Told You So

Earlier this month I pointed and laughed at a ridiculous claim in a story from a local newspaper, which reported:

Police are warning that when cannabis plants reach the final stages of maturity the odour they release has carcinogenic properties.

Officers who deal with the plants use ventilation masks and protective suits and people who have plants in their home, especially anyone with young children, may be exposing their family to a health risk.

After my stirring post the police have now issued a retraction:

AN APOLOGY has been issued by police over an incorrect statement made following a drugs raid.

Northamptonshire Police have retracted a statement which suggested the odour from mature cannabis plants had carcinogenic properties.

A spokesman for the force said: “Northamptonshire Police would like to apologise for the incorrect information provided to the media which claimed that cannabis plants had potential carcinogenic properties.

“This information was provided in good faith. However, we accept the information was misleading and we will strive to ensure this does not happen again.”

The original incorrect statement was published in The Mail on March 1 in a report about cannabis plants being seized by police during a raid in Cottingham.

OK, I had nothing to do with getting them to retract, that appears to have been done as a result of someone bringing the newspaper article to the attention of Ben Goldacre who then started asking questions but I didn't want to say that because his self regard is already too vast.

Spot The Spin

From some neurological research into brain structure and political leanings:

Scans of 90 students' brains at University College London (UCL) uncovered a "strong correlation" between the thickness of two particular areas of grey matter and an individual's views.

Self-proclaimed right-wingers had a more pronounced amygdala - a primitive part of the brain associated with emotion while their political opponents from the opposite end of the spectrum had thicker anterior cingulates.

See what they did there?

Quote Of The Day

One of the 'Top Tips' from the current issue of Viz:

Homeopaths. Save money on petrol by filling up at the water pump. Your car will remember the petrol from your previous fill.

Free Speech- Swings & Roundabouts

Good week for free speech.

Bad week for free speech.

That Will Teach Them To Clean Up Industrial Waste.

It's possible that I've been taken in by one side's public relations but this verdict seems to fly in the face of science:

A group of 18 young people born with deformed hands and feet after their mothers were allegedly exposed to toxic materials before their birth have won a group action lawsuit against Corby Borough Council.

According to the council various epidemiological have shown that the rate of birth deformities is not particularly high at least not to the point where it is anything other than a statistical blip.

As I say I could be mistaken about this particular verdict but the principle is clear enough. If cleaning up an industrial site leaves individuals or institutions responsible for any random clusters of illnesses that subsequently arise then fewer people are going to risk taking part in the decontamination process.

A similar process has already occurred with obstetricians and the makers of vaccines reducing the services they provide rather than become easy targets for lawyers backed up with junk science.

Magic Dogs, Stupid Juries & Cynical Prosecuters.

What the hell?



As someone who's in favour of both juries and elected prosecuters cases like this are seriously challenging.


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Junk Science & Political Ideology.

The search for the pathological conservative is one of the great missions among a certain part of academia. James Q Wilson comments on a certain aspect of it:

Another challenge is politicized assessment of the genetic evidence. Ever since 1950, when Theodor Adorno and his colleagues published The Authoritarian Personality, scholars have studied right-wing authoritarianism but neglected its counterpart on the left. In his study of identical twins reared apart, Bouchard concludes that right-wing authoritarianism is, to a large degree, inherited—but he says nothing about the Left. This omission is puzzling, since as Bouchard was studying twins at the University of Minnesota, he was regularly attacked by left-wing students outraged by the idea that any traits might be inherited. A few students even threatened to kill him. When I pointed this out to him, he suggested, in good humor, that I was a troublemaker.

Indeed.

In more 'pathological conservatives' news the New Scientist reports- "Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers". This is based on a study which find that some of the more conservative states (based on voting) have higher rates of porn channel subscription, using this logic you could conclude that blacks in the US are overwhelmingly Republican because the states with the highest proportion of African-Americans are overwhelmingly Republican (ie Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana etc).

Furthermore it isn't as if more detailed evidence on porn consumption and political preference isn't available and the evidence from the US shows that 32% of Democrats have watched a X-rated movie in the past year compared to 26% of Republicans (and this is before carrying out any correction for the sex of respondents) confirming that the biggest wankers are indeed on the left.

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Fun With Eugenics.

It's almost the weekend and it's time for a light hearted topic. So lets talk about eugenics!

On another blog I got into a discussion about the topic yesterday, after initially making a half joking remark about wanting to stop the likes of Karen Matthews and 'Alfie' popping out dozens of kids for the good of society, I could have mentioned the mother of octuplets as well. Come to think of it I referred to preventing prisoners from breeding as being good for society for explicitly genetic reasons the other day.

Eugenics is strongly associated with the savagery of the Nazis and is therefore pretty much the ultimate taboo. Personally I think the ethical problem with 20th century advocates of eugenics is that they had no respect for civil liberties and believed in the right of the state to forcibly restrict people's right to reproduce. It doesn't therefore follow that there is something intrinsically wicked about non coercive eugenics.

However you can get away with advocating eugenic theories and policies as long as you avoid calling them eugenic take for example:

• The theory that abortion cuts crime.
  
• Singapore's policy of helping graduates have children whilst discouraging the less well educated from doing so.
• Screening among people of jewish descent for Tay Sach's disease.

All these make at least implicit eugenic assumptions yet spark little outrage so it seems safe to assume that the word "eugenics" sparks more outrage than the practice. I'm not endorsing any of these policies or theories (I'm sceptical about the abortion-crime theory) by the way so I don't feel any great need to defend any of them.

If it isn't morally wrong to try to improve the fitness of the population through selective breeding then the question will really come down to whether it is effective or not. For eliminating diseases with identifiable genetic markers- like Tay Sachs- it obviously is effective. When it comes to encouraging the well off to reproduce themselves and the less well off to not do so then it really depends to what extent socio-economic status is influenced by genes, which is altogether a murkier question.

Update: On the subject of how eugenics is socially acceptable as long as you don't call it eugenics see this-

A March of Dimes report released today says all 50 states and the District of Columbia now require newborn screening for 21 or more so-called core disorders recommended for testing. These core disorders, 29 in all, include many rare but potentially disabling or fatal metabolic disorders. Although all states have rules or laws requiring the screenings, Pennsylvania and West Virginia have yet to implement their expanded programs, according to the organization.

Update 2: Cabalamat at Amused Cynicism had a post on this very subject a few months back which is worth a read.

Great Moments In Sociology.

On another blog I've been having a discussion about the gayness or otherwise of American Football with reference to this study that claims that one in three American Football players had had gay experiences. The sample used might be considered to be somewhat unrepresentitive but the sociologist in question doesn't think so:

He said the study was not biased by talking to sportsmen who were now cheerleaders

No of course not....

Attack Of The Nazi Clones.

As everyone knows stories about Nazis sell newspapers and books. Since so much has already been published about them it's hard to find original takes on the subject. Unless of course the story is complete fiction. Take this for example which is currently one of the most popular stories on the Telegraph website:

Nazi angel of death Josef Mengele 'created twin town in Brazil'

Note the use of quotation marks to indicate "We know this is bollocks but we'll print it anyway". The article goes on to claim that after Josef Mengele escaped from Europe after the war he began conducting more twin experiments, this time in a Brazilian town. This seems like odd behaviour for a fugitive trying to keep a low profile.

Not only that but despite his known scientific output being totally worthless, in Brazil he was something of a genius and managed to permanently alter a whole town's genetic make up so that it was became especially prone to producing twins.

The only evidence to support the assertion that Dr Mengele was responsible for the town's twin boom is that there might have been a German vet or doctor in the town back in the early 1960s.

Quacks

There has been a slew of columns about the conviction of Robert Napper for the murder of Rachel Nickell, and the role that a well known psychologist, Paul Britton, played in leading the investigation astray. Nick Cohen who covered the case for a long time has a particularly good article on the matter:

Detectives discounted his denial, which was convincing when you consider he had an incentive to say anything that might please his strange girlfriend. The point of the undercover exercise was not to extract a confession from Stagg, as no judge would have allowed a jury to hear evidence from a honey trap. Britton's pseudo-science aimed at securing more than a mere admission. He believed that his academic insights had given him the psychological profile of the killer.

Detectives set "Lizzie James" on Stagg to see if he matched Britton's description of a murderer, who was excited by his victim's fear and had a "deviant interest in buggery". When Britton ruled that the local loner did, the police believed him. Police say that Britton also told them that the murders of Rachel Nickell and Samantha and Jazmine Bissett were not the work of the same man, although Britton disputes this.

The specifics of Britton's folly are gruesome enough. As professor David Canter of Liverpool University said at the time, he barely mentioned the most striking and revolting aspect of the case: that the killer murdered Rachel Nickell in front of her child. As William Clegg, Stagg's QC, added at the trial, the transcripts of the conversations between his client and "Lizzie James" showed only that Stagg was a friendless man going along with a domineering but beautiful woman.

But dwelling in the detail misses the wider point. Just as dissenting economists are asking by what right their conventional colleagues demand to be taken seriously when no more than a handful warned of a coming banking crisis, so Parliament and the public should be wondering by what right psychologists demand a hearing.

It is not a reputable profession. The British Psychological Society dismissed all charges of misconduct against Britton in 2002, and no-one else has held him to account for what he did to Stagg and, indeed, to "Lizzie James", who went on to suffer a nervous breakdown.

Paul Britton purported to have an insight into how killers think. He was at best deluded. Psychologists haven't merely enabled killers to remain uncaught but, through their 'expert' advice to parole boards, have also enabled known murderers to be released. Killers are relatively rare and in depth stides of them even more so. This means that there isn't a great deal of actual evidence for psychologists to test theories against and therefore conclusions drawn from them should only be accepted provisionally and never be applied to real life situations as though they were scientifically proven laws.

It might not be true to dismiss the whole field as charlatanry, after all it is so wide ranging that what is true for part of the profession is not true for all of it, however there is clearly a tendency on the part of psychologists to pretend to have a more profound insight into the human mind than is the case. As the most media friendly branches of psychology are those that purport to offer shortcuts to solving big problems such as crimes or personal afflictions this means that most of the public faces of psychology are quacks and frauds.

Mystic Minister

Last month I wrote to the government's science minister, Lord Drayson, to tell him that the off the cuff remarks he was going to make this weekend about being able to predict the future were clearly nonsense. Now that the remarks have taken place, I still hold to this view.

He isn't actually claiming to be psychic but merely latching on the ideas in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink*, however if Gordon Brown had a sense of humour he might emulate Kelvin Mackenzie who famously informed the Sun's resident astrologer of his redundancy in a letter that began "As you will already know....".


* I haven't read Blink, but am I correct in thinking that the basic idea is that the subconscious mind can ofter assemble information and reach a decision before we are conscious of it?

The Obamas Versus Medical Research.

One of the most frequent criticisms that is made against the Republicans in the USA, including against a certain women whom I promised not to mention for a week or so, is that they are "anti science". This is mostly due to the prominence of creationsim on the American right, which is something I wish was not the case because Creationism is nonsense as is it's fraudulant cousin, Intelligent Design. I have said before holding one irrational belief doesn't make someone an idiot, after all Isaac Newton believed in alchemy, but it is depressing to see politicians I support favour such nonsense.

However a politician's personal beliefs are less important than what they do in office, so a candidate who finds creationism credible but doesn't attempt to promote it as a matter of public policy is not a problem. Unfortunately there is a woman involved in the US presidential race who does have a track record of abusing her position to promote anti scientific scare mongering, that is Michelle Obama. As this New York Times hagiography of her a few months ago reveals:

She also altered the hospital’s research agenda. When the human papillomavirus vaccine, which can prevent cervical cancer, became available, researchers proposed approaching local school principals about enlisting black teenage girls as research subjects.

Mrs. Obama stopped that. The prospect of white doctors performing a trial with black teenage girls summoned the specter of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment of the mid-20th century, when white doctors let hundreds of black men go untreated to study the disease.

In other word the wife of the Obamessiah promoted racial paranoia to sabotage medical research and a worthwhile public health initiative. This might be seen as a one off but when you consider it in the context of the Obama's former pastor telling his flock that HIV was invented by the American government in order to kill black people you have to wonder about what damage the Obamas would do if they were in charge of agencies like the CDC.

Claim To Lame & Other Local Snippets.

In my local newspaper today, page two was devoted to a contestant from the reality show "Shipwrecked" having a photoshoot to plug a local business. That's not even a Big Brother level reality TV star! Can anyone spot a more minor "celebrity" in a news item?

In the same newspaper there is a more interesting story about a local museum which has an exhibit about Charles Darwin and the theory his most famous theory. Someone complained about the accompanying signs explaining the theory, and so the council decided to blank out the "offensive" paragraph so as to to upset the unnamed religious fundamentalist who lodged the complaint.

It is only a minor story in itself but it is symptomatic of a wider trend.

Sasquatch Fails Test.

"Bigfoot Fails DNA Test"

But he still has to pay child support, it's an outrage!

I wonder what would motivate someone to fake a bigfoot corpse anyway:

Also present were Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the two who say they discovered the Bigfoot corpse while hiking in the woods of northern Georgia. They also are co-owners of a company that offers Bigfoot merchandise.

Oh.

Mind you this zoologist doesn't reckon that the existence of the sasquatch is completely crazy.

Update: I suppose we should all just be thankful that they weren't selling Jack the Ripper merchendise.

Also Don't Rely On Magic Pixies To Beat TB.

This is an old story but I only saw it for the first time yesterday, when someone linked to it in a thread about alternative medicine:

Don't rely on homeopathy to beat malaria, doctors warn

I'm not usually an advocate of eugenics on this blog but surely anyone stupid enough to try to protect themselves from malaria with the contents of their herb rack should be encouraged in their efforts to remove themselves from the gene pool. Why do I suspect that the kind of people who would disregard medical advice when it comes to Malaria are the same ones who would go into a blind panic over their mobile phone causing cancer?

Scaremongering

Is it me or is this bloke just engaged in pointless scaremongering?

The director of a leading US cancer research institute has sent a memo to thousands of staff warning of possible higher risks from mobile phone use.

Ronald Herberman, of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, said users should not wait for definitive studies on the risk and should take action now.

That's a great research institute, telling everyone not to bother with the research and just panic, perhaps we should apply that principle to the MMR vaccine next time. His memo will almost certainly provide a great service to many sleazy tort lawyers looking to extort vast sums of money from the mobile phone companies by telling credulous juries that their clients were made ill by their phones.

He lists tips including switching sides regularly while talking on mobiles.

I do that already, but the police keep pulling me over and telling me that I'm driving dangerously. I'm not a medical researcher and come to that I haven't actually had a mobile for years (people often seem amazed by that) but I seriously think that if something that widespread caused cancer then we would already know. It isn't as if the possibility hasn't been studied until now. More to the point there are few obvious mechanisms by which the radiation emitted by the phones could cause cancer.

ACPO On Immigration.

ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers have issued a report claiming that there is no major increase in crime associated with immigration. This runs contrary to claims made by the Chief Constables of Cambridgeshire and Kent, it also makes the incarceration and nationality statistics look rather strange. It was conducted by the head of ACPO's race and diversity squad phoning detectives and community officers and asking them whether they believed that there was a connection between immigration and crime, as someone called 'Rob' puts it here:

'So, the Race and Diversity Stasi ring you up and ask you if you think crime is committed disproportionately by non-Britons. Given the insane attitude of the Police force towards race issues, it is a no brainer what the average copper would say. No Guv, everything's fine.'

Quite.

The other thing to consider is that crime is overwhelmingly committed by the young, and the peak age for impulsive and 'petty' crimes such as vandalism, shoplifting and the like is only in the mid teens, with more serious crimes most common in the early to mid 20s.

Seeing as immigrants are (I think) usually in their 20s and 30s and without teenage children it may be that the impact of immigration doesn't contribute very much to petty crimes that make up the bulk of all offences committed, whilst having a disproportionate impact on more serious crimes.

This comes back to something I have repeatedly criticised the pro-immigration lobby for, rather than arguing that the benefits of immigration outweigh the costs they just refuse to acknowledge that there are any costs to immigration.

Update: Inevitably the usual suspects have swallowed the ACPO report whole.

Update: Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green claims "There is no evidence to suggest an immigrant is more likely to commit a crime than a UK citizen and it is, of course, wrong to suggest that immigrants are more likely to commit crimes". This is untrue, there is plenty of evidence, look at the prison stats. He appears to regard factual accuracy as taking second place to being in line with fashionable thinking.

World To End, Lawyer Objects.

The New York Times reports:

Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

So not only will these scientists destroy the planet, they've also failed to produce an environmental impact study, the fiends!! Of course being the New York Times I'm surprised they haven't mentioned the impact that the end of the world would have on women and minorities.

Politics & Threats To Science.

Like most people in this country I regard creationism as an intellectual absurdity, I was going to say I regard creationists as absurd but I realise that otherwise very intelligent people can sincerely believe ridiculous propositions, Isaac Newton and his belief in alchemy springs to mind. As long as they aren't aggressively trying to assert their idiotic beliefs I have no problem with them. Ramesh Ponnuru of the National Review has a post up about remarks made about evolution and creationism in politics by Marty Peretz of the New Republic:

He writes at the New Republic: "My minimum condition for and from a plausible president is that he accept that men and women are descended from apes and monkeys. Huckabee surely doesn't. But, then, I'm not sure that George Bush does either." Do scientists accept this either? Back when I was in high school, they taught us that apes, monkeys, and humans shared ancestors in common rather than that the last group evolved from the first two. It seems like an awfully imprecise way for Peretz to state a truth he considers so important.

This encapsulates a lot of the problems I have with those who sneer about the views held by certain people about creationism, usually they are just as ignorant and misguided about the science as the creationists themselves. The likes of Peretz who don't understand evolution but know that they are passionately supportive of it aren't a huge concern in any practical sense, they're just annoying. The real danger to evolutionary science comes not from creationists or the Peretzs of this world but rather from those who claim to believe in evolution but try to silence anyone who proposes that it may apply to humans as much as any other species.

E.O. Wilson's landmark book, Sociobiology, was met with immense hostility by the far left, including by supposed scientists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. He was variously physically attacked and smeared as a Nazi* by members of the far left under front groups like 'Science for the People' a totalitarian anti-science movement. Wilson's offence was to write a book about the biological origins of behaviour in animals, including humans whereas devout marxists like Lewontin believed that this blasphemes against Das Kapital. Whilst creationists and ID'ers believe errant nonsense they pose no serious threat to the advancement of science, the radical left on the other hand have a consistent track record of trying to derail politically inconvenient science.

* I don't endorse the whole contents of this site, I'm only linking to them because they have reproduced one of Wilson's essays.