One for the philosophers
Me from a couple of days ago:
In general, what makes people and things dangerous is their capacity to do harm, not their intrinsic badness
this was meant as a nod in the direction of the Goldacre fans among my readership - BG does (and this is much to his credit as many of his competitors for the "sceptic" brand write whole books about "Counterknowledge" which don't even mention tobacco/lung cancer) take on pseudoscience carried out by the pharmaceutical industry, but it's less than a fifth of the amount of text and effort that he spends on woo. Whereas, as I noted in that post, even if one brackets out the potential deaths caused, you can see that one single piece of scientific malpractice carried out by a pharma company caused misdirection of medical expenditure a hundred times greater than the annual NHS spend on homeopathy. The point being, that if effort was expended in rough proportion to the harm done, people would hardly mention homeopathy at all. (Update: Goldacre's "Bad Science" col covers this story this week, although I think "disappointing behaviour" is perhaps a little mild as a description of what happened).
But I kind of gave up on that angle, because there's something wrong with that decision rule. It sounds reasonably intuitive (or at least it does to me with my own background; it's basically a loose way of talking about a marginal cost criterion), and I think it certainly beats the alternative rule of expending all of one's effort on the single worst problem until it is solved (the "why aren't we talking about Burma/Darfur/Zimbabwe?" gambit in international human rights). But it leads you into some weird places.
For example, if you're just saying that "the badness of something is determined by the amount of harm it does", then Prohibition was a success. Just as I reasoned that Hitler was more dangerous than Peter Tobin because he was in charge of an industrialised state, the fact is that alcohol consumption at the level of the USA in the 1910s was almost certainly causing more death and injury than any criminal gang could ever have done. Or you end up trying to judge all potential expenditure against a yardstick of spending the money on vaccination and water provision in the Third World and closing down the Royal Opera. And so on. But I don't really understand why the rule doesn't work.
Important note: thanks very much, but I did do "Utilitarianism: For And Against" at university and got an alpha in Finals; I'm reasonably familiar with most of the theoretical arguments, at least at the level at which it's possible to discuss them in blog comments. I'm not really asking about the moral arguments in favour of (or against) utilitarianism per se and am aware that there is basically no way of arguing against Peter Singer once you've accepted his premises. I'm thinking more about the "importance in proportion to harm and benefit" rule as a practical political principle of decision theory, and why it doesn't seem to work.
There are a few obvious possibilities which I think are red herrings. Prohibition was indeed largely bad for libertarian reasons rather than because of anything to do with health outcomes, but I think that even the health outcome justification for it fails. In the other example, I am also heavily sceptical about whether the quoted marginal benefits of vaccination and water projects are actually deliverable on any reliable basis, but I think I'd still regard the "shut down the Royal Opera and spend the money on the poor" rule as wrong even if I wasn't.
My own guess is that a rule like this breaks one of the important criteria for a rule of justice that are there in some versions of Rawls - that the social decision rule has to be justifiable to everyone in society on their own terms, otherwise it's not really a society. If you have an overarching rule about priorities, it's going to create what Kenneth Arrow calls "positional dictators" - ie people whose position in the current allocation of resources gives them a status such that the social utility function is wholly determined by theirs. More importantly, there are going to be loads of people whose priorities are nowhere near the social priorities and who therefore have no chance whatsoever of seeing their particular hobbyhorse being funded. People like that are eventually going to get pig sick of making their contribution, because they're going to believe (correctly) that the society they're in isn't working for them.
It's late, I've been staring at a spreadsheet all day, and I'm off to the pub, so I might not have read your post with due care and attention - but isn't "the badness of something is determined by the amount of harm it does" saved by adding "involuntary" between "of" and "harm"?
ReplyDeleteHence, the vast majority of deaths caused by alcohol consumption are irrelevant, because they consist of someone who drinks a bit too much dying at 60 of cirrhosis or heart failure because they didn't want to stop, not of yer desperate alcoholic murdering people because he's MAAAAAAD.
Now, if booze companies try and stop information on booze's health effects from being published, then they're harming people (in the sense of "not providing them with the information they require to make a decision that will allow them to correctly offset other considerations against harm") like GSK in the last post. But if they don't, then they aren't.
Re: your Prohibition argument, did alcohol consumption actually fall during that period?
ReplyDeleteIt looks to me as though you don't like Ben Goldacre's work for some reason and are determined to find something to criticize him for, but are too honest to go in for a session of whataboutery.
ReplyDeleteYou also seem to have the idea that tackling "woo" is taking on an easy or unworthy target, but surely the Matthias Rath lawsuit shows that this isn't always the case.
Wouldn't it be better to explain the real reason you don't like his work?
ejh - yes. More importantly, it was substantially lower after Prohibition as compared with before. The USA was, predominantly, a very boozy society before Prohibition - schoolkids drinking beer in morning break, that kind of thing - and, predominantly, a rather uptight puritanical one afterwards. (Both tendencies were there, before and after, but during Prohibition the puritans essentially won.)
ReplyDeleteSo no, I don't think the health justification for Prohibition fails; I think it's a fairly straight case of (individual) liberty (to the extent that it existed in that time and place, qualified in all sorts of ways) versus engineered collective outcomes.
Also, I'm not sure about diverting the money to vaccination, but your entire last paragraph is consistent with closing the Royal Opera House and spending the money on something else. Nothing says [your] priorities are nowhere near the social priorities and [you] therefore have no chance whatsoever of seeing [your] particular hobbyhorse being funded like public subsidies to opera.
Wouldn't it be better to explain the real reason you don't like his work?
ReplyDeleteWe've been through this in past BG posts - basically, I don't like the "sceptic" movement in general because I think they're self-satisfied and annoying, but it's important to attack the strong targets like BG rather than just nutpicking random sceptic blogs or PZ Myers.
For BG himself, I find him incredibly frustrating because he's actually intelligent enough to have considered all the issues that I want him to be thinking about, but he constantly has the urge to play to his peanut gallery. Also he uses "arts graduate" as a pejorative, which was twatty when Graeme Garden did it in the Goodies Annual 1982. It's really not unlike my love/hate relationship with David Aaronovitch.
Nothing says [your] priorities are nowhere near the social priorities and [you] therefore have no chance whatsoever of seeing [your] particular hobbyhorse being funded like public subsidies to opera.
I don't really agree with this.
Hold on there Phil: schoolkids drinking beer in morning break, Have you got references for this? I don't recall this sort of thing Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, etc, but that may just be me. Also, I'm not confident that this is a bad thing. People in Tudor times drank beer rather than water. From what I know of the Old West and Americans' traditional reluctance to pay taxes, I wouldn't be surprised if several states did not have potable water in ready supply. Surely the important things here are: how many kids drank beer in morning break; how old they were; why; whether we can find examples of Etonians, Rugbians (or whatever the term is), etc drinking beer at school. For the latter, I'm sure we can; again, I can't recall examples from Orwell (who would have left Eton in 1920 or 1921; IIRC); there's a fair bit of beer-drinking in Dickens too, isn't there? Probably for similar reasons: the water really wasn't all that great. I'm not sure when coffee and tea became very cheap. Tea was certainly a British staple by the time of "The Road to Wigan Pier" but I've always suspected that the claim that Dr Johnson once drank 20 cups of tea (or perhaps 25 after checking) was as much a boast about his disposable income as his constitution.
ReplyDeleteI imagine I'll have something to say about Dan's post once I unsidetrack myself.
Dave - I didn't say anything about most of what you're talking about in your comment; I wasn't saying school beer-drinking was universal, or that it was uniquely American, or that it was a bad thing. Just that the USA was mostly quite libertine with regard to alcohol before Prohibition and has been mostly quite puritanical ever since. My source is Erich Goode, Drugs in American Society.
ReplyDeleteD^2 - if you're in the minority that gets opera, I guess you wouldn't. Lots of people don't get it at all, and viewed from outside the association with huge ticket prices, public school accents and people talking swoony blather on Newsnight Review is a strong one.
I don't actually like opera, but I don't think that anyone really thinks that the subsidy to the Royal Opera House is stopping something important to them from being funded (or if they are, they're doing so because it's been raised into a totem of effeminate ponciness in a manner that I'm not really keen to indulge). I'm Welsh and I think it's maybe a bit differently culturally loaded, but does anyone really think this?
ReplyDeleteAnd in any case, I think this is my point - you'll be familiar with the slogan "benefits that are only for the poor, become poor benefits". If we decide that our governing rule is going to be that the only amenities which are going to get subsidised are those which meet a kind of means test, while the perks and pastimes of the middle and upper classes are to be provided 100% on the free market and via private charity, then this is going to have (and in my opinion has had) long-term consequences for the kind of politics we get. My whole point here is that you actually want a public sector that's involved to a certain extent with everyone's lives, because that way everyone realises we're in it together. If you go down the zero-sum route and split society into takers and payers, you're introducing an implicit objective of minimising the overall size of the state.
(This is all going in the direction of what a massive fucking mistake it was to remove maintenance grants from middle class students).
A friend of mine once lectured to our local branch of the Skeptics Society. She described the people she met as being sceptical about everything except science.
ReplyDeleteBy the way - a philosopher/pedant writes - your original comment was that the dangerousness, not badness, of something was determined by the amount of harm it could do. That seems dead right, but assessing danerousness is not quite the same as assessing badness, which seems much more sensitive to motives.
On the wider policy point, I quite agree with you.
I basically agree with your argument, but not with how you stand it up. You seem to be saying that the risk of "positional dictators" imposing their own priorities and hence warping public spending allocation decisions is hypothetical, and that the existence of a public subsidy to opera is a sign that this is not currently happening. To my mind this is a bit like saying that the abolition of grammar schools was the first time the government intervened in the allocation of resources to education.
ReplyDeleteShe described the people she met as being sceptical about everything except science.
ReplyDeleteI saw a terrific talk at a Skeptics' conference years ago, by a (Christian and hence somewhat partisan) archeologist talking about Graham Hancock. Along the way he discussed the popular image of science - one true answer; one model which everyone agrees on; ideas progressing through falsification; no grey areas - and said that in his experience just about none of this was true of science as scientists practised it (lots of grey areas, lots of disputes that never get resolved, etc). Then he said that the popular image did match the picture of scientific rationality presented by Richard Dawkins. "Sceptical about everything except science" sums up that kind of mindset nicely.
yes subsidises for Opera do say: we don't care about your culture to a lot of people, but then subsidies for opera also pay for Tom Leonard and Alasdair Gray and James Kelman, so it's not really black and white.
ReplyDeleteI don't see why this would be the case. It's not as if, say, football or popular entertainment isn't also subsidised.
ReplyDeleteIs football subsidised? The thought had never occurred to me. This may be because I don't think I've ever seen a shroud-waving "cutting this grant will threaten the very future of British culture itself" appeal on behalf of footie.
ReplyDeletebut it is true that, rationally or not, opera subsidies do come across in one way to a lot of people, no?
ReplyDeleteYes, there's lots of football clubs that are either owned or heavily subsidised (usually by below market rates on their grounds) by their local authorities.
ReplyDeleteNot so much at the top end, but then if we're talking about expensive ticket prices ...
In general, what makes people and things dangerous is their capacity to do harm, not their intrinsic badness
ReplyDeleteI'd read this as a nod towards the decents who thought that condemning minor Marxist academics is more worthwhile than critically examining US foreign policy.
If not, well, surely you can allow that people write books fundamentally because they are interested in the topic, whilst also comforting themselves with the thought that the book will have an effect which is more positive than not, without it all having to be the most important issue currently facing the world.
Failing that, one could, I think argue according to your calculus, that a scientific approach to medicine is an amazingly good thing, and if we lost it the consequence would arguably be the worst thing in the history of ever. Call this enormous positive value X. Now of course, the threat posed by woo is undeniably tiny, call it y, nevertheless the prize is so enormous and precious, that when you multiply the two together Xxy, you still get something which justifies bods writing the odd blog or book, to keep woo confined to the margins.
Actually I'm serious about this bulwark argument, you may not like the sceptic community, but if they all shut the hell up, who would lobby for accurate labelling, or investigate whether or not a certain medical practice constitutes woo or proper medicine? Under those circumstances there would be an explosion of woo, which would be a bad thing even on your terms.
Larry
I'm not sure about your expected value argument - surely the threat posed to scientific medicine by corporate anti-science and pseudo-science is a lot worse, isn't it? I just checked the Goldacre blog and there's nothing about the swine flu inquiry, nothing about the Smithkline scandal, but a fucking load about fish oil, and one incredibly weak piece of BACAI where he basically has to admit he was criticising a valid piece of science, but some poor journalist or other is still wrong because hahahaha arts graduates. (here's the piece I'm talking about - it also contains a couple of examples of "inventing principles of scientific ethics off the top of your head", which I think is really pernicious).
ReplyDeleteI think the bad thing about woo is that it's in general an instrument of social control, as per Adorno's "The Stars Brought Down To Earth". It's a way of giving people the ersatz impression of control over their own environment when they don't really have it. Also, as we discussed before, if we were really serious about anti-woo, we'd be talking about how to completely transform the way the medical professions deals with chronic fatigue and allergy patients.
I think perhaps I should have made my objection a day or two ago, because it seems to me that there is a difference between pharmaceutical malpractice and woo. In the first, the underlying scientific principles are sound, but the data is dodgy. i.e if they weren't lying or hiding their data, there wouldn't be an issue. In the second, the scientific principles are buggered, straight out of the box. e.g homeopaths coming up with 1001 reasons why double-blind trials shouldn't apply, and concocting new treatments from theories which have been known to be fiction for hundreds of years.
ReplyDelete(I guess this roughly maps to the difference between the perpetrator being a bastard and being an ignoramus.)
You can make a strong argument that the former is is a bigger problem than the latter, and I'd probably agree. But if we accept that they are different things, then I can revert to the argument that while opposing woo may not be as important as investigating opposing the misdeeds of big pharma, it's nevertheless a worthwhile activity rather than not...
That was me by the way.
ReplyDeleteLarry
To continue being sidetracked for a bit. Phil, I'm really not sure what you are saying. I know you're far to sensible to generalise - especially about a nation as diverse as the United States. (I will have to look at that book you mentioned.) You can find several traditions happening concurrently in most US cities. The US was neither noticeably dissipated pre-1920, nor is it abstemious now. (Definition to follow.)
ReplyDeleteWikipedia is an excellent resource on the Prohibition. Its roots go far back to 1830. As with any legislation which is supported by members of different parties representing different constituencies, the 18th Amendment had many justifications, and health was one of these, but not nearly as important as 'morality'.
As for whether the Puritans won and whether the US is more abstemious now, IMO, they didn't and it isn't. The Wikipedia entry includes this strange sentence: In 1830, the average American consumed 1.7 bottles of hard liquor per week, three times the amount currently consumed in 2010. (Quoted from Time. A good piece, incidentally.) But this is meaningless. The 'average American' in 2010 is greatly different from her counterpart in 1830. She drives to work, is more likely to work by brain than by hand, etc. And 'hard liquor' does not seem to include wine and beer, slower, more sociable, and more contemplative methods for getting pie-eyed. (Housman was wrong about the merits of malt and ale.) Meanwhile, America takes drugs by the shovel load. Lindsay Lohan's problems only partly derive from being young, famous, rich, and liking alcohol. She's also fond on prescription medicine. And she's hardly uncommon. Why self medicate when you can afford professional help?
The puritans haven't won the modern-day prohibition, aka the war on [illegal] drugs either. Good grief, as I'm sure I've said before, in Alastair Campbell's first book of diaries, Campbell talks to Bush about their drinking careers. AC drank far more (although AC's intake bordered on insane) and is now totally dry while Bush drinks a glass or two of wine or beer with evening meals. This is because Bush was never an alcoholic. It's a euphemism. Bush was a cocaine addict, but as that's illegal, it can't be admitted in print.
The hypocrites won. The truth lost. Good news for the Daily Mail, at least.
Phil, you're so right that the plebs don't get opera, BTW. They really hate it when exposed to it.
ReplyDeleteI once read (but never bookmarked and have since lost) a really good article on Prohibition, the conclusion of which was that as a public health measure it was a huge success. At the end of the day, we do know that taxes on alcohol and cigarettes affect consumption, so it would be very odd if something like that didn't.
ReplyDeleteI'm really not sure what you are saying
ReplyDeleteOur incomprehension is mutual - I can't see what Alastair Campbell or Lindsay Lohan have to do with the price of fish.
All I'm saying is that (according to Goode) there was significantly higher per capita alcohol consumption in the US, in the years immediately before Prohibition, than in the years immediately afterward and ever since.
I'm also saying that alcohol was normalised in US culture prior to Prohibition in a way that it hasn't been since. When I say the puritans won, I don't mean the US is a nation of abstainers, but that the dominant culture in the US is significantly more screwed-up about alcohol than ours (perhaps I should say even more screwed-up than ours). And, more importantly, that it's significantly more screwed-up about alcohol than it was before Prohibition.
Prohibition worked, both in terms of cutting the amount people generally drank and in terms of making people think drinking was an issue.
As for opera, there's a hell of a difference between a guy getting up and doing a song and, well, opera.
ReplyDeleteMy mother tried to educate me in these things when I was about thirteen; first one of Ballet Rambert's shows for kids and then a watered-down-for-kids production (book in English, lots of bits replaced by spoken dialogue and exposition) of Il Seraglio. I don't remember much about the Ballet Rambert - although I do remember thinking there wasn't so much child-friendly fun and frolics as I'd been led to expect and rather more, well, ballet. But Il Seraglio - my God. I had never been so bored, and I don't think I ever have since. I pleaded with my mother to take me home in the interval, but she said I'd get to like it if I tried. I tried. I failed.
In many ways I like the idea of opera - I think Robert Wilson's a genius, and I loved Mishima. But why does it have to be so rich and posh and archaic and mannered?
Actually, I think your objection to Goldacre derives from the realisation that he is a formidable competitor in the realm of smartarse Oxford graduates who are overly convinced of their own cleverness (apologies for the tautologous description).
ReplyDeleteHow do I know this? Via whatever bullshit epistemological system I feel like. It doesn't matter exactly what, because some Slate-esque contrarian posturing masquerading as rational analysis says nobody should bother criticising it.
To me it seems that the problem with the "shut down the opera and use the money to feed the poor" argument is that it assumes implicitly that "we all want to feed the poor, but unfortunately cannot afford it."
ReplyDeleteThis is very far from the truth. The reason good things do not get done is that people don't want them done at all, or at least do not want to spend any resources on doing them. Thus, there is really no connection between shutting down the opera and feeding the poor. The poor would stay unfed even if the opera were shut down.
In a hypothetical situation in which there really was some kind of a real trade-off between opera and food, the marginal utility argument would work fine.
Why so hate it? For me, it is a pride to do that task. Perhaps too many audiences are around and opera there it goes..
ReplyDeleteActually, I think your objection to Goldacre derives from the realisation that he is a formidable competitor in the realm of smartarse Oxford graduates who are overly convinced of their own cleverness (apologies for the tautologous description).
ReplyDeleteHow do I know this? Via whatever bullshit epistemological system I feel like. It doesn't matter exactly what, because some Slate-esque contrarian posturing masquerading as rational analysis says nobody should bother criticising it.
As always, this would be so much more powerful as a critique if someone was prepared to sign their name to it.
If you want to criticize Goldacre, then go ahead and post on his blog or email him! All this seems pretty silly since he's never likely to read anything on your blog without your pointing it out to him...
ReplyDeleteRe: Prohibition, I'm more inclined to Dave's position than Phil's. I think declines in alcohol consumption also happened in the UK over the period concerned, and over a longer period, and did so primarily not because of the WW1 drinking-hours laws but because of changes in culture, and personal and work habits. Of course Temperance also played a role, but so it did in the US - the point perhaps being that many people acquired a anti-alcohol outlook and a non-alcohol lifestyle (to use an anachronistic term) which we might view as being a cause of Prohibition rather than its effect.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to argue the case that bans are necessarily counter-productive and I wouldn't say so of prohibition, but I'd really want to know that people who wanted to drink sufficiently to damage their health couldn't get access to what they wanted. Is that so?
Re: opera, it's expensive because a lot of affluent people like to go and this means top performers get paid a great deal. So if the plebs are going to get in, there have to be some subsidised tickets. As it happens I've been to the ROH more than once for a tenner or so, which is rather less than it will cost you to get into Leyton Orient. I recommend both experiences.
I think I will post something on the BG blog one day, but I want to get it worked out properly first exactly what I am and amn't objecting to.
ReplyDeleteMy copy of Goode is at work, but I think all he's saying is that the criminalisation of alcohol over a period of years - driven, clearly, by the growing strength of the Temperance movement - had an effect on alcohol consumption levels both during the ban and after the ban was lifted. I'm not sure why we'd think that it wouldn't - the smoking ban, which stops well short of prohibition, appears to have had an effect on the number of people smoking. Whether Temperance alone would have had comparable effects we can't know, although presumably we could compare the change in consumption over the previous 14 years - again, I'll check when I've got the book in front of me.
ReplyDeleteI'd really want to know that people who wanted to drink sufficiently to damage their health couldn't get access to what they wanted. Is that so?
ReplyDeleteAgain, I'll see what Goode says, but I'm not sure how we could tell - retrospectively it could just look as if those people who did cut down must not have really wanted to drink to excess.
opera's expensive because of extended high-end artisanal labour costs: costumes, set-designs, lighting, theatre-hands and so on (plus a small orchestra's worth of musicians as well as chorus singers) -- in addition to the celebrity voices, who are actually often salted pretty thinly through the cast
ReplyDeleteits modern spectacular effects have to compete with cinema, not in content exactly, but in sense of marvelousness -- the punters on the whole won't put up with cheap and cheerful glitzy panto, they want the money on the stage; except to look expensive enough to put bums on seats, it has to BE expensive, which puts the ticket prices up (so punters expect it even more opulent and so on round)
spectacular film pays for itself -- when it does, which is not always -- by being able to show in multiple prints all over the world (to millions rather than hundreds); plus you can also recoup at DVD stage, perhaps entirely there -- some recoup is possible for opera with recordings of course, but it's nothing like the same scale, and the bus on seats is only as many as the opera house will hold, which is really not that many, even compared to a single multiplex
outside italy -- which was a special case, with a fanatical semi-populist opera public possibly as late as the 1920s -- opera had basically stopped paying for itself as a routine project everywhere by the early 19th century: the exception being bayreuth, which was cultist, quite austere in lots of ways (punishingly uncomfy by all accounts), and saved money by turned a lot of the staging element into repeatable routine -- it only began exploring reconceptualisation of wagner's own staging practice after ww2 (when a lot of the cultism -- not to mention the family business- had become horribly compromised by association with you-know-who)
re prohibition: i don't have it to hand -- it's at my dad's house -- but there's an extensive article in the late 20s supplement to the 1911 encyclopedia britannica, written about prohibition during prohibition which argues at length, with detailed statistics, that the health benefits have been manifest
ReplyDeleteit's an interesting artefact because the tone is so matter of fact -- there's no assumption it will be repealed shortly, for a start, but no great moral investment in it either: it's scientific reportage, about a project in a far-off, rather quirky land
(the statistics may be garbage of course, and britannica may have hired a temperance nut to write it up; i've only ever read it out of historical fascination)
As always, this would be so much more powerful as a critique if someone was prepared to sign their name to it.
ReplyDeleteOh, absolutely. The power of a critique is inextricably bound up with the name of the person making it. Presumably the sympathy for placebopathists is informed by a similar attitude to truth and logic.
Oh, absolutely. The power of a critique is inextricably bound up with the name of the person making it
ReplyDeleteYou don't seem to understand the point. It's not that the particular name of the person matters (although of course, if you're my mum that would probably make a difference), as the simple fact that you clearly don't actually think enough of the arguments you're making to sign your name to them. It's rather like the difference between saying something to somebody's face, versus writing nasty things about them on a wall. You probably don't realise this (with the truth, and the logic, and all of that clouding your view), but so far in this comments thread, you've said a lot more about your own character than about mine.
what makes people and things dangerous is their capacity to do harm, not their intrinsic badness
ReplyDeleteTo nitpick, somewhat as Larry was saying above,one would have thought that a multiple of the capacity and the (not necessarily intrinsic)badness would be a more natural way to look at it.
Also when comparing big pharma malpractice to homeopathy, you imply that the cost of stopping both is essentially comparable,or that there aren't other benefits in discouraging belief in nonsense, or in the case of Prohibition other public goods in living in a less uptight society.
She described the people she met as being sceptical about everything except science.
And doubtful about anything inconsistent being logical?
Also when comparing big pharma malpractice to homeopathy, you imply that the cost of stopping both is essentially comparable,or that there aren't other benefits in discouraging belief in nonsense
ReplyDeleteLet's be straight here - what GSK did in this case was nonsense (I note that Ben Goldacre also gets this right - he refers to them as "behaving like homeopaths" in his column). This is the point I'm trying to make - bad science is a much bigger threat to the world than homeopathy, and I think it's a real misplacement of priorities to consider that even completely wiping out the £4m spent by the NHS on homeopathy every year is a material victory when there are $600m units being made by people covering up drug tests.
Justin, thanks for agreeing with me.
ReplyDeletePhil, my points are these: Prohibition wasn't about health; it didn't introduce abstinence to Americans (Lincoln, pretty much a national hero - to the North and West, anyway - neither smoked nor drank); it didn't make Americans more moderate: Americans aren't moderate in their intoxicating substance intake, if we can consider those who indulge at all; finally, it made crime professional and organised.
Anyway, I rather agree with Dan here. I've thought about joining the sceptics in Wales (they're on Twitter), but I'm no longer clear what they're sceptical about. Astrology? Busted by St Augustine. Snake oil? PZ Myers found a nice letter from one Samuel Clemens (a comic write, m'lud) in 1905. It's not exactly radical.
Not that I've got a lot of time for people who are sceptical about scientific consensus. I've little time for global warming deniers and conspiracists. Nor for the "Bell Curve" guy. But there is a guy who thinks the consensus since Hubble (the person, not the telescope) that red-shift of galaxies is correlated with distance is wrong. If he's right (which I doubt) current estimates of the age of the universe and its structure and origin would be up for review. Since it's very hard to measure the distance to other galaxies (you need to rely on supernovae having fixed brightnesses, again a slightly wobbly theory, because there may now be more than two simple types of SN), there's room for scepticism. OTOH, there's little point in lay people trying to second guess full time researchers. So what do sceptics do?
Here in the US, my only source of knowledge about Ben Goldacre comes from this video.
ReplyDelete"I think it's a real misplacement of priorities to consider that even completely wiping out the £4m spent by the NHS on homeopathy every year is a material victory when there are $600m units being made by people covering up drug tests."
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that's a valid point, but hardly a devastating critique of BG or other 'skeptics' and their causes. Particularly from a man who has dedicated such a large part of his life to criticising DA and NC among others as well as various amusing but often trivial musings on his blog.
In other words, is your argument not whataboutery of the first order? I think your objection to BG comes from the same place as your objections to Dawkins - it is 90% about the style (and let's be fair, the anonymous poster above wasn't completely wide of the mark) and 5% contrarianism on your part, which leads to you looking for that other 5% of questionable priorities or dodgy assertions.
So while I think you may well be right in some of your criticisms of BG, it just doesn't seem like your motives are entirely pure, and that colours the way the criticism comes across.
I would think the first order objection to BG is the way that he has so easily slipped into position as a scientific talking head in areas where he is clearly no expert, which would seem like something of a conflict of interests.
It's funny you should bring that up. I was thinking about "Anti-Goldacre" (and deciding I wasn't going to do a post of that title because I'm not really interested in starting a blog war this week) on the train, and realised that actually the comparison to "Aaronovitch Watch" was pretty much apropos.
ReplyDelete1) As I discovered in my callow youth with the "shorter Steven den Beste" series[1], you have to be quite careful about a project that's based entirely on criticising other people, or it begins to look like bullying. With AW, we were taking on two of the UK's most prominent and influential political journalists (both of whom, it has to be noted, had hit books while we were covering them!), and we usually did our best to be fair to them. A lot of my objection to the "sceptic" movement in general is that they're so amazingly keen on midget-punching. As I invariably point out in the case of BG, he does deserve significant amounts of credit for being one of the only ones that *ever* takes on a difficult target *at all*.
2. Due to the midget-punching being rather unedifying, there's a need to pretend that these midgets are supervillains. In actual fact, most homeopaths and Dr Gillian McKeith don't actually do all that much harm. They're disposers of placebo effect, often as we've discussed in fields like allergy medicine where the medical profession is currently handing out massive doses of anti-placebo effect. So in order to make them look like supervillains, one needs to a) make sure that every single case of genuine harm is reported to the max, turning someone like Matthias Rath from a marginal kook into a sort of Ernst Blofeld, and b) prod and provoke the silly woos until they lash out with a lawsuit or something, at which point you can complain about their terrible illiberalness.
2) i) The second tactic (b) above will be recognised by anyone who's been to school as an excellent tactic, while (a) above is, in my opinion, also quite problematic. Which gets on to my answer to your point - I don't think this is whataboutery, because the issue here is that "Bad Science" (the blog) gives a systematically misleading view of the world in which "woo" and medical malpractice are roughly similar magnitudes of threats. In fact, look at the language used to describe GSK's behaviour; it's really much more measured than if they'd done something really awful, like marketing ionisers.
(to be continued ...)
[1] Which certainly *was* bullying and I don't feel great about it today - when I face the Great Scorer, my excuse will probably be that SdB was very nasty to other people and someone needed to do something about it.
(... continued)
ReplyDelete3. "Bad Science" the column is very different to the blog - there's a lot more useful content and it is not all hippy-punching. But in the column, I think your first-order criticism is very relevant. It was originally meant to be "Bad Science Journalism" - ie, a column in which Goldacre the scientist would be the scourge of the journalistic profession's misreporting of science. But actually, it's another science column, neither better nor worse than the rest. Which leads to
4) For a guy whose whole thing is to excoriate the mistakes of others, he makes mistakes, all the time. There's a hoolie on the front page now, where he has a go at a Guardian article where he didn't realise they'd actually commissioned an academic researcher to crunch their data, and he climbs down in about the most graceless way possible. But there's also silly mistakes of interpretation - the last time we went round this mulberry bush I found a silly speed-reading mistake where he said that a study showed something about back pain when it didn't[1]. You'll notice that on this blog, I don't hand out "Economic Idiot" awards or call for major newspapers to be shut down - this is precisely because I don't aspire to the standard of personal flawlessness that you'd need in order to do so.
(to be continued further)
[1] It was a study into the *consequences* of back pain. The criterion for a successful outcome was whether someone went back to work and stopped complaining. It was a perfectly good study but it wasn't about pain.
(... continued further)
ReplyDelete5) So my assessment of BG is that ... drum roll ... he's actually a rather good science journalist. No more, no less. I read his column, and quite like it; the blog I don't have to read and so I don't.
6) So why my peculiar obsession with him, which has led me to write three or possibly even four blog posts in the last five years? I think it's basically that the roots of his success are in the same soil as Freakonomics - it's the large community of the educated reading public who are interested in science but can't or won't do the maths.
7) I am quite concerned about this audience, because they're very vulnerable - they're looking for answers, but they don't have the critical apparatus to assess the answers they're given[1]. This is quite a new publishing genere, and the modern science academic popularizer, of which both BG and Levitt/Dubner are examples, doesn't seem to have got anywhere near a set of principles for explaining the uncertainty and tentativeness of a lot of the stuff they're talking about.
(I think I'll take a break there and return to the theme later)
[1] Would it be trite to note that this is behaviour which looks quite like a displaced religious instinct[2]? Well I guess I'm trite then.
[2] Or possibly, the "religious instinct" is a displaced version of this.
Oh right on queue ...
ReplyDeleteMaking libel threats.
Actually I believe that BG would be perfectly within his rights to sue, if it's true that he's been called a liar. But he's just spent the last six months on a high horse about British libel laws. FFS. Either it's vital to free speech and blah blah blah for people to be able to chuck around consequence-free accusations of dishonesty, or it isn't.
This (and it's hardly the only example, viz copyright laws also don't apply to sceptics) reminds me more than anything else of the Scientologists' "fair game" principle. Which IIRC the Scientologists have scrapped because it ended up making them look so bad.
Dave - I don't think we disagree about very much.
ReplyDeleteProhibition wasn't about health
Not in dispute. I think I've said all along that Prohibition was driven by the Temperance movement, whose objections to alcohol were far more fundamental.
it didn't introduce abstinence to Americans
Again, not in dispute.
it didn't make Americans more moderate
It depends what you mean by 'moderate'. If you're saying that it didn't make Americans, considered as an entire society, drink less alcohol overall, then I'm pretty confident you're wrong (although my books are at the office, etc). If you're saying that it didn't make Americans chilled-out and sensible about alcohol, then again that's never been in dispute - I've said all along that the puritanism of the Temperance movement gave the US a more screwed-up attitude to alcohol.
Americans aren't moderate in their intoxicating substance intake, if we can consider those who indulge at all
Same answer. Bingeing and repenting is very puritanical behaviour. As for the overall level of consumption, I'm fairly confident it's still lower now than before Prohibition.
it made crime professional and organised
Again, not in dispute.
As for McKeith, there's an odd passive-aggressive mood developing in Jack of Kent's comments thread on this one - sort of "don't be silly, of course Ben isn't really going after McKeith! (although he'd be well within his rights if he did!)". Sort of "why, I oughta!" reframed as "why, he would be quite entitled to!"
1. McKeith is quite a prominent individual: you don't have to turn over any stones to find her.
ReplyDelete2. Lots of us can't do maths, even if we used to be able to. It's something you need to keep up, I think, and if you don't, you can still be good at grasping concepts but not at following the figures. (Plays bloody havoc with the chess, mind.)
3. The Prohibition debate. I do think there's a genuine cause-and -effect problem in that though of course one can show that alcoholism and related behaviours were much less after Prohibition than before, one can't necessarily show that it was Prohibition itself that brought this about. (Though of course, in the social sciences, one rarely can state anything with certainty.)
It's likely that many people's attitude to Prohibition, certainly including mine, may be coloured by the contemporary equivalent, the War on Drugs, which seems not to have any genuine effect in separating the substances involved from those who wish to take them. Perhaps we're projecting the failure of one effort on to the non-failure of another. Or perhaps the comparison is apt despite the different outcomes, because in one instance consumption was due (as it were) to drop anyway and in the other, it wasn't.
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ReplyDeleteIs Badscience the blog much different from the column? It seems to be mostly the column pasted without editing and a really quite small number of additional articles, often 'meta-articles' ('this vitamin pill peddler doesn't like me', that sort of thing). There's the forum (which has sucked quite a lot of the comment away from the blog) but it doesn't seem like you're talking about that.
ReplyDeleteSo your fundamental argument appears to be that Goldacre concentrates too much on the low hanging fruit** (homeopathy, acupuncture etc.) but doesn't take on the hard targets (Big Pharma, the medical establishment etc.)? Because it is actually really very hard to come up with readable criticisms of the more difficult areas. Homeopathy being nonsense is fairly easy to explain in a few hundred words but the statistical shenanigans used in a pharma sponsored trial or a crap scientific study over-promoted by press release are very hard to explain in the short column format he has - you end up either writing pages of dreary prose getting into the minutiae of the stats or study design or you rely on an argument from authority*.
Add to that the question of how much of Big Pharma misconduct is easily accessible and suitable for a repeated weekly column - since the majority is by definition secret and you can only bang on about the need for public trial data every so often you run out of stuff to talk about fairly quickly - which is death to the column.
Looking at the last few columns we have criticism of: Big Pharma, nutritional supplements, the L’Aquila Prosecutor’s office (investigating seismologists' failure to predict an earthquake), an Observer health report on fish oil, the lack of evidence base behind government penal policy, treatment of medical and pharma whistleblowers, central government election result data, plus assorted articles on some interesting studies that don't meet the criteria of criticism of anyone. I agree that he seemed to focus more on the likes of Gillian McKeith early on, and still likes to return to his old stomping ground now and then, but perhaps as his confidence and journalistic skill has grown he's aimed a bit higher? I'm curious as to your views of someone like Phil Hammond in the Eye, who has both broken some serious journalistic health stories and also banged on in a boring manner about stuff of interest only to him.
Re: the libel question, I think you're oversimplifying the libel law debate to score a cheap point.
* Not necessarily even an authority that Goldacre has, being both a junior doctor and a junior academic.
** I'm sure that the 'skeptic community' would argue that while homeopathy in and of itself is primarily just sugar pills and not actively harmful from a health perspective (it is still a monetary scam though) it goes with a general attitude and set of beliefs that can lead to significant harms through rejection of conventional medicine and that it is both a symptom of and contributes to a public approach to scientific issues that enourages magical thinking.
Re: the libel question, I think you're oversimplifying the libel law debate to score a cheap point.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree that I am. I think it actually is that simple. As far as I can see, the argument that they want to make is "it's different when they call me a liar from when I call them liars, because they areliars!". Which is a) actually true but b) you pretty self-evidently can't base a law on that sort of reasoning.
I never understood, btw, why it was that the libel reform campaign went up front on Simon Singh, with the two medical whistleblower cases in the background, rather than vice versa. I am enough of a cynic to think the PR industry might have been involved.
So your fundamental argument appears to be that Goldacre concentrates too much on the low hanging fruit**
ReplyDeleteNo that's my argument about sceptics in general - Goldacre himself is actually quite good on this (although I do still think that there's a problem with implicitly putting Gillian McKeith on a similar footing to the pharma industry, and as you can guess, I don't agree that the general attitude is all that harmful compared to the systematic suppression of data).
I think you have actually identified the problem - there actually isn't enough material to justify a weekly column on "Bad Science". So what do you do when you've contracted to provide one? You a) indulge in mission creep to start writing the type of loose popularisation that you've previously criticised or b) play to the peanut gallery and pick high profile fights with easy targets, or c) up the ante with nitpicking on other people's stuff.
All of which is basically what's happened. The trouble is that it's happened more or less unintentionally and unconsciously, and so there's never been a change in style to fit it; it's still that same Freakonomics "here's what the data say, here's what the real facts are" unqualified assertion, even when the subject matter is something where the author's clearly not in a position to make that statement.
There's a totally nonergodic relationship between the amount of BG I read and my view of him; I keep on finding things that make me say "oh, I've got this all wrong, he's actually quite subtle and coming from a lot of the same places as me", then just when I'm about to write the big humble pie comment, I follow a link to something that makes me think "christ, what is he playing at?". I wonder if it will eventually settle down?
Also, by the way, Twitter harrumph. If this is an accurate summary of what went down, then it's impossible to see what the word "lies" was referring to or where the libel happened. I'm sure that in context BG is correct in presuming that it was a reference to him, but I bet it would be really irritating to explain what the fuck is going on.
ReplyDelete"I don't agree that I am. I think it actually is that simple. As far as I can see, the argument that they want to make is "it's different when they call me a liar from when I call them liars, because they areliars!". Which is a) actually true but b) you pretty self-evidently can't base a law on that sort of reasoning."
ReplyDeleteWell it seems to me that the distinction they want to make is between being sued for saying 'that stuff you're saying isn't true, liar' where the plaintiff claims that while what they are saying is indeed not true they are not 'liars' because they believed it at the time, therefore you have libelled them, versus saying 'that stuff you're saying is a lie' when in fact what they are saying is true. That is the distinctiom between truth/falsity and intention to deceive - which is what a lot of the Simon Singh case hinged around as I recall.
Either way I think he's wrong to threaten libel, but McKeith is indeed rather keen on the old legal threats so he probably thinks it is quite funny.
the contemporary equivalent, the War on Drugs, which seems not to have any genuine effect in separating the substances involved from those who wish to take them
ReplyDeleteResearch a friend of mine did on mephedrone has made me wonder (reluctantly) if common sense is actually right about this one. It's early and semi-anecdotal days, but it does look as if the spread of mephedrone (which was extraordinarily rapid) was greatly facilitated by its legality, and that lots of people had a vague irrational sense that if it was legal it must be less unhealthy/dangerous than, say, ecstasy (which it really isn't, as it happens).
Speaking personally, there are a number of reasons why I don't use cannabis, but one of them is definitely that I don't want to break the law if I can help it.
I think the reason why the received wisdom is that Prohibition didn't work goes back to D^2's original point - we know that Prohibition was wrong and bad in all sorts of ways, so it's hard to hold that together with the thought that it might also have had real benefits.
Strange, 56 comments and no mention of this week's column.
ReplyDeleteI put it in an update on the main post yesterday - as I say, it's a good example of BG at his best, although "disappointing behaviour" is really a bit mild as a description of what happened. I suppose he might have been lawyered a bit.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to Phil Hammond, I think he has exactly the same problem - enough material for a really good column every couple of months, which has to be crammed into one every two weeks. In general, I think science communication tends to suffer from the false reasoning "this is really important! so it needs to be in the mass media!". If it's really the case that medical science only makes small and tentative claims of discoveries, and can't be oversimplified, and all that, then I think the conclusion might be that it's probably not suited to being covered in newspapers.
(just in case - unworthy thought! someone suspects me of sneakily editing the main post, cf the comment timestamped 7/18/2010 10:35:00 AM above).
ReplyDeleteIt's early and semi-anecdotal days, but it does look as if the spread of mephedrone (which was extraordinarily rapid) was greatly facilitated by its legality
ReplyDeleteAnecdata, I know but this would also be the story of the sudden rise and fall of the magic mushroom market in Camden Town (basically - grew up like, like, like those funny dome-shaped vegetable fungus things, can't remember what they're called, upon someone discovering that the prohibition of psilocybin was only on dried and prepared product and thus that it was legal to sell growing fungi, then shut down overnight when the loophole was closed).
Speaking personally, there are a number of reasons why I don't use cannabis, but one of them is definitely that I don't want to break the law if I can help it.
ReplyDeleteMmm, among my reasons too. But if we wanted it I reckon we wouldn't struggle. And if we're not fussed enough to break the law, we're probably not fussed enough to do ourselves any harm with it.
I am in the exhilarating position of being able to smoke cannabis without fear of judicial consequences[1], so sadly the only reason I neglect to do so is that I don't actually like it.
ReplyDeleteI still loathe the local Christian Democrats of the last government for banning magic mushrooms, though, and I didn't use those either.
[1] Dutch law is quite odd; cannabis is still actually illegal, but there is an official policy of not prosecuting for small amounts.
What about anti-vaxers? Certainly they have a great capacity to do harm.
ReplyDeleteGood point. As I say below in the post titled "A naughty boy did it and ran away", I think that a lot of the actual harm was the result of symbiosis between the vaccine/autism crowd and the sceptics though - in the UK at least (I don't know about the USA which might have been different), it would surely (with the benefit of hindsight) been so much more sensible to meet concerned parents half way and offer the single vaccinations on the NHS again. But the medical community (greatly encouraged by the skeptics) decided to dig its feet in - for the most part justifying this decision specifically because they thought that the single vaccine would have better take-up, which has to count as a really bad call.
ReplyDeleteWhat interests me is that the strategy of marginalising the "anti-vaxers" and treating them as fringe loonies who didn't have to be listened to worked so much worse in the medical sphere than similar strategies worked against "conspiracy loons" in the political sphere.
But, yes, good point.
I suppose one advantage to BG starting on relatively low-hanging fruit is he gets a reputation for taking on obvious quacks. When he takes on worthier targets, they slot into the obvious-quack role in the established Bad Science narrative and part of Goldacre's job is done for him. If he'd started by taking on Big Pharma before progressing to Gillian McKeith, he'd have no obvious victories to show and would look like he'd slunk off to punch midgets and let off steam, which wouldn't help his cause at all.
ReplyDeleteit was legal to sell growing fungi
ReplyDeleteI recall reading a pamphlet about magic mushrooms which finished with an account of several 70s court case, all of which went against the liberty caps, thus indicating a very narrow legal definition of preparation that amounted to taking the mushrooms out of the field they were growing wild in. I think something slightly more complex occured than a loophole being closed: the rise of poorly researched anti-drugs propaganda gave the impression to the law enforcement community that mushrooms were legal, and the Home Office eventually re-stated what the position of the law actually was.
I think it's the other way round - the letter of the law actually stated that they were legal unless "prepared for consumption" or words to that effect, but for several years Plod and his friends on the magistrate's bench* pushed it and, naturally, got away with it. It was the rise of well-informed pro-drugs propaganda that changed things and led to mushrooms being sold openly - which in turn led to a two-stage pushback. First the police collectively** brought in the line that "pick, wash and place in chiller cabinet" qualified as "prepare for consumption"; then the Home Office changed the law so that the mushrooms themselves were just plain illegal.
ReplyDelete*This is actually a bit of a slur on Plod - who has seen a lot more of the world, and is often a lot more liberal, than your average magistrate.
**There are 43 geographically-based police forces in England and Wales, each answerable to its own police authority, its own Chief Constable and the Home Office. Clearly, "the police" aren't an organisation as such and hence can't decide anything collectively, and any policy which is implemented across the country must either be a government directive or a fantastic coincidence.
if we're not fussed enough to break the law, we're probably not fussed enough to do ourselves any harm with it.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't follow. The mephedrone research, again, suggests that it's possible to drift into a really self-destructive pattern of behaviour if you happen to find a substance that clicks with you and nobody's stopping you getting it. For a while back there, among certain groups, mephedrone didn't even have the social stigma of alcohol, let alone the legal stigma of ecstasy - and although I hate to say it, the results weren't pretty.
Clearly, "the police" aren't an organisation as such and hence can't decide anything collectively, and any policy which is implemented across the country must either be a government directive or a fantastic coincidence.
ReplyDeleteEither this is sarcasm or you haven't heard of ACPO, our very own, CCTV-tastic, unelected shadow government...
I would like to say that I think I rather agree with the comment that the post was a (thankfully rare) outbreak of whataboutery.
ReplyDeletePhil - I have to admit that my speculation is mostly based on the Rik Mayall video Out Of My Head, but it would be interesting to see if other anti-drugs propaganda takes the same line. I think I'm correct in recalling that the "dangers" of cannabis consumption have always featured much more prominently.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it is propaganda so much as business finding a niche in the loophole that established the Camden market,plus the pre-establishment of a market in Amsterdam (where they don't have any mountains, and so a lack of naturally occuring fungi).
Meanwhile in another part of the forest of aggressive rationalism: "Don't be a dick", Phil Plait tells sceptics. (Sceptics not overjoyed.) No full transcript online, but I've discussed it with some links here. (I'm about to post essentially the same comment at Aarowatch, so apologies if you read both.)
ReplyDeleteBeing anti-vax is pointless now even Alphas are on the retirement list.
ReplyDeleteSorry, bad geek joke there.
What interests me is that the strategy of marginalising the "anti-vaxers" and treating them as fringe loonies who didn't have to be listened to worked so much worse in the medical sphere than similar strategies worked against "conspiracy loons" in the political sphere.
Now I didn't follow every in and out of this, but it was my impression that the vaccination scares were taken much more seriously than deserved right from the start by the media, politicians and even the NHS and that the ridiculing only started long after the damage had been done.
But in any case the answer as to the difference lies in two words: Daily Mail. The MMR scare fitted their worldview, while being skeptical about say the War on Iraq, not so much.
the vaccination scares were taken much more seriously than deserved right from the start
ReplyDeletethis isn't true unless you take an unusual definition of "the start". At the start, it was very difficult for anyone at all to be sure how seriously it deserved to be taken - it's not at all as if vaccines are in general incredibly safe and there was a seeming autism epidemic, the reasons for which still aren't known. Wakefield's malpractice wasn't known at the time - even as late as 2005, Ben Goldacre was referring to his original study as a good piece of work that had been foolishly overhyped relative to its sample size. The assertions of the safety of the MMR vaccine that were being made right at the start were, in fact, significantly overstating the actual evidence base on the safety of the vaccine - the actual work was done a lot later. That's another way it differs from the truthers, in that it was pretty obvious that 9/11 was done by bin Laden right from the start.
I have no option but to link to this as it's so on-topic it hurts.
ReplyDeletedd: the criterion for a successful outcome was whether someone went back to work and stopped complaining
Chortle.
dd: What interests me is that the strategy of marginalising the "anti-vaxers" and treating them as fringe loonies who didn't have to be listened to worked so much worse in the medical sphere than similar strategies worked against "conspiracy loons" in the political sphere.
Cost/benefit - most of the anti-vaxers - and pretty much all of their audience - were genuinely concerned with trying to avoid injecting poison into their children, and so were entirely uncowed by any abuse. On the other hand, contrary to the myth of the obsessive paranoid, the conspiraloons are mostly just people interested in discussing (whether well or badly) various historical controversies, so plenty of respectable types would rather shut up, and only the unrespectable continue. And of course concerned middle-class parents are much less likely to be dismissed than various 'fringe' (note smuggled evaluation) types you know nothing about.
But mainly, the anti-consp stuff goes back to Popper and Hofstadter - it's had a long time to do its work.
pj: it is actually really very hard to come up with readable criticisms of the more difficult areas
But the thing about BG is that he is very good at doing so (for the most part at least).
dd: "concentrates too much on the low hanging fruit" [is] my argument about sceptics in general
That's professional, self-styled or strident 'Sceptics', of course. The tendency to shooting fish in a barrel is bad (apart from the incidental gittishness that often goes with it) because it involves drawing of artificial battlelines, erection of crude banners, and an us 'n' them attitude which distorts debate.
Further, when the debate is so framed, i.e. as between actually existing (medical) science v certain kinds of bullshit, the former ceases to be an irrelevant alternative, and ignoring its failings gives a biased impression. The problem with whataboutery is not primarily that it is an accusation of bias, but that it is a false (or anyway unwarranted) one.
Two general points on any harm-based priority principle: 1. I think some have pointed out that all harm including long-term needs to be accounted for, not just immediate effects. So presumably the idea is that belief in homoeopathy encourages, feeds into, etc. a general misunderstanding of or contempt for science. I'm not generally impressed by these kind of arguments, but for those who are, note that the barrelfishshooting tendency can just as well be presented as fostering a lazy and uncritical (or rather non-critical) attitude. And of course giving the Pharma bums a free pass also involves bad habits.
2. (Very general:) there are at least (see? philosophy!) two steps involved here, as in debates about criminalisation. Establishing badness or undesirability is one thing, deciding what should be done about it is another. Interventions rarely achieve their object perfectly, and almost always have side-effects. Three points. 3. (also v general:) prioritisation only becomes a real issue so far as there is a trade-off.
in that it was pretty obvious that 9/11 was done by bin Laden right from the start.
ReplyDeleteWell, it depends what you mean, and specifically it depends on "as opposed to what?" It very obviously was done by somebody outwith the US governmental and security structure, for reasons I don't propose to go into again. But who Bin Laden was, or what role he had, wasn't remotely clear at the time. For all we knew it could have been done by a bunch of guys who knew no more of Bin Laden than we did.
A warning from history, or rather AW: It's odd just how often in political debate, and perhaps more generally, fairly moderate voices are tied to loud, annoying ones in order to score cheap points and silence debate.
ReplyDeleteD^2 above: it's important to attack the strong targets like BG rather than just nutpicking random sceptic blogs or PZ Myers.
That certainly wasn't the intention - I meant to untie Ben Goldacre from the more annoying versions of the sceptic movement and to (seemingly unsuccessfully) explain what I didn't like about his specific version of scepticism. Although I am not sure one's going to get far in characterising BG as a "fairly moderate" voice rather than a "loud, annoying" one - he has a category called "Moron baiting" on his blog, which certainly suggests that he self-identifies with those who wind people up on purpose. I'm not sure who the moderate sceptics are, although this is probably because it's a very peripheral and relatively new interest of mine so I don't recognise many names below the top tier of published authors.
ReplyDelete[CAPTHA: proust - honest!]
ReplyDeletePhil. OK, we agree on most things. I can't agree that Prohibition was well-intentioned or worked out well. I'm with Justin on this. Eg: if alcohol is illegal, it's less likely to be given as a cause of death. As for the "if X is legal, it's likely to be perceived as less harmful than illegal Ys and Zs" argument: it's true. And, of course, bogus. For most people, cannabis is fairly harmless. Peanuts are, allegedly, fatal to some people. It seems to be very much caveat emptor. And there's nothing wrong with that, but I'm much more libertarian than you.
I think my position is roughly this: the law recognises intention when it decides between murder and manslaughter. So it's presumably equipped to decide what a defendant meant. Legalise all drugs, and prosecute only those who dealt[1] with intent to harm.
[1] Drug dealing should fade away v quickly, as Boots could dispense psychotropics etc much more cheaply and effectively that street-corner stoners. When I was a teenager I was primly anti-drugs because a) I was a fan of Philip K Dick's "A Scanner Darkly" and b) because dealers were capitalists. Now I worry what doing away with street-dealing will do for budding entrepreneurs. Maybe it'll make them helpless minions of the state; or maybe they'll go into legitimate and socially beneficial businesses. One hopes the latter, of course.
I didn't see any incompatibility between OC and DD.
ReplyDeleteBoth would avoid picking easy targets as proxies, and instead aim at the strongest, most easily defensible exemplars (which are generally more moderate, since weaker claims make for stronger positions).
'Moderate' and 'loud, annoying' lie on independent scales, really. OC doesn't say: never go for a git, but: oi, don't gitpick. D^2; don't nutpick.
The positions are concordant though different: loudmouthedness is a presentational thing, 'nuttiness' (supposedly) not.
Drug dealing should fade away v quickly
ReplyDeleteYou think? While mephedrone was legal, it was actually cheaper and more reliable to buy it in bulk from a reputable online supplier than buy a couple of doses from a dealer; most people still went to dealers, though. Not only that, but a lot of people who did buy in bulk sold on to their friends, and some of them started making a living out of dealing as a result.
You could argue that legalisation would drive prices down to the point where illegal dealers couldn't make a living out of it and hence wouldn't exist, but I'm not convinced it would. A huge proportion of the cost of alcohol and tobacco consists of tax and duty, levied at punitive rates both as a cash cow and to deter users for public health reasons. It's hard to imagine that cannabis wouldn't be just as heavily taxed. But if it was, the opening for dealers would be there - just as it is for smuggled tobacco; the difference being that in the case of tobacco the illegal business has grown up alongside a legal supply chain with near-universal buy-in.
I am a libertarian, as it goes - my preference would be for the law to have nothing to do with what anyone chooses to put in their body. I can just see some problems getting there from here - a lot more problems than I was aware of before I knew about research on drugs.
What interests me is that the strategy of marginalising the "anti-vaxers" and treating them as fringe loonies who didn't have to be listened to worked so much worse in the medical sphere than similar strategies worked against "conspiracy loons" in the political sphere.
ReplyDeleteTim Wilkinson gets at part of this, but it's also that vaccination relies on (near-)universal usage, whereas modern democracies see voter participation down near 50-60%. So you can (and do) have 10% of the populace believing truly, insanely dangerous conspiracy theories, and it won't make much difference (either they don't vote - my sense is that the craziest conspiracy theorists stay away from the polls - or they get outvoted by the reasonably sane), whereas just a percent or two of parents leaving their children vulnerable to virulent diseases can have a huge impact on herd immunity.
In the States, at least, I don't think any major news outlets* gave the anti-vaxers a serious platform, possibly because it was associated with hippies and home schoolers, corporate America's answers to Untouchables. I'm sure some of the coverage was rather less anti-anti-vaxer than the medical profession would prefer, but as you say, there was some legitimate doubt at the outset of the controversy.
* Salon, with RFK, Jr., is the biggest I can think of, and they surely fall below "major"
BTW, I think that the whole tangent trying to analyse D^2's anti-BG animus was really unfortunate. I know nothing about the guy, and the "skeptic" brand doesn't really exist over here, and so I took the post as an interesting ponder on, essentially, choosing battles. I took the point to be that D^2's heuristic for battle-choosing doesn't quite align with the rule that makes logical sense to him, and neither matches the actually-evident bases for skeptics and others in choosing battles.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, my take is that there are a lot of damn people in the world, and it wouldn't actually work for all 6 billion of us to tackle the World's Greatest Problems all at once, starting with #1. Specialization and all that. So instead you let people try to improve whatever strikes their fancy, on the theory that motivated people will be most effective, and most (or enough) people will be making positive contributions that it works out. Where I think the rule is useful is as a sort of reality check: if you're putting all your efforts to vaporizing a flea while your family is being attacked by a bear, perhaps your priorities are out of whack. But arguing that no one should do anything until the World's Greatest Problems are solved is simply a recipe for irrelevance.
> it was pretty obvious that 9/11 was done by bin Laden right from the start
ReplyDeleteOff topic, but I am still interested in a reasonably objective and orderly description of the credible evidence tying bin Laden to 9/11. Similarly, any credible evidence on what, if anything, is Al-Qaeda.
(Just in case this is not obvious: torture induced confessions or any information attributed to "intelligence community" sources cannot be considered credible evidence.)
Now I worry what doing away with street-dealing will do for budding entrepreneurs
ReplyDeleteThey're with you in Oakland
but I am still interested in a reasonably objective and orderly description of the credible evidence tying bin Laden to 9/11.
ReplyDeletehe keeps boasting about it in his videos, doesn't he?
Would the 9/11 Commission Report fit the bill, Sortition?
ReplyDeleteI was a fan of Philip K Dick's "A Scanner Darkly"
ReplyDeleteSo you can manufacture cocaine from everyday household products for less than a dollar?
If I had time I might say more about whether legalisation would drive the small-scale producer from the market. They have survived a massive drop in price for the cheapest Moroccan hashish, but the more professional pruning and drying available to bigger operators might force many of them to make themselves available for other work.
I don't really buy the idea that there was 'legitimate doubt' early on in the MMR controversy. Sure, no one had actually proven that MMR didn't cause autism by that point but neither had anyone presented anything more than a hypothesis that it might do so. The Wakefield paper was barely more than a case report - and even the paper itself didn't make the rather more extravagent claims that Wakefield made at the press conference.
ReplyDeleteI can remember at the time when it was published, this was before the media maestrom, reading the paper and thinking 'hmm, not much evidence to go on there, file under pretty unlikely hypotheses'.
If that's 'legitimate doubt' then I don't see how it differs much from the 'legitimate' doubt that it was the jews wot done WTC.
You mean the arabs. Or the muslims.
ReplyDeleteNo - I mean the jews. i.e. someone has suggested it was all a Mossad plot, but they haven't produced any real evidence for it, in a similar way to the suggestion that MMR causes autism without any real evidence.
ReplyDeleteSorry, yes, with you now - I misread 'doubt' as meaning 'doubt'. (And 'the jews' as meaning 'the jews'.)
ReplyDeleteIn so far as the original phrase 'legitimate doubt' means that there was a legitimate belief that MMR might cause autism then I'm claiming my use for the jewsdidwtc connection is just fine.
ReplyDelete> he keeps boasting about it in his videos, doesn't he?
ReplyDeleteDoes he? I believe that at least initially he denied any involvement. And if he does now boast, how credible is that? And if it is, is that all the credible evidence there is?
> Would the 9/11 Commission Report fit the bill, Sortition?
Have you had a look at the report? I think the evidence it presents on the matter of the Al-Qaeda/bin Laden connections falls squarely within the "torture induced confessions or any information attributed to 'intelligence community' sources" category. Please refer to the boxed note titled "Detainee Interrogation Reports" on page 146 of the report.
You don't seem to understand the point. It's not that the particular name of the person matters (although of course, if you're my mum that would probably make a difference), as the simple fact that you clearly don't actually think enough of the arguments you're making to sign your name to them.
ReplyDeleteAnd you don't have enough faith in your argument to actually defend it, instead impugning the character of your critic. Oliver Kamm employs the same basic tactic.