More of that, please

I'm usually excited to confront insane conspiracy theories, but the so-called "birther" movement is completely devoid of anything worth thinking about. As Outis pointed out below, what little they think they have is nothing more than absurdly transparent lies. It's a convenient paranoid conspiracy for this busy age. No work is needed, just pop it in the microwave and watch it melt. It's the multi-tasker's obsessive fantasy.

But I do want to talk about something that I noticed after this nice take down by Chris Matthews:



Many media figures, most notably NBC's David Gregory, have attempted to defend their behavior in the months leading to Bush's Excellent Adventure in Iraq. Here we have Gregory, after YEARS of soul-searching, coming to the conclusion that there was nothing more he could have done:



I think Gregory is very genuine, he really doesn't know what he could have done better, and that's the problem. Where Gregory and the rest of the press corps failed was not so much in the way they asked questions, but in how ill-informed they were.

Take this now famous interaction between Bill Moyers and the late Tim Russert over a New York Times story reporting that Saddam Hussein had obtained or would obtain nuclear weapons:

BILL MOYERS: Was it just a coincidence in your mind that Cheney came on your show and others went on the other Sunday shows, the very morning that that story appeared?

TIM RUSSERT: I don't know. The NEW YORK TIMES is a better judge of that than I am.

BILL MOYERS: No one tipped you that it was going to happen?

TIM RUSSERT: No, no. I mean-

BILL MOYERS: The Cheney office didn't leak to you that there's gonna be a big story?

TIM RUSSERT: No. No. I mean, I don't have the-- This is, you know-- on MEET THE PRESS, people come on and there are no ground rules. We can ask any question we want. I did not know about the aluminum tubes story until I read it in the NEW YORK TIMES.

BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable. Someone in the Administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It's a circular, self-confirming leak.

TIM RUSSERT: I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.

My concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.

What Gregory and Russert missed that Matthews managed to nail in the birther segment is that you have to do the research. You must be prepared, and the only real way to accomplish that goal is to approach your interviewee as an adversary.

Look, lawyers regularly oppose friends in the courtroom, but that doesn't stop them from being as critical of their opponent as possible. It would be an ethical breach to behave otherwise.

The birther movement is essentially rhetorical tee-ball: the claims are stupid, the proponents are transparent, and the research needed to destroy their laughable ideas is minimal. But notice that Matthews was effective because he showed up with a copy of the birth certificate. There was no wishing for phone calls. They called up Hawaii and obtained the necessary documentation.

Obviously the tone of the debate doesn't have to be so hostile and dismissive (though it was more than appropriate here), but the approach has to be the same. Interviewers need to confront public officials as adversaries, not enemies, but adversaries.

Russert and Gregory failed because they thought the necessary information would come to them, or simply asking open-ended questions would be sufficient to debunk administration claims.

I suggest that the popular media interviewers (Gregory, Rose, Couric, Gibson...etc) invite a birther to their program so they can practice actual critical opposition. After they've gotten fat on that veal, they can work their way through moon-landing deniers and 9-11 wackos until they're prepared to confront a Republican Congressman on global warming. If they can actually challenge those groups with serious facts and unrelenting scrutiny, then they can sit down with someone like Cheney. Until they realize that the only stances worth holding are the ones you can defend against a legitimate opponent, we will be stuck with more limp questions and reporters confused about what they did wrong.

Cherry Picking Statistics

There has likely been no time in history when it is easier to fact check a claim than our current age, thanks to the Google. That being the case, I'm really shocked at how often people attempt to skew statistical data that is easy to reference and double-check.

Think Progress has an interesting article discussing Sen. James Inhofe's recent declaration that defeating Obama's health care plan would be a 'huge gain' for the GOP for the 2010 election cycle. I want to zero in on an offhand talking point Inhofe delivered during his appearance on Janet Parshall's radio show:

But every day, they [Democrats] lose votes, because people find out what it is [the health plan], what it’s going to do, and what it’s not going to do. When you tell people that the
mortality rate in Canada is 25% higher for breast cancer, 18% higher for
prostate cancer, you know, they say why in the world would we emulate a system
like that?

Curious, I Google'd, "are mortality rates for cancer higher in Canada than USA," and the fourth listing was a CTV article from the CTA.ca News Staff that include this incredible factoid:
In a report on worldwide cancer survival rates, Canada ranked near the top of the 31 countries studied with an estimate five-year survival rate of 82.5 per cent.

For breast cancer, Cuba had the highest survival rates -- another country with
free health care. The United States was second, and Canada was third, with 82
per cent of women surviving at least five years.

Emphasis mine. So, Inhofe used the USA's excellent survival rates for breast cancer as a way to demean the quality of health care in Canada and universal health care (or socialized medicine) in general. He fails to mention that not only is Canada ranked third in the world in breast cancer mortality rates, but the highest ranking country is communist Cuba.

We again must ask ourselves if Inhofe is simply clueless about the state of affairs regarding cancer mortality rates, or if he is a shameless liar who cherry-picked a statistic to forward an argument that the greater corpus of the statistical data absolutely refutes.

How Conspiracy Theories are Born

This is a fascinating diary from Daily Kos by CatM about the most recent developments in the ongoing Obama birth certificate drama.  For those who don't want to follow the link: today on Hardball G. Gordon Liddy claimed that Obama is an 'illegal alien' and dropped the bombshell on Chris Matthews that he, "ha[s] a deposition, sworn statement from the step-grandmother who says, 'I was present and saw him [Obama] born in Mumbasa, Kenya.'"

There are a number of things that I find fascinating about this declaration, the least of which being that it's completely false.  There is no deposition or 'sworn statement', Liddy simply has a partial transcript of a phone call that took place between a self proclaimed street minister, Bishop Ron McRae and a Swahili translator who happens to be Sarah Obama's step grandson that was recorded without their knowledge or consent.  More importantly, the transcript itself is not particularly revealing: 

MCRAE: Uh, could I ask her, uh, could I ask her about his, uh, his, his, his actual birthplace. I would like to see his birthplace when I, when I come to Kenya in December. Uh, was she, was she, was she present when he was--

VOICE (in background): It is here.*

MCRAE: Was she present when he was born in Kenya?

BROTHER TOM (in background): He is asking her that, uh, he wants to 
know something that uh, was uh you, was they, was she present when, ah, 
he was born. Were they they there then?

TRANSLATOR OGOMBE: Yes, they say that yes she was. She was 
present when Obama was born. 
(McRae catches breath)

There you have it, folks.  A 'sworn statement' from Sarah Obama that our president is an illegal alien.  Take a moment to parse the sentence, "Was she present when he was born in Kenya?" then, "Was she present, when he was born, in Kenya?"  Now translate it into Swahili, then Luo, the language that Mrs. Obama speaks according to Bill Kristol.  If you are McRae, you see definitive proof that Mrs. Obama was present when the President was born.  If you are less excitable, you wait for clarification.

Clarification that occurs literally moments later and was notably excised from the transcript as it was submitted in court as evidence during the a recent lawsuit challenging Obama's citizenship.  From the transcript:

TRANSLATOR OGOMBE (to McRae): No! Obama was not born in 
Mombasa! He was born in America!

MCRAE: Wh-whereabouts, whereabouts was he born? I, I thought he was born in Kenya.

TRANSLATOR OGOMBE: No he was born in America, not in Mombasa.

MCRAE: OK. Do you know whereabouts he was born?

TRANSLATOR OGOMBE: (Pause.) Huh? 

MCRAE: Do you know where he was born? I thought he was born in Kenya. I was gonna go by and see where he was born.

(two male voices in background in foreign language speaking at the same 
time. Mrs. Obama or another woman in background.)

VOICE (background): It was Hawaii.

As I see it, there are a few different interpretations of Liddy's actions: (1) he went on national television and advanced a conspiracy theory based on a partial transcript of this phone call and was too stupid to read the entire thing or check up on it before declaring his faith in it, or (2) Liddy knew that the transcript was bogus but believes he can do significant political damage to Obama's presidency by promoting this particular meme.  Neither interpretations are particularly flattering.

Either way, I think this is a wonderfully illustrative example of how conspiracy theories are born.  It literally starts with a game of telephone, moving through three languages and resulting in a confusing situation that requires further clarification.  The resultant transcripts (full and partial versions) demonstrate how easily confusion can spread when small bits of information are removed from their context.  General laziness and a national press platform now combine to create legitimacy for the theory - you can already hear the conservative pundits claiming that the controversy is spreading like wildfire now that it's been discussed on MSNBC.  And, once the theory has gone mainstream, it's impossible to ever completely discredit it as long as their are people that want to believe it enough that they are willing to harass 85 year old women from Kenya.

It's not the crime, it's the cover-up

Despite the best efforts of LeBron James and Nike, a video of a college player dunking on the "King" was released to the public.

Video

(I removed the embedded version because it begins to play whenever the page is loaded--very annoying)

In LeBron's defense, there was a grassy knoll to the left, just outside of the camera's sight. Several eyewitnesses report a man in a hooded sweatshirt using a snare-trap to restrict BronBron's ability to jump. But the "mainstream media" will never tell you about that.

What's extraordinary about this video is how completely unimpressive it is. We see LeBron coming across the paint late to give a half-hearted challenge to a player in the midst of his leap. I fail to see how this would reflect poorly on James, but somehow it was deemed as being harmful to his carefully crafted image.

The release of the footage was so anticipated precisely because James' camp, which included Nike, went to such links to suppress the story. Had they just let the clip appear on YouTube it would have been mentioned on the endless talking-head sports shows for one day, and no one would ever think about it again. It would have slipped down the memory hole as a funny aberration, like this clip of the Greatest losing a pick-up game to a CEO that paid thousands of dollars to stand on the court next to him:



Obviously a long retired Jordan wasn't going at 100%, and when you play 200 people in a row, odds are one of them will toss up a couple of lucky shots, and everyone understands this.

But LeBron (or Nike) turned his unremarkable video into an event by sending people around the court to confiscate tapes. In this day and age, it should be obvious that complete control of such things is impossible, as the smuggled cell phone video of Saddam Hussein's execution proves. From Nixon to Clinton to Craig, the indisputable lesson of all potential scandals is to simply own it and move on.

PS-I haven't kept up on the course of events, but I was hesitant to link to the LeBron video because it appeared on an "Ebaum" site. A few years ago a rather interesting scandal involving the proprietor of the site, Eric Bauman. He would scour the Internet for videos other people had created (many on the often very funny ytmnd.com), stamp them with his brand, and place them on his site.

Here is the wikipedia summation of the story.

I am thus tentative to support such a site. In this case, the video has been placed on ESPN's homepage, Yahoo Sports, and countless other sites, so my drop in the ocean is beyond irrelevant. But it's worth knowing about shady practices, even when they occur between nerds.

Ain't my Fault

Glenn Greenwald's interview with Chuck Todd was amazing.

Todd concludes his generally self-justifying statements with an intensely defensive claim about the media’s role in potential torture investigations:

Well, look, I think the problem, though, sits not with the media in this respect. And this is what frustrates me a little bit, is that the problem, the people we should be upset with are the folks on the Hill, folks in the White House, folks at the Justice Department. Those are the ones who have the power of the subpoena, and the power to do these things, not the media. And I know we get beaten up about it. But the power does lie in Congress. And the power does lie in the Justice Department.

Ah, so I shouldn’t blame poor Chuck Todd because he can’t order the commencement of legal procedures. Evidently, the “fourth estate” no longer possesses the ability to speak truth to power. Only power can deal with power in this nation. That’s an astonishingly self-effacing view for a reporter. Chuck Todd, stenographer. And to say such a thing while your network is busy canonizing Walter Cronkite. I am having trouble imagining a more direct insult to his legacy.

And also note that lacking the puissance to confront such problems is one thing, using what measly strength you think you have to provide a defense for those public officials, which was the act that motivated Greenwald's initial criticism, is another.

But there’s more. According to Todd, the issue is, gasp, complicated:

But you're assuming a black and white. I mean, the whole point of those OLC memos was showing that they were getting a set of, that the interrogators were potentially getting legal advice to, and in fact what the Bush administration was trying to do, was trying to find a legal way. They were trying to find a legal way, they were trying whatever, which is, of course, my - as a non-lawyer - my frustration with the law sometimes - is that the law isn't clear cut.

If only there were a venue for settling legal disputes in this country. Call your Congressmen now and demand that they create a forum whereby parties in conflict over the interpretation of a legal code could have a person or group of people analyze the arguments and render a decision.

Todd’s fundamental problem with assigning a Justice Department lawyers to investigate the entire torture culture appears to be the fact that it would become “political:”

I agree, in a perfect world - Glenn, in a perfect world, yes. And if you could also guarantee me, that this wouldn't become a show trial, and wouldn't be put, and created so that we had nightly debates about it, that is the ideal way to handle this.

Colbert did a nice bit on this little gem.

So in summation, Chuck Todd thinks that (1) the media has no power, so leave them alone, (2) the issue is tricky, so ignore it, and (3) when a case is debated on television it becomes a “show trial.”

Where to begin? I can start by offering congratulations to Todd for consistency. He thinks the media lacks the power to hold politicians responsible for bad behavior, and he also believes it cannot stop itself from turning an investigation into a circus (see the above Colbert link). A truly neutered animal, this press of ours.

I may be naïve, but I would assert that if networks focused on the substance of the case, leaving the politics as an afterthought, you would be less likely turn the otherwise gravely serious investigation into Absurdist Theater. But it would take a media with some power to pull that off. Kim Jong-Il evidently puts little boxes with screens and speakers fueled by electricity in the homes of all of his citizens so he can communicate his views. That’s real power.

But Todd goes even farther. Not only is the press helpless, but any issue without a clear resolution should be avoided. I was honestly speechless when I first heard that claim. There’s nothing to say about that save to let it stand as a monument to incredibly stupidity (I don’t think Todd generally approaches life that way, but when confronted by a superior adversary, such laughable rationalizations are the predictable result of a desperate defense).

Todd happens to be one of the better reporters on the scene, which speaks volumes about the state of the Washington press corps. To reiterate why this issue is not a “political football” or “cable catnip,” as Greenwald mentions several times, around 100 detainees died in US custody, 34 of which are suspected or confirmed homicides.

All snark aside, our nation has rightly concluded that the way to solve these complicated issues is through an adherence to legal process. The Supreme Court does give advisory opinions, Bush could not have run the Yoo memos past a Justice, so the only way to deal with these problems is to adjudicate when it has become an actual case or controversy. If we decide that any issue that is both complicated and political cannot see a courtroom, we have destroyed that sacred legal process. Todd has it exactly wrong, it is the unclear, vague cases that must appear in a court.

Stop asking questions, damnit.

In 1575, Jerome Wolf wrote a letter to Tycho Brahe in which he observed, “No attack on Christianity is more dangerous than the infinite size and depth of the universe.”

Following the destruction of medieval superstition by revolutionaries like Copernicus, Galileo and Magellan, the intellectual community had to come to grips with how ill-informed Bible-based education had left them. For over a thousand years scripture stood as a complete, definitive source of knowledge. If it wasn’t in the Bible, it wasn’t worth knowing.

But as knowledge progressed it became obvious that not only was there a great deal of information missing from the Bible, but that it was functionally useless as a fountainhead of useable concepts. It could not be trusted. According to scripture, the world was flat, Jerusalem was the center, and the sun circled a mountain in the north. Not only does the Bible conveniently fail to mention the Earth’s position in the solar system, its rotation, and its true size, it has nothing to say about the vast distances between the stars. Beyond just the pure factual errors, there is no sense of proper age and size. 6000 years is all it offers, and there is no indication of anything but Heaven and Earth.

It was this vast gulf between what observation revealed and what he had been taught from religious authorities that motivated Wolf’s statement. How could God’s word be taken seriously if it left humanity so ill-equipped to understand the universe?

Yet today most religious people wouldn’t share Wolf’s discomfort. That sense of visceral conflict, with respect to the size of the universe, is completely gone. But why? Is it that we now have a better understanding of the Bible? I would argue that very little has substantively changed in the actual text or our understanding of its original meaning. No, we impose our advanced scientific knowledge on the ignorant document. Children who grow up in a world described primarily by science interpret the Bible to match that knowledge.

If the size of the universe no longer threatens Christianity, there are plenty of recent scientific discoveries that do. You could easily rewrite Wolf’s letter substituting evolution for “size and depth.” And every branch of science has conspired to ridicule the notion of a 6,000 year old planet. If Christianity is to survive as anything more than a cult, it will stop battling against these issues as it abandoned geo-centrism and infinity.

But this serves as a perfect model to understand the most fundamental difference between those that have promote the scientific method and those that seek to advance religion over science. One camp endevors to gain knowledge, the other holds that they are currently aware of everything worth knowing.

The recent re-popularization of the theist-atheist debate is striking for the complete lack of new arguments from the theist camp(I will use that term for brevity, acknowledging that there are deists in the world, but they don’t compose the majority). They quite literally advance the same positions that Hume dealt with 250 years ago. But this is precisely the point: they cannot develop new arguments because they deny the possibility of learning. They will forever be in the reactionary position. Science moves forward, often discovering facts that contradict religious documents, and theists can only complain about the results. They will not develop a new tool or instrument capable of viewing God, so they are stuck with what they have.

Thus they must construct their barricades around the areas that science has yet to enter definitively: how did the universe come into existence? How did life originate? Where does morality come from (arguably, science has given us a solid explanation for morality, but I will be charitable)? Theists jump on the lack of certainty in these areas as evidence that science itself is fatally flawed.

You’ll notice D’Souza using some slight of hand in this article to make a similar point. There are, he asserts, simply facts or concepts that are forever beyond the reach of science. He uses a Kantian argument holding that our experience of reality is not necessarily true reality to back his claim. According to Kant, we can only discuss the world we experience, and there is a world beyond our senses. There is no rational reason to conclude that these two versions of reality match.

I don’t want to delve too deeply into Kant (I remember getting caught in that quicksand as an undergrad), but I will say that there’s also no reason to think that the world isn’t as we experience it. Kant’s claim falls into a more general category of global skepticism that was popular among the modern philosophers. I could likewise maintain that there’s no way for me to prove that I’m not a brain in a vat in some laboratory and my experience of this world is being fed to me by scientists and computers stimulating my brain.

To this whole class of claims I simply say, fine, I suppose it’s possible, but whether it is or isn’t, in this world I experience, the scientific method yields results and religious belief doesn’t. Whatever actually happens to be the case, I am far better off basing my ideas on sturdy evidence than simply taking old fairy tales on faith: Antibiotics work, homeopathy doesn’t, science builds structures that stand, and prayer has no tangible effect. And, most importantly, there's still no evidence for or good reason to believe in God.

D’Souza makes a much slicker move, however. He uses this broad skepticism of reason to justify a belief in God. From an argumentative standpoint it’s ridiculous: the failure of one system does not necessarily entail the truth of another. The positive idea of God has to be substantiated with its own set of claims. It doesn’t simply materialize when a criticism of science is advanced any more than Mormonism becomes the true religion when we prove that Norse mythology was false.

But beyond that, there is a disgusting arrogance in D’Souza’s argument. The scientific method and rational inquiry, he claims, have limits. There are things it can never prove. And you know what? He just happens to be privy to all such knowledge. I could ask how, exactly, he knows about God and why the faculty that enables this knowledge is exempt from the Kantian limitations on human perception, but I am more struck by the preposterous conceit required to hold that view. He has gained through a special divine relationship what the generations of scientists who saved us from nature’s wrath by building a fortress of knowledge one tiny brick at a time can never know. He doesn’t need to test these ideas, prove them against critical reality, no, he simply knows.

But that is the most intellectual rendering of the anti-science argument. D’Souza is shrewd. Unlike many of his theist brethren, he has staked out a position that won’t be directly destroyed by scientific innovation. If you say that, for example, science can never tell us how life originated, you run the risk of being contradicted. If, however, you posit the existence of a magical world beyond science (one that conveniently never interacts) you can always maintain its existence. The failure of every real world iteration of faith can be dismissed and the central claim clung to.

But even with that rhetorical shrewdness D’Souza has defined his spiritual world as beyond science. He is thus constrained by the same inability to generate new arguments. His view is beyond progress, so it is stagnant. Though slightly more clever, D’Souza’s view essentially represents the notion that those subjects on which science hasn’t spoken, define its necessary, and eternal limitations.

History, however, shows that the unexplained areas of science lead to the most promising advances, not the collapse of the pursuit itself. But most importantly, those “gaps” in scientific understanding represent the venues for gaining future knowledge. Most scientists find them exciting and cannot wait to move ahead. But religious folk have decided they represent unanswerable questions that only a concept of god can fill. So they have built their bulwarks in front of those subjects, hoping in vain that adventurous minds will simply stop asking questions.

So where does this leave us? The theists have essentially announced that they posses sufficient knowledge, no progress is possible. Science has failed, and they understand God, so there’s no reason to move ahead. Adopting that stance means that you will never generate a new argument, and as we can see, there hasn’t been a new argument for God’s existence in many centuries.

And this midset has bled into politics. There are obvious problems on both sides of the aisle, but there is a basic difference, at least with the contemporary political groups. Currently, the left happens to be the party that operates on a model of identifying problems and searching for solutions. Too many Americans don’t have health care, the environment needs fixing, and the economy is harming the middle class. Then solutions are discussed and argued for. The American right seems to have two basic operating mandates: deny they are any problems and complain about potential solutions.

The examples are endless. We have McCain arguing that economy was fine, right-wing luminaries bragging about our very flawed health care system, and endless examples of shills pretending that global warming is a myth (no link for those fools). All of these positions require one to ignore evidence obtained by reasoned inquiry, whether the conclusions of climate scientists or assessments of our health services.

Just as theists claim to already know everything important, the political right believes that they have already discovered the perfect political/economic system. Simply place your faith in the free market and all will be fine. Any restrictions or regulations on market forces are a move away from the ideal. Thus, all progress is negative.

In order to sustain this idea you have to deny the existence of any complications and criticize any potential changes. Thus, like the anti-science groups, they have decided that progress is impossible. All there is to achieve has already been achieved.

Moving forward it’s important for political figures on the left to understand this basic fact of the right. “Bipartisanship” can never be reached with a group dedicated to objecting to all of your ideas—even the ones you’ve yet to express. My advice would be to simply allow them to throw tantrums and complain. Just like science will continue to yield useful results, a reasoned approach to governance will make life better. The progress-deniers can just die out, complaining as they fade away.

Getting Stuck by Junk Medicine

I was disappointed but hardly surprised when my mom directed me to an article in her local paper about acupuncture. The paper’s site has a subscription requirement (which would be fodder for another post as, unlike every other functionary on the internet after 1998, you cannot subscribe to the site with a credit card, you have to establish a direct deposit to you checking account—and people are puzzled about the failure of newspapers), so I will just quote the relevant portions.

The article was titled, “Sticking it to Traditional Medicine.” If that didn’t settle any doubts about the direction of the bias, the sub-heading reads, “Local chiropractor finds study of acupuncture rewarding.” So we have one voodoo artist, a chiropractor (who happens to be head of the Kansas Chiropractic Association), preaching about a different voodoo practice, acupuncture.

The article, which is primarily an advertisement for the chiropractor’s business (he recently received the necessary certification to practice acupuncture), is dripping with awe and reverence for the “5,000 year-old art.” I’m always amused by people using antiquity as a selling point for medical treatments. Because acupuncture is not science, it has no means of self-correction. It’s not like practitioners have discovered new ways to manipulate the body’s chi, because the body doesn’t have any. Thus, the “art” hasn’t discovered anything new in those 5,000 years. Sure, they might argue about different ways and places to stick the little needles, but they can’t give any sort of causal explanation for why. Nor have they ever attempted double blind studies aimed at sussing out the best methods. Thus, it exists fundamentally unchanged from its state 5,000 years ago. Imagine saying, “this toothpaste was used by the ancient Egyptians.” Wouldn’t the next reasonable question be, “what were their teeth like?”

That acupuncture has survived so long is interesting and impressive from a historical and cultural perspective, but think back to what life was like for a human 5,000 years ago. Hell, think about the state of medicine one hundred years ago. About 20% of children died before their first birthday, the average lifespan was around 40 years, and those that were lucky enough to make it into adulthood suffered from constant chronic pain. Acupuncture was available then, so why weren't people healthy?

How did traditional Chinese medicine, including acupuncture, do against Yersinia pestis in the third pandemic in 1348-50? The Great Mortality blasted through China just as it did Europe, culling the population and bringing humanity closer to extinction than at any time since the last Ice Age. Yet I'm supposed to rely on these same treatments now?

The logic drives me insane. All of the wonderful gains in human health made over the past century should prove the uncontested superiority of Western medicine. But the substantive medical issues with acupuncture are being dealt with by researchers and scientists much more qualified than I, so I will move to focus on the sneaky argumentative techniques found in my mother's paper. It was informative in so far as it displayed a number of common techniques used by alt-med proponents to seduce new clients.

The article begins, as most of these things do, with a reasoned, science-minded man skeptical of the effectiveness of this alien healing method:

It was difficult to wrap my head around it, being educated in Western science. But once you’ve experienced it, you know that it really does work.

Now, it bears repeating that our champion of Western science is a chiropractor, so the science learnin’ clearly didn’t make much of an impression, or if it did, it didn’t stick. But we have our every-man to identify with. If he was skeptical and it worked for him, hell, it just might work for me! A quick survey of QVC will give you plenty of make-up caked women in floral patterned dresses using the same shtick to sell gaudy baubles and detergent.

But that’s not enough, we need some facts to back up our story:

No one knows for sure whether acupuncture works using the Chinese theory of chi or whether it is effective because of Western science’s suggestion that it uses the body’s own natural endorphans to combat pain. But the one thing most of the scientific community agrees upon is that acupuncture can be a beneficial form of treatment for a large variety of physical and mental issues.

Most of the scientific community? Hmm, that doesn’t sound right. The author defends this dubious claim by referencing two “studies.” The first is a 1997 National Institute of Health report. The author of the article doesn't give any specific citation, so I have to assume that she means this. It turns out that it wasn’t so much a report as a conference summary. The NIH invited a bunch of alt-med “researchers” to present their work. They didn’t manage to extend the courtesy to a single scientist who found negative results in studying acutpuncture.

So what we have is the exponential use of fake authority to cloud bad data. We begin with multiple alt-med proponents, each of whom cannot, on their own, present convincing evidence. A bunch of these individually inadequate shamans are gathered under the umbrella of the NIH (an organization with the word “health” right in the title), and their speeches are summarized and offered to the public as a “report” validating the usefulness of acupuncture. Now every reporter, student, or alt-med supporter can just read the abstract, cite the NIH, and claim that scientific studies prove the potency of acupuncture.

Unfotunately for the alt-med community, they seem to have as much trouble with math as they do with science. No matter how many powers it’s raised, when you start with zero, you end with zero.

Here's what the scientific community actually says about the practice:

Acupuncture is an unproven treatment. The best studies of acupuncture show that it is no more effective than placebos(inactive treatments.) The NIH panel was conceived in all likelihood with an agenda to promote the acceptance of acupuncture by the public, press, insurance plans, HMOs and Federal and state medical plans.

That was Dr. Wallace Sampson, M.D., Editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and Clinical Professor of Medicine at Stanford University.

The second, and most suspiciously, is a 2007 World Health Organization “data report” that cites “multiple scientific studies on the subject.” Because there was also no clear citation for that report, I was unable to find exactly what the author was talking about. I did, however, find a 2003 report by the WHO's Department of Essential Drugs and Medicine Policy. Assuming this is what the author was talking about, the report was burdened with a number of methodological errors, the most glaring of which being the mission statement by the report's author, Dr. Zhang, "...to show acupuncture works."

The rest of the Mercury article is directed at assuaging the public’s fear of needles. Apparently they aren’t as big and scary as the hypodermic ones we're used to. Whew.

So what we're left with is an advertisement published as a newspaper article with dubious citation and sham reports as supporting data. Standard operating procedure, it seems.

Oh no, you're going to filibuster?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Barney Frank Extended Interview Pt. 1
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What struck me about Frank’s response was how casually he explained that the bill in question needed 60 votes to pass. It’s shocking that this tactic, the filibuster, has shifted from desperation move to standard operating procedure with such little complaint. Obviously they only need 51 votes to pass the bill, according to that little thing called the Constitution, but Frank just accepts the idea that nothing can happen without 60.

This betrays the absolute wimpiness of the Democrats. As has been said on issue after issue, let the Republicans stall health care for children, environmental reforms, or economic legislation. Force them to read the phone book and make a spectacle of their attempt to thwart laws they disagree with (but most Americans support). Then when nothing gets done, there will be plenty of video of old white dudes making fools out of themselves to stall popular reform. You can see the campaign adds writing themselves. Of course, then Democrats couldn't blame Republicans for governmental failure, which may be the point.

Besides being an insidious sort of constitutional rewrite, the ascent of the filibuster bestows awesome power on those few senators who announce that they are willing to be swayed. Currently, these obnoxious senators are know as the “Gang of Six:” Democratic Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.), Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and most loathsome of all, Independent Joe Lieberman (Conn.). Under the current senate mindset, some number of these senators must be convinced to join on a piece of legislation. This gives them an unfortunate amount of power, and this power only exists because they announce their availability for seduction.

They are to the senate as good-looking girls are to high school: everyone knows who they are and chases after them with uncontrolled lust. All of the attention gives them the false impression that they’re wanted for more than their looks (or vote). Thus they announce their likes and dislikes to fawning crowds. Outside the bounds of their confined universe most people find them annoying, but in their sphere, they reign supreme. And indeed, listening to a “serious” Joe Lieberman speech reminds of listening to a cheerleader talk about how her cats don't like the smell of her new nail polish. If only these senators would become undesirable after 20lbs. of beer and pizza binges in their first year of college.

It seems to be a matter of senatorial courtesy that the threat of a filibuster is sufficient. If the Democrats required Republicans to make a spectacle, when roles reverse, Democrats would have to humiliate themselves with the same dance. But what kind of sad bargaining tactic involves conceding the point before negotiations even begin? Republicans don’t even have to worry about the political ramifications of stalling popular legislation with circus stunts. If the Democrats had just let the Republicans throw a temper tantrum and filibuster the expansion of the SCHIP program, the fallout may have been severe enough to restrict the tactic to extreme situations.