost seven years to the minimum wage protests at fast food restaurants. The question is whether people learn to change behavior when they are bailed out from predictable consequences. I have long argued that the reason you can’t raise a family on the minimum wage is that no one should start a family if they can only get a minimum wage job. Bad luck is not forever.

 

People who caught a bad break certainly should be helped, but behavior rewarded is behavior repeated. Irresponsibility rewarded breeds more. Over the past seven years a lot of irresponsibility has been rewarded. Here are my 2013 comments:

[More protests are breaking out around the plight of fast food workers unable to survive on the minimum wage. They are demanding a wage increase to $15 an hour. The news has presented the arguments pro and con, but have usually given more time to the protesters, sometimes, as in this CBS piece, picking out one as a kind of “poster child” for the cause. The hidden problem is that minimum wage, unemployment extensions, food stamps and other proposed government solutions ignore behavioral factors.

A primary argument in favor of this issue tells us that all these people are less fortunate, that they need a helping hand to get back on their feet, that "there, but for the grace of God,” go we. They completely ignore well-known wisdom that behavior has consequences. We are presented with the argument that every one of these fast food workers is merely down on his luck or a victim of a bad economy, and that the situation has nothing to do with consequences of behavior. This unbelievable scenario is widely accepted by otherwise rational people. The media and many politicians never challenge it.

This leads to an interesting comparison: In other circumstances, how do caring people really act? If your teenage son sits on the sofa all day playing videogames, ignoring homework and refusing to do his chores, do good parents excuse the behavior and cover for him? Do they pass it off with, “That’s OK; he’s going through a tough time”? Even non-parents know the answer. Good parents will institute consequences for this poor behavior, knowing that if they don’t, life and reality will later institute much harsher consequences. Teenage sons can be very difficult, but good parents anticipate with a pattern of similar, consistent reactions to deal with natural childhood resistance and laxness. That’s how caring people act. They don’t always come to the rescue – behavior that makes the rescuer feel powerful, but often causes long-term harm to the one rescued. When the bad situation is a bad break, sympathy and a leg up are appropriate. If the son is mugged and loses money, parents may reimburse him for the loss. If he loses it gambling, that’s the consequence of bad behavior. Bailing him out is inappropriate, dulls the impact of the consequence and no learning occurs. (For an extreme example see the recent case of "affluenza" in Texas.)

Returning to the case of minimum wage employees, especially those presented by the media and never challenged, we must ask if it was bad luck or consequences that contributed to the situation. If it’s luck, then some temporary help is appropriate, because bad luck does have a kind of half-life or statute of limitations. A little help can turn things around, but caring people do not bail out from consequences. That only fosters more problematic behavior.

Even in these seemingly innocent human-interest stories the determination requires only a few simple questions. Where did those two or three children come from? Where is the father (or fathers)? What contribution is he making? If none, why not? Did the workers finish high school; were drugs ever involved; are they applying for better jobs, are they looking for ways to increase skills, etc., etc.? What is the long-term plan, if any? (CBS later reported that their "poster-child" example turned down promotions more than once because it didn’t fit her preferred personal schedule. Another news story told of a kind social worker repairing at minimum cost the car of a woman who hasn't been able to work in 5 years due to a neck injury. She can't work, but she can drive?!)  

Looking at the situation through the behavioral lens would probably determine that many of these people are not victims. Many are living with the consequences of earlier choices. Should caring people run to bail them out, labeling them all as “less fortunate,” as the compassionistas would have us believe? Not only do they not learn and grow, but the next generation, poised to make the same mistakes, sees no example to discourage them from following the same path. So, the current, non-behavioral approaches, which lump them all into the same category, lead not to solutions but to perpetual problems.]

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.

MSG and Elections

Throughout the years under a number of different topics, I have made the point that people tend to strongly hold onto ideas, whether they are true or false. They may have heard them repeatedly, heard them from an authoritative source or just liked the idea because it reinforced their favorite biases. In any case, ideas tend to stick.

 

Just a few weeks ago I reran a flashback about the misconception that electric power lines are health hazards. This idea was passed around by the news media back in the 1980s based on flimsy evidence. The idea stuck despite it being firmly disproved within ten years. People still believe it today.

 

In "More Secrets to a Longer Life" on September 28, I discussed the myth that vitamin C reduces the duration and intensity of a head cold. Companies take advantage of this decades-long misconception, making money by offering vitamin C in several forms. I also made reference to other persistent misconceptions: the power of cranberry juice to treat urinary problems; that cutting back on fat is the key to a healthier lifestyle; and the exaggerated benefits of antioxidants.

In light of that, I read some interesting information about monosodium glutamate (MSG) in Bill Bryson’s book, The Body. Here is part of the first paragraph on page 106:

MSG has had a hard time of it in the West since1968 when The New England Journal of Medicine published a letter – not an article or a study, but simply a letter – from a doctor noting that he sometimes felt vaguely unwell after eating in Chinese restaurants and wondered if it was the MSG added to the food that was responsible. The headline on the letter was “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” and from this small beginning it became fixed in people’s minds that MSG was a kind of toxin. In fact, it isn’t.

Further investigation bears this out. From the MSG Fact Sheet: “The scientific research supporting the safety and benefits of monosodium glutamate (MSG) is extensive.”

Another source, the Healthline website states, “While some people assert that the glutamate from MSG can act as an excitotoxin, leading to the destruction of nerve cells, no human studies support this.”

After discussing common complaints, the Mayo Clinic summarizes, “However, researchers have found no definitive evidence of a link between MSG and these [reported] symptoms.”

 

There is no scientific or medical evidence, yet people still report symptoms because they heard it and believe it.

 

What does this have to do with elections? 

 

If you can expose voters to enough misrepresentations, quotations taken out of context, made up stories and unfounded accusations against an opponent and get them to buy it, why not say them over and over and arrange for others to repeat them? Most people don’t do the research/critical thinking; they hear it and it sticks, especially if their mind is already made up. (Right now people on each side are thinking I am talking only about lies spread by the other side!)

 

Politicians and biased news organizations (aren't they all?) do it because it works. And the tactic continues to get more intense. The underlying cause is that voters let them get away with it. They get so stirred up by the "news" that doing cool, critical thinking becomes more difficult than usual, and every new lie stirs them up more. 

 

It reminds me of a casual definition to explain differences in drama: comedy is when the protagonists get what they want; tragedy is when they get what they deserve. By passively following along, buying all of the drama served up by politicians, the media and partisans on social media instead of critically challenging the talking points; Americans will continue to get the leaders and the government they deserve. And it will be a tragedy.

Flashback – Fear of Power Lines

Irrational and unsubstantiated fears have been good examples of a lack of critical thinking. People hear a rumor or supposed scientific truth and latch onto it without questioning or doing any research. 

Back on December 5, 2014, I explained one of these unfounded fears, the concern that power lines emitted some kind of dangerous radiation that makes people and animals sick. That was almost six years ago, when Facebook and other social media were in their relative infancy. Today Americans are exposed to this kind of news almost constantly as social media users pass along scary information with no attempt at verification. 

As they did in this case, news organizations will sometimes pick up these stories or interview the believers without any attempt to explain or debunk the beliefs. They merely want to capture “eyeballs.” Fear sells, and fake news is nothing new.

Here is the original post. 

[If you are old enough, you remember the big scare in the late 1980s about power lines causing cancer.  In fact, if you are not old enough to remember the news reports of the time, you have probably heard about this idea from someone who was. There was a great deal of concern, but after over 30 years of further research, it appears to have been a mistaken assumption. Still the fear persists.

The fairly short (7:46) NY Times Retro Report is worth watching.

It begins with replays of news reports from all the major networks from 1987. It was big news at the time, and this review is very informative, showing in retrospect how the news business operates when breaking news has the potential to stir up a lot of fear based on very limited data. A voice-over talks about how power lines may cause cancer while showing the picture of a small bald child, apparently battling cancer (but not from power lines) – sneaky.  When seven children in one Denver school developed cancer and parents blamed it on nearby power lines, one reporter says that it could be a “tragedy of enormous proportions.”

The Times calls the episode “Power of Fear” with the message that once this type of fear is introduced into our society it never really goes away.  

The researcher who first suspected the problem now explains that further research has ruled out any problem.  With the number and density of power lines, this should have developed into a major health problem, but it didn’t.  “That suspicion (of a cancer risk) was simply wrong...The likely impact (of power lines) is zero.”  Scientists in the 1990s conducted hundreds of experiments exposing rats, other animals and human cells to intense EMFs (magnetic fields around the power lines) over long periods of time with no change in the cells.  “In 20 years of looking, no one has found a way that power line fields can do anything at all to cells of animals; unless it can do something to cells, it cannot cause cancer.”  The National Academy of Sciences confirmed this by reviewing 500 studies and releasing their findings in October 1996.  Nothing since then has altered the conclusion of no danger.

The association was always “suggestive, but very faint” but correlation does not prove causation. Yet the idea, the fear, persists and is still spread by some public figures, some advertisers who use the scare tactics to sell real estate service and by word of mouth – now with the added power of social media.

Why do some Americans believe these sources and continue to fear the presence of power lines?  Psychologists tell us that risks that are invisible, that might cause suffering before death or that might affect children have uncanny staying power, even in the face of firm evidence to the contrary. This highlights the need for critical thinking, to put aside emotional responses and listen to the facts. Don’t we have enough stuff to be afraid of without dredging up errors from the past?]

Ducks, Rabbits and Politics

A familiar optical illusion from more than 100 years ago by an unknown German artist asks viewers if they see a duck or a rabbit. Some see a rabbit first and then realize it could also be a duck, and vice versa. It has been reproduced many times for many purposes, but I think it is particularly illustrative of the political situation in America.

Newscasters and citizens puzzle over the divisiveness, and the answer is simple. In politics, some people see a “duck” and some see a “rabbit.” But unlike the optical illusion, many refuse to see both or even admit that the other exists. The Democrats blame the divisiveness on the president, at a convention filled with negative messages and predictions of disaster. They insist it is a “rabbit,” and the president and his backers, misguided “duck” people are dangerous.

The Republicans send the opposite message with no possibility of compromise because it’s definitely a duck. It can’t be both; even if sometimes each side is wrong, those errors are amplified into end-of-the-world scenarios. Divisiveness is inevitable.

It’s impossible to get the truth – that there is a little bit of validity in both viewpoints – because the media is complicit. Here is an observation from a book published thirty years ago called Reality Isn’t What It Used To Be, and if anything, it’s truer today than ever: “The media take the raw material of experience and fashion it into stories; they retell the stories to us, and we call them reality.” Different outlets are creating many different realities, but the realities they create must fit their pre-established stance on each issue – in this example, is it a duck or a rabbit? 

What passes for the news today is more closely related to a morality play from the Middle Ages than to an objective delivery of facts. The stories must have drama, good guys fighting bad guys. And who fits those roles is dictated by the underlying assumptions. So we get similar stories about the same facts that, after the story creation process is complete, bear little resemblance to each other. If there is no easy way to make your side the good guys, the story is buried or omitted.

This is obvious to anyone watching or reading the news carefully. It’s as if CNN/New York Times and Fox exist in different universes. They construct for us different realities without apology. Editors lose their jobs over opinions or headlines that don’t conform. One local television station in Indiana advertising for a news reporter listed as one of the qualifications: must be a good storyteller. The goal of investigation is to build a story in support of their accepted reality.

So we find ourselves in a political power struggle where any concession is seen as surrender, where every event has at least two interpretations, where every single subject and virtually every opinion become political, where last week’s issues disappear in a rush to cover the latest controversy. There is always another side as politicians tell their own stories and accuse others of telling lies or intentionally misleading.

The real events, pseudo-events (like the recent political conventions), behaviors and quotations are fictionalized to promote the designated heroes and villains. Social media compounds the problem not only by repeating favored stories and attacking the other side, but also by acting as a source of fresh stories, memes or opinions for further development. 

As soon as the rabbit-seers take a position, the duck-seers publicize the opposite side, and vice versa. Solving the problems takes a back seat to proving who is right about the rabbit or the duck. And everyone knows they are right, because they heard it from their favorite storyteller, and usually ignore or mock the rival storyteller.

This is not going to change after the election, no matter the outcome. Our enemies and economic rivals around the world are watching and laughing, not at one side or the other, but at the ridiculousness of the self-inflicted chaos. 

Conflicting Stories About Mind Control

Sometimes all the critical thinking in the world can’t completely resolve an issue, but it can get you closer than gut reaction, Facebook or the news media.

This journey began when I read Outnumbered: Exploring the Algorithms That Control Our Lives by David Sumpter, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Uppsala, Sweden. It tells about the effects of technology and the Internet on our lives. “Using the data they are constantly collecting about where we travel, where we shop, what we buy, and what interests us, they can begin to predict our daily habits, and increasingly we are relinquishing our decision-making to algorithms.”

That seems scary, but one reassuring, and somewhat surprising, observation was that commercial and political discussions and arguments on social media and even those by professional persuaders like politicians and advertisers don’t do much to move us off our established positions. You’ll struggle to move someone from one side to the other no matter how good your data; a more likely reaction will be increased resistance (Democrat/Republican, Coke/Pepsi).

Next stop, The New York Review of Books. Here I found a review of The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, author of Money Ball and other best sellers. In it he “recounts the complex friendship and remarkable intellectual partnership of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the psychologists whose work has provided the foundation for the new behavioral science.” Their work is summarized in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) that gives numerous examples of how intuition, fast thinking, frequently leads us in the wrong direction. (I referred to this idea last Monday.)

Later in the article the reviewer begins to elaborate: “Lewis does not discuss the ways in which the same behavioral science can be used quite deliberately for the purposes of deception and manipulation, though this has been one of its most important applications.” But wait a minute! That idea would contradict the point mentioned above.

To support a premise that “Lewis does not discuss,” the reviewer spends several paragraphs worrying that Trump’s 2016 victory moved this new understanding of behavioral science from “making the world a better place” to “a darker story in the public mind…. News outlets have claimed that although Obama’s and Clinton’s teams both used social media, data analytics, and finely grained targeting to promote their message, Trump’s team, according to Forbes, ‘delved into message tailoring, sentiment manipulation and machine learning.’… If this sinister level of manipulation seems far-fetched, it nevertheless reflects the boasts of Cambridge Analytica, the company they employed to do this for them.” 

The implication is that this must be take very seriously, but four paragraphs later the reviewer concedes that whether Cambridge Analytica did or even could do what they claimed consists primarily of a sales pitch.

Finally, I turned to Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe by Hugo Mercier, a cognitive scientist at the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris. He believes that people are less gullible than we tend to think. We often hear stories of obvious scams involving Nigerian princes and prepaid debit cards, but, like plane crashes, these stories make the news because they are rare and shocking, not because they are common. Again, people tend to resist rather than blindly accept new ideas.

Mercier also uses Cambridge Analytica, which according to the Guardian newspaper “allowed democracy [to be] highjacked,” as an example. On page 139 he writes, “In fact it was a scam.” He goes on to say, “In reality, its influence was nil” and that the political analysts “never saw ‘any evidence that it worked’” feeling it was based on “pop psychology BS.”

Who do I trust about the power of persuasion generally or Cambridge Analytica’s (and Russian bots') past or future influence on US elections? I trust Sumpter and Mercier, not a NYBooks reviewer speculating on something the author didn’t discuss in the book, then hedging about how true it is. Experience and these authors teach me that swaying people through psychological manipulation is highly unlikely.

Flashback - Diet Soda and Depression

[I wrote this over seven years ago about another meaningless study meant to make disturbing headlines for the news media and possibly to attract more funding for the researchers. The only party left out of the equation, as usual, was we, the consumers.] 

I have mentioned before the tendency of journalists and the media to try to get and hold our attention with emotionally charged pictures and stories. We regularly see news about the results of studies that seem surprising, scary, or shocking, but they are often somewhat meaningless. They challenge our ability to remain calm and think rationally about the subject. Here is another example.

“A new study finds that people who drink diet sodas or fruit drinks are more likely to be diagnosed with depression.” The article continues very responsibly to explain the size and nature of the study and to emphasize that a link does not necessarily mean that drinking diet sodas causes depression, but the headline - "Drinking diet soda linked to depression" – has us hooked. (With sugary soft drinks being blamed for obesity - blame the soda, not the person drinking it - our choices are narrowing.)

Thinking critically about it, we know that correlation is not the same as causation. "Linked to" isn't the same as "caused by." We may wonder what we are supposed to do with this information – stop drinking diet soda so to avoid depression or start drinking lots of coffee, which the article tells us may have the opposite effect? I don’t think it works that way.

Later in the article they say, “more research is needed.” So what was the point?

Why should we even care about these kinds of studies that give preliminary findings, or publicize findings before they are presented for formal review, or rely heavily on self-reporting as opposed to objective observation?  As I pointed out before, we don’t have the time or energy to be worried about everything, so there is nothing really useful about such news. But it does make for catchy headlines.

[After all this time nothing has changed. Basically meaningless preliminary studies continue to be published and highlighted in the news almost daily, and it won’t stop until a large number of Americans wise up to the tactics.

On second thought, one thing has changed. Judging from comments on social media, some people do have time to worry and express an opinion about everything, but that's another topic. ]

Black Raspberries

Without a doubt black raspberries are good for you. They contain more antioxidants than most other fruits along with anthocyanin, ellagic acid, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium and many other nutrients. But let’s not get carried away!

The subject came up in one of those health stories on the news last week. The big announcement was that a new study indicates that eating black raspberries might reduce inflammation associated with skin allergies.

The story went on to say that in a study done with mice at Ohio State University and recently published in Nutrients “found that a diet high in black raspberries reduced inflammation from contact hypersensitivity.” They fed one set of mice a normal diet while another set had the equivalent of a daily serving of black raspberries added to their diets. After three weeks the ears of all the mice were exposed to an irritant “that caused contact hypersensitivity. Then, they measured the reductions in swelling, comparing the ears of each mouse.” It turned out that the swelling went down more quickly in the group of black raspberry eaters.

This is interesting and promising, but why does it make the news? Mice are not the same as people, or else drug companies could save a lot of time on human trials. They plainly state, as do most initial studies that it was “an early indication that those benefits might exist” and “more work needs to be done.” 

The health benefits of black raspberries are well known. Other studies both at OSU and elsewhere have shown promise in reducing inflammation associated with some types of cancer. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) published this paper on the benefits of the anti-inflammatory properties of freeze dried black raspberries on ulcerative colitis, a disease that can dramatically increase the risk of colon cancers. Again, the studies were done with mice, not people.

From another OSU press release three years ago: “The researchers have demonstrated the remarkable ability of black raspberries to reduce the development of tumors in animal models of cancer, including the oral cavity, esophagus, and colon.” At that point they were ready to start some limited human trials and were soliciting smokers to test whether giving them regular doses of a black raspberry-rich drink could “protect [them] from oral disease and lower the risk of oral cancer.”

They are clear in their conclusions however. This does not necessarily mean that black raspberries prevent cancer.. “A definitive human study to answer that question would take decades and be cost prohibitive. Instead, researchers will continue to evaluate the influence of berries on biomarkers of cancer in both animal models and short-term clinical trials.”

Of course that sounds too much like science and doesn’t prevent this website from boldly proclaiming: “Black raspberries are a cancer-fighting superfood,” while pushing copies of his book.

This is so typical. News organizations release as health news a preliminary study done with mice, as they cover the TV screen with stock footage of berries at the grocery store. It's an easy job; they don't have to do any work to get the story. Meanwhile, limited studies and early indications are misrepresented as definitive results and to promote the superfood du jour. (A few years ago açaí berries were the new superfood.)

All this hype comes around regularly because Americans tend to ignore the details (critical thinking) and look for the easy answers in the form of supplements and superfoods (discipline). 

Flashback - Extending Unemployment Benefits

[Early in 2012 I used a question about the motivational aspects of unemployment benefits to show how sloppy news organizations are about data gathering. This kind of "research" continues to this day without being challenged, while Congress raises the issue of further extending unemployment benefits in light of the coronavirus lockdown. ]

First, this is not about the pros and cons of extending unemployment benefits. It’s about using critical thinking to deal with the information we receive on any subject. This just happens to be a good example. 

At the end of this CNN Money article they ask: “Do you receive unemployment insurance? Have you not been looking for a job as hard because you are getting benefits? Email [address] with your contact information and you could be contacted for an upcoming story or video.”

Two thoughts. As I have pointed out many times before, testimonials or anecdotes are not evidence. These reporters will receive e-mails and sort through them probably to find ones to support the story they want to tell. Second, even if they condensed the information received and delivered a summary, this is an extremely poor method of sampling. Their data would not be representative and any statistical conclusions would be meaningless. How many people do you seriously think will e-mail to say that they are just sitting around until their unemployment runs out, making no effort to find a job?

This practice of finding an individual example and selling it as the plight or experience of many is common among reporters, politicians and advertisers. They want to put a face on the crisis, but it borders on deception. Often the purpose is to gather support for a cause or product by eliciting an emotional reaction from the viewers or voters. It steers us away from the kind of critical thinking and analytical problem solving required to get us (the US) out of the mess we are in.

[By the way, if I had been inclined to write about the motivational effects of unemployment benefit extensions, I need look no farther than a National Bureau of Economics Research working paper in 2015 after the recession. Surprise, surprise! They estimated “the abrupt end of unemployment benefit extensions led to 1.8 million additional new US jobs....”, that is, new workers!]

Is The News Making Us Sick?

It began one morning with two seemingly unrelated items: a story about mountain climbing on BBC Future and a panel from the comics section of the newspaper.

The BBC article, “The placebo effect is well known for its medical benefits, but there is evidence it could give athletes an edge, too,” began with an experiment where mountain climbers were given oxygen to boost physical performance at high altitudes. In a laboratory simulation, they were first given tanks of oxygen to improve performance. When they were later given empty tanks, their brains expected similar improvement and caused the body to adjust appropriately.

It went on to explain how placebos like this can improve athletic performance in other areas, for example, sugar pills believed to be performance enhancing drugs could have the same effect. 

The effectiveness of placebos applies to many areas. A summary of studies shows that “antidepressants are effective for depression about 31-70% of the time, while placebos are effective 12-50% of the time…. So, while antidepressants appear more effective than placebo, only a fraction of the benefit we see in patients is likely from a direct neurobiological impact of the medication itself.” Effectiveness depends on the amount of faith patients have in the product. Placebos taken as part of a test of more powerful drugs tend to have more powerful effects; and patients often report some of the same side effect as the drug itself.

This led me to another BBC article explaining the opposite effect, sometimes called nocebo. In this example the treatment was merely the words the doctor used. The doctor, talking about serious osteoarthritis, says that he has “bad news,” that the knees are “worn out” and the medicine may “help a bit,” but may damage the stomach lining. The doctor has set the patient up to expect the worst. This kind of presentation can unintentionally cause the brain to deliver the opposite of a placebo effect: less positive, possibly negative, outcomes.

A conclusion is “when prescribing treatments, the doctor should emphasise the positive effects of the medicine, while framing the negative side-effects so they seem less frightening, and being careful not to over-emphasise their risks.” They should be honest, but with an optimistic tone.

This led to yet another BBC article, this one from 2015, about how negative thoughts and ideas can not only make you sick, but actually kill you. This effect applies to any authority figure or respected expert, not just doctors. “In the same way that voodoo shamans could harm their victims through the power of suggestion, priming someone to think they are ill can often produce the actual symptoms of a disease.” Hence, people can die of fright or become sicker based on the message and their faith in the authority of the messenger.

Each of these articles is interesting, but coincidentally they came to my attention on the day I saw “The Flying McCoys” at the bottom of the page of an on-line newspaper. The idea is almost too true and too common to be funny and typical of many news programs.

Based on the information above, what is this doing to the overall health of the American people, this constant barrage of fears and anxiety over the virus and whether opening the economy too soon will be a mistake, the emphasis on the ever increasing number of cases and deaths, the constant skepticism about the actions and predictions of the task force, the criticism of any encouraging remarks – especially if they turn out to be overly optimistic; and for years now, fanning the flames of  divisiveness within the country – all with the express intention of putting us on edge, amplifying the fear and anxiety to get everyone to continue to tune in. 

Remember, placebo, the strong mind-body connection cuts both ways. Between the news media, social media and politicians, it’s surprising we are not all physical and emotional wrecks.

The news can be both addictive and unhealthy. One defense is to watch less. Another is to use critical thinking and see it for what it is, big business trying to attract “eyeballs,” and act accordingly, increase our skepticism, lessen our faith in the source and discount their predictions of a fearful outcome at every turn. 

The Opposite of True

Some ideas are repeated so often that large numbers of Americans believe them without question. This makes a handy tool for politicians, advertisers and fundraisers. They get our support to fix problems that either don’t exist or have been exaggerated out of proportion. I covered some of these, stories about child abductions and clean air problems, about two years ago. Here are a few more examples.

Police killed in the line of duty:

Watch the news and you would believe that this issue is at an all-time high. There is a war on; blue lives matter! But the data tell a different story.

This website lists all deaths in the line of duty by cause and by year. The overall figures match fairly well with this other site, so I believe the information is accurate. 

Ignoring causes like accidents, heart attacks, etc., I looked only at gunfire, assault and vehicular assault, that is, purposeful acts. The total for 2019 was 58, somewhat below average. Of the last ten years, the highest were 2010, 2011 and 2016. The lowest were 2013, 2015 and 2017. There seems to be no pattern or trend.

Naturally, no one should feel good about any number above zero. Every case is a tragedy. The problem is a lack of progress, not an escalation.

Vietnam Veterans:

After so many years the stereotype of the mentally scarred Vietnam veteran still rings true in the public imagination. Reality is surprisingly different.

Research done early this century and summarized by Peter Rowe in the San Diego Union-Tribune found that those who served in Vietnam were “more likely to be married, college educated and gainfully employed than other members of their generation.”

Furthermore, a Harris poll of returned veterans “revealed that 90 percent said that, ‘looking back,’ they were either ‘very glad’ or ‘somewhat glad’ to have ‘served their country.’ Eighty percent said that returning home was ‘about the same or better’ than they had ‘anticipated.’” A large majority rejected the popular notion of the former soldier struggling to readjust, haunted by flashbacks and nightmares. 

Scam Victims:

We hear it over and over on the news and public service announcements: Make sure grandma and grandpa don’t become victims of scams. As a senior citizen who doesn’t answer the phone unless I recognize the number and who dumps in the spam bucket those weekly messages that my email is about to expire unless I follow the link, I resent the implication! The truth is that younger people are more susceptible to scams. 

This is true in the US, but I have seen similar reports from the UK and Australia. Here is an Experian article about a Better Business Bureau report. “Americans ages 18 to 34 were more susceptible to scams (43.7% were victims) than Americans 55 and older (27.6% were victims). However, while occurrences are less for older Americans, seniors still lose more money in scams than younger victims.” (They probably lose more only because they have more.) 

The Inc. website reports the same tendencies.

Going back to the Experian numbers, there is something fishy about their numbers. In the article they show a graph of those scammed by age group, which they took from the original report.

To get 43.7% they merely added 25 + 18.7. That’s like saying if 10% of first graders have red hair and 10% of second graders have red hair, then 20% of the whole group have red hair. WRONG! The right answer is 10% provided the classes are of equal size.

So their report of 43.7% for the younger people is really closer to 22%, and their number 27.6% for the seniors is less than 14%. The conclusion is still the same but the math is pathetic! (Remember, Experian is one of the three companies that calculate your credit score and they have trouble with this simple calculation!)

The overall point here is that we are often fed stories that are no more than stories that someone wants us to believe to raise donations, increase their ratings or get support for passing a new (unnecessary) law. 

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?"