Recently in Recycling The News Category

Blue Screens

When I traveled to Italy a few years ago I found the blue screens on computers to be the most memorable travel experience, you know, aside from the terraces and olives and Caravaggios of travel lit - the "Blue Screens of Death". I hadn't seen so many blue screens since the 1990's. Fresh off the plane, the machine to purchase tickets took our money without producing train tickets. The station agent cocked his head and displayed doleful eyes at our request for a refund. Like it was the most absurd thing he'd ever heard! Then he walked around the room gesticulating at exhibits A, B, C, D...all blue screens on all computers, and he explained verbosely in Italian: That's why we wouldn't get a refund. He did finally produce our tickets, not because we explained how to fix the screen problem - which he dismissed with a flick of the hand; not because we subsequently insisted that he use a telephone work-around; but most likely because we threatened to sit there forever. We are usually in a big business hurry, but...

That was only the beginning of Blue Screens in Italy. Blue screens at the airport, blue screens at internet cafes, the hotels, the train stations, the offices, even at the empty museum exhibit -- how? This was a far cry from countries even a decade earlier where the remotest places, say in Asia, got on online and stayed up and doing business. That was my Italian experience.

Trials

Today, Italy is still looking a little medieval, isn't it? All that ancient stone architecture with the tiny little windows romantic in one view, lends a sinister backdrop to the bizarre Perugia murder trial, which Perugians complain sullied their town's reputation.

Then there's the other trial, that of the seismologists being tried for information they supposedly didn't provide to townspeople of L'Acquila before the earthquake. Thousands of scientists have written to protest the prosecution of scientists. Actually, the scientists did relay the risk of earthquake on that day, about 1:1000, but subsequently a government official garbled the message. At the same time, disturbingly, a non-scientist was claiming (falsely) to be able to predict earthquakes based on radon gas measurements. So that radon-guy jacked the townspeople up, then the official tried to reassure them, now the scientists are on trial.¹

Shutting Down Speech

This week, the computer screens went black in Italy. The government introduced a new wiretapping bill that imposed severe restrictions on online speech. The Italian bill declared that the online author of any 'alleged defamation' would need to correct the problem within 48 hours or be punished by a large fine. Guilt of defamation would be in the eyes of the "defamed". Wikipedia protested with a blackout.

Wikipedia's action got the bill partially changed to apply only to larger businesses, not blogs and Wikipedia. But as Nieman Lab explains, the bill stills stands. Furthermore, it's the overall state of press freedom in Italy that's "dismal". As Nieman Lab writes:

"Berlusconi owns the influential private media company Mediaset; he exercises direct control over state television. Italy's 100,000 professional journalists, to get work, must belong to the Ordine dei Giornalisti -- a group that is, in effect, a modern-day guild. This year's Freedom House survey of global press freedom, citing 'heavy media concentration and official interference in state-owned outlets,' ranked Italy as only 'partly free."

It makes it seem like blue screens would be the least of their problems. I know, it's totally biased to judge Italy on these select things, just it would be to judge Americans on their predilection for their cowboy hats, guns and anti-science moves. Nieman Labs interviews several people (from Perugia) who understandably worry how severely the government threatens press freedom. And of course many other governments, not only Italy, seek to curtail internet expression. If governments continue to corral the "Internet" -- rather, the now familiar "internet" - will we have to start calling it the "Intranets"?

--------------------

¹ In a recent post, we criticized Fox News for profiteering on the weird, absurd, and false earthquake predictions of Jim Berkland. This trial adds another dangerous twist to Berkland's odd-ball predictions. Confusing people about the real risks isn't just bad for science, it's an actual liability for governments.

Science Journalism Debauchery

Has anyone aside from science bloggers had so many rules imposed on them? OK, maybe science journalists. In the 1990's, when the debate over genetically modified (GM) seeds motivated the headline: "MUTANT CROPS COULD KILL YOU" (Express February 18, 1999), the British government attempted to correct the fear-mongering headlines. That didn't work, so to stem future journalistic liberties of that sort, the Parliament tried to subdue the culture that propagated such rumors.

They issued a a lengthy report warning of further journalistic depredation from "the approaching era of digital TV" and the "increasing ghettoisation". (No mention of the internet.) More journalists needed to be "scientists", they said, after surveying GM stories put out by all of eleven UK publications over two days. Only 17% of the stories were written by science journalists, they found, and not any of the commentary came from "science writers". The Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons, the Royal Society, and SmithKline Beecham suggested punishing future misbehavior, especially for getting the facts wrong:

"media coverage of scientific matters should be governed by a Code of Practice which stipulates that scientific stories should be factually accurate. Breaches of the Code of Practice should be referred to the Press Complaints Commission."

Of course an editor at the Independent responded describing how writers could conquer the facts but still mislead the reader. Thankfully, there's often a compelling counterargument. So in the end, the report's authors settled for a rather bland collection of guidelines dealing with Balance; Uncertainty; and Legitimacy.

And of course while the Parliament fretted about the fate of genetically engineered crops, over at News of The World...

Digital Science Journalism - Publishing Freedom

When science blogging came along it seemed to offer an alternative to the maligned mainstream media science journalism. But despite its growing stature, it too has been besieged by criticism. Some of this came from mainstream media, especially in the beginning.

But interestingly, while traditional science journalism often gets attacked from the outside, online science journalists indulge in lots and lots of self-flagellation. Perhaps this is to be expected from people who labor at the frontier of the often masochistic bench science, replete with high rates of experimental failure. Or perhaps self-criticism makes it easier for science bloggers to generate conversation? Work out their identities? Get traffic?

Of course there's much more to online science journalism then blogging, but I'm going to limit my comments to that. Acronym Required started about seven years ago, and from the rather echoey halls of 2004 science blogging, the medium exploded. Now it impressively fills some of the gaping holes in other science journalism.

We last commented on the state of "science" television programming in 2007 -- and why comment further? The science blogging world offers an amazingly vibrant alternative, filled with witty, reflective, analytical, smart, and generous writers -- especially considering the frequent debauchery of mainstream journalism. Which makes the persistent whine of self-criticism all the more puzzling. Is it some evolutionary thrust gripping science bloggers to impose governing rules on their peers?

This is especially amusing in the context of how blogs started, to augment search. Search itself started in a era that included the (albeit, totally unrealistic) perception of internet as free of boundaries, regulations, and governments. Consider this piece from early 1996:

"We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity."

Radical, but the philosophy is actually alive and well among quite a few technologists today.

Search back then was pretty rudimentary, thus the role of blogs. To understand just how rudimentary, look at this old Yahoo page with its awesome user interface. (Accompanied by the great ad with a winking person who looks photoshopped from two different faces, asking awkwardly: "So, My Yahoo! or yours?".)

My point is, the world in which blogging started was simple. For one, an early blog was often not much more than some geek saying -- "hey I found this cool site": link -- so I'm cool too, right? These "trusted links" made a prehistoric stab at "community" and "personalization" -- because who could trust something called the "World Wide Web", with its random collection of and unknown "links"?

Secondly, through innovation if not mindset, the Internet and blogging celebrated independence from tradition. As the internet expanded, many bloggers took to the medium in defiance of the exclusive world and onerous rules of offline publishing. The audience for blogs in the beginning was a very small group of internet users, frontiersmen strongly connected by their independence, who were by default "the community".

Page Views

As the originators of the real commercial internet intended, soon people realized they could make advertising money on the internet, and "pageviews" became an all important metric. The number of people publishing on the internet grew and bloggers were then advised to "keep it short". This advice about post-length was couched as insight about readers short attention spans. But it was as much about drawing pageviews and revenue. "Keep it short" and the unspoken "make us money" became compulsory over 'make it interesting'.

When Tumblr and Twitter arrived on the scene with truly short-form platforms, some of the same organizations then suggested that blogs could actually be a venue for "long-form posts". Finally, just as the fashion industry moved away from dictating skirt lengths sometime in the 1980s, people eventually stopped dictating ideal post length. Of course they still told people what to do, they just moved on from making demands on post length.

To Join Or Not To Join

It's my impression that science bloggers find more rules to bandy about than others, but granted, I don't have enough data to swear that economists, say, are really more laissez-faire. I couldn't possibly document all the various rules that science bloggers have proposed for other science bloggers over the years, but to illustrate my point, I'll mention a few.

First there's the question of where to host your blog. Some insist that science bloggers should join a science blogging network. This came about when the number of online science bloggers reached a point where they could actually form a group. Those advocating joining offer compelling reasons -- traffic, exposure, "community". Now, the number of such science blogging "communities" has surpassed our ability to keep track of them. There are still pros and cons to joining of course, depending on your goals, technical abilities, impressions of the different online venues, how your schedule might accommodate blogging, etc. But your agreeable answer to join is existentially far more critical to a potential host than to you. After all, the hosts wouldn't exist without the bloggers.

Of course the notion of "online community" includes many possibilities. Communities can be collaborative, nurturing, educational - great; or, if you've observed them in action, joining such an online science community can be like joining the military, where participants -- "travel to exotic foreign lands, meet interesting and exciting people, then kill them."

Proving Your Worth

Once the blogger decides where to put their blog, a barrage of other considerations and demands will follow. For example, in 2007 bloggers for peer-reviewed research reporting (BPR3) emerged, proposing

"to identify serious academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research by offering an icon and an aggregation site where others can look to find the best academic blogging on the Net."

While interesting as a business aggregation proposal, the blog "Peer-To-Peer" diplomatically commented on the idea, saying it would be impossible for such an icon to assure the "quality of the blog post itself". Or, we might add, to insure the quality of the writer's analysis, the quality of the science journal, the quality of the science research, and so on.

Questions of ethics in science blogging are constant, carrying on from earlier discussions of ethics in blogging and science journalism. Way back in 2003, bloggers started wondering whether they should adopt journalists' standards. Perhaps journalism in 2003 was wrapped in mystique that shrouded realities like "MUTANT CROPS COULD KILL YOU", but the drumbeat of ethics has since trailed science bloggers. I can't see how this could be useful people have written strong arguments noting that blogging wouldn't exist if bloggers weren't ethical. Nor has the whole ethics thing really led to changed behavior as far as I can see, but those who push "ethics" will forever peer over our shoulders, stick in hand.

Still other people demand, as the Parliament did 1999, that science bloggers/journalists only blog about things they know. Quite a qualitative statement considering variations in breadth and depth of knowledge among both scientists and journalists. A comment here provides a good rebuttal to that idea. You could also reason that writing solely about what you know at any moment, like the biomechanics of kangaroo tendons, for instance, despite how interesting, might also be good way to become a lazy, narrow minded, outdated, and one bored stiff writer.

Recently the subjects of anonymity and pseudonymity re-emerged and preoccupied many science bloggers. I'm not going to weigh down this post talking about that, except to note 1) that the discussion has largely revolved around the value and necessity of a particular type of individual authentication, and 2) that the discussion has largely ignored the politics and economics driving such individual authentication.

Other people try mark out precise roles for science bloggers/journalists. Science writers should be "educators", they say, or "explainers", or priests of "how things work". Each such suggestion is an invitation for extensive discussion and cogitation, and naturally other people will vehemently disagree with every proposal. So then why don't bloggers just do what suits them best? Or does the constant criticism and re-definition create "community" (and pageviews)?

Getting The Details Right

We've touched on some general instructions to bloggers about how to blog about science. There are more detailed demands too, aimed at all of science blogging and journalism, as the divisions between online and offline media blur. For instance:

• 2005: Don't use the word "Global Warming": Thus implored some scientists reasoning that people would confuse climate change with their local weather.

• 2006: Don't use big words: So lectured the film "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus". The version I saw at Tribeca 2006 highlighted words used by scientists in dialogue that were "too big", while characterizing Intelligent Design folks as small word people, i.e. comparatively approachable and understandable. It employed character assassination on all fronts by advising scientists to drop their testy, pompous attitudes, while it basically infantilized people who were religious. Some scientists took this whole thing to heart, overlooking how the movie slyly played to both audiences. People who knew the fairly simple polysyllabic words could be secretly smug that they knew the words when the definitions flashed on the screen like some weird spelling bee; and the other side of the audience could be smug about the portrayal of scientists as surly and smug.

• 2007: Don't publish on Fridays: The IPCC panel and hundreds of scientists took flack from the communication "framers" for publishing their 2007 report on a Friday (link accessed 04/11) because 'any veteran journalist would know better'. The same post chastised the report for lacking "drama" like portraying "polar bears on melting ice". The authors gave another paper kudos for "reframing the IPCC report" with a "corruption angle" that gave it "more legs". In other words, said the framers, don't be scientists or reporters be PR ringmasters.
• 2008 "Don't use the word "denial", "denialist", or "denier": Some scientists said that labeling climate change denialists as such was pejorative.

At the time, each of these instructions drew passionate discussions. But times change -- or don't change. Today it's fine to use "global warming" and "denialist". Science Friday still airs to large audiences on Fridays, and Science Magazine successfully publishes, Friday, after Friday, after Friday.

As charming as "Flock of Dodos" was, do big words really make science/scientists extinct? If we believe that message, should we then be discouraged that in 4 years, the Flock of Dodos trailer has 13,376 views on Youtube, while Hoax of Dodos, the Discovery Institutes pathetically best response, has almost as many -- 11,405 views? OK true, the "Pulled Punches" video (cut scenes from Flock of Dodos) has 18,605 views. But for perspective on what 18,605 views means on YouTube, the video "Emma Watson Punches Interviewer" (Jan 19, 2006), has 4,159,895 (all view numbers as of 05/11). Despite the fact that "Punch" is a catchy keyword to put in your comparatively boring science video, what does all this mean for science and science journalism?

"Blogging" is Worthy

What if none of these rules and instructions make science blogging "better", whatever better is? What if people still deny climate change for example, no matter what the facts and no matter what manner we convey them? While pursuing better communication is incredibly important, as is presenting ideas compellingly, how much of science knowledge lost by miscommunication is really any responsibility or fault of scientists and journalists (online or offline)? How much should be attributed to the political inclinations, personal distractions, and various passions of our audiences?

In reality most science journalists have zero time to write stories, whether or not they have generous deadlines. Those stories must always be very compelling just to get read. The extreme example of this fact, illustrated by a UK journalist, applies to most writing:

"You are writing to impress someone hanging from a strap in the tube between Parson's Green and Putney, who will stop reading in a fifth of a second.

We may not like this. We may wish readers didn't prefer reading science only when it's infused with sex or violence or something that 99% of the population have some opinion on. We may wish that journalists really comprised some "fourth estate", or could make a difference, or could educate readers. What if science writers could just all write about their own fascinating interest, rather than about something dictated by advertising? And what if the audience would just read, and not worry about about ethics, badges of legitimacy or whether education was happening as they read?

But until science journalists make a lot more money or have a lot more time, that won't happen on any large scale basis. But most science bloggers write for free or pittance. And if you write mostly for free on a blog, shouldn't you just write? Or does it have to be for some higher purpose (agreed upon by the consensus of one of many "communities")? Because wasn't that the whole purpose of blogging?

Science bloggers should keep in mind what their up against. The lifeblood of mainstream media consists of headlines the likes of this week's "GM Blunder Contaminates Britain With Mutant Crops", about "Frankenstein" crops.

So I'm sure whatever you write, dear blogger, will stand up just fine. And until "offline" journalism reaches different standards, can we stop insisting/demanding/pleading that bloggers "ARE journalists too"? Maybe science blogging could stand on its own apart from journalism if the community of science bloggers trusted themselves.

In our last post we riffed off column in the New York Times titled "Medicine of the Move" (earlier titled "The Body Politic"), where Gail Collins opened with the statement: "sometimes you just want to tell the medical profession to make up its mind". Granted, we conceded, medicine and science can seem confusing. We described in Part I how medical profession recommendations come from science research, which the press can make appear contradictory. As an example, we showed differences between caffeine/diabetes research as presented in the media, compared to the research presented in the original source. We walked through different experimental protocols that would appear to show different results to the unpracticed reader. Finally, we emphasized that although headlines make ordinary science progress into "news" every day, a small research step reported in the "news" should not be confused with a public health recommendation.

As for public health recommendations, yes, doctors change them. But is it that the medical profession that "can't make up it's mind"? After all, medical advice comes from science research studies. Maybe it's scientists who can't make up their minds? In this post I'll explain why people puzzle me when they often complain that doctors/scientists "can't make up their minds". Secondly, I'll explain why I believe this insidious popular notion is actually dangerous.

Would the World Be Better if The Medical Profession Didn't Evolve?

My first point I'll pose in the form of a question -- would the complainers rather that science and medicine be static than dynamic? Lets take the subject of Collins' NYT column that dealt with hormone therapy for female menopause.

First, lets look briefly to history. Hormone therapy came of age in the 1960's, a half a century ago. For perspective, let's look at an accelerated time frame. A century ago, doctors didn't understand that bacteria caused food poisoning. Doctors who admitted patients for so-called "ptomaine poisoning" could wash out patients' mouths, insert tubes in their stomachs, feed them milk, and wring their hands as they watched people stricken with food-borne bacterial infections die. Fifty years later, things had progressed. By mid-century, scientists understood bacterial infections and how they could be treated with antibiotics.

Medicine in the 1950's and 1960's saw the advent of the polio vaccine, the development of ultrasound to see babies inside the womb, and treatment of chronic kidney failure by hemodialysis. In 1960 and 1961 scientists along the East Coast of the US learned that the Hepatitis A virus was caused by shellfish contaminated with raw sewage. In the 1950's and 1960's doctors made major advances in cardiac surgery so they could repair congenital heart defects in babies. Such repairs became feasible when doctors realized that they could use a patient's relative as a live "heart and lung machine". From that, what I'll call a 'proof of concept', technology advanced to machines that could keep patients oxygenated during heart surgery. As you can imagine, the first "heart surgeries" were a messy business, and as in every field of medicine. The 1950's and 1960's brought major improvements to medicine, but in fits and starts. Mid-century, post WWII was the era when hormone therapy became popular.

Who To Blame?

Based on recent findings about the risks associated with hormone therapy, women and doctors now hesitate before turning to hormone therapy. Collins, who developed breast cancer that she attributes to hormone therapy, ended her NYT column with this: "Actually, I don't blame anyone. Except maybe the guy who wrote that "Feminine Forever" book." She's referring to an early hormone therapy proponent and author, gynecologist Dr. Robert Wilson. Today, the book's title sounds suspiciously pseudo-medicine but it probably sounded different to women in the 1960's, half a century ago. In that time of "women's liberation", Wilson chastised the predominantly male medical community for being callous to women. A 1966 Time Magazine article described Mr. Wilson's complaints about doctors:

"physicians generally dismiss post-menopausal changes as part of the 'natural' aging process. Their attitude, [Dr. Wilson] suggests tartly, stems from the fact that "most doctors, being male, are themselves immune to the disease." As he sees it, the menopause is "castration," and [Wilson] asks whether his colleagues would tolerate so casually a similar fate in themselves.

So that was it. In the era of women's liberation, Wilson accused men as standing-by while women became one day bra-less free spirits, the next "castrated" at the youthful age of 50. Which is why in 1966, as Time Magazine put it:

All over the U.S., women in their 40s and 50s are going to doctors and demanding "the pills that will keep me from growing old." Women in their 60s and over are asking for "pills to make me young again." In each case, what they are really asking for are doses of hormones to slow down or reduce the ravages of age.

Now, a half a century later, science studies are finally catching up with individual accounts and showing that some of the risks people had always worried about with hormone therapy could not be ignored. But for the last half a century some women got terrifying first hand knowledge of risks they probably had no had no idea they were assuming. Breast cancer is one of the most publicized concerns, with studies showing 8 in 10,000 women per year contract breast cancer who wouldn't have without hormone therapy. In addition, women who take estrogen and progestin risk more strokes, blood clots and urinary incontinence.

To be fair, there are associated decreases in the incidence of colorectal cancer and hip fractures with hormone therapy. Many women benefited and swore by hormone therapy. But the problem was, no woman nor her doctor, could predict which risk vs. benefits bucket she might fall into. That's always the hardest part, predicting risk given very few knowns and a vast number of unknowns. Today science continues to do research in order to try to find a way that women can glean the benefits of hormone therapy but not incur the risks.

As hormone therapy fades in popularity it may seem intuitive to damn whoever made it popular. Perhaps hormone therapy was in part a cultural movement that's gone the way of hippies? Not quite. Half a century later, women's liberation is less of a cultural driving force in the United States, but women of all ages take take other risks, for instance with plastic surgery. Decades from now, this too might look silly. But now, there's all sorts of rational urging that not only to stay young looking, but to keep a job, to stay in the job market, women must stay looking youthful.

Moving away from the NYT column, if you want to cast blame, there lots of targets. Profit making companies -- pharmaceutical, insurance and media -- all distort public health knowledge. Much has been said about each of these industries.

But people should just as well blame the human body for not making medical science easier and more predictable. Genetic variation assures that people can react differently to the same treatments. The same medication that cures one person, will do nothing for another, and rare cases will kill another. Many women never incurred any negative outcomes from hormone therapy. Scientists are still working to understand why. Doctor try to apply that knowledge for patients' health. Fortunately for all of us, scientists and doctors don't give up, therefore science and medicine continue to evolve. People who think change is a curse, who infer therefore that this progress is a curse should spend some time perusing old medical journals.

The Logic of Blaming Scientists

Medicine and science do change in half a century, true, and that's a good thing. But even if you're looking at science or medical progress over a short time span, does saying medicine/science can't make up its mind make sense?

Isn't it a little like saying "the press can't make up its mind"? After all, science research is almost always translated for the public by the press. What would Bill Keller say? Do "science columnists" like John Tierney at The New York Times behave in concert with journalists/data movers like Julian Assange at WikiLeaks? Can these journalists ("sources", to some) be lumped with journalists that come in the form of TV personalities blogging on the Huffington Post? Are they all part and parcel with twittering science journalism professors? Sure, you can clump together and label professionals if that feels convenient. But in an honest moment no one would compare the entire cohort of "scientists", "doctors", or even "journalists" to a school of sardines flitting hither and thither through the sea until they expire in Santa Barbara harbor from depleting all available oxygen.

Just as absurd, the statement that science or medicine "can't make up its mind" presses the illogical notion that scientists collude in order to present the disparate or outlying findings that you immediately find looking across any subject's vast body of research. I'm sure scientists would love to be gifted with such inordinate non-existent powers over research grants, graduate student experiments, science publishing, reviewers, etc. in order to collude, but the universe is not so magical.

Clearly, the fact that these statements about science agenda's, ignorance, or malevolence do not make sense, but that does not stop their spread. And while the NYT lede was perhaps tongue in cheek, the very common sentiment that scientists can't tell what's going on from all the conflicting research leads to more insidious behavior. This is our second point.

Fostering Dangerous Attitudes about Science and Medicine

Propagating the myth that scientists and doctors present "conflicting" results, and "can't make up their minds" leads citizens to exasperation with research. Few acknowledge how it's all filtered through the press. Fewer still peruse the even the summary, called an "abstract", of original studies, most of which are publicly available online (for instance health at Pubmed).

In this way, the commonly expressed sentiment that scientists change their minds can become in essence a self-serving excuse for apathy: 'How can I take care of my health when scientists and doctors can't even make up their minds?' As the subtitle of the NYT article puts it: "It's very difficult to be a civilian in the world of science." Oh, woe are we. But ironically, by blaming scientists/doctors, citizens resign themselves to fate and thus open themselves to manipulation.

So second to pointing out the fundamental essence of science and medicine that advances at a rapid pace, fortunately for us, I suggest that the myth that scientists can't make up their mind is insidiously destructive because it enables manipulation of the public in matters of science and medicine.

In personal health, if people believe they are helpless, they're less likely to try and understand the science that effects them, less likely to do research, and less likely ask questions of doctors. Distrust of allopathic medicine can also lead people to ignore doctors, to turn to "woo-woo" theories, or to become susceptible to relentless pharmaceutical advertising and absurd press headlines aimed at readers. It's fine to criticize woo-woo science, as many scientist do, taking on homeopathy, acupuncture, anti-vax, chiropractic, chrystals, etc.; but scientists and critics intellectually blinkered if they do that without acknowledging the anti-science industry that gives these sorts of "healers" their power.

Once people have fully accepted the premise that scientists and doctors "can't make up their minds" on personal health data, it's a small step to convince them that science can't make up "it's mind" on anything else either.

Are climate scientists predicting an Ice Age or Global Warming, cry shills for energy "business as usual" (BAU) such as fossil fuel lobbies? And now we have almost half of the US population not believing in climate change, a situation that doesn't bode well for any species. I simplify this of course, people also choose not to believe in climate change because they don't see anything they can do about it. But often that learned helplessness starts with a false indictment of scientists. As in personal health, the false indictment that scientists really don't know anyway is self-serving because it breeds fatalistic apathy.

The apathy leads to further victimization by those who work most effectively when citizens don't pay to close attention. Not only do people believe they can't do anything about global warming, they justify their stance by saying the scientists don't know what's happening either. This becomes the perfect atmosphere for severe policy moves like the destruction of the EPA. Polluted air and water disproportionately effect the elderly, poor, and very young who can't protest, but in the end it will effect everyone. Propagating distrust in science by claiming science can't make up it's mind creates the perfect apathetic breeding ground for such radical policies.

To conclude, I heartily disagree with the idea the medicine or science can't make up it's mind. First, too often people confuse press headlines with medical advice derived from many research studies, each of which is only a building block to public health recommendations. As medical history shows, it's these changes, commonly called progress, that has expanded our lifespan (albeit with risks). It defies logic to say that scientists collude to create conflicting results. Most importantly, the popular idea that science or health professionals "can't make up their minds" feeds a learned helplessness that in turn opens citizens to further manipulation.

-------------------

Whose responsibility is it to make sure that people understand science research? In the end, it's the people's, it's society's. Unlike many others, I don't agree that it's up to the scientists' to educate the general public. But that's the subject of another post.

--------------------------------------

¹ Pointing out that the media can distort the actual results of studies for the sake of a headline, we asked why, for instance, the lead author would be quoted in this Science Daily study saying "We have known for many years that people with or at risk of Type 2 diabetes should limit their caffeine intake", when the author's actual science journal study (M.-S. Beaudoin, L. E. Robinson, T. E. Graham. An Oral Lipid Challenge and Acute Intake of Caffeinated Coffee Additively Decrease Glucose Tolerance in Healthy Men. Journal of Nutrition, 2011; 141 (4): 574 DOI: 10.3945/jn.110.132761) reported correctly that studies have found a "negative correlation between long- term coffee consumption and type 2 diabetes risks"? See? Study says one thing, news report on the study says another.

In "Medicine on the Move", Gail Collins opens her column with this: "sometimes you really do want to tell the medical profession to just make up its mind".

She writes: "estrogen therapy, which was bad, is good again. Possibly. In some cases." Not only that, she continues, current research shows that calcium pills are not "good" anymore and because of conflicting research women don't know whether or not to check for lumps or even get mammograms. The column seems sympathetic to women, who are presented as collectively confused by the scattershot findings of medical research: "'It's very difficult to be a woman,'" Collins quotes Dr. Leslie Ford of the National Cancer Institute.

You understand what she's saying. And not only is it tough to be a woman, it's tough to be a man. On prostate tests, should men screen? Operate? Oh, now don't operate. And the latest, don't even screen. What should men do?

And what about children? Treat their teeth with fluoride or not? Eat organic or not? Give them plastic bottles or not?

The bottom line is, we all care to some extent about personal health choices, and depend on the latest research to make our decisions. Doctors can help by passing on recommendations based on the research and their own filtering of the risks of one action or another. But the research can be confusing. One research study rarely drives a decision, rather, bodies of research sway medical recommendations like the one to recommend that women take hormones after menopause to preserve youth. And now, 50 years later, the recommendation that women not take hormone pills.

When hormones were first recommended for women a half a century ago, even then there were concerns about possible side effects. But doctors, women, and media surged ahead with treatment. Now, after many women have stopped hormone therapy recent studies are showing that some women benefit from hormones while for others there's limited risks. The science is slowly capable of a finer grain analysis of the issues.

The tricky part is translating the results of many research studies into public health recommendations. As this challenges doctors and those in public health, patients are also confused by what sometimes seems like an arbitrary process. The barrage of pharmaceutical ads on television is not helpful. And the barrage of "studies" reported in the press is mind-numbing. Based just on the media, it's too easy for the consumer to view each study as a separate public health recommendation, since the press presents studies not necessarily to educate but grab eyeballs and sell ads.

Is Coffee Bad For You?

Take for instance the press report last week on research that people who eat fatty meals then drink coffee can raise their blood sugar -- dangerously. Science Daily published an article titled: "Got a Craving for Fast Food? Skip the Coffee, Study Suggests". The title is not very intuitive, but hundreds of news outlets explained by quoting the author of the study, who stressed the importance of the study's findings for people with diabetes and metabolic disease: "We have known for many years that people with or at risk of Type 2 diabetes should limit their caffeine intake". She continued:

"Drinking decaffeinated coffee instead of caffeinated is one way to improve one's glucose tolerance. Limiting the intake of saturated fatty acids found in red meat, processed foods and fast food meals is also beneficial. This study has shown that the affects of these foods can be severe and long lasting."

"Severe and long lasting" -- wow, that's alarming. Let's check it out. What do other studies find? Indeed, previous research suggests there's a connection between caffeine and diabetes. For instance in the column to the right of the story on the Science Daily site, under "Related Stories", is a link to one story titled: "Cutting Caffeine May Help Control Diabetes (Jan. 28, 2008)". So two studies that say the same thing, that caffeine is linked to diabetes, and cutting it may control diabetes.

According to "Safer States", seventeen US states have announced legislation that would limit BPA use (Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and the District of Columbia). But proposing legislation is only a first and tenuous step to preventing health harm from a toxic chemical (like deposing a dictator is to democratizing a nation). Having the governor on board helps. Maine's governor recently proved himself not not in agreement with his state's proposed legislation. Governor Mike LePage of the Tea Party, asserted there's not "enough" science to support BPA legislation:

"The only thing that I've heard is if you take a plastic bottle and put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards."

This doesn't jibe with science -- over 300 studies show physiological changes from BPA even more alarming than a little beard might indicate. But I also don't think his statement would please the plastics and chemical lobbies like the ACC. So I'm sure his phone was immediately jangling with lobbyists and "independent" scientists rushing to offer LePage some more reassuring marketing lines.

• In Sync Communication

  In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), "Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication", Princeton researchers used fMRI to record the brain activity of people communicating. They found that people more successfully communicated when the listener's brain activity mirrored the speaker's brain activity. When people can anticipate and predict one another's speech, their brain activity becomes "coupled", which leads to better understanding.

• Technological Coupling? Google AIandYou

  Once upon a time, Microsoft vowed, preposterously - it seemed at the time, to "put a computer on every desk, in every home." Another mid-1990's Microsoft marketing campaign asked whimsically, "Where do you want to go today?" We've come a long way. This week, Google's Eric Schmidt promised:

  "If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence... We can predict where you are going to go."

  Schmidt's declaration unnerved more than a few people. But if I were monetizing Google's growing collection of search data, I too would use this line when marketing to states, businesses, and advertisers. For the US military in the throes of the Wikileaks' revelations, Schmidt's announcement might be reassuring, an excellent business proposition. But is Schmidt's assertion possible? Or is it one of those technological promises like 'we will sequence the genome and cure disease', or 'voice recognition software will translate anything', that will ultimately fail to advance as promised?

• Technological Unveiling

  Even if Google's promise doesn't reach its imagined apex, today's technology allows the unprecedented unveiling of people. From the article, "The Web Means The End of Forgetting", in New York Times:

  "In 1890, in perhaps the most famous article on privacy ever written, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis complained that because of new technology -- like the Kodak camera and the tabloid press -- ''gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious but has become a trade.'' But the mild society gossip of the Gilded Age pales before the volume of revelations contained in the photos, video and chatter on social-media sites and elsewhere across the Internet."

  The author goes on to describe companies who make a business of restoring a marred on-line reputation, showing that the technological unveiling phenomena is certainly not hurting business for anyone, of course, and this is key. Now that Google reassuringly promises to restore the balance of power for business and governments that might feel as though information is a little too "free", by promising that not even one commenter will be inadvertently shielded, those who may have been threatened by the internet (governments) can relax?

• Does the Internet Propagate Bombast, Polarity, and Cognitive Dissonance?

  On one hand Google promises to predict "where you will go next". On the other hand, for individuals who want to be heard, the internet is so vast their voices easily get lost. Although people who once held a prominent platform of authority seem most anguished in their reactions to this, public discourse in science, politics, economics, immigration, foreign policy -- anything -- now turns to YELLING, goes polar, spirals downhill, and gets crazy and scraped of tempered reason. Some people wonder if the web is to blame for the rumor cacophony.

  But strangely, some of the same people who have focused on the internet's role in incivility, have in fact been most falsely and most viciously maligned, not on the internet, but by talk show hosts with daily audiences in the millions -- Cass Sunstein by Glenn Beck, for instance. In his latest salvo Glenn Beck told audiences that Sunstein would lead government to tax "rumors". This might indeed undermine Beck's existence, if only it were true.

  As I've mentioned, I don't agree that the web has promulgated incivility. With the web, at least, there's some barrier of entry -- both internet access, and the ability to read. Talk shows on radio and TV are far more accessible not only to those who like to be talked at, but to the millions of workers/voters whose jobs involve driving or working everyday NOT at the computer. Arguably, Glenn Beck single-handedly contributes far more to the culture of incivility, intolerance, and hate crimes, than the skeeviest internet site or most prolific or vile commenter.

  But as I see it, the internet seems more unwieldy to the people/organizations/institutions who before the internet, enjoyed a much more exclusive and unassailable platform.

• "Why American Writers and Speakers are Often Bombastic"

  People love to blame the rise of the internet for incivility and the like, but perhaps we've always been a society prone to uncivil bombast. Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) wrote of his observations traveling around America, in his book "Democracy in America:

  "Each citizen of a democracy generally spends his time considering the interests of a very insignificant person, namely, himself. If he ever does raise his eyes higher, he sees nothing but the huge apparition of society or the even larger form of the human race. He has nothing between very limited and clear ideas and very general and very vague conceptions; the space between is empty..."

  "Writers, for their part, almost always pander to this propensity which they share; they inflate their imaginations and swell them out beyond bounds, so that they achieve gigantism...By this means they hope to catch the eye of the crowd at once and easily keep it fixed on themselves, an object in which they often succeed..."

  Wrote Tocqueville: "Writer and public join in corrupting each other."

• How Things Work: To War! With Excellent "Evidence"!

  The internet is not the only territory of falsehoods and rumors. Carne Ross, UK diplomat in charge of the Iraq dossier at the UN who resigned the Foreign Office over the Iraq War, cited some British documents detailing the risks of invading Iraq versus the successful containment policy at the time. What method did the US and UK use to convince the public? The Financial Times quotes Ross:

  "This process of exaggeration was gradual and proceeded by accretion and editing from document to document, in a way that allowed those participating to convince themselves that they were not engaged in blatant dishonesty. But this process led to highly misleading statements about the UK assessment of the Iraqi threat that were, in their totality, lies."

  In comparison, the ("fictional") movie, In The Loop satirizes the British government's Iraq decisions for it's abrupt and buffoonish launch into war war. While the underlying arguments of mushroom clouds and the like have been proven groundless, we have a mix of theories as to how the UK and US managed the PR segue into war.

• WikiLeaks

  Andrew Bacevich, and also the New Yorker, noted some hypocrisy in the US military's stance on WikiLeaks (no, not with the 'blood on their hands' drumbeat). They observe that the military's intention to punish the perpetrator of the Afghanistan documents leak runs opposite of the military's complacency about its own leaks in the past. Bacevich said (transcript):

  I do think is a reprehensible action. But it's also reprehensible when, in the summer of 2009, before President Obama had made his Afghanistan decision, that the McChrystal recommendation was leaked to the Washington Post, which effectively hijacked the debate over what the Obama administration should do about the Afghanistan war. And I don't remember Admiral Mullen or Secretary Gates or these other people deciding that they were going to go find out who leaked the McChrystal recommendations, because I believe that that is as reprehensible as this leak of the 90,000 documents. That was a direct assault on civilian control of the military. So if you're going to get upset about one, you ought to get upset about the other, too."

  WikiLeaks continues to be a fascinating case study for the military, technology, journalism, international law, and foreign policy, as well as bystanders.

Does WikiLeaks finally show us the potential of the "World Wide Web" of Once Upon A Time? Or is it a sinister threat to our sacred institutions?

Only The Government is Qualified to Redact?

Last weekend, as everyone knows, WikiLeaks posted documents that uncover the daily dirt of the Afghanistan war. The leak is unique in its sheer volume. Notably, the information is not condensed into a seconds long news flash with insight provided by a general or government commentator, so as to neatly temper the shock value war-time revelations. War is ugly and complicated, as described in the many books about the Iraq war that everyone read, like Fiasco; or one I liked, Rory Stewart's The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq. But in the US wars abroad are remote and as such easy to ignore.

WikiLeaks smashes our ability to ignore war by documenting hundreds of unsavory details about the pervasive untrustworthiness of the various "allies", the killing of civilians by wayward drones, intelligence mistakes, and small details like the attempted poisoning of an American geologist. In short, the everyday deaths, maimings, destructions and deceptions. War is war. But Assange says by releasing the documents, he hopes citizens pressure the government, he hopes the details embarrass some generals, goads them to behave better, or derails their careers. High hopes, that Assange.

While Assange has his agenda, states struggle to frame the leak within theirs. Citizens have been barraged with guidance from official and unofficial sources about how much attention to pay to the deluge of unsettling news. At first most officials advised there was no new "news", which could mean anything, but seemed to implore: Pay no attention! Pay no attention! Which compelled WikiLeaks and news outlets to argue that indeed, it was new news, and proceed to line item the "new news" in gory detail.

So then commentators put forth a more nuanced stance. Stewart A. Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy for the United States Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush, talked with Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute in "Dangerous Leaks", on BloggingHeads TV today.

There was no "new news", Baker said, but new details about people and places that endangered military strategy and individuals. When told by Sanchez that WikiLeaks was redacting information in 15,000 docs to prevent that sort of thing, Baker responded that WikiLeaks was inept at that task because they couldn't know which information was dangerous. WikiLeaks could only pretend to protect sources and individuals in the documents, Baker said. The government was far more qualified to know which information to redact when they released information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). But even the government made mistakes he said. In other words, pay no attention, it's not important, but it must be stopped, there are sound government procedures for this. What are we supposed to think about this bevy of contradicting statements? Will anarchy break out if the public knows more via "unofficial sources"?

House of Critics

It's not just governments who pursue Assange. Competing organizations in the "important leaked documents space" also criticize WikiLeaks and the personal motives of Assange. The owner of Cryptome says WikiLeaks' mission is corrupted by money. Steven Aftergood, of Secrecy News blog, has said that WikiLeaks threatens individual liberties by disclosing documents for disclosure's sake. Other hackers have donned white hats to accuse WikiLeaks of endangering national security.

Some naysayers have other disputes. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said:

"This is not journalism...did they write stories, talk to sources, analyze the information, go to the government for a response or put it in context? Did they do something to inform the public about what these documents show? No."

Still others accuse WikiLeaks of working under the mantle of transparency, but operating in a completely opaque fashion. Following the New Yorker's June 7th article on Assange: "No Secrets: Julian Assange's Mission for Total Transparency", one letter to the editor of The New Yorker criticized Assange's leak history, citing inconsistencies between history and his stated goals: "On the surface, [Assange's] ideology seems to say: Full transparency leads to greater honesty and a better global society.", the letter writer wrote, "But why then publish private church data intended for the use of its leaders?"

This specific quote, I think, refers to the release of Church of Scientology leak described in the June 7th article. But let's consider that. The Church of Scientology has it's awful secrets. Popes and the highest leaders of the Catholic Church, squirreled away very private church data for centuries. Only when brave victims, mostly young boys, stepped forward en masse to reveal the priests' transgressions was the destructive force of those crimes revealed. If technology had enabled a leak earlier on would some of those crimes been prevented?

The Sacrosanct Institutions and Freedom of Information

The letter to the New Yorker editor could have been referencing the church of government. It could have been referencing the church of the military, the church of hacking, or the church of journalism. You don't need the FOIA to access WikiLeaks' cache of secret documents. The government has (at least momentarily) lost a smidgen of control, as have sanctified journalists, and the Church of Scientology has fewer secrets. Assange asserts that this is a good thing and his goal.

Look for instance at "the church" of journalism. What is "journalism" these days? Is it a useful tool for eliciting government response and context as Lucy Dalglish says? Or is journalism, due to technology and psychology research, more and more the public relations arm of institutions? Does it live up to its potential? Do we really need generals to put war incidents in context for us? Or as citizens, can we be enticed to be both interested and trusted as intelligent judges of how effectively our tax money is being used in wars? Or is that a fairy tale? More pragmatically, isn't there just too much information for the fourth estate to efficiently parse it all for us?

Long ago, when the internet first came to be, some crazy people thought it would provide a new frontier for open information, would break the barriers erected by states. But ordinary citizens have always found themselves on the wrong side of information asymmetry when it came to knowing what governments were up to. WikiLeaks shows another possibility. Maybe in this new age, as Obama promised, government could indeed be transparent, participatory, and collaborative. Maybe the Obama government will in this way, accomplish its information goals. But perhaps all the transparency won't all be found at sites like transparency.gov in the cloud. Maybe Open Government will be defined by world citizens like Assange, too.

The skirmish over at ScienceBlogs between PepsiCo and the science bloggers actually made me feel sorry for Pepsi.

Pass The Bong and the Aspartame

You have to admit, PepsiCo had a tough month...week. First, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom banned Pepsi from vending machines, a move that elicited potshots from conservative DC paper The Washington Times, as in: "Pass The Pot Brownies, But Drop That Soda". Expounding on that clever cliche, WT wrote: "In the City by the Bay, it may soon be easier to get a pot-laced brownie than a can of Pepsi".

Oh yeah, nailed it! Hippies in the "City By The Bay" ("Frisco" to some) -- don dirty tie-dyed t-shirts daily in order to stand on corners and flash "peace" fingers, a lot of badly parented long-haired youth driving orange Volkswagon buses, wearing flowers in their hair, swaying to the music, with THC soothing their psychedelics' addled nerves. The Washington Times really knows "The City By The Bay".¹

The battle used to be between Pepsi and Coke, not soda and the world. Coke would lose its big university or city contract to Pepsi, then Pepsi to Coke, back and forth. But not this time, soda was ousted. No sooner than being ejected from San Francisco city vending machines, PepsiCo was yelled off ScienceBlogs.

SciBling Hospitality?

It must have been a confusing time for PepsiCo. ScienceBlog editors at first warmly courted PepsiCo, who titled their blog invitingly: "Food Frontiers". But they couldn't even pen a "Hello, World! Corn syrup is so good for you", before "SciBlings" (ScienceBlog bloggers) rose up en masse from their virginal science blog space and confronted the evil sugar-water mixer about they "stealth" advertising.

I wasn't there. But it's mid-July, pretty slow in science news, so I thought I'd Twitter all the anger and consternation, not to mention the mass exodus of SciBlingers. This I think, will entertain all the fluffy dogs, porn stars (and some cool peeps) who follow AcronymRequired. Unfortunately, before anyone could figure out whether to call it PepsiCoGate, Pepsigate, or Pepsicopalyse, Pepsi's Food Frontiers bloggers had skedaddled as if confronted by a battalion of helmeted storm troopers spraying plastic bullets and tear gas at their sit-in.

Safely back at PepsiCo.com, the Food Frontiers bloggers publicly reminisced about the "very candid feedback" and their "intent to embrace that conversation".

The regrouping Pepsi bloggers talked microbial stability, acidity, phosphorous content, obesity, and salt, vis-a-vis PepsiCo. And as promised, Pepsi engaged "that conversation", by answering the demands of SciBlingers who chased them out of their Special Science Space in the World Wide Web.

PepsiCo "embraced" the assault from SciBlingons. One Science Blog writer asked (none to politely.)

"Does the material leave your own computer when you write a post, ever? I.e, pass in front of other people's eyes? Is there a standard workflow for producing a blog post that involves any kind of oversight or inspection?...The truth is that if you'all blogging researchers can only write approved copy, then the whole blog thing really is probably a bad idea".

To this, Pepsi responded promptly and sweetly: "Thanks Greg Laden" in a post they titled with no ambiguity: "The Posting Process on Food Frontiers".

But will such sugary pabulum engage ScienceBloggers? No. Only two people responded to that thoughtful PepsiCo post, and neither of them reciprocated by "embracing" the drink maker.

I would have suggested that Food Frontiers to be a little in Sciblingers' faces - such as: "WTF is YOUR process -- why do so many ideas conflicting with your world view meet with such profane outbursts and bunkerbuster-style attacks? What are you, the Department of OK Blogs?" Now that, would be "engaging the conversation", sciblingy-like. Instead we got this light, huggy, bubbly, PepsiCo marketing stuff.

Maybe the Pepsi Food Frontiers bloggers were jittery, wan and weak from a diet of caffeine, phosphorous, sugar, water, and natural flavors. Or, possibly they were devouring cans of spinach voraciously and weight-training vigorously, but saving their vim and vigor for this week's attack on a more familiar foe -- CocaCola.

In a newish YouTube spot, the two opposing soft drink truck drivers meet in a diner and swap colas, "Why Can't We Be Friends?" by the band War, a 1970's song. As one driver drinks a soda, the other betrays him (can't tell you why). Then they get mad and crash through a window together. The Associated Press wrote:

"Analysts say people love the funny, spirited rivalry of the decades-old cola wars and the move will benefit both soda makers. That's good news for the $100 billion industry, which is seeing weak soft drink sales as shoppers switch to healthier juices and teas."

Business as usual, just pining for the 1970s? See how it works Sciblingers? Friendly public rivalry.

Butlered off the Isle?

Of course, I don't really feel sorry for Pepsi. They have a nice new sepia toned 1970's ad and a brilliant business, patenting and selling corrosive sugar and water drinks. But as we've written before, soda's not so healthy for humans or the environment ("Childhood Obesity, The American Way", or "Pop's Out Drug's are In", or "Coke: Teaching the World to Sing", or "Why So Fat? It's System Wide", or "Common Sense Foods in Schools""). And PepsiCo doesn't need us, they can always fall into the arms of Coke, or the loving the Cato Institute. or FOX, and many others.

Apparently there was more going on at ScienceBlogs than PepsiCo, there always is. I've read and mostly enjoyed ScienceBlogs since the inception. There weren't too many bloggers way back then and I've watched SB evolve with particular interest. So I get it. But Sciblingons! Sheesh! "Spirited rivalry" and gentle brawls people! Do you really need to beat them up, throw them off the island, bash their heads in, then drown them? What good are they too you then?

Just my opinion. I believe that ScienceBlogs has done wonders for getting others online writing about science. A ton of SB bloggers blog seriously about science, every day, good stuff. But some bloggers get increasingly spiteful as they vie for the attention that blogging compels, then use that attention to generate a certain brand of PR for SB. The level of conversation often spirals downward (there must be some entropy model that describes it). And that downward spiral seems infectious -- I've noticed Nature has been forging new ground lately in diluting their brand with some profane blogs also.

Pepsi's not the first one to feel SciBlingon wrath, though sleepy-hot July always gives these incidents an extra charge. Remember the Nature/Butler/PLoS fracas of July, 2008? It was similarly acrimonious with a familiar corporate/underdog theme.

These bloggers know their power, they say. But this is how SB looks from the outside, to me, an independent sometimes-blogger. Everyday science bloggy, bloggy, bloggedy, great - oh, too boring? Yawn? Then Boom, Smash, Bang, big tizzy over at ScienceBlogs over something, lots of media coverage. Repeat. For someone not in the thick of it, the episodic commotions tempt a plea for perspective.

I hope ScienceBlogs settles -- certainly finding eager writers shouldn't be a hurdle, and there are 60 left. I look forward to future writing from the diaspora. But I would also venture that it's complicated, messy business, this advertising stuff, this ethical boundaries stuff. It's pretty easy to inadvertently be seen as hypocritical trying to carve arbitrary ethical boundaries that suit your own very personal interests. As a minor, minor example, isn't most blogging just personal branding/advertising? But your brand is pure as the driven snow, whereas Pepsi's is marred by soda pop? Anyway, I'm not sure getting Pepsi off of ScienceBlogs, although certainly a "cause", was one worthy of the show or the arena.

(To Be Continued)

--------------------------

¹ Actually, in another "City By The Bay", they plan to grow pot by the acre, an unfortunately timed news story which you'd think would crush my defense. But then the city will tax it, hopefully so they can pay for a much needed police force. Complicated. Another story.

Manufacturing Consent

An FDA panel last week rejected Boehringer Ingelheim's application for flibanserin, a drug the company claims treats "hypoactive sexual desire disorder" (HSDD) in women. Boehringer's studies showed that low libido women who took the "film-coated, 100mg tablets" had on average ".8 more satisfying sexual events (SSE) per month (hey, it's statistically relevant) than the control group. But the drug caused side effects such as nausea, dizziness, and fatigue. The panel said the company did not prove that the drug increased desire despite Boehringer's claim that an SSE was an adequate "downstream" measure of desire.

The drug is controversial for reasons other than efficacy and side effects. Boehringer says research shows HSDD affects 6-10 percent of women. But half of that study's researchers were company consultants and employees, and speakers attending the hearing disagreed that the low libido occurred that often. Nevertheless, the Boehringer crafted an intensive marketing strategy to build buzz around flibanserin. In Australia, the marketing firm Ethical Strategies Pty Ltd invited influential sex experts to Sydney on behalf of Boehringer to "discuss a common yet relatively unrecognized medical condition". The company offered payment of $1,000, airfare, food, and accommodation. The experts discussed the important "research" and strategies to increase awareness of HSDD, and their participation, promised Ethical Strategies, was "confidential".

None of this is too shocking, but doctors and researchers voiced their disapproval of Boehringer's approach calling it a "thinly veiled marketing campaign filled with bias, misinformation and celebrity endorsement". One noted that "women don't need treatments with real side effects for imaginary diseases designed by a marketer", and others offered their opinions that the research was a "scam" and not of "clinical meaningful benefit".

Fear of Flying?

HSDD itself is a disputed diagnosis. The American Psychiatric Association recently proposed that HSDD be subsumed into another disorder. That the condition once solidly in the realm of the psychiatric field is being labeled a biochemical disorder may ruffle some feathers. One psychiatrist said: "a women's desire for sexual emancipation is very worthy. I fear that it's being hijacked by a profit-oriented industry that doesn't really try to understand women and their sexuality." Another doctor said: "The messages are aimed at medicalizing normal conditions, and also preying on the insecurity of both the clinician and the patient.

Both these statements are odd. If you're speaking on behalf of women, isn't it a little patronizing to characterize the company's marketing as "preying" on women's "insecurity"? The research may be sketchy and the mechanism is not like Viagra. But should the pill work, aren't women sophisticated enough to balance risks of fatigue and nausea with ".8 more sexually satisfying episodes" per month? Horrifying side effects have been streaming alongside pharmaceutical ads on TV for years, many of them far more disconcerting than "nausea". Now that women are out of the kitchen, voting, graduating from college in higher numbers then men, etc., do women really need "emancipating"? I don't know. But doesn't it all sound so, I don't know, 1970's?

And That Name!

And my thoughts on naming: Next time around Boehringer may want to reassign the detail. "Flibanserin" is just weird. Others agree. NYPost called it "unsexy", and one Nature blogger prefers "pink viagra", which he said "rolls off the tongue so much more easily than filba... filiba... flibasero..." The proposed trade name "Girosa" really doesn't cut it either. Hard "G"...as in organism? Or soft "G"...as in gender? Eeewww....but what do I know?

"Did the EPA drop bisphenol A from the list in eight days because of lobbyists? First of all, if the EPA or any government agency reversed a decision like this in eight days it would be a grand miracle on the scale of the Genesis seven day creation myth. Or at least worthy of an Olympic gold medal. Really..."

Post Updated 2/19/10 to include new references.

The EPA, Skewered For First TSCA Action in Decades:

On December 30th, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted action plans for four chemicals: phthalates, perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and short-chain chlorinated paraffins. (No really! It gets better :-) ) An action plan signals that the EPA intends possible regulation because the chemical poses a hazard. Chemical companies complained bitterly. The EPA also listed two more chemical action plans in the development process, for benzidine dyes/pigments, and bisphenol A. Scientific American commented at the time:

"This is a big deal because it is the first time since TSCA was passed in 1976 that the EPA has made such a move. To date, the agency has only successfully used TSCA to restrict or ban five of the 80,000-plus chemicals on its inventory"

However this week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel criticized the EPA's December chemical action plans, questioning why bisphenol A wasn't on the top four list: The EPA's "move" was "drawing suspicion", explains the paper:

"the head of the Environmental Protection Agency had been talking tough in one speech after another last fall about the need to protect the public from such chemicals, particularly BPA...but when the agency's list came out Dec. 30, identifying four chemicals that would face stricter labeling and reporting requirements, BPA was not among them..."

Writes MJS: "Critics say the Dec. 22 meeting might have been why BPA was dropped from the top of the agency's list".

BPA is on the agency's list. But to the Journal-Sentinel's question, why is it not first up in the most recent round of action plans? Did lobbyists pressure OMB/OIRA to change EPA's stance on Dec. 22?

Now, Suddenly, The EPA Turns on A Dime?

The paper cites as the deciding factor a meeting of plastic and chemical lobbyists with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA):

"Eight days after a meeting between chemical industry lobbyists and Obama administration officials, federal regulators put off including bisphenol A on a list of dangerous chemicals that would be subject to stricter regulation"

The Center For Progressive Reform also forwarded the idea that the EPA was influenced to remove BPA from its chemical action plans list in a blog posted January 22:

"on December 22, just before EPA was about to release its first four chemical action plans, activists from American Chemistry Council and representatives of a major BPA producer met with officials at OIRA to plead the case for BPA's safety."

Did the EPA drop bisphenol A from the list in eight days? First of all, if the EPA or any government agency reversed a decision like this in eight days it would be a grand miracle on the scale of the Genesis seven day creation myth. Or at least worthy of an Olympic gold medal. Really.

But, lets look back to last fall, to a much quoted speech given by Lisa Jackson to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. The MJS quoted the speech in their article. At the time, we wrote in "The EPA Speaks To Me" that Jackson's speech, like the president's sweeping public orations, promised something for everyone:

"The more I read, the more Jackson's speech looked like a veritable public relations jambalaya. She spoke to those committed to wetlands, spotted owls, to asthma sufferers, climate change, to those concerned about coal and gas emissions, to the Clean Air Act, to trash incineration, dioxins, pesticides, green chemistry, research, unions, medical professionals, public health groups, industry, environmentalism, to those who want jobs, fast food packaging, to unborn children, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and postal workers, as well as everyone who emails public comments to the EPA or who's concerned about health care or health..."

I commented at the time that her speech was clearly a "marketing tool and conversation generator but not a public policy statement." We could get mad about a lot of things in her speech, I'm sure, if we took it as public policy commitment.

If Only Talking Made Policy

Of course, in that speech Jackson did mention bisphenol A, saying: "Every few weeks, we read about new potential threats: Bisphenol A, or BPA - a chemical that can affect brain development and has been linked to obesity and cancer..." Or, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sees it: "The first chemical on her list: BPA." But, writes MJS: "In the end, though, her agency settled on four other chemicals to target first for the action plans." (emphasis ours)

So as MJS says, it's true, "first" Jackson did mention BPA. Then she said "pthalates", then "dioxins, then "lead" (each once). One of the Journal-Sentinel's sources labeled EPA's stance as "curious". I'm as cynical as anyone, but lets look at Jackson's rhetorical choices.

San Francisco was the first in the nation to attempt action on bisphenol A and phthalates. Jackson was at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club talking to (I guess) some commoners -- not chemists or policy wonks. "Bisphenol A" and "pthalates", "dioxin", and "lead" would be recognizable and appreciated by the crowd. True, she didn't explicitly mention "polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) including the commercial versions of pentabromodiphenyl ether (c-pentaBDE), octabromodiphenyl ether (c-octaBDE), and decabromodiphenyl ether (c-decaBDE)" -- the flame retardants in the first batch of four EPA action plans. But had she, the crowd, eyes glazing over, probably would have slumped into trance instead of thinking the EPA was their friend and ally. Whether you view this as PR or marketing or just common sense, its elementary communication. And as an aside -- why no concern about the EPA's omission of lead or dioxin in the first batch of action plans?

Sept. 29th: EPA Announces Four Chemical "Action Plans". Sept. 30th: Names Chemicals

As for the EPA's choice of which chemicals would be targeted first, on September 29, 2009 , the EPA issued a press release" right after Jackson's speech, announcing its intention to issue four action plans in December:

"The EPA has identified an initial list of chemicals for possible risk management action and anticipates completing and posting an initial set of four action plans in December. It will complete and post additional chemical action plans in four-month intervals thereafter."

On September 30, 2009, the EPA issued another press release, naming the four chemicals of top interest, the same ones that it produced action plans for in December:

"EPA today announced a series of actions on four chemicals raising serious health or environmental concerns...The agency's actions represent its determination to use its authority under the existing Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to the fullest extent possible...In addition to phthalates, the chemicals EPA is addressing today are short-chain chlorinated paraffins, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and perfluorinated chemicals, including PFOA.

So in a September 30th press release, the EPA named the same four chemicals that were in the December 30, 2009 action plan announcement. Then did the American Chemistry Council (ACC) really sway the EPA's BPA decision in a meeting December 22nd with OMB/OIRA, eight days before the EPA's action plan announcement?

The Chemical Lobby, BPA & The EPA: Economics Factors?

To me, aside from the overly conspiratorial premise of the article, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and CPR valuably point the public's attention to some enviable industry access. The ACC sent five representatives to meet with four OMB,OIRA staff; and SABIC, a Saudi BPA manufacturer, sent two. The ACC apparently sent a letter requesting the meeting dated November 3rd. This is news: If you're a chemical lobby group or a Saudi BPA manufacturer, you can get a meeting with OMB/OIRA in a month and a half.

ACC also submitted a slim bibliography(.pdf) of research sources. The ACC submissions show the industry's dedication to a relentlessly one-sided messaging on chemical safety.

Six of fifteen studies in the bibliography have ACC's Steve Hentges (meeting attendee and ACC lobby spokesperson, who has relentlessly messaged about BPA safety) listed as the senior author (not unbiased). Three industry related studies intend to prove that BPA degrades quickly, which is an important criteria for EPA action plans. At least four other studies with various aims are authored by groups sponsored by plastics, BPA or chemical foundations. It's true, as the MJS writes, most of the studies authors have industry affiliations. There are hundreds of other studies to choose from which wouldn't bolster the ACC's arguments one tiny little bit. (Although to be fair, the ACC is a chemical lobby group -- not an unbiased journalist, a point I'd hope the EPA recognizes)

But the ACC included one study from Ryan et al published in Toxicological Sciences (Online October, 2009), that is an EPA study conducted by EPA employees. This study concludes that low-dose bisphenol A does not alter puberty, fertility, or anatomy and sexual behavior in rats, compared to the estrogen control. Several groups dispute this study because, for one, the strain of rat is not as sensitive to low-dose estrogen" (.PDF Update 02/19/10). However the study's sponsoring author has disputed their claims (which are longstanding) to Trevor Butterworth of Stats.org, which has been doing PR on behalf of the bisphenol A industry. We previously discussed Stats.org's role in several posts.

If anything might dissuade the EPA from acting on BPA it would be its own studies (which they didn't need the ACC to highlight.) The senior author on the study, L. Earl Gray Jr., also testified before the EPA in 2008, emphasizing that his level of "concern" (an agency measure of potential harm) about bisphenol A exposure was less that his level of concern for phthalates exposure. Industry groups have touted Ryan's and Gray's work. If the Ryan and Gray's study methodology is in question, no activist has been too public about it (Update 02/19/10: A letter in Toxicological Sciences published 02/17/10 explains the problem with rat strain.) Perhaps more media focus should be placed here, on the EPA's own study.

The ACC letter requesting the meeting asks for chemical industry participation in the EPA decision making process (a request that seems rather unnecessary given the easy access industry does have). The letter also asks EPA to "be sensitive to the potential and foreseeable negative effect on the marketplace...the market impact on bisphenol A demonstrates this is a serious and real concern." Of course this is the primary goal of ACC, to urge the EPA not to impact any one of 80,000 chemicals' markets.

The EPA, in contrast, has said that its priority is to "review all chemicals against safety standards that are based solely on considerations of risk - not economics or other factors." (emphasis ours). It will be interesting to see how the EPA decides on bisphenol A, and whether its considerations to "risk" will include industry consideration to economic factors - or not. However just the fact that OMB and EPA were willing to sit with the ACC lobby group shows a willingness to listen to their (always) economic arguments.

The EPA -- Total Pushover?

I don't think I'm particularly naive in these matters, we've been following industry influence on policy for a while, especially BPA, which we've been following since 2005. We've specifically written about EPA apparently backing off of regulation under pressure from OIRA/OMB several times before.

But I'd be surprised if the EPA turned their intentions for BPA around based on this meeting. First, it appears from their press releases that they had already concluded back in September which four chemicals were first up for action plans. The idea that they would be so swayed is practically absurd, given the transparently, almost lazily, self-interested documents submitted by industry. Somehow I have more confidence in this EPA then to think they changed action plans based on those almost disrespectful pleas. But they do, now, have their own scientists saying that BPA isn't as dangerous as phthalates.

Clearly the EPA is not quite committed to regulating BPA as activists want. But it has put $30 million towards EPA research. It's also conducting its own studies. Hundreds of science studies provide evidence that BPA is harmful, but there are enough impacts from EPA decisions on industry that the agency needs to continue its BPA investigation. However, consider dioxins, another chemical the EPA mentioned in its Commonwealth Club speech. Dioxins are proven to be carcinogenic, a far more damning research finding than has to date been applied to BPA, but the EPA is still struggling to contain their use. On BPA, I'd be the first to say that there's enough research, as would many states and communities. But federal policy-making is not science. So is it more than poppycock to suggest that the EPA was singularly pressured by one ACC meeting to change its mind on BPA?