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February 3rd, 2012 (Permalink)Blurb Watch: Man on a LedgeThe 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." 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.
January 28th, 2012 (Permalink)A LapalissadeFrom 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.
January 26th, 2012 (Permalink)Mixed-Up Logic CheckIf 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 WatchThe 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 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:
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
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| 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:
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
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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:
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:
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?
Yeah, they're dead! They're all messed up.
Source: Richard Lederer, Anguished English (1989), p. 87
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
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
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.
Why do white sheep eat more than black ones? (Traditional riddle.)
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:
Answer to the Riddle: White sheep eat more than black sheep because there are more of them.
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:
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:
Source: Richard Lederer, The Bride of Anguished English (2000), p. 108
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
A headline on the WebMD site reads:
A subhead continues:
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:
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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