Christopher Lee (1922-2015)

Sir Christopher Lee's Fifteen Greatest Roles

• Frankenstein's Monster (The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957)
• Count Dracula (Dracula, 1958; Dracula—Prince of Darkness, 1966; Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, 1968; El Conde Dracula, 1970; Taste the Blood of Dracula, 1970; Scars of Dracula, 1970; Dracula, A.D. 1972, 1972; The Satanic Rites of Dracula, 1973)
• Sir Henry Baskerville (The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1959)
• Kharis (The Mummy, 1959)
• Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes [Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace], 1962; Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady, 1991; Incident at Victoria Falls, 1992)
• Kurt Menliff (La Frusta e il Corpo [The Whip and the Body], 1963)
• Franklyn Marsh (Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, 1964 [“The Disembodied Hand” episode])
• Dr. Fu Manchu (The Face of Fu Manchu, 1965); The Brides of Fu Manchu, 1966; The Vengeance of Fu Manchu, 1967; The Blood of Fu Manchu, 1969; The Castle of Fu Manchu, 1969)
• Rasputin (Rasputin—The Mad Monk, 1966)
• Duc de Richeleau (The Devil Rides Out, 1968)
• Mycroft Holmes (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, 1970)
• Dr. Charles Marlowe/Edward Blake, (I, Monster, 1971) [based on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde]
• Lord Summerisle (The Wicker Man, 1973)
• Rochefort (The Three Musketeers, 1973; The Four Musketeers—The Revenge of Milady, 1975; The Return of the Musketeers, 1989))
• Scaramanga (The Man With the Golden Gun, 1974)

Take the A Train

I'm sure the terrible Amtrak derailment near Philadelphia that killed 8 people and injured 200 others captured your attention. Despite House Speaker John Boehner calling the idea “stupid,” there is reason to believe that Congressional budget cuts played a role in the accident by delaying the installation of positive train control, a signal system that would have automatically slowed trains traveling above the speed limit. In Mr. Boehner's simplistic world view, each event has one and only one cause. Therefore, if the accident can be attributed to human error, legislators are absolved of responsibility for cutting spending that would have protected passengers from human error. In sharp contrast to the usual political response to such tragedies, on the day after the accident, the House Appropriations Committee voted to reduce Amtrak's budget by another 15% next year. Highways and airports each receive about 45 times the subsidies that Amtrak does.

Amtrak's problems and our own will be compounded if the American people conclude that passenger trains are unsafe, especially if they decide to travel by car instead. Here are the data on annual number of deaths per mile travelled, supplied by Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post.

Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs during President Obama's first term, is a lawyer by profession, but his books and articles draw heavily on research in social psychology. In a recent op-ed, he mentions two reasons people might overreact to news of the Amtrak tragedy.

1. Probability neglect. When deciding on a course of action, a rational decision maker should weight the utility of each alternative by its probability. Sunstein coined the term probability neglect to refer to people's tendency to completely ignore probabilities when making their decisions. As a result, our actions are influenced far too much by low probability risks, such as the chance of a plane crash, and low probabilty benefits, such as winning the Powerball lottery.

Sunstein overstates his case when he claims that probabilities are completely neglected, but there is evidence from psychologist Paul Slovic and others that average citizens do a poor job of estimating the risks posed by various activities and technologies, when the judgments of experts are used as the criterion of accuracy. An example is nuclear power, which is judged to be much more dangerous by non-experts than experts. When experts make risk assessments, their estimates are largely determined by annual numbers of fatalities, while lay people's judgments are influenced by other characteristics such as catastrophic potential.

2. Availability heuristic. Sunstein's second reason that people might overreact to the Amtrak accident helps to explain some of our poor risk judgments. A judgmental heuristic is a simple rule that people use to make decisions quickly and without much thought. The availability heuristic, first identified by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, states that the frequency of some object or event is judged on the basis of how easily it can be brought to mind. For example, availability is influenced by proximity in space and time; that is, we are more likely to recall events that occurred nearby or recently. Please check out this brief explanation of the concept.
   
   

As noted in the video, one factor determining availability is the salience or emotional impact of an event. When asked to estimate the frequency of various causes of death, we overestimate those that are more dramatic, such as homicides and accidents, while underestimating more mundane causes, such as heart disease or diabetes. A followup study showed parallel differences in the amounts of attention given to these causes of death by the news media. Since the media usually devote more attention to infrequent events, such as plane and train wrecks, than ordinary, everday occurrences—the “man bites dog” phenomenon—they contribute to our tendency to overestimate the probability of rare events and underestimate more common ones.

My intent is not to criticize media coverage of events like the Amtrak accident. In fact, my first impulse was to include a picture of the accident, thereby making myself part of the problem. Our task, as critical readers, is to remind ourselves to place media publicity in its larger statistical context, and to start being less afraid of Ebola, for example, and more afraid of obesity.

You may also be interested in reading:

Death By Anecdote, Part 1

Good Studies Go to the Back of the Bus

Unsafe Exposure

A new study has found unsafe levels of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), linked to cancer and respiratory illness, near fracking sites in Carroll County, Ohio. The study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, was conducted by a research team headed by Drs. Kim Anderson of Oregon State University and Erin Haynes of the University of Cincinnati. The first author was Blair Paulik, an OSU graduate student. The article is gated, but secondary sources, including an OSU press release, give what appears to be a complete, though non-technical, description of the study.

Carroll County, 70 miles southeast of Cleveland, has 30,000 residents, lies on the Utica Shale formation, and had 421 natural gas wells at the time of the study, February 2014. (It now has 480.) The study was initiated by concerned citizens who contacted Dr. Haynes.  

Air samplers were placed on the properties of 23 volunteers who lived within 3 miles of gas wells. The monitors contained treated materials that absorbed contaminants. They were sealed in airtight bags and shipped to Dr. Anderson's lab for analysis. Volunteers were trained in proper collection and handling of the data.

PAHs are hydrocarbons (compounds of carbon and hydrogen), seven of which, i.e., benzopyrene, are classified by the Environmental Protection Agency as carcinogenic. Prenatal exposure is also associated with lower IQ and childhood asthma. Based on their data, the authors calculated that the lifetime cancer risk for those living closest (.1 miles) to the wells is 2.9 in 10,000. This is almost three times the EPA's acceptable level of 1 in 10,000. Levels of PAHs declined 30% at a distance of three miles—still well above the acceptable limits. Levels were about 10 times higher than a rural Michigan county containing no gas wells.

Researcher Blair Paulik in front of an air sampler
(© Oregon State University)

In googling the study, I found an article in Marcellus Drilling News, a pro-fracking website, calling this a “sham study.” Some of their objections were silly, i.e., that the OSU authors were “a long way from home,” and that the article “sneaks in the c-word.”  (Estimating cancer risk was the point of the study.) I found three possibly substantive criticisms: that there were too few data collection sites, that they were not randomly distributed throughout the county, and that the data were collected by “untrained volunteers.” The third objection is false, but if the samples were carelessly handled, it's likely they would have captured fewer, not more, contaminants. Since neither the gas wells nor the human population are randomly distributed within the county, I doubt the value of including data from locations that are far from either gas wells, people or both (although it certainly would have diluted the findings).

Future studies should randomly select fracking sites and collect more samples at varying distances from the wells, including some more than 3 miles away, to establish the physical boundaries of the contamination.

You might also be interested in reading:

Is Fracking Safe?

Fracking and Public Health, Part 1

Fracking Up Baby

White People Don't Riot: A Manual of Style for Ambitious Young Journalists

Last week, two motorcycle gangs clashed at a restaurant in Waco, TX. They fought with fists, chains, knives and guns. Nine of them were killed, 18 were injured and 170 were arrested.

What is the proper terminology to use when referring to this incident in the corporate media? The New York Times referred to it variously as a “confrontation,” “fight,” “shootout,” “chaos,” and “problems.” To this, CNN added “melee,” “ruckus,” “fracas,” “brawl,” and “brouhaha.” Under no circumstances, however, is it to be referred to as a “riot,” since this term is reserved for the actions of people of color.

How are the participants in this incident to be called? As Charles Blow pointed out, the Times referred to them as “biker clubs” and “outlaw motorcycle gangs,” terms that have positive, even romantic, connotations to some Americans. However, they are not to be referred to as “thugs,” since this term refers to young black men demonstrating against police brutality. Furthermore, it would be ridiculous to assume that biker gangs are representative of white culture generally, or to speculate that their behavior was influenced by heavy metal music. It is equally inappropriate to question whether their fathers were present during their upbringing.

A similar principle applies to the use of the word “terrorist.” Terrorists are Muslims who plot or engage in violent acts against non-combatants. It follows then that white people engaged in similar actions are, by definition, not terrorists. In fact, when white people do these things, one may question whether they are newsworthy at all. Here is a useful case in point.

© Doggart for Congress

Robert Doggart, an ordained Christian minister and former Congressional candidate from Signal Mountain, TN was recently convicted of plotting—on tape and on the internet—to attack the residents of Islamberg, a small, rural Muslim community near Hancock, NY. To implement his plan, Doggart recruited followers and “battle tested” his M4 rifle. His statements, recorded by an informant, included the following:

Those guys [have] to be killed. Their buildings need to be burnt down. If we can get in there and do that not losing a man, even the better.

Yet Doggart was allowed to plead guilty only to interstate communication of threats, is out on bail, and faces a maximum penalty of five years in jail.

You've probably never heard of this case, and rightly so. Attempting to report such a crime in the corporate media would likely end the career of an aspiring young journalist. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting did a search of the Nexis data base looking for media coverage of the Doggart case. It was reported in local Tennessee news media, and by a handful of mostly small newspapers in the US, UK and Pakistan. It was not covered by the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, NPR or any of the national television networks.

Imagine the saturation coverage the corporate media would have given this incident had it been a Muslim group plotting a similar attack on a small Christian community.

Where did Doggart get the idea to attack Hancock, NY?

As the Daily Beast pointed out, one reason for the lack of coverage is that the FBI chose not to put out a press release about Doggart's arrest. This stands in sharp contrast to the extensive publicity given to cases of entrapment in which an undercover agent is able to persuade some hapless Muslim to agree to participate in an FBI-planned terrorist plot. When deciding what is important, journalists are well-advised to follow the lead of the FBI.

Aspiring reporters may question whether there are any exceptions to the “white people don't riot” rule. There are. The term “riot” can sometimes refer to the behavior of groups of predominantly white people, provided they are demonstrating in favor of a liberal cause. Occupy Wall Street is a recent example. A helpful cue for predicting a "riot" is when the police show up in "riot gear."

You may also be interested in reading:

TV Networks on Torture: "Just Do It!"

Stuart Hall (1932-2014)

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

And Then There Were Nones

Last year, I posted the results of the General Social Survey showing that, in 2012, 20% of American adults reported themselves as having “no religion,” and that these folks—referred to by demographers as the “nones”—are increasing by about .6% per year. This month, the Pew Research Group released the results of their 2014 Religious Landscape Study. This survey, undertaken every seven years, is based on the results of a quota sample of over 35,000 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus .6%. Although Pew refers to their nones as “unaffiliated,” the results are strikingly consistent.

Pew reports that 22.8% of the population were nones in 2014, up 6.7% from 16.1% in 2007. Meanwhile, those calling themselves Christians declined from 78.4% to 70.6%. This amounts to an increase of 19 million nones, for a new total of 56 million. Among all religious groups, the nones are second in size only to evangelical Protestants. A followup question showed that, of this 22.8%, 3.1% said they were atheists, 4% claimed to be agnostic, and 15.8% believed “nothing in particular.” This leaves open the possibility that some of the nones engage in spiritual practices, pray, or believe in one or more gods. There was also a 6% increase in those saying that religion is "not too" or "not at all important" in their lives.

The Pew researchers offer two explanations for this shift.

1. Generational replacement. The most dramatic increases in the percentage of nones occurred among younger adults. However, they increased across all generations, even rising by 2% among people over 70.
2. Switching religions. Among those who report switching their religious affiliation, the nones showed the largest gains of any group. Eighteen percent of Americans who were raised in a religious faith now claim to be unaffiliated.

Another perspective on this trend comes from the 2015 State of Atheism in America, a study by the Barna Group. It combines the results of four surveys of 23,000 adults conducted in 2011 through 2014. The Barna Group calls their nones the “unchurched,” meaning that they say they haven't attended church in the last six months. This results in a larger group, about 36% of the total. They find that 25% of the unchurched are either atheists or agnostics, a group they call “skeptics.” I find this a more interesting group than folks who believe “nothing in particular,” since they would seem to have given some thought to religion.

The Barna Group identifies five demographic shifts among their skeptics when they are compared to the same group in a 1993 survey they conducted.

1. They are younger. In fact, 34% of them are between 18 and 30.
2. They are more educated. Half of them are college graduates. Only 32% of Americans over 25 have graduated from college.
3. A higher percentage are women. Male skepticism increased too, but not as much as among women.
4. They are more racially diverse. This is due largely to an increase in skepticism among Hispanics and especially Asians.
5. They are more regionally dispersed. The Northeast and West continue to have higher percentages of skeptics, but the differences are not as great as in the past.

The last three trends suggest a mainstreaming of skepticism. Rather than being a distinctive subgroup, atheists and agnostics are becoming more broadly representative of the population. One major exception, however, is the continuing underrepresentation of African-Americans.

The Barna Group's stated goal is to reconnect with skeptics and bring them back under the influence of superstition, so they asked skeptics what they thought of Christian churches. They note four common responses, although they don't report the percentages who gave each one.

1. The church is group of people who share a physical space but are not otherwise connected to one another in meaningful ways.
2. The church adds little of value to their community.
3. The church stands for the wrong political policies: war, sexual and physical violence, prevention of gay marriage and reproductive freedom, etc.
4. Church leaders are not trustworthy.

The third response supports the backlash hypothesis—that young people are leaving the Christian religion because they disagree with its conservative politics.

What can we conclude from all of this? Due to the positive association of religiosity with age, the percentage of nones is likely to continue to increase. This is good news for liberals. In an earlier post, I presented evidence suggesting that the most important causes of religiosity are poverty and lack of education. Barring an increase in the financial desperation of the middle class or a weakening of our system of public education—both very real possibilities—the future of organized religion does not seem very bright.

You may also be interested in reading:

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 1

The Revolt of the Nones, Part 2

The God Squad, Part 1: Religion as Selfish Individualism

Advance Planning

Stanley Milgram's studies of obedience to authority are almost certainly the most famous social psychology investigations yet conducted. They suggest that ordinary people are willing to harm others (to the point of killing them) on the orders of an authority figure who provides only minimal justification for doing so. What makes them so surprising is that they show that behavior we ordinarily attribute to strong personal convictions is largely under situational control--a basic argument of almost all social psychology.

A familiar pose:  Peter Sarsgaard as Stanley Milgram

Experimenter, a new film about the life and work of Stanley Milgram by Michael Almereyda, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. It has received good notices. Film critic Amy Taubin chose it as the festival's best film. In the March-April Film Comment, she says:

Michael Almereyda's Experimenter is a spare, formally ingenious biopic about Stanley Milgram, the Yale social psychology professor who in 1961 concocted an experiment that demonstrated that obedience to authority overruled morality and empathy in a large majority of his subjects. . . . Almereyda's screenplay and direction—this is far and away his strongest, most coherent, and moving film—and Peter Sarsgaard and Winona Ryder's performances as the titular experimenter and his wife capture the profound sense of irony that infused the Milgrams' entire life.  

No release date has been announced and no trailer is available yet. The best substitute I could find was this interview. This is not a film that's likely to be shown at the mall, so we'll have to pay attention in order to see it. Watch this space.

The best source of information about Milgram's life and work is Tom Blass's book, The Man Who Shocked the World.

The only other film I know of that directly portrays social psychological research is the 2001 German film Das Experiment, a fictionalized version of Phil Zimbardo's prison simulation, a study closely related to Milgram's work. The film deviates considerably from real events, portraying the lead experimenter as unconcerned about the suffering of the participants and eventually morphing into a thriller about whether the subjects can escape from the laboratory. Phil Zimbardo was not amused. Nevertheless, it's worth checking out if you can find it.

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The Dirty Dozen(*) of 2014

April Fools

Unfortunately, these politicians are not joking.

The Earth will end only when God declares it's time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth.

                                                                   Rep. John Shimkus, R-IL

Is there some thought being given to subsidizing the clearing of rain forests in order for some countries to eliminate that production of greenhouse gases?
                                                                  Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, R-CA

In case we had forgotten, because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, I ask the chair, do you know what this is? It's a snowball, just from outside here. It's very, very cold out.

                                                                 Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, Chair

                                                   Environment and Public Works Committee

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Snow Job

A Blow to Baseball

Concussions are not as big an issue in baseball as they are in boxing, football or hockey, but they are a problem. Players can collide with a wall or one another on the field or basepaths. Batters can be hit in the head with a pitch, and pitchers with a batted ball. At greatest risk are catchers, whose facemasks are routinely jarred by foul tips. Concussions account for about 2% of time lost, and are increasing at a rate of 14% per year. Although baseball has a seven-day disabled list specifically for concussion victims, there is no universal time off standard. Players can return if they show no symptoms, pass a series of physical and mental tests, and have the approval of the team doctor.

© Getty Images

What makes baseball attractive for study purposes is the fact that individual performance can be quantified easily. A research team head by Jeffrey Bazarian at the University of Rochester compared the performance of 66 position players (non-pitchers) who suffered concussions from 2007 through 2013 on seven offensive metrics: at bats, batting average, on-base percentage, home runs, slugging percentage, OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage), strikeouts and walks. (Of course, these seven measures are not independent.) These data were calculated for the two weeks before the concussion (pre-event), the two weeks immediately after the player's return (post-event), and the period between 4 and 6 weeks after his return (long term post-event). To control for the possibility that performance was changed by time off alone, they computed the same measures for 68 players granted leave for paternity or bereavement. The analysis statistically controlled for position (catcher vs. non-catcher) and number of days off.

The results showed significant immediate post-event declines for concussion victims on four of the measures: batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS.  Overall, the players coming back from paternity or bereavement leave showed a slight improvement, suggesting there may be some value in mid-season rest. The concussion victims continued to hit more poorly relative to the leave group during the long term post-event period, but the differences were not statistically significant. Here are the means:

Batting Average

Event	Pre-Event	Post-Event	Long Term Post-Event
Concussion	.249	.227	.261
Leave	.255	.271	.269

On-Base Percentage

Event	Pre-Event	Post-Event	Long Term Post-Event
Concussion	.315	.287	.318
Leave	.331	.332	.333

Slugging Percentage

Event	Pre-Event	Post-Event	Long Term Post-Event
Concussion	.393	.347	.398
Leave	.393	.433	.404

OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging)

Event	Pre-Event	Post-Event	Long Term Post-Event
Concussion	.708	.633	.715
Leave	.724	.765	.736

The results suggest that these ballplayers had not fully recovered from their concussions before returning to action. The authors mention several possible explanations for the performance decline, including poorer visual acuity, slower reaction times, and problems with balance. Hitting a baseball thrown at 90 mph from a distance of 60 feet requires optimal performance of all these systems. However, the two measures most clearly associated with “seeing the ball,” strikeouts and walks, did not show significant change. Maybe the batters were hitting the ball at the same rate, but not hitting it as solidly.

I can understand why baseball players feel pressure to return to the field after an injury. The mean salary is slightly over $4 million, a loss to the team of almost $25,000 per game for time spent on the disabled list. This study suggests, however, that keeping the player on the bench longer might benefit not only the player but also the team.

Post Script

When this study was reported in the New York Times, the reporter interviewed Dr. Gary Green, Medical Director for Major League Baseball. The article states:

Dr. Green was . . . unimpressed with the study, which he said had major methodological problems and lacked proper controls. “You really can't draw many conclusions from it. If it shows anything it shows that the batting parameters—strikeouts and walks—are actually fairly consistent before and after injury.”

Green said he felt that there was no way to distinguish the changes the study found from ordinary variations over the course of the season that happens with all players.

There are several problems with Dr. Green's comments. Of course, no one is denying that there are consistent differences between players in batting performance. Since this study is a within-subjects design, one of its strengths is that it permits these individual differences to be statistically eliminated, allowing a more precise estimate of the effects of concussions. It was also disingenuous of Dr. Green to mention only strikeouts and walks, while ignoring the four other performance measures that are likely to be of equal or greater interest to the team management.

More importantly, Dr. Green has a fundamental misunderstanding of the logic of research design. When results are statistically significant, that means they are unlikely to be explained by ordinary variability over the course of the season. For example, if the probability of a result were less than .01, the likelihood of this result occuring by chance is less than one in one hundred. The probabilities of the four results reported in the above four tables were less than .005, .01, .004 and .003, respectively.

In my opinion, a reporter has a responsibility to do more than quote spokespersons on both sides of a controversy when one of them makes erroneous or implausible statements. Letting such remarks go unchallenged is a form of false balancing. The reporter should have pressed Dr. Green to explain what methodological problems he found with the study. He also should have briefly explained the meaning of statistical significance to the reader. If he felt uncomfortable saying these things in his own voice, he could have called one of the authors of the study and asked him or her to respond to Dr. Green.

Of course, this presumes that the reporter knows enough about research design to be skeptical of Dr. Green's remarks.

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Football's Days Are Numbered

The Matthew Effect

The Job Killers, Part 1

Snow Job

The corporate media, in their near-saturation coverage of extreme weather events, almost never mention climate change as an important cause of these events. This is documented in a study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), which examines news reports about the extreme cold and heavy snowstorms that have hit the Eastern U.S. this year.

FAIR examined the transcripts of all ABC, CBS and NBC network news programs from January 25—the time of the first blizzard—through March 4. There were 417 segments that mentioned extreme cold, snow or ice, but only seven of them (less than 2%) made reference to climate change.

There is a near-consensus among climate scientists that warmer ocean temperatures lead to a greater concentration of moisture in the atmosphere above the oceans, which in turn increases the amount of snowfall during winter storms. Warmer temperatures also can increase snowfall because the greatest amount of snow falls when the temperature is between 28 and 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

There is less consensus about the causes of the extreme cold of the past two winters, but it seems to be related to the polar vortex, a cyclone-like weather pattern that circles around each pole. Less ice and snow cover at the North Pole has weakened the polar vortex, causing cold air masses to drift southward over the Northern Hemisphere.

Attributing winter storms to climate change seems counterintuitive to people who identify it exclusively with global warming. Unfortunately, four news segments were devoted to Senator James Inhofe's (R-OK) misleading stunt of bringing a snowball onto the Senate Floor to mock “global warming.”

A second finding of the FAIR study is that the corporate media gave substantially less coverage to the current drought in the Southwestern U.S. to than snowstorms in the East. There were twelve segments on the drought during the time of the study, and only one of them mentioned climate change.

That increasing temperature might lead to droughts is not at all counterintuitive. All the climate models predict less rainfall in the American Southwest. But unlike blizzards, droughts are “non-events,” which are less likely to attract media attention even thought their consequences may be quite serious.

Why are the networks so reluctant to connect extreme weather to climate change? One possibility is that they see climate change as a partisan political issue. Its mere mention as a cause of some negative event may be seen as liberal bias. But if reality has a liberal bias, this means that less reality will find its way onto the news. A cynic might also point to the networks' concern about alienating the fossil fuel companies upon whose advertising they rely so heavily.

A study by social psychologists at Rutgers University shows that when people have direct experience with extreme weather—in their case, Hurricanes Irene and Sandy—they are more likely to support politicians whose policies are intended to minimize climate change. However, if this message relating extreme weather to climate change is to reach the ubiquitous “low information voter” in time, the media must make these connections early and often. Right now, that's not happening.

Post Script

The one drought report that did mention climate change was an ABC segment which included this depressing example of false balancing.

A new study from Stanford University claims the drought in California is being fueled by human-caused climate change. But some scientists not involved in the study are questioning some of those findings.

Really? How many scientists? Who are they? Are they independent researchers or are they employed by fossil fuel corporations? What are their objections to the Stanford study? Are these objections scientifically valid? We'll never get answers to these questions from the Mouse House. ABC's message is simply the usual misleading claim that "experts disagree" about climate change.

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TV Networks on Torture:  "Just Do It!"

This Will Not Surprise You

Climate of Mistrust

Liberal Bias

A group of conservative psychologists headed by John Chambers has been fighting back against what they perceive as a liberal bias among social psychologists. Their latest paper demonstrates some systematic errors in assessing social mobility in the United States, with liberals making greater errors than conservatives. The authors refer to these errors as “distorted along ideological lines.”

Social mobility refers to the upward or downward movement of individuals between social classes. It is usually measured by comparing different generations within the same family, called intergenerational mobility. If the United States were a land of great economic opportunity, there would be only a modest relationship between people's wealth and that of their parents. However, studies have shown that there is less social mobility in this country than in most other industrial democracies.

Until recently, most scholars believed that social mobility in this country had declined in the last few decades. This was an inference based on the well-established fact that income inequality has increased dramatically since 1980. Since it is known that countries with the greatest inequality have the lowest social mobility, it was presumed that social mobility had been declining as well. However, in 2014, a research group led by Raj Chetty published an extensive study of the intergenerational mobility of Americans born between 1971 and 1993 using income tax data. They found that social mobility has been relatively constant over the time period covered by the study. The authors note that much of the increase in inequality has occurred at the extreme upper end (“the 1%”), which doesn't have much effect on social mobility. 

Chambers and his colleagues did an internet survey of 410 American adults in which they were asked to estimate what percentage of Americans born in the early 1980s whose parents were in the top, middle and lower thirds of the income distribution had migrated to each of the other two thirds of the distribution by the time they were in their late twenties. The accuracy of their estimates was measured against the Chetty, et al., data. They were also asked to indicate, on a 5-point scale, whether they thought social mobility had increased, decreased or stayed the same over the past 40 years. Finally, they were asked to state their political idelogy on a 5-point scale running from “strongly liberal” to “strongly conservative.” 

Here are the main findings (which were replicated in a followup study):

• Most respondents thought there was less social mobility than had actually occurred. Although all three groups underestimated social mobility, liberals underestimated it more than moderates and conservatives did. With regard to people whose parents were in the middle class, liberals underestimated the percentage that were upwardly mobile, while conservatives underestimated the percentage that were downwardly mobile. These findings are illustrated in this chart.
  
  

• The majority (56%) thought that social mobility had declined over the past 40 years, with only 15% answering correctly that it was stable. While the majority in all three groups thought mobility had declined, a higher percentage of liberals gave this incorrect response than moderates or conservatives.

The behavior of the liberals in this study exhibits motivated reasoning. They tend to believe what their ideology tells them, even though in this case it isn't true. Their errors were consistent with the liberal critique of this country that it does not permit enough social mobility. (Conservatives were also guilty of motivated reasoning when the underestimated the percentage of middle class people who were downwardly mobile.)

Some social psychologists and journalists have stated or implied that politically motivated reasoning is more prevalent among conservatives than liberals—the assymetry thesis. Chambers and his colleagues rightly point out that their results contradict the assymetry thesis. It is likely that all people engage in motivated reasoning, the size and direction of their errors depending on the issue at hand. Since liberals favor progressive change while conservatives value the status quo, liberals may exaggerate the seriousness of current problems, such as limited social mobility. Chambers is free to call this “distortion” as long as he applies a similar label to the errors of conservatives.

(Note to researchers: If you want to find “distortion,” it's probably best to present participants with a cognitive task similar to the one used by Chambers—a task that is unfamiliar, and for which everyday life provides little help in arriving at a correct answer.)

Let me tell you what is not the intended take-home message of this post. Just because the public underestimates the amount of social mobility in this country, that does not mean that the current situation is satisfactory. The Horatio Alger myth is still a myth. Miles Corak demonstrated in 2006 that social mobility in the U.S. is substantially lower than in Canada and seven of the eight European countries in the study. Only the U.K. has a (slightly) more rigidly stratified society than the U.S. As one pundit suggested, if you want to live the American dream, move to Finland. Social mobility also varies dramatically by region with the U.S., with mobility being lowest in the southeastern states. (See this PBS interview of Raj Chetty.) Emmanuel Saez, one of the co-authors of the Chetty study, put it this way: “The level of opportunity is alarming, even though it's stable over time.”

Furthermore, the fact that inequality is increasing means that low social mobility has more serious consequences. As the rungs of the economic ladder move further apart, the economic penalty paid by those who are stuck in the middle and lower classes becomes greater. Quoting Saez again, “The consequences of the 'birth lottery'—the parents to whom a child is born—are larger today than in the past.”

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In Denial

Herding Cats

Is Democracy Possible?  Appendix

Our New Family Member, Django

When our beloved dog Chomsky passed away at age 14 in August, we thought it would be a long time before we adopted another. But then Tina found this one-year-old border terrier mix on the internet. He was once scheduled for euthanasia, but was rescued by Tracy's Dogs.

We've named him Django. We think it has a nice ring to it. It also honors jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt; Sergio Corbucci and Franco Nero, writer-director and star of the 1966 film Django; and Quentin Tarantino and Jamie Foxx of Django Unchained. He isn't completely socialized yet, but he's curious and bright and is learning quickly.

The Dirty Dozen(*) of 2014

The reason for the asterisk is the same as my reason for delaying this year's list of best films. I can't remember a year in which I've missed as many critically-acclaimed movies, through a combination of inattentiveness earlier in the year and bad weather during the end-of-year rush. Included among the unseen are American Sniper; Mr. Turner; Only Lovers Left Alive; Selma; Still Alice; The Theory of Everything; Two Days, One Night; and Under the Skin. I'm probably not going to see any of these films for a while, so I'll go with what I have. On the plus side, thanks to Pittsburgh's film festivals, I've managed to include some obscure but excellent films.

• The Babadook (Australia). A literate haunted house movie and commentary on family dynamics. It's good to have a horror film back in the dirty dozen.
• Boyhood. You have to admire the risks director Richard Linklater took in shooting a film over 12 years. The consensus choice of film critics, it probably fell short during award season because of its lack of emotional highs and lows.
• Citizenfour. There's very little technique in this documentary. Laura Poitras simply pointed the camera at Edward Snowden and let Glenn Greenwald interview him. But this is an essential film about the willingness of an individual to stand up against illegal state action.
• Confession of Murder (Korea). After the statute of limitations expires, a man confesses to murder and becomes an instant celebrity. The detective who conducted the original investigation searches for the truth. Koreans have made some great cop flicks.
• The Dark Valley (Austria). Although it's set in the snowy mountains of Austria in winter, the film has the plot structure and presentation of a revenge-themed spaghetti Western. Very entertaining genre film.
• Human Capital (Italy). On the surface, a mystery involving a hit-and-run accident. The facts are filled in as the same events are told from the perspectives of three different characters. The subtext is social inequality in Italy; specifically, the question of how much a human life is worth.
• Ida (Poland). As beautifully shot in black and white as any film I've seen lately, it has an intriguing premise: In 1962, a young orphan raised in a convent is about to take her vows when she discovers that she's Jewish. But the ending, while probably realistic, was a major disappointment.
• The Imitation Game (UK). My choice for best film of the year. The central irony is that Alan Turing, who saved the collective British derriere during WWII, was hounded to his death for being gay. Another great performance by Benedict Cumberbatch.
  
  

• A Most Wanted Man. This film of a John Le Carre spy novel involving the hunt for a terrorist went almost unnoticed despite the excellent acting of Philip Seymour Hoffman as a German secret agent.
• Nightcrawler. Not only does this action movie satirize the sleazy ethics of TV news, the main character (well-played by Jake Gyllenhaal) has internalized the ridiculous self-help messages taught by motivational speakers to naive business students.
• Stranger by the Lake (France). In this thriller, a man thinks he may have witnessed a murder at a gay swimming place, but he lets his libido overrule his judgment and winds up in real danger. The film is sexually explicit.
• Unforgiven (Japan). An extremely faithful remake of Clint Eastwood's 1992 film, but the main characters are all samurai. The lead actor is exactly who you'd want in the Eastwood role--Ken Watanabe.

Here are two flawed honorable mentions.

• Snowpiercer (Korea) has a terrific premise: Runaway global warming, followed by a failed attempt at geoengineering, leaves the survivors stranded on a moving train (“Snowpiercer”) in a below-freezing world. Living arrangements on the train replicate the extreme inequality that preceded the Apocalypse, and the film is about the on-train revolution that follows. Unfortunately, some plot points make little sense, and the film lapses into mindless violence.
• Whiplash is a well-made, well-acted film with a great soundtrack, but is based on the flawed premise that the way to teach a young man to be a skilled jazz musician is to humiliate him, arousing both anger and fear. Reviews I've read suggest that many otherwise bright people accept this premise, which is not empirically supported.

My take on Birdman is that I agree that Alejandro Inarritu's camera work is outstanding, but I had a hard time identifying with the self-indulgent pseudo-problems of actors under stress. This is one of the world's most overpaid and underworked professions, so spare me, please.

My best actor is Benedict Cumberbatch for the second year in a row (last year, for The Fifth Estate). Best actress goes to Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, the beleaguered upper-class wife in Human Capital.

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Best Films of 2013

Failures of Memory--Big and Small

By now, we all know that Brian Williams “misremembered” that a helicopter he was in was hit by enemy fire in Iraq twelve years ago. The video below shows how his account of the incident changed over the years. Since the memory was self-serving, many people have characterized Williams' account as a lie rather than an accidental memory lapse. To people who have never been in a war zone, the idea that someone might forget whether his helicopter was hit by gunfire is a pretty tough sell. NBC News implicitly took this position when it punished him by suspending him without pay for six months. Several other well-known people, such as Hillary Clinton, have been caught in similar fabrications, and several of Williams' other recollections have come under suspicion.

Cognitive psychologists point out that the average person dramatically underestimates the malleability of human memory. False memory syndrome refers to cases in which people have an important memory that they truly believe, but which is factually incorrect. Some people have been convicted of crimes they did not commit, such as sexual abuse of children, on the basis of memories “recovered” by alleged victims, usually with the aid of mental health practitioners. Other innocent defendants have been convicted of crimes to which they confessed under police interrogation, and of which they believed they were guilty, at least for a time. A new study by Julia Shaw and Stephen Porter provides some of the best evidence yet for the construction of detailed and important false memories.

The authors used a paradign developed by Elizabeth Loftus for her “lost in a shopping mall” study, in which some college students were induced to develop this false memory. After 126 Canadian students had volunteered to participate in the study, their parents or primary caregivers were interviewed. The purpose of the interview was to identify one highly emotional event of a non-criminal nature that had occurred to the students during their adolescence, and to ascertain that they had never been arrested and charged with a crime. The first 60 students who met these criteria participated in a series of three interviews, each about one week apart.

In the first interview, they were asked to recall and describe the true event and a false event allegedly reported by their parents. In half the cases, the false event was that they were arrested and charged with a crime—ten cases each of assault, assault with a weapon, and theft. The other thirty false events were non-criminal: an accidental injury, being attacked by a dog, and losing a large amount of money. Since none of the participants reported remembering the false event during the first interview, they were given false contextual cues, were asked to try to recover the memory, and were given advice as to how to recover it. They were asked again to describe both events and answer several questions about them during the second and third interviews. At the end of the third interview, they were fully debriefed.

Participants were said to have accepted the false memory if they met two criteria: (1) they reported ten or more details of the incident not suggested by the interviewer, and (2) they reported during the debriefing that they truly believed the event had occurred. Forty-four of sixty participants (73%) met these criteria. The percentages did not differ very much among the six types of false events.

The researchers were impressed not only by the large number of participants who accepted the false memory but also by their “richly detailed” descriptions of it. They compared responses to the true and false memories among the 44 participants who experienced the false memory. These students recalled more details of the true memory (92, on average) than the false memory (72)—but 72 details is still fairly impressive for a false memory. They had greater confidence in the true memory, and experienced it as more vivid, but the amount of anxiety generated by the true and false memories did not differ.

There are some important differences between Brian Williams' false memory and those created in the Shaw and Porter study. As far as we know, Williams' memory was not prompted by anyone else. However, Loftus has suggested that he might have been influenced by “audience tuning.” To paraphrase Jon Stewart, audience responses to his tale might have excited the pleasure centers in his brain and caused his story to drift toward greater bravery over time. In addition, the memories created in the study were not self-serving. Just the opposite. They remembered being charged with a crime. Would their misremembering have been even greater if the memory had been flattering to them?

Leslie Savan expressed her satisfaction that at least someone is being punished for lying about our invasion of Iraq, even if it's not one of the right people. Others have spoken about the relative unimportance of Brian Williams' battlefield exaggeration when compared to the many other lies he routinely told on behalf of the government and his corporate sponsors every weekday night. In fact, we might speculate that NBC's main reason for suspending him was not that he told a false story but his loss of credibility, which might adversely affect public acceptance of their nightly propaganda report.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Tony Norman reports that he was in the Monroeville Mall last week when three people were shot, although he didn't see or hear the incident. When he posted his experience on Twitter, one person wryly commented, “in five years, he will say he was shot.”

By the way, did I ever tell you about the time I rescued a dog from a burning building?

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Hey, Wait a Minute!

A Stroll Down Memory Lane