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FANTASTIC 4 KNOCKED UP NANCY DREW
February 3rd, 2012 (Permalink)

Blurb Watch: Man on a Ledge

The new movie Man on a Ledge has had some trouble with the critics: its Metacritic Metascore is 40 out of 100, which technically means "Mixed or Average Reviews", but one point less and it would be "Generally Unfavorable Reviews". Similarly, it scores a rotten 32% on Rotten Tomatoes' Tomatometer. So, what's an adwriter to do for a blurb? Contextomy to the rescue! An ad for the movie has the following blurb:

"TAUT AND SUSPENSEFUL."
Elizabeth Weitzman, NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Based on that quote, you might think that Weitzman at least liked the movie, even if few other critics agreed with her. However, the context gives a different impression:

“You gotta love New York,” says a stock character in Asger Leth’s stolidly literal-minded “Man on a Ledge.” But New Yorkers are probably too sharp to fall for this movie’s obvious ploys. While Leth does work hard to inject some local character into his tense thriller, the stars and setup are pure Hollywood. An incongruously gorgeous Elizabeth Banks plays down-and-out Detective Mercer, who’s ordered to midtown’s Roosevelt Hotel on an apparent suicide call. The man on the ledge is Nick Cassidy (stiff Sam Worthington), himself a former NYPD officer. … Screenwriter Pablo Fenjves start [sic] with a promising premise, and the opening scenes are taut and suspenseful. A late-day chase scene picks up the sagging middle, but Leth totally fumbles what should be the movie’s biggest moment. The primary problem is that he seems to want things both ways, seeking gritty, socially relevant New York realism from an unconvincingly glam cast…saddled with hokey dialogue. … Like Cassidy, Leth never quite knows whether to jump or stand firm. Too often, he just winds up wobbling in the wind.

This is a case of the oldest trick in the book of blurbs, namely, quoting praise of a part or aspect as if it applied to the whole.

Sources:

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Funny Signs for the funny sign.

WARNING No Swimming If you can't swim
January 28th, 2012 (Permalink)

A Lapalissade

From an Agence France-Presse report:

Francesco Schettino told a friend he was following the advice of a manager about what route to take…media reported, quoting a call secretly recorded by police the day after the January 13 shipwreck that killed at least 16 people. … The luxury liner [captained by Schettino] capsized off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio with more than 4,000 people on board. Sixteen people are still unaccounted for. … He added that he deserved credit for the fact that "I managed to save everyone, except them (the victims)."

Sources:

Acknowledgment: Thanks to Tereza Šmejkalová for pointing out the quote and for the lovely title.

WHO INCREASED THE DEBT?
January 26th, 2012 (Permalink)

Mixed-Up Logic Check

If you pay attention to the news, you might be excused for thinking that President Obama has increased the national debt much more than his predecessors in office. However, a bar graph put out by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office, and later used by the liberal group MoveOn, purports to show that Obama has increased the debt less than each of the four previous presidents, and the three Republican presidents―Reagan, Bush père, and Bush fils―each increased the debt more than either of the Democrats―Clinton and Obama.

An earlier version of this chart (not shown) contained an error that exaggerated the amount of debt accumulated under Bush the younger and played down the amount under Obama. This error led the fact-checking site PolitiFact to award the chart a rating of "Pants on Fire" on its Truth-o-meter last year (see the Source, below) when the chart was first circulated, but it has since been corrected (shown). So, the percentages given on the chart are now correct, but what do they mean?

One way you might try to get a rough measure of the differing contributions of different presidents to the current debt would be to calculate what percentage of that debt was contributed by each president. However, this chart clearly does not do that, since the percentages add up to more than 100%―in fact, Reagan's percentage alone is nearly 200%.

Instead, the label on the y axis is "percent increase in public debt", that is, the height of the bars indicates how much public debt increased during each president's term as a percentage of the debt at the beginning of that term. For instance, according to the chart, the debt nearly tripled during Reagan's term, that is, the amount of debt added under Reagan was almost double the existing debt. According to PolitiFact, the debt at the beginning of Clinton's term was about $4.2 trillion, and the amount at the end was a little over $5.7 trillion, so that $1.5 billion was added during his term, which is 37% of $4.2 trillion.

So, if the percentages in the chart are now correct, what's the problem? The problem is that during the thirty years covered by the chart, the national debt has steadily increased. The chart itself shows this, since if any president had managed to lower the debt, his percentage would be negative. As a result, the starting debt from which each president's percentage is figured is different, and the chart is thus comparing apples to oranges. As Glenn Kessler, the Fact Checker for The Washington Post pointed out in criticizing the corrected version of the chart:

The chart has some basic conceptual flaws. For instance, as the debt keeps getting higher, the possible percentage increases will keep getting smaller. Under the mixed-up logic of this chart, a person can go from 10 to 20, and that would be a 100 percent increase. If the next person goes from 20 to 30, that’s only a 50 percent increase, even though the numerical increase (10) is the same.

Given the constantly increasing debt, the later a president's term, the smaller the percentage he adds to the debt will tend to be. This is one reason why Reagan's percentage increase is so much bigger than any other president―because the debt was at its smallest at the start of his term―and why Obama's is the smallest―since the debt was higher at the start of his term than at the start of any previous president's. So, the chart is inherently biased against the earlier presidents and in favor of the later ones, that is, the percentages of the earlier presidents will be inflated and those of the later ones diminished.

In this case, comparing absolute numbers is more revealing than comparing percentages. For example, George W. Bush added nearly $4.9 trillion to the debt, whereas Obama has added about $3.7 trillion. So, the debt racked up under Obama is in fact about three-quarters of that added under the second Bush, rather than less than half as the chart seems to show.

This brings us to another way in which the graph is comparing apples and oranges: Reagan, Clinton, and Bush 2, were all two term presidents, serving eight years in office, whereas Bush 1 served one term of four years, and Obama has so far served only a little over three years. So, under Obama it's taken only three years to add 75% of what took eight years under George W. Bush.

Sources:

January 19th, 2012 (Permalink)

Debate Watch

The umpteenth―I've lost count―debate of the candidates for the Republican nomination for President, moderated by journalist Bret Baier, was held in South Carolina a few days ago. The following transcript has been heavily edited to keep it on topic, but also to omit hesitation, repetition, stumbling over words, and one apparent mistranscription (see the Source, below, for the unedited transcript):

Baier: Next round of questions is on foreign policy. And we’ll begin with Congressman [Ron] Paul. In a recent interview, Congressman Paul, with a Des Moines radio station you said you were against the operation that killed Usama bin Laden. You said the U.S. operation that took out the terrorist responsible for killing 3,000 people on American soil, quote, showed no respect for the rule of law, international law. So to be clear, you believe international law should have constrained us from tracking down and killing the man responsible for the most brazen attack on the U.S. since Pearl Harbor?

Paul: Obviously no. I did not say that. As a matter of fact, after 9/11 I voted for the authority to go after him. And my frustration was that we didn’t go after him. It took us ten years. We had him trapped at Tora Bora and I thought we should have trapped him there. I even introduced another resolution on the principle of marque and reprisal to keep our eye on target rather than getting involved in nation building.

Paul starts out with a typical "politician's answer", that is, trying to change the subject, which is what politicians do when they're afraid that a direct answer to a question will lose them votes. In this case, Baier asks for Paul's view of the military operation that killed bin Laden last year, but Paul changes the issue to why bin Laden wasn't captured ten years earlier. At first, Paul answers Baier's question "no", and denies having said what Baier reported, but it's not clear exactly what it is Paul is denying―as we'll see, Baier's characterization of his position appears to have been accurate. Then, Paul changes the subject. Baier, however, spots the attempted switcheroo and presses him on the original, unanswered question:

Baier: But no respect for international law was the question about the quote that you used in Des Moines.

Paul: …I don’t see any reason why they couldn’t have done it like they did after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and that would have been a more proper way. If somebody in this country, say a Chinese dissident come over here, we wouldn’t endorse the idea, well, they can come over here and bomb us and do whatever. I’m just trying to suggest that respect for other nations' sovereignty. …

Baier: Speaker [Newt] Gingrich? If you received, Speaker Gingrich, actionable intelligence about the location of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar inside Pakistan would you authorize a unilateral operation, much like the one that killed bin Laden, with or without the Pakistani government knowing, even if the consequence was an end to all U.S.-Pakistani cooperation?

Newt Gingrich: Well, let me go back to set the stage as you did awhile ago. Bin Laden plotted deliberately, bombing American embassies, bombing the USS Cole, and killing 3,100 Americans, and his only regret was he didn’t kill more. Now, he’s not a Chinese dissident. You know, the analogy that Congressman Paul used was utterly irrational. A Chinese dissident who comes here seeking freedom is not the same as a terrorist who goes to Pakistan seeking asylum. Furthermore, when you give a country $20 billion, and you learn that they have been hiding―I mean, nobody believes that bin Laden was sitting in a compound in a military city one mile from the national defense university and the Pakistanis didn’t know it.

Here, Gingrich points out, correctly, that Paul's argument is based on a weak analogy. However, while Paul eventually got around to directly answering Baier's question when pressed, Gingrich never did answer Baier's specific question of whether he would order such an operation if the consequence was an end to cooperation with Pakistan.

Sources:

Fallacy: Weak Analogy

January 16th, 2012 (Permalink)

Name that Star Fallacy!

Philip Plait from Bad Astronomy on star-naming:

There are companies that offer to sell you the right to name a star after someone―yourself, perhaps, or a loved one or friend. For a fee, and not necessarily a small one, you receive a certificate authenticating some star in the heavens with the name you bestow on it. Some companies even give you the co-ordinates of your star and a stylish map so you can find it. There are many organizations like this, and one thing most have in common is that they strongly imply―and some come right out and say―that this star is now officially named after you. Congratulations!

But does that star really have your name? … The answer, of course, is no. … The bottom line is, despite any claims by these companies, the name you give a star is just that: a name you give it. It isn't official and has no validity within the scientific community.

[The website of one of these companies] claims there are 2,873 stars visible to the naked eye; in reality, there are more like 10,000 (depending on sky conditions). Besides being too small, that figure is awfully precise. How do they know it's not 2,872 stars, or 2,880? Using overly precise numbers sounds to me like another way to make them seem more scientific than they really are.

Fallacy

Source: Philip Plait, Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax" (2002), p. 242

January 8th, 2012 (Permalink)

Reader Review: Critical Inquiry

It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so.―Attributed to Mark Twain

Patricia Heil sends in the following review:

Michael Boylan's Critical Inquiry, first published in 1988 by Prentice Hall, is now in its second edition with Westview. It's short, 191 pages. Short can be good, focused, and organized, with no footnotes but a good bibliography or "further reading" section; another book that I prize very highly is only 192 pages long and has an excellent bibliography. With Critical Inquiry, I had to go through every page to find the ten sources that Boylan quotes in two chapters: three are his own work, and two are the sources of examples of issues involving critical thinking, not background material about logic or fallacies.

Boylan claims his work has been used in classrooms for 20 years, which means starting with the first edition. I probably would buy this book only if required to for a class. One reason is the limited sources. I've seen websites with more complete information and a larger set of references.

In chapter 4, Boylan tries to demonstrate the difference between topical and logical outlining for the same sample paragraph. While his examples definitely display different viewpoints about the sample paragraph, they are too extreme; the topical (bad) copies all the emotionally laden negative words and the logical (good) uses more neutral terms. He doesn't explain why a topical outline couldn't use neutral terms. External references would be a great help here, if other authors have discussed this, because they might explain the concept so that I can understand it.

One issue the book doesn't address is evaluating information sources for reliability or adequate detail. I know I had to study that when I was getting my second bachelor's degree. Maybe all colleges nowadays teach source evaluation as a separate course, or the courses using Boylan's book have another book for that.

A chapter on that would have been a good companion to his chapters on worldview and "finding out what you think." The point of argument is to get agreement from somebody. The person wanting agreement has to start with what he currently thinks, but he also has to find out if the facts fit his ideas. What facts he has depends initially on the worldview to which he was exposed in family and social circles, but that should not determine which facts to use in an argument because what "everybody knows" sometimes ain't so (apologies to Mark Twain). It's hard to realize that without knowing whether a fact is useful or something to convince an audience to discredit or ignore.

I can understand a professor publishing his lecture notes, but if he wants to sell them to average readers or non-experts in his field, he needs to show that he has taken advantage of the best the field has to offer, unless he's a household name. And if he presents his own innovation, he needs to convince people by clear and detailed explanations that he's done something useful in the field in general. That's not what I get here.

By the way, I don't think that's Mark Twain Patricia is alluding to. According to Ralph Keyes, the saying traces back to another nineteenth-century American humorist, Josh Billings, who is now almost forgotten, though the way it's usually phrased has been considerably "improved" over time. Apparently, the saying used to be attributed to Will Rogers, a twentieth-century humorist known for such humor, but now less well-remembered than he used to be. Nowadays, the saying seems to have attached itself to Twain, who is a magnet for folksy ("ain't") humor. As a consequence, the saying illustrates its own thesis!

Source: Ralph Keyes, "Nice Guys Finish Seventh": False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations (1993), p. 74

January 5th, 2012 (Permalink)

Fact Checkers are Sacred

Comment is free, but facts are sacred.―C. P. Scott

James Taranto is back with another criticism of fact-checking. A few years ago, he took a shot at the fact checkers, and I thought it a clear miss (see the Resource, below). This time he hits the mark (see the Source, below). Check it out, it's worth reading.

I agree with most of Taranto's analysis, but there's one major missing piece: he doesn't criticize the whole idea of a "Lie of the Year". I agree with Taranto that the supposed "lie" this year is not really a lie though, in political usage, all that the word "lie" has come to mean is "falsehood". However, even choosing a "Falsehood of the Year" is a bad idea. What's to be said for it, other than it's a good way for PolitiFact to get publicity?

First of all, choosing a "Blank of the Year" is a dubious journalistic practice, since the best that can be said for it is that it makes it easy for reporters to come up with stories at the end of the year: just fill in the blank. Another reason it's a bad idea is that all falsehoods are created equal, and none is more false than another. So, assuming that the claimed "lie" really is false, what makes it special enough to be crowned "Lie of the Year"? The only thing that occurs to me is that the "lie" is thought by someone to be somehow the most significant or important lie of the year.

What's significant or important is a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact. Thus, by choosing a "Lie of the Year", the fact checker has necessarily stepped out of the role of checking facts into the role of commenting upon them. In this way, the "fact checkers" cease to be checkers of fact and become pundits. Not that there's anything wrong with being a pundit, but in the age of Instapundit everybody and his brother is a pundit. Fact-checking is a rare and special thing, or at least it is when it's done right.

Sources:

Resource: Mau-Mauing the Fact Checkers, 10/27/2008

Update (1/7/2012): The Columbia Journalism Review also has an article on fact-checking in its "Campaign Desk" column that's worth reading. Its author, Greg Marx, makes much the same argument that I was trying to make above, but in a longer-winded way. As a result, if you found my treatment too brusque, you might understand his better. He writes:

…[T]he sights of the broader fact-checking movement often seem to be set on something different than strict truth and falsehood. And by acknowledging that, the fact-checkers might grapple with some important questions about the project in which they’re engaged―and might see more clearly the box in which they’ve trapped themselves. …[W]hile the language of fact-checking is powerful, it’s also limited―and the fact-checkers’ tendency to stretch that language beyond its limitations undermines the credibility of their project. One of the problems is that the occasions on which that language is appropriate are less frequent than you might think. …[M]any “fact-checking” pieces actually contain counterarguments―many of which are solid, some shoddy or tendentious, but few of which really fit in a “fact-check” frame.

In other words, the fact checkers aren't always checking facts, and they shouldn't call it "fact checking" when it's not for fear of bringing the whole enterprise into disrepute.

So why have the fact-checkers ventured into uncheckable territory? Kennedy explains it as a simple matter of supply and demand—to keep content flowing to their sites, the operations need to expand their reach beyond clear untruths. There’s probably some truth to that.

Probably so, but there are already plenty of pundits, and once you realize that the "fact checkers" are just pundits who don't want to admit it, they lose their credibility.

I expect that another reason is that fact-checking is dull, hard research work; in comparison, punditry is easy, exciting and glamorous. At magazines or publishers who employ fact checkers, it's usually a low-paying, entry-level position, with no prestige at all. So, who would actually want to be a fact-checker?

…[H]ere’s where the fact-checkers find themselves in a box. They’ve reached for the clear language of truth and falsehood as a moral weapon, a way to invoke ideas of journalists as almost scientific fact-finders. And for some of the statements they scrutinize, those bright-line categories work fine. …[But others] will inevitably involve judgments not only about truth, but about what attacks are fair, what arguments are reasonable, what language is appropriate. And one of the maddening things about the fact-checkers is their unwillingness to acknowledge that many of these decisions…are contestable and, at times, irresolvable. … The argument…is ultimately political, not journalistic, in nature. By insisting otherwise, and acting as if journalistic methods can resolve the argument, the fact-checkers weaken the morally freighted language that’s designed to give their work power….

Because the distinction between fact and opinion is vague, there will always be a danger of the fact-checker sliding over into trying to adjudicate matters of opinion. However, if the fact checkers are to retain any credibility, they need to plant their feet firmly in the factual area and avoid that slide.

Source: Greg Marx, "What the Fact-Checkers Get Wrong", Columbia Journalism Review, 1/5/2012

January 3rd, 2012 (Permalink)

Q&A

Q: I am having difficulty in categorizing one logical fallacy that has come up this fall, and would appreciate your thoughts. When Warren Buffett indicated that he thinks that the rich should bear a heavier portion of the tax burden, many commentators then issued a rebuttal along the lines of, "Well, Mr. Buffett can go ahead and just write a larger check to the IRS," without ever discussing the merits of Mr. Buffett's arguments.

Lately, I've been studying up on 'tu quoque', but I don't think it applies here. "Tu quoque" relies on the protagonist (Buffett) in having a (damaging) relationship or involvement with something related to the protagonist's charge, a slight alteration to "unclean hands doctrine". Here, the potential association with the point of discussion is not necessarily a damaging association. To be sure, if Mr. Buffett did write a check it is not in any way damaging to his argument.

How would you classify the dismissal of Mr. Buffett's argument? Maybe it really isn't a logical fallacy, but a dismissive way to move past the topic, treating the argument as if it is not even worth discussing.―Don Shennum

A: This is a complicated question and depends upon the context. If someone simply criticizes Buffett as a hypocrite for not living up to his stated principle, that's no fallacy. Since it's not a logical question, I'll leave it to others to decide how strong such a criticism is.

However, if the context of the attack on Buffett is a criticism of "the Buffett tax", then that is a type of ad hominem argument. I agree with you that it's not a tu quoque―though that is also a type of ad hominem―for the reasons that you give. It's an attack on a prominent advocate of the tax rather than on the tax itself, which makes it ad hominem, but not all ad hominem attacks are fallacious.

However, in this case, Buffett's possible hypocrisy seems irrelevant to the tax issue, as he may well be a hypocrite and the tax still a good idea. If anything, Buffett's hypocrisy may be some evidence in favor of a tax, since it suggests that rich people probably won't contribute money voluntarily. Thus, if we decided that it's necessary to raise more money for the government from the rich, a tax might be the only way to do it.

Therefore, I think the fallacy that you're looking for is argumentum ad hominem.

January 1st, 2012 (Permalink)

Poll Watch

Here are some recent headlines:

Romney Leads in Iowa Poll as Santorum Gains Before State Caucus

Iowa Poll: Romney leads Paul; Santorum surges

Reporters like to cover polls as if they were horse races because races are more dramatic than dull numbers. According to the current coverage, Romney is in the lead as the field rounds the final turn heading towards the Iowa caucus, Paul is running a close second, and Santorum is pulling up on the outside. If a political campaign is like a horse race, then it's a horse race on a foggy morning when you can only catch occasional glimpses of the horses through the fog, and often can't tell which is ahead.

The results of the poll have Romney at 24%, Paul with 22%, Santorum at 15%, and the rest straggling behind. However, the sample for this state poll was smaller than is usual for national polls, so that the margin of error is a larger-than-usual four percentage points. As a result, Romney and Paul are really too close to call.

The claim that Santorum is gaining is based on the last two days of the poll which had Romney still at 24%, but Santorum taking second place at 21%, and Paul falling to 18%. However, since this is based on only half of the poll's total sample, the margin of error is an even higher 5.6 percentage points. So, it's possible that Santorum's swapping of places with Paul is just the result of chance rather than a supposed "surge". In any case, we'll soon find out, as the caucus is Tuesday.

Sources:

Resource: How to Read a Poll

Update (1/2/2012): Slate has a cute little animation showing the Iowa polls as a horse race. Unfortunately, there's no fog.

Source: Will Oremus, "The Iowa Horse Race", Slate, 1/2/2012

Update (1/4/2012): It appears that the Santorum surge was real, as Romney won the caucus by only eight votes, and both had 24.6% of the votes cast, while Paul came in third with 21%. Except for Santorum, this is very close to the poll results discussed above.

Source: Jeff Zeleny, "Romney Wins Iowa Caucus by 8 Votes", The New York Times, 1/3/2012

December 31th, 2011 (Permalink)

Pop Quiz 2

If you choose a single answer to this question at random from among the five possible answers below, what is the probability that you will select the correct answer?

  1. 20%
  2. 40%
  3. 100%
  4. 20%
  5. 0%

Answer

Resource: Pop Quiz, 11/3/2011

December 28th, 2011 (Permalink)

Yet Another Side to the Story

In an article in The Guardian newspaper, Neil Clark criticizes the late Václav Havel and those who praise him:

He was the symbol of 1989, the anti-communist playwright who helped free his country―and the rest of eastern Europe―from Stalinist tyranny and who put the countries that lay behind the iron curtain on the road to democracy. So goes the dominant narrative of the life of Václav Havel, the former Czech president, who died on Sunday aged 75. Havel, we are told, was a hero and one of the greatest Europeans of our age. But…there is another side to the story. No one questions that Havel, who went to prison twice, was a brave man who had the courage to stand up for his views. Yet the question which needs to be asked is whether his political campaigning made his country, and the world, a better place. …Havel, the son of a wealthy entrepreneur whose companies were nationalised when the communists came to power, showed little concern for the plight of ordinary people who lost out in the change towards a market economy. And there were losers aplenty. While the years following the liberation of eastern Europe from communism by Havel and his fellow dissidents are routinely portrayed in the west as one big success story, the reality is rather different. A 2009 Lancet study concluded that as many as 1 million working-age men died due to the health problems brought on by mass privatisation.

One of the most insidious fallacies―called "slanting", "onesidedness", or "card stacking" in the context of propaganda―is to ignore inconvenient facts that undermine one's case. The reason it's so insidious is that it can be difficult, if not impossible, to discover what has been left out, and it may not even be clear that something was omitted. Most people won't bother to try to check factual claims in the media, let alone look up studies to see whether anything important has gone unmentioned. Case in point:

One piece of evidence Clark offers that Havel was over-rated is that "a 2009 Lancet study concluded that as many as 1 million working-age men died due to the health problems brought on by mass privatisation." One might get the impression from what Clark wrote that a million men died in the Czech Republic due to privatisation, but according to a contemporary BBC account of the study:

The researchers examined death rates among men of working age in the post-communist countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1989 and 2002. They conclude that as many as one million working-age men died due to the economic shock of mass privatisation policies.

So, the one million figure applies to all of the formerly communist countries of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union―an enormous country―over a period of three years. But wait, there's more:

Countries that adopted a slower pace of change, gradually phasing in free-market conditions and developing appropriate institutions, fared much better. The best were Albania, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia, which experienced only a 2% increase in unemployment―and a 10% fall in male mortality. [Emphasis added.]

That is, the Czech Republic actually had a drop in the male mortality rate after privatisation. The BBC report is misleading in that it groups the Czech Republic with countries that had slower rates of privatisation, whereas it in fact was grouped by the study with those countries that had faster rates―the so-called "mass privatisers"―as can be seen in a sidebar to the article. From the study itself:

Outside the former Soviet Union, only one of nine countries―the Czech Republic―had implemented a mass privatisation programme by 1994; overall, the privatisation process was more gradual than in the former Soviet Union, and handled on a firm-by-firm basis. When we restricted the sample to countries outside the former Soviet Union, we noted that greater progress in privatisation was associated with a neutral or favourable effect on mortality rates from 1991 to 2002, unlike in countries of the former Soviet Union.

So, privatisation was indeed―at least so far as we can learn from the study―a success story in the Czech Republic, and the Czech people were not "losers". Did Havel's political campaigning make his country a better place? According to this study, it did. Keep that side of the story in mind when remembering Václav Havel.

Sources:

Fallacy: Onesidedness

December 26th, 2011 (Permalink)

New Book: An A to Z of Critical Thinking

An A to Z of Critical Thinking, edited by Beth Black, is a new dictionary of terms used in critical thinking. I haven't read the whole book yet, but I was able to read some of the entries listed under the letter A using Amazon's preview function. The sample entries were very clearly written and quite accurate, though I could perhaps quibble about a few things. So, assuming this sample, though not random, to be representative of the quality of entries in the book, it should be excellent. Judging from the incomplete "List of Entries" in the back of the book, most of the standard fallacies have entries.

The only previous dictionary of critical thinking, as far as I'm aware, is Nigel Warburton's excellent Thinking from A to Z. Checking Warburton's book against the List of Entries shows a great deal of overlap, and even where they differ both books seem to cover the same conceptual territory. The most obvious omissions are terms from psychology, such as "confirmation bias" and "availability", but I suppose this reflects a general ignorance of psychology in the field of critical thinking rather than a deficiency of either dictionary.

December 21st, 2011 (Permalink)

Lose Your Illusions

Freeman Dyson has an interesting, anecdote-filled, review of Daniel Kahneman's new book Thinking, Fast and Slow. This part caught my attention:

At the end of his book, Kahneman asks the question: What practical benefit can we derive from an understanding of our irrational mental processes? We know that our judgments are heavily biased by inherited illusions, which helped us to survive in a snake-infested jungle but have nothing to do with logic. We also know that, even when we become aware of the bias and the illusions, the illusions do not disappear. What use is it to know that we are deluded, if the knowledge does not dispel the delusions? Kahneman answers this question by saying that he hopes to change our behavior by changing our vocabulary. If the names that he invented for various common biases and illusions, “illusion of validity,” “availability bias,” “endowment effect,” …become part of our everyday vocabulary, then he hopes to see the illusions lose their power to deceive us. If we use these names every day to criticize our friends’ mistaken judgments and to confess our own, then perhaps we will learn to overcome our illusions. Perhaps our children and grandchildren will grow up using the new vocabulary and will automatically correct their congenital biases when making judgments. If this miracle happens, then future generations will owe a big debt to Kahneman for giving them a clearer vision.

This is what I also hope for from a study of logical fallacies, but it would be nice to see some experimental evidence from psychologists that such an effect really occurs.

I find Dyson's defense of Freud at the end of the review puzzling, since he says such things as "Freud is literary while Kahneman is scientific" and refers to "the poetic fantasies of Freud". If Freud were alive today, I think he would be very surprised to be called "literary", and most of his early defenders at least thought that his work was scientific. The notion that Freud's work is "literary" is a fall-back position―that is, one adopted by those such as Dyson who still find some value in it―since it's now so widely understood to be pseudoscientific.

Dyson goes on to say that the highly emotional and sexual parts of the human mind that Freud dealt with can't be studied experimentally, which I'm not so sure about, though there's no doubt that it would be more difficult, and perhaps raise ethical problems. Nonetheless, as far as I'm concerned, if something can't be studied scientifically, that's no excuse to study it pseudoscientifically or to go off on flights of poetic fantasy. However, there's nothing wrong with poetic fantasies so long as we keep in mind that that's what they are, and not expect them to be science or medicine. The trouble with Freud is that many people wasted a lot of time and money trying to treat their mental problems through psychoanalysis.

I have no idea what Dyson means when he writes: "Freud can penetrate deeper than Kahneman because literature digs deeper than science into human nature and human destiny." In what sense is it "deeper"? Kahneman is truer than Freud, and I'll settle for a shallow truth over a deep falsehood any day.

Source: Freeman Dyson, "How to Dispel Your Illusions", The New York Review of Books, 12/22/2011

Resource: New Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow, 10/27/2011

December 16th, 2011 (Permalink)

Obituary: Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens, author of Why Orwell Matters among many other books and essays, has died at the much too young age of 62.

Source: Juli Weiner, "In Memoriam: Christopher Hitchens, 1949–2011", Vanity Fair, 12/15/2011

Resources:

December 15th, 2011 (Permalink)

Check it Out

Discover Magazine has an article worth reading on systematic mistakes people make about risk:

…[W]e focus on the one-in-a-million bogeyman while virtually ignoring the true risks that inhabit our world. News coverage of a shark attack can clear beaches all over the country, even though sharks kill a grand total of about one American annually, on average. That is less than the death count from cattle, which gore or stomp 20 Americans per year. Drowning, on the other hand, takes 3,400 lives a year, without a single frenzied call for mandatory life vests to stop the carnage. A whole industry has boomed around conquering the fear of flying, but while we down beta-blockers in coach, praying not to be one of the 48 average annual airline casualties, we typically give little thought to driving to the grocery store, even though there are more than 30,000 automobile fatalities each year. In short, our risk perception is often at direct odds with reality.

Much misevaluation of risk is due to the anecdotal fallacy:

In the summer of 2001, if you switched on the television or picked up a news magazine, you might think the ocean’s top predators had banded together to take on humanity. After 8-year-old Jessie Arbogast’s arm was severed by a seven-foot bull shark on Fourth of July weekend while the child was playing in the surf of Santa Rosa Island, near Pensacola, Florida, cable news put all its muscle behind the story. Ten days later, a surfer was bitten just six miles from the beach where Jessie had been mauled. Then a lifeguard in New York claimed he had been attacked. There was almost round-the-clock coverage of the “Summer of the Shark,” as it came to be known. By August, according to an analysis by historian April Eisman of Iowa State University, it was the third-most-covered story of the summer…. All that media created a sort of feedback loop. Because people were seeing so many sharks on television and reading about them, the “availability” heuristic was screaming at them that sharks were an imminent threat.

Another source of mistakes about risk that the article mentions―which I've never heard of before but seems quite plausible―is that people tend to overestimate manmade risks while underestimating natural dangers. This, of course, is a variation on the fallacy of appeal to nature, that is, that the natural is good or safe while the artificial is bad or risky.

Source: Jason Daley, "What You Don't Know Can Kill You", Discover Magazine, 10/3/2011

December 11th, 2011 (Permalink)

Headline

Report: Hunting is safer than golf

Something smells not quite right here. I have heard of golfers getting hit by lightning, but how many get shot? The report in question turns out to be one put out, not surprisingly, by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which calls itself "the trade association for the firearms industry". As far as I can tell, the only "report" put out by the NSSF, which says that "its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports", is a press release (see the Sources, below). The headline above is from an unsigned article in the Idaho Statesman that is just a rewrite of the release.

I point out the source of the "report" not simply to dismiss it as an example of advocacy research, since such research can be true. Rather, I point out the source because it should set off an alarm bell, and we need to be especially wary when confronted with supposed research that comes from an obviously biased source. Another basis for skepticism is the fact that the report's claims are so implausible: not only is hunting "safer" than golf, but it's safer than fishing! According to the report, hunting is even "safer" than cheerleading!

In this case, skepticism is justified. Hunting is "safer" than these other activities because there are fewer "injuries" in hunting, that is, the way the research was done was simply to count up the number of "injuries" reported in a sport, and declare a sport "safer" if it had fewer injuries. So, no attempt was made to take into account the severity of injuries; for instance, if every kid who plays video games gets repetitive strain injuries in the thumbs, then playing video games is less safe than hunting by this metric. So, parents, get your kids off the couch, take that joystick away, put a gun in their hands, and send them out into the woods!

Sources:

December 9th, 2011 (Permalink)

Blurb Watch: I Melt with You

I feel sorry for the poor people who have to try to market the oddly-titled new movie I Melt with You. Apparently, there were mass walkouts from its Sundance film festival showing. Its Tomatometer rating is an anemic 13%, and its Metacritic score a "generally unfavorable" 22 out of 100. As a result, the blurbs for the movie ad are mostly drawn from industry publications rather than reviews intended for a general readership.

Blurb Context
"A TESTOSTERONE BLOWOUT."
-David D'Arcy, Screen International		 Despite its cast, I Melt With You, with all its explosive tactility, doesn’t offer much that you won’t get from watching anything by Danny Boyle, who seems one of its stylistic roadmaps. Since its stars are marketable, the testosterone blowout could get a shot at the US and international audience.
"VIRTUOSO VISUALS, PULSATING MUSIC AND MUSCULAR ACTING. Pellington and his gutsy cast have thrown caution to the wind and gone all the way. Deliriously shot and cut so as to produce a virtual contact high, the men's first night bacchanal alone is enough to make one consider a stint in rehab.
-Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter		 This Magnolia Sundance pickup poses significant marketing challenges, beginning with the odd title and also including the assaultive artistic approach and despairingly negative nature of the drama. But there's no denying that Pellington and his gutsy cast have thrown caution to the wind and gone all the way with bold material, and it's this fierce, edgy attitude that could strike a chord with a segment of the public, including viewers half the age of those onscreen. … Backed by hugely amped up tunes by the Sex Pistols, the Clash and innumerable other bands, many of them punk, and deliriously shot and cut so as to produce a virtual contact high, the men's first night bacchanal alone is enough to make one consider a stint in rehab. … But Pellington and Porter have nothing if not the courage of their convictions, boldly rolling over one's dramaturgical reservations on their way to making a genuinely devastating critique of contemporary male inadequacies and inability to deliver the goods. … The issues being addressed could not be plainer and detractors can convincingly hold up I Melt with You as a case of major artistic overkill. But it is equally arguable that the combined power of the virtuoso visuals, pulsating music and muscular acting is what drives the central concerns home to the extent that they register with such force and cannot just be brushed aside.
"FOR ANYONE WHO WORSHIPPED AT THE ALTAR OF THE SEX PISTOLS IN THEIR YOUTH, only to wake up one day an adult trapped in an unsatisfying suburban nightmare."
Jen Yamato, MOVIELINE		 The film’s overriding punk romanticism is, unsurprisingly, not for everyone. It’s for anyone who worshiped at the altar of the Sex Pistols in their youth only to wake up one day an adult trapped in an unsatisfying suburban nightmare, an extreme realization of an all or nothing fantasy that one can atone―if at great cost―for falling off the path they’d set for themselves.

Sources:

November 26th, 2011 (Permalink)

Ron Paul on Drugs

There was yet another debate of the candidates for the Republican nomination for president, this time moderated by CNN's Wolf Blitzer. After Congressman Ron Paul volunteered that the so-called "war on drugs" ought to be cancelled, Blitzer asked:

Blitzer: …When you say cancel the war on drugs, does that mean legalize all these drugs?

Paul: I think the federal war on drugs is a total failure. … Why don't we handle the drugs like we handle alcohol? Alcohol is a deadly drug. The real deadly drugs are the prescription drugs. They kill a lot more people than the illegal drugs.…

Since this is a logic check as opposed to a fact check, let's just assume that Paul is correct that prescription drugs kill more people than illegal ones―it's certainly plausible. Does this fact support his claim that they are deadlier than illegal drugs and, therefore, the currently illegal ones should be made as legal as alcohol?

I've mentioned before (see the Resource, below) the old riddle: why do white sheep eat more than black ones? Answer: Because there are more of them. Presumably, prescription drugs are taken by far more people than take illegal ones, so even if prescription drugs are far safer than those that are illegal, it's possible that more people die from prescription drugs than illegal ones.

In fact, legal non-prescription drugs are probably taken by more people than prescription ones, so it's even possible that more people die from taking over-the-counter medicines than from prescription ones, or from illegal drugs. Yet, OTC drugs are available without a prescription partly because they are considered safe enough for people to use without a doctor's supervision. However, this doesn't mean that such drugs are completely safe, or that no one ever dies as a result of using them.

Similarly, alcohol is a much more widely used drug than heroin, and no doubt many more people die as a result of drinking alcohol than from using heroin. However, this doesn't mean that alcohol is a deadlier drug than heroin. What is needed is a comparison that takes into consideration the fact that there are more white sheep than black ones: what percentage of people who drink alcohol die from it as compared to the percentage of heroin-users who die from heroin?

So, Paul's claim does not support his intermediate conclusion that prescription drugs are more deadly than illegal ones, let alone his final conclusion.

Source: "Full Transcript of CNN National Security Debate, 20:00-22:00", CNN, 11/22/2011

Resource: The Riddle of the Sheep, 10/13/2011

November 24th, 2011 (Permalink)

Thanks!

Thank you to everyone who has supported The Fallacy Files in the past year, whether through a direct PayPal donation, or by purchasing something from Amazon through a link from this site, or by clicking on an ad. You help this site keep busting fallacies!

November 23rd, 2011 (Permalink)

Contextomy Watch

Mitt Romney's campaign for president has put out a video ad that quotes President Obama out of context in a misleading way:

Quote Context
If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose. Even as we face the most serious economic crisis of our time; even as you are worried about keeping your jobs or paying your bills or staying in your homes, my opponent's campaign announced earlier this month that they want to "turn the page" on the discussion about our economy so they can spend the final weeks of this election attacking me instead. Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

This is an interesting example, since Obama was himself apparently quoting some unnamed person in McCain's campaign, but dropping the context―including, the all-important quotation marks―makes it seem as if Obama is saying it himself.

Sources:

November 6th, 2011 (Permalink)

Innumeracy at Slate

A couple of weeks ago, Slate ran the following correction:

In the Oct. 17 "DoubleX," Lauren Sandler incorrectly stated that 42 percent of women live in poverty. In fact, this statistic refers only to women who head families, and the correct percentage is 40.7, not 42 percent. …

Logically, the mistake involved is that of dropping a qualification or, as it is known in Latin, "secundum quid"―the full Latin phrase is "a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter", which means "from something said with a qualification to something said without qualification", which makes up for in explicitness what it lacks in brevity. In this case, the qualification dropped was the phrase "who head families" which qualified "women".

However, the really striking thing about this mistake is how far off it is. Who would believe that 42% of American women live in poverty? The real figure is closer to 14%, according to the source that Slate links to in its corrected version of the article, so the claim was treble the reality. Moreover, the "DoubleX" column where this mistake occurred is one that is devoted to news and issues relating to women. It's surprising enough that anyone could believe the original 42% figure, let alone a journalist who specializes in issues relating to women.

So, how did this mistake come about? Is it possible that the qualifying phrase "who head families" was accidently dropped at some point in the editing process? Here's the original, uncorrected section of the article:

Women who are already mothers have more abortions than anyone else, and by an increasingly wide margin. When Guttmacher Institute researchers last ran the numbers in 2008 they found that 61 percent of women who terminate a pregnancy in this country already have at least one child. That was before the recession, though―before the poverty rate rose to swallow 42 percent of women, almost half of them mothers, many of whom know they can’t afford another child.

The wording doesn't support the hypothesis that the qualification was dropped due to an editorial slip-up, since restoring the qualification would produce the following sentence: "That was before the recession, though―before the poverty rate rose to swallow 42 percent of women who head families, almost half of them mothers, many of whom know they can’t afford another child." Who would believe that less than half of women who head families are mothers? This would be just as puzzling an error as believing that 42% of all American women live in poverty.

In any case, this example serves as a warning against swallowing whole the statistics found in popular journalism. Even egregiously erroneous numbers can slip by the layers of journalists, editors, and fact checkers. Perhaps their eyes glaze over and their brains seize up when they see a number.

Sources:

  • Thomas Mautner, A Dictionary of Philosophy (1995), "Secundum Quid".
  • Lauren Sandler, "The Mother Majority", European Pro-Choice Network, 10/17/2011. This appears to be the uncorrected version of the article.
  • Lauren Sandler, "The Mother Majority", Slate, 10/17/2011. The current, corrected version of the article. Unfortunately, Slate does not seem to preserve the original version of a corrected article.
  • Slate Staff, "Corrections", Slate, 10/21/2011.
November 3rd, 2011 (Permalink)

Pop Quiz

If you choose a single answer to this question at random from among the four possible answers below, what is the probability that you will select the correct answer?

  1. 25%
  2. 50%
  3. 100%
  4. 25%

Answer

October 30th, 2011 (Permalink)

Halloween Headline

Traffic Dead Rise Slowly

Yeah, they're dead! They're all messed up.

Source: Richard Lederer, Anguished English (1989), p. 87


October 27th, 2011 (Permalink)

New Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has a new book out, and Slate has sort of a review of it by Daniel Engber. This is likely to be an important book, if Engber is right in describing it as "a compendium of [Kahneman's] thought and work". For the past four decades, Kahneman has been in the forefront of psychological research into how people make mistakes in reasoning. Unfortunately, logicians have been slow to pay attention to developments in the psychology of reasoning, and those who work under the rubric of "critical thinking" seem not to have been much quicker, as far as I can tell.

According to Engber:

…Kahneman designates no fewer than three biases (confirmation, hindsight, outcome), 12 effects (halo, framing, Florida, Lady Macbeth, etc.), four fallacies (sunk-cost, narrative, planning, conjunction), six illusions (focusing, control, Moses, validity, skill, truth), two neglects (denominator, duration) and three heuristics (mood, affect, availability).

Most of these are new to me, at least under these names, and as far as I can tell there is no overlap with traditional logical fallacies. Of course, confirmation and hindsight bias are familiar friends that I've discussed here often, but I've never heard of outcome bias. Three of the four effects that Engber lists are unfamiliar to me under those names. However, I've apparently heard of the halo effect before, because Engber claims that it's mentioned in a book that I've read, but I don't remember it!

Of the fallacies, the conjunction fallacy has a Fallacy Files entry of its own, and the sunk-cost fallacy is often discussed in economics, but I've never heard of the other two. The six illusions are new to me, except that Engber mentions the last one in the review, where he claims that repetition, legibility, and simple language add up to the "illusion of truth": "…a feeling of 'cognitive ease' that lulls our vigilant, more rational selves into a stupor." The two neglects are new, as well as two of the three heuristics―availability I've discussed here before.

I wonder how well Kahneman defines and distinguishes between these six categories, for instance, what's the difference between a bias and a fallacy? Between a bias and a heuristic? Between a fallacy and an illusion? Does Kahneman define a "fallacy" as a logical mistake, or in some psychological sense? For instance, the sunk cost fallacy has always seemed to me to be a specifically economic mistake and, therefore, not a logical fallacy.

Engber seems concerned in his review with what is to be done about such mistakes, because Kahneman is pessimistic about what people can do on their own to improve:

Again and again [Kahneman] reminds us that having the means to describe your own bias won't do much to help you overcome it. If we want to enforce rational behavior in society, he argues, then we all need to cooperate. Since it's easier to recognize someone else's errors than our own, we should all be harassing our friends about their poor judgments and making fun of their mistakes. Kahneman thinks we'd be better off in a society of inveterate nags who spout off at the water-cooler like overzealous subscribers to Psychology Today. … This imaginary world of psycho-gossip and thought correction sounds like a very annoying place. And while Kahneman's book offers some clear and engaging examples of how our minds work―or don't work―it's never clear whether the propagation of his catchphrases would really improve our lives. Even if organizations and governments can benefit from a rich language of cognitive bias, what would it mean for individuals? Do new ways of talking lead us to make better judgments from one day to the next?

I've often wondered about these things, as well, or at least the related issue of whether studying logic actually improves one's reasoning. However, identifying a disease and curing it are different problems, but the former is a necessary condition for the latter. Does studying fallacies improve reasoning? I'm not absolutely sure that it does, but I am sure that the question is an empirical one, and that we won't know the answer until psychologists like Kahneman put the question to the test. If our current teaching methods are ineffective, recognizing that fact is a necessary step in coming up with more effective ones. Also, Kahneman's work may help here, since the use of repetition, legibility, and simple language would give in this case not an illusion of truth, but the reality.

I'm skeptical that nagging people about their mistakes is a good idea, let alone an effective way of improving their performance. Accusing someone of committing a logical mistake by naming the fallacy strikes me as counter-productive. Instead, I think it's better to explain what's wrong with an argument. If you can't do this, you don't understand the fallacy well enough to be levelling the charge.

Engber also raises another question that concerns me:

Is there a point at which we'll have reached a state of overdiagnosis, where these self-help catchphrases have become so plentiful and diverse that we can no longer remember what they mean? … Eventually we'll be so inundated with "effects" that the word effect will lose its effect. Maybe that's already happened.

As I mentioned, "the halo effect" is a case in point, since I can't remember what it refers to despite having read a book that discusses it. I have no doubt that there are already too many named logical fallacies to expect the average person to learn and remember, but how many is the right number I don't know. Again, this is pedagogical question for psychologists to answer.

No doubt there are too many species of butterflies for most people to learn and remember; there may even be too many for any single specialist to know. However, the question for the lepidopterist is not how many can he or she can remember, but how many there are. I'll leave the appropriate analogy as an exercise for the reader.

Source: Daniel Engber, "The Effect Effect", Slate, 10/26/2011

October 22nd, 2011 (Permalink)

Logic Check

There was another debate between the Republican candidates for President a couple of days ago, this one in Las Vegas and moderated by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. They seem to have one of these every week. Here's the very first question of the debate, which came from an audience member, and part of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's answer:

Question: This is for all candidates. What's your position on replacing the federal income tax with a federal sales tax?

Cooper: I'll direct that to Congresswoman Bachmann. You've been very critical of Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan, which calls for a 9 percent sales tax, a 9 percent income tax, and 9 percent corporate tax. In fact, you've said it would destroy the economy. Why?

Bachmann: Well, I am a former federal tax litigation attorney. And also, my husband and I are job-creators. One thing I know about Congress, being a member of Congress for five years, is that any time you give the Congress a brand-new tax, it doesn't go away. When we got the income tax in 1913, the top rate was 7 percent. By 1980, the top rate was 70 percent. If we give Congress a 9 percent sales tax, how long will it take a liberal president and a liberal Congress to run that up to maybe 90 percent? Who knows?

As a reason to oppose Cain's proposal, Bachmann invokes a slippery slope from a 9% national sales tax to a 90% one. But just how slippery is that slope? To support the slipperiness of the slope, Bachmann gives the example of the income tax going from 7% to 70%. Let's examine that example more closely.

Let's assume that Bachmann's numbers are correct―after all, this is a logic check, not a fact check. Why did she choose to compare the top income tax rate when the tax was adopted to that in 1980, that is, 31 years ago? Why didn't she compare the original top rate to the current one? I don't know, but the current highest marginal rate is 35%, according to Wolfram Alpha. This undercuts Bachmann's argument since, in the past three decades, the top rate has slid backwards to half of what it was.

So, what's to stop Cain's 9% national sales tax from ballooning to a 90% one? Presumably, the same thing that has prevented the income tax from doing so. Moreover, what's to stop Congress from adopting a national sales tax now? What has stopped it before now? Presumably, the usual mechanisms of democratic politics.

Fallacy: Slippery Slope

October 20th, 2011 (Permalink)

What's New?

If you've visited this site before, you'll notice a change to the navigation frame on the left. The change is partly cosmetic, but primarily to simplify navigating around the site. The main menu is now contained in a table at the top of the navigation frame, followed by the complete alphabetical list of fallacies. The weblog also now appears on the front page where the main menu used to be. As with any substantial change, there are probably some remaining bugs, for which I apologize. If you notice a bug, such as a broken link, or have comments or suggestions about the site redesign, please let me know.

October 13th, 2011 (Permalink)

The Riddle of the Sheep

Why do white sheep eat more than black ones? (Traditional riddle.)

Answer

Another debate amongst the Republican candidates for President was held a couple of days ago. One of the questioners, Washington Post reporter Karen Tumulty, asked Texas Governor Rick Perry the following questions:

Governor Perry, over the last 30 years, the income of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans has grown by more than 300 percent, and yet we have more people living in poverty in this country than at any time in the last 50 years. Is this acceptable? And what would you do to close that gap?

I don't know where Tumulty got her first claim, so let's just assume that it's true. However, her second may set off alarm bells for anyone old enough to remember a significant fraction of the last fifty years. Admittedly, the economy is currently in bad shape, and the unemployment rate is high, so it's not surprising that more people are in poverty now than a few years ago. But can poverty really be worse now than at anytime in the last half-century?

At first glance Tumulty's claim sounds alarming, but notice her exact words: "we have more people living in poverty in this country than at any time in the last 50 years". So, all that she's claiming is that the absolute number of poor people is greater now than it was fifty years ago. However, the absolute number of people in the country is greater today than it was fifty years ago. According to Wolfram Alpha, the U.S. population was 184 million in 1961, whereas it is currently 309 million. Moreover, the population has increased steadily in the intervening fifty years. Thus, even if the percentage of the population in poverty stayed the same, the absolute number of poor people today would be greater today than at any time in the past fifty years.

In fact, I think that I've found the ultimate source for Tumulty's claim in a press release issued by the Census Bureau a little over a year ago, which states the following: "The number of people in poverty in 2009 is the largest number in the 51 years for which poverty estimates are available." But it also states: "The poverty rate in 2009 was the highest since 1994, but was 8.1 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available." So, the poverty rate has in fact declined considerably in the past fifty years, though the absolute number of poor people has increased because the population has increased.

Thus, what Tumulty said was literally true, but misleading. I suspect that almost everyone who hears it will assume that it means that poverty has increased in the U.S. in the last fifty years, rather than decreased. It's also a good illustration of why it is important to use proportions, rather than absolute numbers, when comparing changes over time when the size of the population is changing. Unless the population size is fixed, comparing absolute numbers can give a misleading picture.

Sources:

  1. Complete Transcript of Hanover Economic Debate, Time, 10/11/2011
  2. "Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009", U.S. Census Bureau, 9/16/2011
  3. Stephen K. Campbell, Flaws and Fallacies in Statistical Thinking (1974), pp. 101-103

Answer to the Riddle: White sheep eat more than black sheep because there are more of them.

October 12th, 2011 (Permalink)

New Book: Denying Science

A new book by John Grant sounds promising, at least based on its title: Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War Against Reality. Grant is also the author of some other books on related topics, including Discarded Science, Corrupted Science, and Bogus Science. Unfortunately, I haven't read any of these and thus don't know what to expect from the new one.

Sources:

  1. Denying Science: Conspiracy Theories, Media Distortions, and the War against Reality, Prometheus Books
  2. Skeptical Inquirer, September/October 2011, p. 58
September 30th, 2011 (Permalink)

Blurb Watch: Killer Elite

The new movie Killer Elite should not be confused with Sam Peckinpah's forty-year old The Killer Elite. Apparently, the new one is just a killer elite. At any rate, an ad for the new movie includes the following blurbs:

Blurb Context
Rolling Stone
"DELIVERS THE GOODS! THE FUN IS ALL IN THE ACTION. JASON STATHAM IS DYNAMITE!"
Peter Travers 		The fun, such as it is, is all in the hardass action, and newbie director Gary McKendry delivers the goods. Statham is dynamite at this mayhem, though The Bank Job showed he could do better. … But there's nothing elite about this disposable time-killer.
ROGER EBERT
"DIABOLICALLY CLEVER! IMPRESSIVE!"		 The story: De Niro plays Hunter, the mentor of Danny (Jason Statham). … The sheik wants revenge against the killers of his sons, he knows Danny is the best in the world, and he correctly calculates that only the need to save his beloved teacher would lure him back into action. The sons, it turns out, were murdered by four SAS men. Danny's assignment is tricky: He is to kill them, but make it look like each death is accidental, so no one will suspect the sheik. Diabolically clever. … Meanwhile, Spike (Clive Owen) leads a shadowy group…. Their task is to shield the four targets from Danny and his boys. Got that? … The movie is a first feature by Gary McKendry…. This is an impressive debut.

The worst contextomy here is, of course, the dropping of the proviso "such as it is" from the Travers quote. Travers rates the movie only a two out of four stars, which I suppose is about a "C" grade.

Ebert, in contrast, gives it three out of four stars, which would be a "B", I guess. In context, however, his sentence "diabolically clever"―sans exclamation point, of course―sounds sarcastic rather than serious. Similarly, a movie that is an impressive debut may not be impressive simpliciter.

Sources:

  • Ad for Killer Elite, The New York Times, 9/30/2011, p. C13
  • Roger Ebert, "Killer Elite", 9/21/2011
  • Peter Travers, "Killer Elite", Rolling Stone, 9/22/2011
September 28th, 2011 (Permalink)

Head Line

Flaming Toilet Seat Causes Evacuation at High School

Source: Richard Lederer, The Bride of Anguished English (2000), p. 108


September 14th, 2011 (Permalink)

Caveat Elector

In an interview on The Today Show (see the video at right), Matt Lauer asked Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann about her criticisms of Texas Governor Perry in the previous night's debate:

Lauer: …I want to stick on this controversy in Texas, mandating vaccinations for HPV for girls as young as 12. …

Bachmann: …[G]overnor Perry chose by himself, unilaterally, to sign an executive order and put through the requirement that all innocent little 12-year-old girls or 11-year-old girls in the state of Texas would be forced by the government to take an injection of what could potentially be a very dangerous drug. …I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate. She told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter. It can have very dangerous side effects. The mother was crying what she came up to me last night. I didn't know who she was before the debate. This is a very real concern and people have to draw their own conclusions.

This is an obvious, even glaring, post hoc. The daughter in Bachmann's anecdote is vaccinated and "thereafter" is mentally retarded, and the girl's mother jumps to the conclusion that the vaccine caused the retardation. Then, Bachmann commits the same fallacy by endorsing the mother's hasty conclusion. Less obviously, the anecdotal fallacy lurks here, at least as a boobytrap, since a moving anecdote about a weeping mother is more vivid and memorable than a scientific study showing no connection between a vaccine and mental retardation.

Source: Alexander Burns, "Bachmann: 'Crying' mother shared HPV story", Politico, 9/13/2011

Via: Jonathan H. Adler, "Bachmann Embraces Irresponsible Anti-Vaccine Views", The Volokh Conspiracy, 9/13/2011

September 3rd, 2011 (Permalink)

Caveat Lector

A headline on the WebMD site reads:

Chocolate Good for the Heart

A subhead continues:

Regularly Eating Chocolate Cuts Risk of Heart Disease by About One-Third

That sounds like good news! Of course, those headlines were probably written by an editor, so before you run out to the candy store, here's the first sentence of the article itself:

Chocoholics have reason to celebrate today: A large new study confirms that chocolate may be good for the heart and brain. Regularly eating chocolate could cut the risk of heart disease and stroke by about one-third….

Uh-oh. Notice the "may" and the "could", and here's the next subhead:

Chocolate Linked to 37% Lower Risk of Heart Disease

Notice the word "linked", and the article goes on to say that the study "pooled the results of seven published studies involving more than 100,000 people that explored the association between chocolate and heart disease and strokes." Notice the word "association" instead of "causation".

Finally, you get to the bad news near the end of the article:

…[T]he study doesn't prove chocolate lowers the rate of heart disease. The people who ate the most chocolate in the studies could share some other characteristics that explain their better heart and brain health.

That's right. All that the study found was a statistical "link" or "association" between two variables, which does not mean that one causes the other. So, the article's headline was misleading, since the study did not show that chocolate is good for the heart, nor did it show that regularly eating chocolate "cuts" the risk of heart disease.

The study in question was a meta-analysis of observational studies that compared people's heart health with how much chocolate they said they ate. All it showed was that people who claimed to eat the most chocolate had fewer heart problems than those that said they ate less. This result could certainly be explained by something in chocolate that promotes a healthy heart, but there's an alternative hypothesis: obese people, who often have heart problems, may tend to under-report how much chocolate they consume. There's apparently already evidence that obese people understate how much they eat in general, and why wouldn't this apply to chocolate in particular? Of course, the way to test this alternative hypothesis is to do a study that doesn't rely upon self-reporting of chocolate consumption.

By their nature, observational studies can't establish that a correlation between two variables is causal. Moreover, the study itself doesn't claim to establish a causal relationship, but suggests that this hypothesis be tested by a randomized trial. The problem is not with the study, but with misleading reporting of it. So, when you see a headline that seems too good to be true, read the article before believing it; and be sure to read the whole article, because sometimes the truth doesn't come out until near the end.

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