Dunning-Kruger effect — in a cartoon?

February 18, 2011

A cartoon from Jon Wilkins at the Santa Fe Institute, no less.

Dunning Kruger Effect, cartoon by Jon F. Wilkins

Dunning-Kruger Effect by jonfwilkins

(Yeah, I know — it’s not big.  Click the image, go see a bigger version at Wilkins’s site.)

Wilkins added:

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77 (6), 1121-1134 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

Earlier and other flotsam in Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

  1. “Quote of the moment:  Bertrand Russell on the Dunning-Kruger Effect, 64 years prescient”
  2. Dunning Kruger Effect explained, with links

Tip of the old scrub brush to Jason G. Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal.

3 Comments | Cartoons, Dunning-Kruger Effect, psychology, Rampant stupidity, Research, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Debunking Junk Science’s hoax “100 Things You Should Know About DDT”: #14, William Ruckelshaus’s bias

February 17, 2011

Another in a continuing series, showing the errors in JunkScience.com’s list of “100 things you should know about DDT.” (No, these are not in order.) In the summer of 2009, the denialists have trotted this error out again.

At the astonishingly truthfully-named site “Junk Science,” Steven Milloy creates a series of hoaxes with a page titled “100 things you should know about DDT.”  It is loaded with hoaxes about DDT, urging its use, and about Rachel Carson, and about EPA and the federal regulation of DDT, and about malaria and DDT’s role in the ambitious but ill-fated campaign to eradicate malaria operated by the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1955, officially until 1969.  Milloy knows junk science, and he dishes it out with large ladles.

Among what must be 100 errors, Milloy makes this claim, I suppose to suggest that William Ruckelshaus was biased when Rickelshaus headed the Environmental Protection Agency:

14.  William Ruckelshaus, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who made the ultimate decision to ban DDT in 1972, was a member of the Environmental Defense Fund. Ruckelshaus solicited donations for EDF on his personal stationery that read “EDF’s scientists blew the whistle on DDT by showing it to be a cancer hazard, and three years later, when the dust had cleared, EDF had won.”

This is a false statement on Milloy’s site.  After finding no credible source for the claim that Ruckelshaus was ever affiliated with EDF in any way, I contacted Ruckelshaus’s office, and got confirmation that Ruckelshaus was not and never has been affiliated with EDF.  It should be a clue that this claim appears only at sites who impugn Ruckelshaus for his action in banning DDT use in U.S. agriculture.

 

Junk Science's oddly apt logo and slogan

Hiding the truth in plain view: Junk Science is a site that promotes junk science, an unintended flash of honesty at a site that otherwise promotes hoaxes about science. Note the slogan. Does this site cover its hoaxes by stating plainly that it promotes “all the junk science that’s fit to debunk?”

It is also highly unlikely that he ever wrote a fund-raising letter for the group, certainly not while he was a public official.  The implicit claim of Junk Science.com, that William Ruckelshaus was not a fair referee in the DDT case, is a false claim.

I asked Milloy to correct errors at his site, and he has steadfastly refused.

Here is what Milloy’s point #14 would say, with the falsehoods removed:

14.  William Ruckelshaus [was] the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who made the ultimate decision to ban DDT in 1972[.], was a member of the Environmental Defense Fund. Ruckelshaus solicited donations for EDF on his personal stationery that read “EDF’s scientists blew the whistle on DDT by showing it to be a cancer hazard, and three years later, when the dust had cleared, EDF had won.”

Below the fold:  William D. Ruckelshaus’s “official” biography, if you call him today, February 17, 2011.  You should note, there is no mention of any work with EDF.

Read the rest of this entry »

9 Comments | Accuracy, Atomic Bomb, DDT, endangered species, Environmental protection, History, Junk science, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

No, DDT is not the easy answer to malaria

February 13, 2011

Roger Bate and Richard Tren, the Dynamic Duo of DDT, have been busy lately.  Bate appears to have found additional funding from the radical right-wing American Enterprise Institute, where I gather he has been prowling the halls trying to sell others there on the idea that DDT is an easy solution to malaria, and only mad, despotic environmentalist megalomaniacs have stopped DDT from saving Africa from malaria, the American economy from depression, and Major League Baseball from the designated hitter rule.  (I thought it odd that his bio doesn’t mention his work for tobacco interests as integral to his organizing.)

Graphic from a 1950s-era ad for DDT

Graphic from a 1950s-era ad for DDT. No, it's not right -- it's Madison Avenue then, expressing the claims of the "DDT-is-good-for-you" hoaxsters of today.

I don’t exaggerate much, if at all.

So, I’ll bore you with rebuttals over the space of the next few days.  Especially among the right-wing echo chambers, comments are frequently moderated to oblivion when they are allowed at all.

For example, there is a site that calls itself Minnesota Prager Discussion Group — a site for Dennis Prager groupies.  Here’s a post that may have been prompted by a Dennis Prager broadcast, but which cites a scurrilous pamphlet written by Bates and Tren, with Donald Roberts, carrying all sorts of calumny against environmentalists, health care professionals, diplomats, environmentalists and scientists — cloaked in a high degree of disrespect for readers who, they hope, have never bothered to read Rachel Carson and have forgotten everything they may have ever read about DDT and environmental harms it causes.

Here’s the post on DDT and malaria there:

Malaria Can Be Easily Controlled by DDT

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Glenn H. Ray

DDT Still Critical in Fight against Insect-Borne Diseases

Through a mix of environmental fervor, self-interest and disregard for evidence-based policy, United Nations (UN) agencies are misleading the public about the insecticide DDT — mistakenly claiming it is not needed and can be eliminated globally by 2020, says Donald Roberts, emeritus professor of tropical medicine at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Roger Bate, the Legatum Fellow in Global Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute, and Richard Tren, the executive director of Africa Fighting Malaria.

  • UN agencies are misleading the public by claiming that malaria can be controlled without insecticides, notably DDT; the stated aim is to stop DDT use globally by 2020.
  • UN agencies are committing scientific fraud by deliberately and incorrectly interpreting data on malaria control using noninsecticide methods.

While DDT is no panacea, it is still a critical weapon in the battle against malaria and other insect-borne diseases, say Roberts, Bate and Tren.

Source: Roger Bate, Donald Roberts and Richard Tren, “The United Nations’ Scientific Fraud against DDT,” American Enterprise Institute, January 21, 2011.

Above information came from the National Center of Policy Analysis

Dennis Prager regularly reminds his listeners that many tens of thousands of lives can be saved by approving DDT uses in certain areas in Africa.

Oy.  Helluva lotta error and deception packed in a couple hundred words.

So, I tried to help the “discussion group” get to some more accurate understanding of DDT and malaria.

Ed Darrell, on February 2, 2011 at 4:53 pm said:

1. There is no shortage of DDT.

2. Not only is DDT not a panacea, it is increasingly not effective against malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

3. Richard Tren leads an astro-turf organization that collects hundreds of thousands of dollars, but does very little if anything to actually fight malaria. These sorts of diatribes increase contributions to his organization’s coffers, but they don’t help fight malaria.

4. In actual practice over the last decade, bednets have proven to reduce malaria by 50% to 85% in areas where they are deployed; DDT is only 25% to 50% effective.

5. Bednets cost about $10 and last about five years — $2.00 per year. DDT costs upwards of $12 per application, and must be applied twice per year — $24.00 per year. Bednets stop mosquitoes cold. DDT depends on mosquitoes biting people first, then resting on a DDT-coated wall — and we hope that it’s a young mosquito that has not yet contracted malaria itself and is not shedding the parasites.

6. Malaria deaths, worldwide, are lower now than at any other time in human history. Since the U.S. stopped using DDT on cotton in 1972, the death rate to malaria has been cut in half. The death toll to malaria is, today, less than 25% of what it was when DDT use was at its peak. Statistically, it appears that cutting DDT use also cuts malaria.

7. We know that’s not the case, but those statistics prove that we can beat malaria without DDT — as indeed, the U.S. Army beat malaria without DDT to build the Panama Canal by 1915, 24 years before DDT was discovered to have any insecticidal properties. In the U.S., with the great aid of the Tennessee Valley Authority, malaria was essentially wiped out by 1939 — seven years before DDT became available for use against mosquitoes. No nation relying on DDT has been able to eradicate malaria.

Roger Bate, Donald Roberts and Richard Tren commit health care terrorism when they tell their fraud-laced stories against the UN and the health care professionals who fight malaria. Shame on them.

Did the author read anything I wrote?  He responded, politely for a guy who didn’t quite get it:

Glenn H. Ray, on February 9, 2011 at 12:19 pm said:

Ed Darrell: Thank you very much for this information.

Let us assume every item you mention is accepted beyond debate..

Malaria still ravages populations in Africa. We are not beating malaria without DDT.

Dennis Prager agrees with you regarding the value of bed nets and from his visits to Africa, has encouraged financial support to increase their availability.

The question still remains, why is DDT still banned rather than being available for use where needed?

My responses:

Sometimes the facts stare us in the face and we can’t see them.

You said:

Malaria still ravages populations in Africa. We are not beating malaria without DDT.

We have cut malaria 75% from when DDT was heavily used. We are beating malaria as best we can since DDT advocates overused DDT and made it ineffective against most populations of mosquitoes. (WHO’s program to eradicate malaria was effectively ended in 1965 because overuse of DDT by large agricultural interests had bred mosquitoes resistant to and immune to DDT; today, every mosquito on Earth carries the alleles that make them resistant and immune to DDT.)
It doesn’t matter how much we whine about DDT being “banned,” DDT doesn’t work to beat malaria now, and it was never intended to be more than a very temporary solution while medical care, treating the humans, did the real work.

When we beat malaria (as in the U.S.), the fact that humans do not have the disease means that mosquitoes cannot catch it from humans. That means the mosquito bites go back to being annoyances, and we don’t need to worry about them.

Malaria is a disease of humans. If we concentrate on the mosquitoes, we can reduce it, temporarily. If we concentrate on treating the disease, and preventing the disease in humans, we can forget about mosquitoes.

Dennis Prager agrees with you regarding the value of bed nets and from his visits to Africa, has encouraged financial support to increase their availability.

Then why is he talking smack against them? He’s talking untruths about DDT, untruths carried by the anti-bednet lobby, like the so-called “Africa Fighting Malaria” lobbying group. Bednets are twice to almost four times as effective as DDT, if they are used exclusive of each other. You don’t get that impression from Prager. Bednets cost a fraction of what DDT treatments cost. Bednets are effective longer than DDT treatments.

We can beat malaria without DDT. We can’t beat malaria without bednets. If he has no truck against bednets, Prager should get out of the bed of the anti-bednet, pro-DDT lobby, and talk about beating malaria.

The question still remains, why is DDT still banned rather than being available for use where needed?

No, the question is, why aren’t you listening?

DDT is not banned anywhere in Africa, and never has been. DDT is freely available to any government who wishes to use it — or private groups who wish to use it.

DDT doesn’t work as it once did, plus, it’s a deadly poison to fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and small mammals. DDT is unsafe in use outside of Indoor Residual Spraying, where it is increasingly less effective — and Africans are nervous about IRS because their children keep getting sick with strange new diseases even when the kids are safe from malaria. There may be no solid connection between the new syndromes and DDT, but since DDT is not a panacea, not as effective as untreated bednets, and much less effective than treated bednets — why take a chance?

Opposition to DDT today comes from Dennis Prager’s and AFM’s friends in business in Africa. The only serious opposition to DDT I’ve found in Africa was in Uganda, where businessmen sued to stop spraying two years ago.

What in the world makes you think there isn’t all the DDT out there that health workers need?

Any discussion of fighting malaria that involves DDT takes away from the serious fight to beat malaria. A lot of westerners think DDT is a magic potion, and that if we just poison the hell out of Africa with the stuff, we can beat malaria without serious effort, without serious research, without improving the lives of the poor people of Africa who are victimized by the disease.

We beat malaria in the U.S. by improving housing, beefing up public health services, and increasing incomes of families of victims. It took 20 years of concentrated work — all before DDT was even discovered to kill bugs.

To beat malaria in Africa, we must improve housing, beef up medical care, both diagnoses and treatment of the disease, and improve the lives of the families of victims to prevent new disease-causing bites.

It’s tough work. Prager appears not to have the stomach for it. If so, he should say so, instead of claiming, falsely, that DDT could do the job.

Malaria proves a tough foe, difficult to beat. DDT could play a very small role in the defeat of malaria, but more DDT won’t help, and malaria isn’t winning because DDT isn’t available. DDT is readily available. DDT doesn’t work anymore, and DDT was never intended to be a sole weapon.

And:

Lancet recently devoted most of an issue to fighting malaria, and how to beat it. Lancet is perhaps the world’s leading medical journal, certainly among the top three, with no axe to grind, and concerned with improving the condition of humans throughout the world — from a medical care perspective.

The articles come from the world’s leading malaria fighters and those in the vanguard of research on how to beat malaria.

Here’s the executive summary (8 pages in .pdf form).

Did you notice? No call for DDT.

Can you and Dennis Prager please get on board with the campaign to beat malaria? Howling about false, junk science claims that DDT should be used to poison Africa isn’t a ticket to get on that malaria-fighting train.

Mr. Ray responded again:

Thank you again for your interaction. It has been my understanding that many of the claims about the toxicity of DDT to the living groups you have listed has been exaggerated, particularly in regard to the bird populations.
As you might note, malaria control is not my field of expertise, but I have read this claim from two sources over the past decade, but I cannot refer you to them.
I shall remember your ‘corrections’ in any discussion I might have in the future about DDT.

I am certain Dennis has no connections with any businesses in Africa dealing with DDT.

Denial among people who admit that they don’t know much about the topic is really quite amazing, isn’t it?

I made one more comment, but Ray has held it in his site’s moderation queu for enough days I am convinced he plans to leave it there.  Here is what I posted that he has not yet let through:

Ed Darrell, on February 10, 2011 at 12:49 am said: Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Thank you again for your interaction. It has been my understanding that many of the claims about the toxicity of DDT to the living groups you have listed has been exaggerated, particularly in regard to the bird populations.

Peer review research over the past 40 years has borne out the early research from 1945 through 1961 that showed DDT is a killer of birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians and small mammals. I am unaware of any study anywhere that denies this toxicity, except with regard to insects who produce new generations quickly enough to evolve resistance and immunity.

Discover magazine looked for studies saying DDT doesn’t harm larger animals, but found none. In November 2007 the magazine noted:

In fact, Carson may have underestimated the impact of DDT on birds, says Michael Fry, an avian toxicologist and director of the American Bird Conservancy’s pesticides and birds program. She was not aware that DDT—or rather its metabolite, DDE—causes eggshell thinning because the data were not published until the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was eggshell thinning that devastated fish-eating birds and birds of prey, says Fry, and this effect is well documented in a report (pdf) on DDT published in 2002 by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). The report, which cites over 1,000 references, also describes how DDT and its breakdown products accumulate in the tissues of animals high up on terrestrial and aquatic food chains—a process that induced reproductive and neurological defects in birds and fish.

DDT kills birds outright, through acute poisoning. That was what first sounded the alarms at Michigan State University, the University of Wisconsin, and a dozen other places across the U.S. DDT accumulates in fat tissues, and poisons the brains of migrating birds when they are under stress during migration. DDT poisons chicks of birds in the eggs, killing them outright, or making them unable to feed after hatching. DDT makes female birds unable to lay competent eggs (thins the eggshells), which means even if the chick is free of the toxins, the egg can’t protect it through incubation. DDT scrambles the sex organs of birds, making hermaphrodites, and making both genders unable to mate successfully.

Most of these death mechanisms apply in other species, too. The saving grace for humans is that we are so large. DDT doses required for much of this documented damage is much higher than we get. Still, in humans, modest amounts of DDT mimic estrogen, producing premature onset of menses in little girls, and swollen mammaries and shrunken testes in boys.

There are several studies that indicate the carcinogenic effects of DDT are weak in humans. Those studies frequently are touted as having “proven DDT harmless.” Not at all. They only show that DDT isn’t as bad as tobacco in causing cancers. That’s not an endorsement of health.

As you might note, malaria control is not my field of expertise, but I have read this claim from two sources over the past decade, but I cannot refer you to them.

Any source you have will trace back to the junk science promulgated by Steven Milloy, a former henchman of the tobacco lobby, and Gordon Edwards, a formerly respected entomologist who appears to have gone off the deep end with an obsession against Rachel Carson. Neither ever published any research to back up their claims. Edwards is dead, and Milloy is a long-time political propagandist — you won’t see any research from them.

Search Pub-Med. Check the ornithology and wildlife journals. Under U.S. law, were DDT not a deadly toxin, EPA could not ban it. DDT manufacturers sued EPA to overturn the ban, and they lost twice. The courts agree that the evidence against DDT is more than sufficient for regulation of the stuff as EPA did.

I shall remember your ‘corrections’ in any discussion I might have in the future about DDT.

Thank you. Feel free to check my blog, Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, for further developments on malaria.

The hoax case for DDT, and against Rachel Carson, the UN, the World Health Organization and all of science and medical care, is getting a significant set of boosts from Tren, Bate and Roberts this winter.  Let us hope, if only for the sake of truth and accuracy, that their stuff doesn’t get any more traction than it already has.

Other recent postings on DDT and malaria and policy

12 Comments | DDT, denialism, Environmental protection, History, Hoaxes, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Happy Darwin Day! How to celebrate?

February 12, 2011

Charles Darwin

Darwin on Shakespeare: “I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.” (The Quote Blog)

What to do for Darwin Day, and Evolution Sunday, and Darwin Week?

Charles Darwin has a posse

Charles Darwin has a posse, by Colin Purrington

5 Comments | Charles Darwin, Darwin, Evolution, History, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Bathtub reading on a cold February day . . .

February 10, 2011

Stuff to make you think:

  • Do you care? At least 16 members of Congress passed up on the government-sponsored health care plans, trying to be true to their campaign promises to repeal similar care for all citizens, a plan they try to ridicule as Obamacare.  Some of them discovered other plans “available from the market” are expensive, don’t cover pre-existing conditions, and generally don’t meet their needs.  Crooks and Liars explains:

Nevertheless, Republicans are discovering the truth: The status quo is unsustainable, unaffordable, and discriminatory. Now what will they do about that? And how will they appease their angry hordes of Tea Party members being stoked daily via email and fear campaigns?

  • Arctic Ice disappears, and so does the evidence — Tim Lambert notes that those wacky pranksters at the Heartland Institute managed to find one small part of a chart to make a case that Arctic ice is increasing, even as Russia and China prepare to beat the U.S. to trans-Arctic shipping when the ice disappears.  Whose side is the Heartland Institute on, again?  It’s a new propaganda tactic:  The Small Lie.

There are people who need to soak their crania.  Back to work, here.

2 Comments | Education, Health care, News, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

War on science – what else would you call it?

February 4, 2011

From Michael Tobis at Only In It For the Gold, an essential blog for Texans:

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Rand Paul proposes half a trillion in cuts to the US government, including:

  • National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is cut by $857 million.
  • NIH is cut by $5.8 billion.
  • DOE is completely defunded, with some nuclear-related tasks shifted to DOD.
  • NASA is cut by $4,500,000,000 (25%)
  • NSF is cut by $4,723,000,000. (62%)

Science? What science?

Cutting the federal budget is difficult.  Yes, we have a crisis in spending.  We also have many crises in education and in research, and many crises in our economy that are, each of them, rooted in a need for new research.

Is Rand Paul a complete fool?  Is he in league with Chinese Exceptionalists?  Are his ears made of tin?  Or is he a warrior against American knowledge and the American future?

This is a debate which needs facts, and people who can evaluate facts and arguments, and people with a vision for a future America — a good vision for a future America.

One gets the feeling that Rand Paul would have gone after the funding for Ben Franklin’s experiments — not because it would help the federal deficits, since Franklin funded his own work — but because he just doesn’t like science. ‘Why should we let Dr. Franklin take lightning from the gods?’ Rand might ask.  ‘Dr. Franklin should stay out of theology.’

And so the modern-day, real Rand Paul, blunders on, waging a War on Science.

17 Comments | Government, Politics, Science, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Frazil ice in Yosemite National Park

February 1, 2011

4 Comments | National Parks, Natural history, Natural resources, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Palin can’t tell satellites from doughnuts

February 1, 2011

You can tell by the dates I’m not following this closely — it’s a Sarah Palin thing, after all, and we all hope it will go away.

Spudnut Shop, Richland Washington, Tri-City Herald photo by Kai-Huei Yau

Baking doughnuts before dawn at the Spudnut Shop, Richland Washington, Tri-City Herald photo by Kai-Huei Yau

Palin wasn’t content to just screw up the history of the phrase “Sputnik moment,” as noted earlier.  Oh, no, she had to go deeper in dumb, and talk about Spudnut shops.  If you’re not from Salt Lake City where the Spudnut HQ sign adorned Interstate 15 for many years, you may never have heard of Spudnuts, doughnuts made with potato dough.

If you’re wondering what in the world Spudnuts have to do with Sputnik, you’ve got more sense than Sarah Palin.

After screwing up the history, like a blind squirrel, Palin blundered on to talk about a vestige Spudnut shop in Richland, Washington.  She found something we all applaud, a good doughnut shop.   On one hand fans of the doughnut are happy to know of one of a tiny handful of such shops left.  Plus, it’s great to boost a small shop in a small Washington town.

On the other hand, doughnuts, even Spudnuts, don’t come close to the movement to improve American education inspired by the Soviet launch of Sputnik.  From just getting history horribly in error, Palin came close to ridiculing American business with her idea of meeting the challenges like space exploration, with doughnuts and coffee.  Doughnuts and coffee will not lift student test scores, nor are they the answer to lifting our economy today and keeping the U.S. competitive and on top, in the future.

Others covered the topic better than I.

Yes, that is what we need to get the economy back on track.

A bakery.

Not more expertise in math and science, engineering, technology, and developing enterprises that will allow us to compete with the rest of the world. A bakery, full of Real Americans.

Do you realize how this sounds? This is like if I were to say, “Hey, I think we need to take a course to familiarize ourselves with what actually caused the Soviet Union to collapse!” and you were to respond, “Anything can be solved with Hard Work, donuts, and the American Way!” It’s as if I were to say, “Let’s study geometry!” and you were to respond, “Let’s study Gia Spumanti, the red-blooded American protagonist of ‘A Shore Thing.'” “Those two sound similar, but are in no way comparable,” I would point out. And that’s what this is. It’s the kind of bizarre semi-sequitur that has always been a hallmark of your speaking style.

Stromberg got serious for a moment, and makes the case against Palin’s claims:

But in claiming that the Soviets incurred their consequential debts long before Reagan was president, Palin ends up arguing that the Gipper wasn’t nearly that responsible for the USSR spending itself to death. If a reverence for Reagan’s anti-Soviet spending inspired her narrative in the first place, then this is incoherent. If she’s just making this all up, then she’s really also claiming that the Reagan-brought-down-the-USSR narrative is overstated.

Palin appears to be lazily checking a lot of Fox News boxes. She wants to criticize Obama’s State of the Union address, so she grabs hold of the Sputnik line. She wants to make a point about debt, so she invents a history in which the USSR had a debt crisis decades before this inference could have made much sense. Even better — her argument sounds like an implicit vindication of Reagan, but that really just makes it either self-contradictory or hostile to Reagan’s legacy.

Even worse, it seems that Palin planned her rhetorical disaster, as she goes on to discuss the “Spudnut Shop,” a bakery in Washington State that’s succeeding without government support. Yet more evidence that her judgment in both what she says and who she has vetting it is pathetic. It’s not even cleverly manipulative. It’s just dreck.

Zeno provides the horrifying evidence that Palin’s stupid is leaking out, and may be contagious.  Zeno caught Brian Sussman at the formerly-august KSFO talking to a woman who would fail the Sputnik issue even by Texas standards.  In Texas, in 11th grade U.S. history, students need to know a half-dozen dates, turning points in U.S. history.  1957 is one of those dates, for the launch of Sputnik.  Oy, what does it say when a San Francisco radio station is dumber than Texas’s weak and skewed social studies standards?

More:

Tip of the old scrub brush to Oh, For Goodness Sake.

10 Comments | 1957, Business, History, Politics, President Obama, Science, Soviet Union, Space exploration, Space Race, Sputnik | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

“WTF?” Palin completely misunderstands what “Sputnik Moment” means

January 28, 2011

Vodpod videos no longer available.

“WTF?” Palin completely misunderstands what “S…, posted with vodpod

Some bloggers have sworn off comments on Sarah Palin. Good on them.

This fruit is too low-hanging.

Palin doesn’t appear to have a clue about what the phrase “Sputnik moment” refers to — and mistakes it with the much later financial difficulties of the Soviet Union.  You’d think, since she was so close to the U.S.S.R. in Alaska, she’d know something about Sputnik.

And what’s with the “WTF” on television?  Has she no composure, no decency?

Here, Sarah; a primer:

Sputnik was the first artificial satellite launched from Earth, in October 1957.  (Palin wasn’t born for another seven years . . . arguments about teaching history, anyone?)

Please note that the launch of the satellite scared the bejeebers out of Americans.  Most people thought — without knowing anything about how heavy a nuclear device might be, nor how hard it might be to target one — that if the Russians could orbit a satellite the size of a beach ball, they could certainly launch missiles with nuclear warheads to rain down on America.  Maybe, some thought, Russians had already orbited such nukes, which could just fall from space without warning.

That was the spooky, red scary part.  Then there was the kick-American-science-in-the-pants part.  A lot of policy makers asked how the Russians could surpass the U.S. in the race for space (wholly apart from the imported German rocket scientists used by both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.).  Looking around, they found science and technology education in America sadly lacking.  Congress passed a law that called science education necessary for our defense, and appropriated money to help boost science education — the National Defense Education Act.

The Cold War stimulated the first example of comprehensive Federal education legislation, when in 1958 Congress passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik. To help ensure that highly trained individuals would be available to help America compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields, the NDEA included support for loans to college students, the improvement of science, mathematics, and foreign language instruction in elementary and secondary schools, graduate fellowships, foreign language and area studies, and vocational-technical training.

(See the Wikipedia entry on NDEA, too.)

The National Science Foundation (NSF) history points to the genuine advances in science the Soviets had made, and the need for the U.S. to quickly catch up:

Sputnik once again elevated the word “competition” in the language of government officials and the American public. Sputnik threatened the American national interest even more than the Soviet Union’s breaking of America’s atomic monopoly in 1949; indeed it rocked the very defense of the United States because Russia’s ability to place a satellite into orbit meant that it could build rockets powerful enough to propel hydrogen bomb warheads atop intercontinental ballistic missiles.  Perhaps more importantly, however, Sputnik forced a national self-appraisal that questioned American education, scientific, technical and industrial strength, and even the moral fiber of the nation. What had gone wrong, questioned the pundits as well as the man in the street. They saw the nation’s tradition of being “Number One” facing its toughest competition, particularly in the areas of science and technology and in science education.

With its ties to the nation’s research universities, the Foundation of course became a key player in the unfolding events during this trying time. An indication is shown by the large increase in Foundation monies for programs already in place and for new programs. In fiscal year 1958, the year before Sputnik, the Foundation’s appropriation had leveled at $40 million. In fiscal 1959, it more than tripled at $134 million, and by 1968 the Foundation budget stood at nearly $500 million. Highlights of this phase of the agency’s history cannot be told in a vacuum, however, but must be placed within the broad context of American political happenings.

The Congress reacted to Sputnik with important pieces of legislation and an internal reorganization of its own committees. Taken together, the action announced that America would meet the Soviet competition.  The National Aeronautics and Space Act, more than any other post-Sputnik law, had great impact on increasing federal funding of scientific research and development. Signed by the president in July 1958, the law created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and gave it responsibility for the technological advancement of the space program. NASA became a major contracting agency and boosted tremendously the extra mural research support of the federal government. NASA not only symbolized America’s response to the Soviet challenge, but also dramatized the federal role in support of science and technology.

Among other things, the National Science Foundation looked at science textbooks used in elementary and secondary schools, and found them badly outdated.  NSF and other organizations spurred the development of new, up-to-date books, and tougher academic curricula in all sciences.

So, when President Obama refers to a “Sputnik moment,” he isn’t referring to a foolish expenditure of money for space junk that bankrupts the nation.  He’s referring to that time in 1957 when America woke up to the fact that education is important to defense, and to preparing for the future, and did a lot about improving education.  Between the G.I. Bill’s education benefits and the NDEA, the U.S. became the world’s leader in science and technology for the latter half of the 20th century.

But we’ve coasted on that 1958 law for too long.  Now we are being lapped by others — India, China, France, Japan, and others — and it’s time to spur progress in education again, to spur progress and great leaps in science.

One gets the impression Palin does not think much of science, nor education, nor especially science education.  She could use some lessons in history, too.  Sputnik didn’t bankrupt the Soviet Union.  Ignoring Sputnik might have bankrupted the U.S.

Santayana’s Ghost is shaking his head in sad disbelief.  And he has a question for Sarah Palin:  Santayana’s Ghost wants to know from Ms. Palin, can the U.S. compete with the Russians?

Tip of the old scrub brush to P. Z. Myers and Pharyngula, and another shake to DailyKos.

More, resources:

7 Comments | 1957, Education, Education quality, Education reform, History, Santayana's ghost, Science, Soviet Union, Space exploration, Space Race, Sputnik | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Annals of Hoaxes: American Enterprise Institute sends out hoax backgrounder on DDT and trade barriers

January 25, 2011

How do hoaxes get started?

The self-proclaimed august American Enterprise Institute issued a “backgrounder” today on foreign trade.  Backgrounder #2509, written by James Roberts.

The first paragraph is complete fiction:

Decades ago, the use of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) was banned worldwide for what were generally seen as noble and unassailable environmental and public health reasons. Today, ample evidence shows that the ban on DDT spraying has been a tragic mistake. In developing countries, it is linked to millions of preventable deaths from malaria. Worse, some protectionist European business sectors and activist groups continue to exploit the fears of DDT in ways that increase the suffering of the poor around the world.

Here are the errors of fact:

  1. DDT has never been banned worldwide, so there could never be a decades-old worldwide ban. A nearly-world-wide ban was agreed upon by treaty  in late 2001, less than one decade ago.  However, any nation may ignore the ban, legally, by simply writing a letter to the World Health Organization (WHO) saying the nation will be using DDT.  DDT manufacturing continues in a few nations today, including North Korea and India.  India is far and away the largest user of DDT now, using more than all other nations combined.  No worldwide ban on DDT ever existed, and DDT use has been continuous since 1946.
  2. Earlier bans on DDT were assailed in court as unreasonable infringements on commerce. The U.S. banned DDT use on agricultural crops in 1972, but only after two federal district courts had ruled the substance essentially uncontrollable in the wild, and after a lengthy administrative law hearing at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) covering most of 1971 and more than 9,000 pages of testimony.  EPA’s rule left DDT available in the U.S. for emergency use, or for health use.  EPA’s rule left manufacturing alone so the U.S. could export DDT to any other nation who wanted to use it.  Still, DDT manufacturers fought hard in court to overturn the ruling.  Manufacturers argued that the science was thin to back the ban, and that the ban was too much regulation for small gain.  Appeals courts ruled that the science backing the ban was ample.
  3. 39 years after the U.S. ban on crop spraying with DDT, benefits are enormous — history and science show the recovery of dozens of beneficial species, ranging from mosquito-eating Mexican free-tail bats in Texas, through fish in Oklahoma, to osprey, peregrine falcons, brown pelicans and bald eagles in the rest of the U.S. Unknown at the time EPA acted, DDT has been shown to be an endocrine disruptor of the sort that scrambles the sex organs of fish and amphibians in the Potomac and Susquehanna Rivers in the U.S.  Also unknown in 1972, EPA now is listed by the American Cancer Society as a “probable human carcinogen,” though it is thought to be a weak carcinogen to adults directly exposed.
  4. Malaria deaths have been cut by 75% since DDT was indicted as a harmful substance. Perhaps more surprising, without DDT, health workers around the world have sharply reduced malaria incidence and especially malaria deaths.  Nearly four million people died from malaria, worldwide, at the height of DDT use in 1959 through 1961.  Today that death toll has been cut to under 900,000, through wise use of curative pharmaceuticals, careful use of prophylactic nets and home improvements, and the development of new, better-targeted pesticides.  Malaria fighters especially are redoubling efforts to make the disease at least rare, now encouraged by the dramatic strides made without relying on DDT.  Ironically, India has a growing malaria problem, despite its being the greatest user of DDT today.  (Even more ironic:  Roberts claims about half the death rate WHO does — a 90% reduction in malaria deaths.)
  5. No preventable death to malaria has been tied to a lack of DDT. No nation has ever had difficulty getting DDT if it wanted it.  The fight against malaria was hampered when the malaria parasites developed resistance to traditional pharmaceuticals used to treat the disease in humans, but the promulgation of artemisinin-based combination therapies made up the gap. Nations have difficulty developing a health care system that can quickly and accurately diagnose malaria, and which form of malaria, and then deliver the necessary therapeutic regimen of pharmaceuticals to cure humans.  DDT cannot make up for that difficulty, partly because DDT use itself now requires rather extensive testing to make sure it works.  As Jonathan Weiner noted in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Beak of the Finch, nearly every mosquito on Earth today carries at least one of two alleles which make them resistant or wholly immune to DDT.  DDT cannot be used without first testing to be sure the mosquitoes are killed by it.
  6. No otherwise noble European or “western” business groups nor environmental groups work against the minor use of DDT for indoor residual spraying (IRS). For example, the Environmental Defense Fund was one of the groups that lobbied the Bush administration to allow USAID money to buy DDT for IRS in Africa, a use the Bush administration inexplicably had not allowed.  Opposition to this minor DDT use in Uganda was organized by Uganda businessmen who sued to stop it, not by European groups — generally.  BAT, British-American Tobacco, did organize opposition to use of DDT, on specious grounds — highly ironic since the people who run the pro-DDT publicity machine are, several of them, former tobacco propagandists whose organizations go seed money from tobacco companies.  Generally, DDT use for IRS in Africa is supported by everyone involved, including environmentalists and the U.S. government.

Four sentences and six grievous errors of fact from the American Enterprise Institute.  And this is just the first paragraph of their “background” paper.

James Roberts may have tried to pluck an example from a history he does not understand.  There may be a problems with trade and pharmaceuticals and pesticides — but none of the problems he cites for DDT is accurate and true.  He may have fallen for the hoaxes perpetrated by others.

Watch:  A hundred others will cite the hoax conclusions Roberts lists, claiming American Enterprise Institute as the source.  Likely they will assume AEI had its facts straight, and wasn’t the victim of a hoax.

And that’s how hoaxes get started, big time. This is how no-think tanks wage the War on Science.

Will AEI issue a correction?

Does anyone take such publications as authoritative?  May God forbid.

With such a sloppy start, can the rest of the paper be any better?

(Oy, now I scan down the document, and I see Roberts cited Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring as saying DDT use would lead to extinction of birds, “offering no proof.”  Since Carson made no such direct claim, and since the book was loaded with citations to the studies that proved her points, that is it was loaded with “proof,” we must conclude that Roberts did not bother to actually open the book, let alone read it.  That doesn’t speak well for the chances of getting a correction.)

2 Comments | DDT, History, Malaria, Rachel Carson, Science, Trade, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

George Clooney’s malaria? DDT didn’t cure it

January 25, 2011

Not sure why, but pro-DDT sites have been harping about George Clooney’s having contracted malaria, a second time, while performing one of his humanitarian acts in southern Sudan.

George Clooney in Sudan, Time Magazine photo

George Clooney in Sudan, Time Magazine photo

True, Clooney got malaria.  His take?

“This illustrates how with proper medication, the most lethal condition in Africa can be reduced to bad ten days instead of a death sentence.”

Sometimes it may pay to remember that malaria is disease caused by a parasite who must live part of its life cycle in humans, and part of its life in mosquitoes.  Killing mosquitoes only works until the next susceptible mosquito comes along to bite an infected human.

The goal of malaria prevention and eradication campaigns generally is to cure the humans, so regardless how many mosquitoes may be in a given location and regardless how many people they may bite, there is no malaria pool for the mosquitoes to draw from, to spread to other humans.

To beat malaria, we need to prevent the spread of the disease.  At some point that requires providing quick and accurate diagnoses of which parasites cause the infection, and a complete and completed regimen of therapeutic pharmaceuticals to actuall cure the human victims.  DDT is mostly a bystander in that crucial part of the fight.

What was Clooney doing in Sudan?  According to the New York Daily News:

Clooney was in Sudan in December to work with Google and the UN on a human rights project that combines satellite imagery analysis and field reports to prevent a new war from occurring in the troubled country.

“We want to let potential perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes know that we’re watching, the world is watching,” he said in a statement at the time. “War criminals thrive in the dark. It’s a lot harder to commit mass atrocities in the glare of the media spotlight.”

Do you consider it odd that Clooney’s contracting malaria might gather more news in western outlets than his actual trip to Sudan, to call attention to the campaign against genocide?

5 Comments | Africa, DDT, Genocide, Health care, History, Malaria, medicine, United Nations | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Roger Bate’s simple lie about DDT

January 22, 2011

In the last two weeks we’ve seen a virtual-world assault by Richard Tren, Roger Bate and Don Roberts, alternately telling fantastic tales about how Rachel Carson from beyond the grave organized a mass murder that rivals Joseph Stalin, or saying that environmentalists conspire to keep life-saving chemicals from getting to Africa and Asia.

This morning’s e-mail brought a release from the often-fact-challenged American Enterprise Institute, under the by-line of Roger Bate — “The UN’s Scientific Fraud Against DDT.”

Fraud?  That’s all on Bate.  Here are things Bate will not tell you:

  • No malaria fighting organization claims it needs more DDT.
  • DDT has never been banned in Africa, nor Asia.
  • If any nation wishes to use DDT to fight malaria, that nation need only write a letter to the World Health Organization informing WHO of that fact.
  • If anyone violates the Persistent Organic Pollutants Treaty (POPs) and uses DDT without telling WHO first, there is no penalty.
  • Malaria death rates are, now, at the lowest level in human history.  While there is a threat of a resurgence of malaria, the threat comes because the malaria parasites themselves develop resistant to the pharmaceuticals used to treat the disease in humans — no connection to DDT.
  • DDT use cannot stop malaria.  Consider:  India is one of two or three nations today who still manufacture DDT, and India uses more DDT than all the rest of the world’s nations put together.  Malaria is still a problem for India.
  • Beating malaria requires more than poisoning the hell out of Africa.

Roger Bate:  Walking science, history, law and policy fraud.  His claims are hoaxes.

Update: Tim Lambert at Deltoid looked at the claims of Bate and Roberts, and found that they appear to have made many errors in simple math and statistics.  Read about it here.

4 Comments | DDT, Hoaxes, Malaria, Voodoo history, Voodoo science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Science ethics: Ten biggest science paper retractions of 2010

January 18, 2011

Science uses a tough system to correct errors and prevent frauds.  Peer-review makes it difficult to get a paper into a journal, period, let alone one with hoaxed-up data or conclusions.  Still, out of the tens of thousands of serious science papers published each year, a few sneak through that shouldn’t, sometimes due to researcher error, sometimes due mix-ups in peer review, sometimes — rarely — due to outright fraud.

In the past 15 months political action to fight global warming took huge hits around December 2009 when a few thousand e-mails were hacked from computers at the Hadley Climate Research Unit in England, one of the leading groups in climate research that indicates a warming Earth.   Critics of Hadley made great hay about how the alleged wrong-doing in the e-mails meant that all climate research was wrong, or at least questionable.

So, I was greatly interested to stumble across this article in The Scientist, which lists what that magazine calls the “Top Retractions of 2010” — papers retracted for errors and ethical reasons.

None of the top retractions had anything to do with climate research.  One of the most under-reported stories of 2010 was that the claims of error and fraud by climate scientists were, themselves, hoaxes.  Looking at the list of top retractions, unless you were really looking for the climate papers, you might never notice.

Most of the retractions were in medicine and health.  Several were in cancer research.  False science in climate studies does not appear to be a major problem, measured by retractions.

Those who accuse climate scientists falsely don’t really have anything to retract in a formal sense.  They did no science work that was published.

When do people wake up and realize that global warming is a real problem, and we shouldn’t be fooled by political smears of the scientists who discover the data?

1 Comment | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, Ethics, Global warming, Green Politics, Hoaxes, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

But the Earth still warms

January 18, 2011

Political activists who oppose working to stop or slow greenhouse gas emissions in order to slow global warming find themselves in awkward positions recently.

Before, during and after the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 they predicted that warming had stopped, and that we are entering a period of global cooling.  Alas for their claim, the planet refuses to cool.  The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest in human history; 2010 itself turned out to be one of the warmest years in history, worldwide.

NOAA graphic: Indicators of global warming: “Seven of these indicators would be expected to increase in a warming world, and observations show that they are, in fact, increasing. Three would be expected to decrease and they are, in fact, decreasing.”

Somebody stole hundreds of e-mails from one of the climate research clusters in England, and the anti-action activists claimed that the messages would reveal wrong-doing on the part of scientists, perhaps even criminal action.  Instead, five separate investigations discovered no wrong-doing on the parts of scientists, but a lot of hard work gone for too little action because of the anti-science shenanigans of the anti-action crew.  The science showing global warming remains untouched, with no significant body of research showing contrary.

One of the loudest voices against claims of global warming, Christopher Monckton, was unmasked as a blowhard and a fraud.    Scientists organized to refute the hoax claims of the anti-action activists.

So, the anti-action activists are sore.  They don’t take criticism well, and they especially don’t like anyone who points out their errors.

Sadly, they didn’t learn from the their past hoaxes.  So if even a lowly high school teacher should point out an error of history, they resort to making false claims and censorship against the teacher.  They have no data to back their case, nothing but invective to rebut with.

And so it was that a rather new site, hauntingthelibrary, took my comment noting where they could find the data to disabuse their wild claims, stripped it out, and substituted words I did not and would not write.

Fraud again, this time from hauntingthelibrary.  Hoax.  Fraud even in small things.

The movement against the science of global warming is rotten to its core.  (Seriously — most sites would be happy to note the pingback from this blog; the blogger had to act to block the pingback from showing up.  What are they so afraid of?)

Legend says that Galileo, backing out of the audience with the Pope in which he was put under house arrest after having “recanted” any claim that the Earth orbits the Sun, said quietly, “Still, it moves.”  Even the Pope’s powers through the Inquisition could not stop the Earth orbiting the Sun.  No matter how powerful the denial propaganda machines, no matter how many anti-science bloggers they recruit, the Earth keeps on stubbornly warming up.

Or, as Galileo might have said, “Eppure, lei si scalda!”

_____________

Update: Then there is Anti-Gore Effect Sillies Syndrome — claiming Gore erred, when he didn’t.  It’s demonstrated with the infection fully affecting the judgment of its victims at this odd place, XD Talk Forums.

 

More:

Earlier at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

Photo by W. W. MacFarlane - Pine bark beetle damage in Teton National Forest

Photo by W. W. MacFarlane – NPR caption: “Many dead trees appear gray and red on the high-mountain slopes of Union Pass Bridger in Teton National Forest in Wyoming”

14 Comments | Accuracy, Climate change, climate_change, denialism, Dirty Tricks, Entomology, Forestry, History, Hoaxes, Politics, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Annals of DDT: 1946 warning of the dangers of DDT

January 6, 2011

Warnings from this article in Popular Science in February 1946 are almost eerie in their accuracy.

Cover of Popular Science, February 1946; Google Books and Ebay image

Experiments in Ontario by the Dept. of Lands and Forests show what happens when DDT is used out of doors.  Damage to trees was limited to burning of leaf edges.  Carnivorous water beetles and some other aquatic animals were not greatly affected but died because the insects on which they fed were destroyed.  Other aquatic insects were killed directly.  Crayfish, which feed on insects and themselves serve as fish food, were very susceptible.  Minnows were killed by contact and trout died from eating poisoned insects.  Six kinds of frogs and two kinds of snakes were killed, either by contact or by eating poisoned insects.  Any DDT field spray is likely to destroy more than half of these amphibians.  (page 72)

There is an interesting reference to a case of several human deaths due to DDT — these reports of human deaths disappeared from research reports rather quickly, and today critics of environmental protection policies often say that no human ever died from DDT.  What happened to those reports, and are there others?

A further objection to the wide use of DDT in larvae control is the dangers of contaminating the water supply.  Fear of this led us to abandon plans to use DDT extensively at Bear Mountain Park.  Heavy rains might wash the DDT into reservoirs.  We were not fully aware of the deadly effects of the chemical then, but we received word from Okinawa later than several natives had died from eating DDT, and post-mortem examination revealed nerve lesions similar to those produced by strychnine.  (p. 72)

Brownfielders working against Rachel Carson sometimes claim she manufactured controversy about DDT with the publication of her book in 1962.  Go see this article from 16 years earlier, and see the warnings offered by the author, Dr. C. H. Curran, who was Associate Curator, Department of Insects and Spiders, at the American Museum of Natural History.

Rachel Carson was right, and still is.

More history:

10 Comments | DDT, Environmental protection, History, Rachel Carson, Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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