More NYT Nonsense

The New York Times health section is making it too easy today. Let's start with the final paragraph of this article to lay out the conclusion:

“They show quite convincingly, yet again, that overweight and, in particular, obesity, raise the risk of mortality,’’ Dr. Stampfer said. “It really should be the final word on this issue that’s arisen as to whether overweight is actually bad for you or not.”

Strong words, eh? Too bad he can't back them up. Here's the main claim being made regarding the modestly overweight:

The researchers said the more telling analysis arose when they focused on 186,000 healthy men and women who had never smoked. Among men and women, being overweight raised the risk of death 20 percent to 40 percent compared with normal-weight people, the researchers said.

Sounds scary. Let's examine some of the methodological issues so that we can aspire to the correct level of scared-ness. First, the population is drawn from those in the AARP. As the article acknowledges:

Because all the participants were recruited from AARP, they are not exactly representative of the population as a whole, and the participants reported their weight themselves, which contributes to some uncertainty in the results.

Kudos for the honesty.

Dr. Leitzmann said neither factor would probably skew the results considerably because “it’s a very large sample of people.”

Statistically the word skew has a specific meaning and the more correct term would be bias. Also, the good doctor is full of it. A large, non-representative sample is still non-representative. One possible advantage is that with a large enough sample you could select a random subsample that is representative of whatever population you're trying to capture (in this case the whole US). The article does not say whether they did this or not.

Secondly, the size of the sample reduces uncertainty but it does not reduce bias. In this case it means that peoples self-reported weight has been measured very accurately. It does not mean that their actual weight has been measured accurately at all.

Errors in reporting weights — people sometimes say they weigh less than they actually do — would also not produce a large effect, he added.

At least he acknowledges the potential bias, but, as I said above, it is not possible to know if the results are truely accurate or not.

Additionally, the mechanism for categorizing people as overweight is the body-mass index (BMI). The BMI was invented over 150 years ago. Its purpose is to categorize those with average body composition. Anyone with abnormal body composition, will not be categorized correctly. As an example, I am just below the overweight cut-off with my BMI, even though I am in excellent health. The disparity is due to my lifting weights and the subsequently higher muscular composition of my body.

“No single study is able to solve a controversy of this magnitude,” Dr. Leitzmann said, but he recommended that anyone overweight “should be looking to lose weight.”

I have to respect his honesty in his conclusion here. He may be reaching a bit, but he at least acknowledges that his study is not the end-all be-all of all research. Unlike Dr. Stampfer, who was not involved in the study, but throws out the concluding quote found above. This study suggests the possibility that being slighly overweight increases mortality, but it does not even come close to being the "final word" on the subject.

The study is an example of an observational study, in which a sample of existing data is analyzed for correlations. These types of studies are far inferior to randomly selecting the sample and assigning people to one category or the other. Obviously this is not possible to examine this problem; it is not realistic to randomly assign certain people to be overweight or normal weight. That means that there will be no single study, no matter how large, that will definitively answer the question.

Somatization Some of THIS

I found this New York Times article deeply offensive. Here's the lede:

People with a long history of medically unexplained symptoms — aches, pains, fatigue, dizziness and other complaints for which doctors can find no physical cause — might finally find relief.

Literal meaning: Hey, all you who people who modern medicine can't help, we might be able to help you.

Sounds pretty promising, right? Unfortunately the next paragraph blows that out of the water:

Two new studies by researchers who specialize in the baffling condition called somatization syndrome, estimated to affect up to 3 percent of adults, suggest that the quest for a physical explanation may take on a destructive life of its own. Instead, those with the syndrome should focus on practical strategies to regain normal function and relieve symptoms, the researchers say.

Wow. That is poorly written. Let's dissect that nonsense. First, they make up a name, somatization syndrome, as a catch-all for everything that doctor's can't seem to diagnose. That's unhelpful.

Then the article obliquely says that nothing is wrong with these people; it's all in their head. Well, golly-gee, if doctor's can't figure out what's wrong with you what does that leave? Nothing. You must be fine; you're just crazy. It can't possibly be the doctor or modern medicine that's at fault. No sir-ee, if doctor's can't diagnose it that means it doesn't exist.

Of course, they can't be honest and just tell you that they think you're crazy right to your face. That wouldn't be very effective. So instead, later in the article, they introduce "cognitive behavioral therapy" to, as the second paragraph says, "focus on practical strategies to regain normal function and relieve symptoms". RIIIIIIIIIGHT. They couldn't send people to psychologists because that would imply they were crazy, so let's make up a pseudoscientific therapy to go along with our pseudoscientific syndrome. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I'm sure that there are some subset of people with unexplained symptoms that are mildly hypochondriatic, but piling everyone with vague symptoms but no diagnosis in the same category is absolutely ridiculous. The arrogance is astonishing. To think that EVERYONE that doctor's can't diagnose is a whack-job is breathtakingly vile and condescending.

I've been looking for the following headline: "God Dead: Doctors/Lawyers Take Over", but I have to say I haven't seen it quite yet. Why don't they just admit that doctors are people too, and maybe, just maybe, they don't know everything.

Full disclosure: I have twice had many months-long illnesses that doctors could not diagnose. Both times I had to self-diagnose and treat. I now have a healthy skepticism about modern medicines' ability to do anything beyond antibiotics and trauma.

Women

Just want to point out two articles claiming to explain women. They seem remarkably similar. I'm not going to make any pronouncement as to how accurate the picture they portray is, except to say that I sincerely hope they are far from universal.

The first, from Michael Williams, points to a translated article about how women (allegedly) view the world.

The second, is an old article by Spengler at the Asia Times, that is referring to the possibility of women priests. He uses that as a launching point to discuss the general psychology of women.

Read at your own risk.

The Tower of Babel and Jargon

In Genesis, there is a story in which man tries to build a tower high enough to reach God. In punishment for such hubris, the Lord creates a proliferation of language among the peoples of Earth, such that they are divided and unable to muster such organizational capacity again (see wikipedia entry). I don't know if the story is literally true or intended allegorically, but it doesn't affect what I have to say.

Every professional field has their own language, consisting of various acronyms and words used with sometimes vastly different meanings than the norm. Economists talk of "declining marginal utility", the military has FUBAR and "five-by-five", businessman have "core competencies" and "shareholder value", engineering has "system-of-systems" and "modeling and simulation environment". Take each individual word from these terms, find its meaning, and you will find that it is at best tangentially related to the underlying meaning of the relevant term. Why is this? Why do these obscure terms exist? What drives the need to create technical jargon that often obfuscates as much as it elucidates? Why did I just use such big words?

I submit that it all goes back, conceptually, to the Tower of Babel. Apocryphal or not, it cannot be denied that there exists an enormous number of languages. Communication, and therefore cooperation, would be much easier for disparate peoples if all spoke a single language. With such manifest advantages, there must be a good reason why different tongues exist, beyond mere accident.

Language serves two purposes beyond its primary one of communication. The first is as a means of inclusion. Language is an identifier of what group an individual is a member. The second is the converse, as a means of exclusion. To define a group, there must be both members and outsiders, or else the distinction is meaningless. This directly relates to the biblical story, in that the abundance of languages is presented as a means of division and disorganization.

In every field, the use of jargon has two purposes. The first of these is communication. The use of specialized language allows often complicated ideas to be more efficiently presented than if each nuance was perfectly explained. This is the ostensible reason for jargon usage; because it facilitates communication among those who understand the terms. The problem with this is that often the meaning of technical jargon is at best imperfectly understood. There often don't exist clear, well-established meanings for technical terms. This can cause often painful miscommunication when two parties disagree on a terms meaning, especially when the difference is not explicitly addressed.

The second purpose, which I've been alluding to since the introduction, is to define membership in some group. Membership in some group helps to establish credibility to reinforce the trust of the hearer in the speaker's argument (see this column by Arnold Kling on trust cues). So while technical jargon can often seem to be irritating and unnecessary, it actually has an important role to play in both stating a position and in getting another person to believe in that position.

In defense of pessimism

Varifrank has an excellent piece referring to all the doom and gloom predictions that have been made pretty much since Thomas Malthus, two hundred years ago. He doesn't explicitly reference Malthus, but I think the blame for much of the apocalyptic we're-going-to-run-out-of-X-resource nonsense can be dated to him.

Varifrank refers to Hal Lindsey as the "king of silly predictions". I've never heard of him, but I do remember Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute. I participated in high school debate, and ten years ago the topic was U.S. foreign policy towards China. I'm not going to assume familiarity with high school debate rules; basically there were two teams of two who would face off in each round. One team would present some sort of plan addressing the topic for that year, including whatever evidence they could muster, and the other would try to poke holes in their case.

My partner and I that year built a case that we needed to take land from the Conservation Reserve Program (basically, a program that pays farmers NOT to farm a portion of their land) to grow food for the Chinese. Why would the Chinese need this food? Because they waz gonna starve! At least, that's what Lester "the Molester" Brown said (Note: not his actual nickname, just an unfunny play on his name). In retrospect, the idea is laughable. The Chinese economy had posted double digit growth rates since the late '70s, and they were going to starve? Even at the time I didn't really believe it, but high school debate is about winning, not the truth.

Obviously Mr. Brown was incorrect. But a quick Google search reveals that he is still making paranoid prognostications. He now works for the Earth Policy Institute (biography here), where he continues to fear-monger regarding world population and resources. The lack (rather than the surplus) of the former is fast becoming a problem (at least for the developed world), and the latter is, after decades of predictions to the contrary, more plentiful than ever.

After a comparison of our lives today and those a hundred years ago, Varifrank has this to say:

"We are all the descendants of those who came before us, who in each of their lives saw and experienced things daily that would make each of us wet our pants in fear. We face none of those horrible things in our lives today, yet we are more in fear of life itself than any of those people were in theirs while they faced very real threats and not the imagined ones of that we face in ours."

My response is that humans have a deep-seated need to fear. And furthermore, this isn't a bad thing. Fear is a powerful motivator, as Machiavelli realized when he famously argued it was better for a ruler to be feared than loved.

None of the apocalyptic predictions regarding the future have come true, and I believe it is at least in part because the predictions were made. Instead of self-fulfilling prophecies they became self-defeating prophecies. By loudly proclaiming that the sky is falling, these oft-foolish predictions are taken seriously by a few who perhaps help put policies in place to pre-empt their impacts.

Do I have any real evidence for this? Nope. I'll just point to the fact the world hasn't ended as evidence that apocalyptic predictions (no matter how ridiculous) are no threat.

They are also extremely fun to ridicule.

Quick hits

Two quick items:

First, this item from Ravenwood, about one poor would-be anti-war protesters dilemma.

"Sometimes I just get so mad that my country is committing mass murder. What power have I to stop it?

I am going to start reading up on Ghandi. This is the breaking point. I have to do something drastic, like go on a hunger strike chained to a light pole next to the NBC building in Chicago. But it's starting to get cold and I have my thesis to work on and classes to finish up this semester." (Emphasis mine.)

Now, that's funny. I would try to make a political point by suffering through a hunger strike, but it's just too cold and I'm busy.

On a slightly less humorous note, there's this article from National Review Online concerning divorce.

"As recently seen on The Today Show and Good Morning America, "divorce parties" are all the rage. Was your marriage on the rocks? Well, the divorce papers are signed and it's now time to play "pin the blame on the ex" and "throw the wedding ring in the toilet" games — or so it is if you talk to the likes of the author of The Woman's Book of Divorce: 101 Ways to Make Him Suffer Forever and Ever."

I have suggestion. If you are the type of woman to buy a book subtitled 101 Ways to Make Him Suffer Forever and Ever, then the most effective way to "make him suffer" would be to stay with him.

You are a Social Moderate (43% permissive) and an... Economic Conservative (88% permissive) You are best described as a: Capitalist Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Engineering Education

Go read this article from Tech Central Station from an engineering drop-out.

Have you read it?

Okay, here are my comments. The author makes many good points, but isn't quite in a position to make complete recommendations (not that I am either, but combined...).

In my experience the following qualities are required to succeed in obtaining an engineering degree:

1. above-average intelligence
2. the ability to learn on your own
3. the ability to self-motivate
4. willingness to give up an extensive social-life

Douglas Kern was found lacking in 2. This ties into his recognition that engineering teaching is generally poor. This is true and should be changed but won't. Why? Because university engineering programs are not about education they are about research, and the skill-sets required of professors for the two often conflict. It's not about how well you can teach the students, it's about how well you can pull in the research dollars for the school.

Meanwhile, my friends majoring in the liberal arts pulled dandy grades while studying little. "You just wait," I thought, gazing upon them like the ant regarding the grasshopper in the summer. "You party and blow off homework now, but in ten years, you'll be making merely wonderful money as investment bankers and consultants, while I'll be getting laid off from a great job at General Electric."

Here is the second problem with engineering education. Oddly, it has little to do with the engineering part of it. The problem is that liberal arts degrees are so easy to get as to be worthless (except from a hoop-jumping perspective). None of the liberal arts classes I took taught any sort of useful skill. We (my fellow engineering students and I) had a simple formula to relate the difficulty (and hence the usefulness) of engineering classes to liberal arts ones: one engineering class = four liberal arts classes. This should give you an idea of the relative difficulty. The problem is not with the left-hand side of the equation, but with the right. If liberal arts classes actually taught something and required effort, then engineering classes would not look so bad in comparison.

To a certain extent, engineering classes are difficult because they have to be. Future engineers need to learn the required skill-set to do their job without getting anyone killed. No liberal arts program prepares students for a life-or-death environment and they have thus relaxed their requirements to worthlessness. The fault here lies with liberal arts education programs, not engineering.

Here are Kern's prescriptions for improvement:

If you want more engineers in the United States, you must find a way for America's engineering programs to retain students like, well, me: people smart enough to do the math and motivated enough to at least take a bite at the engineering apple, but turned off by the overwhelming coursework, low grades, and abysmal teaching. Find a way to teach engineering to verbally oriented students who can't learn math by sense of smell. Demand from (and give to) students an actual mastery of the material, rather than relying on bogus on-the-curve pseudo-grades that hinge upon the amount of partial credit that bored T.A.s choose to dole out. Write textbooks that are more than just glorified problem set manuals. Give grades that will make engineering majors competitive in a grade-inflated environment. Don't let T.A.s teach unless they can actually teach.

Fair enough. But, as stated above, the "overwhelming coursework" exists for a reason. Those are the skills needed to make an engineer competent enough not to kill people. You can't really reduce that. This is especially true of upper-level classes which the author would have never been experienced due to his dropping out.

Another problem with his comments is that the skills required to succeed in getting an engineering education are basically the same as those required for being an engineer. You can't just dumb things down and serve everything on a platter because that would not create good engineers. What he calls "weeding out undesirables with absurd boot-camp courses" is not always a bad thing. Many people are simply not cut-out to be engineers and the goal should not be to keep those people; it should be to keep those who have the skills but are struggling due to inadequate teaching.

Note that the boot-camp style of engineering education serves to create strong bonds between students. Engineering students (justifiably [IMAO]) look-down on those who take the easier liberal arts path. But if you've read this far, you know that:).

Carolina on my mind

For reasons I do not care to explain I was driving through the Carolinas yesterday, and I saw some interesting things.

First, in North Carolina, there was a billboard for a housing development called "The Challenge." Huh? Do people really want to live in a challenging environment?

Second, in South Carolina, there was sign for a mobile home place named "Spartan Homes." Admittedly it was near Spartanburg, but still, do they not know what Spartan means? Seriously, people.