05.3.2008 | 11:15 am | Junk Science, Nanny Nation
Dr. Shepard was one of the co-authors of the infamous Helena Study. The study made an astonishing claim: That in the six months Helena MT had a smoking ban in place heart attacks dropped by 60%. In order to fully appreciate this entry, I suggest you first read the details of the study here and here.
Tony Masset, a student at Carroll College in Waukesha, WI, attended a presentation by Dr. Shepard. Before the presentation he asked me to suggest some questions he could ask.
Tony tried to record the conversations, but wasn’t able to because of an equipment malfunction. Instead, he wrote down the questions and answers immediately after leaving the presentation. As a result this is an accurate, but not word for word, report.
The first round of questions took place during the presentation.
Tony: “There were only 44 cases. Why didn’t you ask a single person about their SHS exposure?”
Shepard: “Because we didn’t have the data from before the study to compare the results too. So even if we asked them about their exposure it wouldn’t have done us any good because we can not compare it to anything.”
Tony: “Your own graph shows a similar dip in the heart attacks in 1998. Why did you ignore that?”
Shepard: “That data isn’t similar as shown in my graph.” Then he pointed to a new column graph that showed the number of heart attacks by year instead of by month. The average showed the rates increasing every year up to the year of the ban and then slowly climbing again after the ban was lifted.
So when one graph proves you’re a liar, create another that shows you in a better light.
Tony: You announced a 60% reduction in your press conference, but your published study only claimed a 40% reduction. Why?”
Shepard: “We did a (phonetically spelled) qwuaz-eye study and the BMJ wanted us to do a linear study.” I am not sure what it means, I think his point was that he had the data determined using one method but the BMJ wanted them to determine the data using their approved method. It has to be a round-about way of saying “we manipulated the data and they didn’t want to publish our manipulated findings.”
My guess is Shepard was admitting that the 60% number came from a “quasi-study.” In other words, an imitation study, something that resembled a study, but was not a real study. What does this say about his integrity?
After the presentation:
After the questions I stayed to argue with him for about 15 minutes. He had an older listener and a younger college student on each side of him giving him a bobble head visual “surround sound” effect, two people that literally shook their head yes to every single thing the man said! A few things said in our Q&A were:
Tony: “Why can’t the bar owners make their own decision about how to run their business? If it truly was beneficial to bar owners wouldn’t they implement smoking bans on their own?”
Shepard: “People do not have a right to smoke because it harms others so bar owners can’t permit a practice that someone does not have a right to do. And no, bar owners have an irrational fear that they will lose business if they implement a ban so they will never decide to ban smoking on their own.”
Bar owners fear of losing business is hardly irrational. Smoking bans always destroy a significant number of businesses, especially bars.
He brought up various court cases where smokers always lost and concluded, “See, no one has a legal right to smoke.”
Nice sidestep. This is not, and has never been, about anyone’s right to smoke. It’s about junk science and the property rights of venue owners.
Tony: “People can decide for themselves whether they want to patronize a bar or not, so why do we need a blanket ban that forces owners to decide how to run their establishment?”
Shepard: “The employees can’t decide for themselves. They often have no skills, no education, and they need to put food on the table and so they have to bus tables, their choice is taken away. Does the owner have the right to subject employees to that?”
Tony: “The employees chose to work there, they knew people smoked and yet they took the job anyway. If someone doesn’t like where they work they can find another job.”
College student bobble head: “What experience do you have in the work force?”
Shepard: “(smirking) You are falsely believing that people can go out and find a job anywhere at anytime, that there are limitless jobs available, and that people have the ability to change jobs. Most people don’t and those individuals that don’t have a choice of where to work can not be subjected to SHS because of how deadly it is.”
Could Shepard have been any more condescending? He claims his mission is to protect bar employees, but it’s because they’re talentless losers who can’t find work anywhere else.
Tony: “I believe one of the great aspects about living in America is that you can choose to leave a job at anytime for any reason and find one where you want to work. Positions for unskilled laborers are probably the most abundant in this economy and you are going to tell me that it is impossible for them to find another job at a different restaurant?”
Shepard: (smiling as the two bobble heads bobbed up and down)”I think you do not understand the point. Bar owners can not be allowed to subject employees to SHS because of its harmful effects, plain and simple. I also think you are not being sympathetic to the situations most people live in and you have never experienced the choices that they have had to deal with.”
Tony: “I want to go back to the question about the first three months of the ban. During that time, with little compliance, heart attacks decreased. In the second three months, with enforcement, heart attacks returned to normal levels.”
Shepard: “Most businesses were in compliance with the ordinance, only a handful weren’t. Part of the reason the ban was lifted was because of the difficulty with enforcing it. They got fed up with trying and overturned the ban. I think it is unfair to bring up those specific statistics because you are focusing too much on the data.”
This is a flat out lie. A substantial number of businesses weren’t complying and he knows it.
Tony: “We have many taxes on cigarettes, if we ban smoking besides the loss of jobs for those individuals wouldn’t the government just push the tax onto some other product or service because they will not want to lose funding?”
Shepard: “We would double the tax each time the percentage of people that smoke is cut in half. It would maintain our tax income and discourage others from smoking. I would hate to be the guy that pays $1,000,000 for the last pack of cigarettes. Also like you said, those people could easily go find other jobs because it is America.” (Head bobbing and laughs)
Tony: “You really pushed the idea that nicotine is the most addictive drug in the world so why would increases in the tax rate suddenly cause people to break the habit? Why wouldn’t they just go bankrupt making them dependent on societal programs such as welfare, increasing costs for nonsmokers?” (A big point of his was that nonsmokers pay for smoker’s health insurance.)
Shepard: “If you were listening that is not what I said. Poor people that can’t afford cigarettes stop smoking; it is the rich that end up being the primary smokers with higher tax rates because they can afford to smoke.”
It is a joke. On the one hand he says “Because the nicotine is so addictive even if smokers want to quit they can’t.” Yet later he says poor people will stop smoking when they can’t afford cigarettes. Like they can suddenly stop buying them because cost becomes the over whelming factor in the decision to smoke. What will really happen is a poor person will steal cigarettes if they can’t afford them, plain and simple. I wish I would have said that.
A few will steal, but the majority will buy “illegal” smokes, cigarettes that have been purchased without paying the tax. There is a huge black market for cigarettes that aren’t burdened with confiscatory taxes, and it grows every time tobacco taxes are raised.
Well I hope I gave you some insight into how the presentation was conducted. He had an answer to everything I said. I learned a lot. I’d like to take their responses, research them, and blow them out of the water next time I argue. I’d like to find weaknesses in their logic and pick their ideas apart. Hopefully I can strengthen my argument after this.
I think I shocked the people when I told them I did not smoke or drink but I would be the first to fight for everyone’s right to do so. I wish I could remember more of what we argued about at the end or even the points he argued in his presentation.
I want to thank you again for the questions and for reading my e-mail. I love your website and I hope you can maintain it with more relevant information!
Tony Masset
West Allis
Great Job, Tony. Yes, nannies, like all fundamentalists, have stock answers for the tough questions. But, as you learned, there is little substance to those answers. If you keep pressing them they usually end up contradicting themselves, revealing their dishonesty.
Comments (1)
04.28.2008 | 1:21 pm | Junk Science, Nanny Nation
Now that European nannies have succeeded in using bogus claims to outlaw smoking nearly everywhere , They’re moving on to their next target: passive drinking.
Uber Nanny Dr. Peter Anderson claims, “The total tangible cost of alcohol to EU society in 2003 was estimated {pulled out of someone’s ass} to be €125bn (€79bn-€220bn), equivalent to 1.3 per cent GDP, and which is roughly the same value as that found recently for tobacco.” Anderson was a driving force in vilification of Europe’s smokers. His primary tool was lying about the effects of second hand smoke, relying, of course, on ass numbers. “The intangible costs show the value people place on pain, suffering and lost life that occurs due to the criminal, social and health harms caused by alcohol. In 2003 these were estimated {pulled from way up my ass} to be €270bn, with other ways of valuing the same harms producing estimates between €150bn and €760bn.”
Did you really think the nannies would stop at tobacco?
Comments (2)
03.26.2008 | 8:08 am | Junk Science, Religion
Although I disagree with a lot of his positions and ideas, I’ve always liked Ben Stein. His nasal “Bueller, Bueller, Bueller” is now part of our language. He continued the persona as a science teacher in “The Wonder Years,” where he’d drone on about horrible events with no trace of emotion. And “Win Ben Stein’s Money” was great fun.
A few months ago I stumbled on this, and shook my head. Ben’s movie “Expelled” is a documentary that claims teachers, professors, and “scientists” who subscribe to “Intelligent Design” proponents are not with the respect they deserve.
Now that the film is getting close to release a lot of unsavory details are becoming public. Ben misrepresented the theme and intent of the movie to get several prominent biologists to participate.
(Note: I haven’t seen the film yet, so this is all third hand.) The movie documents discrimination against people who pretend to be scientists yet subscribe to creationism/ID. They aren’t promoted, published, or treated wonderfully by the colleagues.
That’s hardly surprising. It is, in fact, a good thing.
Imagine a physics professor claimed that there was no such thing as friction, and so perpetual motion machines were not only possible, but could solve all our energy problems. How about a history teacher that included the evil galactic ruler Xenu in his curriculum? How often would they get promoted? How much respect would they get from their peers?
Approximately none, and that’s exactly how much they deserve. The same goes for anyone insisting on creationism/ID.
Ben is trying to make this a free speech issue and is insistent that real scientists are closed minded because they won’t entertain his superstitions. This is beyond pathetic - it’s just sad. It has nothing to do with free speech. Creationists are free to spew their ignorant spew all they want but no one is obligated to provide them with a platform. It has nothing to do with suppressing ideas; their ideas have been checked and discussed and explored ad nauseum, and none of them have been found to have even a trace of validity. (Unlike real science ideas, they haven’t been tested, because they are not testable.) The only point this movie really makes that that scientists accept reality and reject ridiculous fantasies.
You blew it big time, Ben. You’ve spent a lifetime building a reputation as the smartest guy in the room, and now you’ve blown it all on something really, really stupid.
You’ll find lots of links about this story here. Best article title on the list: Ridiculous Demented Right-Wing Wackaloon Theocratic Douchemonkeys Fuck Up Big Time
Comments (2)
03.6.2008 | 2:11 pm | Junk Science
Growing up in the 70s is one of the things that keeps me skeptical about global warming.. Back then we were constantly warned that global cooling was The Big Scary Thing that would Kill Us All. (And yes, that was the consensus at the time.)
So it comes as no surprise to learn that before the 70s cooling scare we had a global warming scare that ran from 1954 to the 70s.
Which was preceded by a global cooling scare that captured the imaginations of the fearful from 1895 to 1932.
You can read the details here.
Comments (0)
01.27.2008 | 3:06 pm | Junk Science
In 1998 Patrick Michaels, a University of Virginia climatologist, proposed a bet: “If we were of a betting sort (and there are some nasty rumors going around that we are), we would be willing to wager that the 10-year period beginning in January 1998 and extending through December 2007 will show a statistically significant downward trend in the monthly satellite record of global temperatures.” Tree huggers should have taken him up on it, because the data is in and he would have lost. Proof of Global Warming!
Well, not so much. Not at all. There have been tiny changes, but none that are statistically significant. One dataset shows a drop of -0.06 degrees Celsius. Another shows an increase of .04 degrees. Another shows an increase of .173, yet another shows an increase of .142. This article doesn’t specify the margin of error, but it’s likely that the spread covers the numbers well enough to write off even these minuscule changes as random noise.
So great news, right? This has been on the front pages of newspapers everywhere right?
Yeah, right.
Comments (0)
12.9.2007 | 2:20 pm | Amusing, Ridiculous, Junk Science, Religion
No matter what the problem is, sooner or later someone will Blame The Jews. In yet another example why it’s so difficult to write satire in this world, a group calling themselves “Green Hanukkah” is calling on Jews to combat global warming by lighting one less Hanukkah candle. Each unburned candle will save a whopping fifteen grams of CO2.
The founder of “Green Hanukkah” says, “”the campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won’t need another miracle.”
Over the yeas I’ve heard several Jewish friends admit that Hanukkah is so dull they usually make it to the forth or fifth day before they say “screw it” and stop bothering with the ritual. Little did they know they were saving the world.
Comments (3)
11.13.2007 | 1:41 pm | Junk Science, Nanny Nation, Big Brother
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is suing Mothers Against Illegal Aliens for using “Mothers Against” in their name. Their C&D letter said “MADD cannot be associated with your organization and the use of “Mothers Against” gives a strong implication of a relationship with MADD.”
Not really. As the writer of this blog discovered, a quick Google of “Mothers Against” returns hundreds of “Mothers Against” organizations. Why they went after this one is anyone’s guess.
M.A.D.D, like every other nanny organization, is a fountain of made up numbers and fake statistics. Their favorite, of course, is the number of drivers killed in “alcohol related accidents.” Note the careful phrasing. We’re not talking drunk drivers here, we’re talking alcohol related. If the driver swallowed his mouthwash before going to work and blew .01 on a breathalyser, that’s alcohol related, even though no sane person would consider that drunk. If a driver hits a drunk pedestrian, that’s alcohol related. If the driver is stone cold sober but his passenger had a few, that’s an alcohol related accident.
I’d suggest that they change their name. Just shorten it by one letter, to M.A.D: Mothers Against Drinking. They are no longer going after drivers who are actually drunk. Their goal is prohibition, one baby step at a time.
At one point, they used the motto “Impairment starts with the first drink.” They’ve dropped that, removing it entirely from their web site. Perhaps they realized they were jumping the gun by a few years. But a few quotes from their literature shows where they’re really coming from.
”Promoting ‘responsible drinking and driving’ is like promoting ‘responsible drive-by shootings’.”—MADD’s Driven Magazine, Fall, 1997
Forget limits on BAC. It’s just not acceptable to drink and drive, period” - Madd President Wendy Hamilton.
“Lowering the legal [arrest] standard will be a deterrent for light drinkers as well as heavy drinkers. There is no safe blood alcohol level, and for that reason, responsible drinking and driving means no drinking and driving.”—Catherine Prescott, former President, MADD.
“…we do not want to overlook the casual drinker. If you choose to drink, you should never drive. We will not tolerate drinking and driving-period.”—MADD President, Karolyn Nunnallee.
Source: this informative, very ugly site.
A well done breakdown of how M.A.D.D lies with numbers can be found here. And you know you can trust it, because it’s published by Modern Drunkard Magazine.
Comments (3)
10.12.2007 | 9:05 pm | Junk Science, Politics
The Nobel Peace Prize lost all its value when it was given to Yasser Arafat for taking a brief break from murdering Jews. But just in anyone forgot how worthless it is, they’re reminding us by giving it to Al Gore and the IPCC.
I’ve already said most of what I have to say about Gore in this podcast and this article. But I’m making this blog entry to provide a place for you, the readers, to comment.
Comments (3)
10.10.2007 | 9:55 pm | Political Correctness, Junk Science, Nanny Nation, Big Brother
In a semi-free country like the US it’s difficult to impose tyranny in one fell swoop. It has to be done slowly, little by little, baby step by baby step. And it’s important that those first few steps seem reasonable.
The first anti-smoker law was passed in the sixties. It demanded smoking and non-smoking sections in airplanes. That seems pretty reasonable, and it was passed with little objection. If someone said “In a couple of decades this will lead to it being illegal to have a smoke in a bar,” everyone would have laughed at him. And if he said “In forty years this will lead to it being illegal to smoke in your own home” he’d have been written off as being batshit crazy.
This week the city of Belmont CA passed a law that does just that. If you live in an apartment or a in a condo you’ve paid for, your private property, it will soon be illegal to smoke in it.
Fellow citizens, how long are we going to put up with this kind of shit? What will it take to wake up the American Sheeple?
Comments (4)
10.4.2007 | 4:20 pm | Junk Science
If you’re not extremely skeptical of statistical claims, you should be.
“SAGITTARIANS are 38% more likely to break a leg than people of other star signs — and Leos are 15% more likely to suffer from internal bleeding. So says a 2006 Canadian study that looked at the reasons residents of Ontario province had unplanned stays in the hospital.
Leos, Sagittarians: There’s no need to worry. Even the study’s authors don’t believe their results.” (Link requires free but annoying registration.)
Comments (2)
10.2.2007 | 12:33 pm | Junk Science
This article, first published in 1990, provides a clear explanation of what should and should not be considered “junk food”.
“The real definition of junk food (or, of any of its synonyms) should recognize the fact that the adjective is applied exclusively to food items that children, and especially teenagers, find appetizing. Thus, codliver oil, despite its undeniable greasiness and artificially added vitamins and preservatives, is not junk food, because children loath it. Cake, which children love, is, on the other hand, a non-basic (or junk) food, despite containing flour, eggs, milk products, fruit, and sugar (which, with the inexplicable exception of the sugar, are all individually classed as “basic” food items).”
Comments (1)
09.21.2007 | 12:48 pm | Junk Science
Many of the scary numbers we get from the “experts” are wrong, overstated, and in far too many cases, invented. They are ass numbers – numbers someone pulls out of their ass and then spews with authority. “Journalists” then print these ass numbers as if they’re real, but cover their own butts with the weasel words “according to.” “According to Dr. Bigshot McExpert drinking coffee causes a 34% increase in foot fungus.” Other “journalists” copy the story, repeating the claims. Rinse, lather, repeat and sooner or later, usually sooner, most of the public is confident in their knowledge of facts that aren’t facts at all.
This is rampant in the field of medicine, especially in medical claims used to create public policy and laws. It’s even more rampant in economics. Most economic estimates, projections and claims are just fanciful guesses designed to cause alarm where none is warranted.
Experts rely on ass numbers because they almost always get away with it. They’re seldom called on their claims. When they are, the results are usually enlightening and entertaining.
When blogger Michael Geist asked the Canadian police for proof of their claim that software piracy costs Canada thirty billon dollars a year, they said they, well, um, er, kinda sorta. . . made it up. They got their information from an industry front group that generates ass numbers for a living, and then repeated it. They also did some math, again picking random numbers for their calculations. You can read Michael’s story here.
Here’s a fun project for a rainy weekend. Scan the news for ass numbers. Pick one that seems really outrageous. If you like, you can do some research on your own to see if there’s any truth to the number, or even to find out what the real number should be, but that’s optional. Now send some e-mail to the reporters who wrote the story and any sources quoted in the article. Ask for specific sources of the numbers.
Some people will ignore you. Most who reply will evade the question. Persist. Ask them again. Be polite for at least the first few exchanges. You’ll learn a lot about trusting numbers from the experts.
A while back I did just that with ten different nicotine nanny organizations and individuals. You can read the results here.
Comments (19)
07.14.2007 | 12:41 pm | Junk Science, Nanny Nation
Most medical journals have eagerly swallowed the junk science and outright lies of the anti-smoker crowd. This makes it nearly impossible for the opposition to be heard. One exception is the American Council on Science and Health.
Michael McFadden and Dave Kuneman authored a very comprehensive study that shows the conclusions of the widely publicized Helena study are nonsense. They used widely available public data to show that smoking bans have no effect on heart attacks if the sample size was reasonable. (The Helena “study” had a sample size of forty people, and none of them were asked about their exposure to SHS.) Yet their submissions to medical journals have been either ignored or rejected. ASCH saw fit to publish their story.
Now all we need is for a medical journal to stand up to Big Pharma and publish the study itself.
If you’d like to Smartenize® yourself about the Helena “study” start here.
Comments (0)
07.14.2007 | 12:36 pm | Junk Science
I warned about this more than seven years ago. The only surprise is that it took this long.
Susan McBride, a whiny bitch from Detroit, is suing her employer because people wear scents to work. She imagines this violates her rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act. She wants all her co-workers to stop wearing any sprays, perfumes, colognes, lotions and deodorants because she’s sooooo sensitive.
She hasn’t used the magic words “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity” in any of the articles I’ve read, but that’s what she’s describing. MCS is, of course, an entirely imaginary illness. It is nothing more than extreme hypochondria.
Comments (0)
06.26.2007 | 12:00 am | Junk Science, Politics
Sixteen Things You Can Blame on Global Warming
- I thought that the killings in Darfur were the result of tribal warfare, rebel groups, a corrupt government (is there any other kind?) and regional politics. Silly me. It turns out it was caused by global warming. And that’s according to the UN, so you know it must be true.
- Scotland is preparing for a crime wave, which will be caused by global warming.
- I like cats, but you can have too many of them. If you do, blame global warming.
- When frogs started dying off all over the world the Rachel Carlson crowd insisted that pesticides were to blame. It turned out it was due to parasites and fungus. And, of course, global warming.
- If you have cockroaches, guess why? Yep, global warming.
- Beetles? Oh yeah, that’s because of global warming too.
- The snows of Kilimanjaro have been receding for years, and of course global warming is to blame for that. No, wait.
- Damn, insurance is expensive. All because of global warming.
- The reason hurricane Katrina was so nasty was because of global warming. (But wait - the following year we had the fewest, mildest hurricanes in a long time. (Shh, don’t tell anyone.))
- Are Tornadoes caused by global warming? Of course!
- Is there as shortage of hookers in your area? Damn that global warming!
- Why was your web site down? Global warming, of course.
- If an old guy is growing tiny bananas in his greenhouse, you know global warming is to blame.
- Is all this making you feel ill? Maybe it’s not this list; you’re sick because of global warming.
- Wolves eat fewer moose in one island and more moose on another, all because of global warming.
- And finally, we used to always be able to count on using the phrase “as cold as a nun’s tit in a brass bra.” Unfortunately, global warming has put an end to that too.
Comments (6)
06.5.2007 | 10:28 pm | Junk Science
About a month ago my doctor told me my diabetes medicine wasn’t working as well as it used to, so he added Avandia into the mix. It worked very well – after a week or so my blood sugar had dropped to nearly normal levels.
A week after that the media started reporting that this stuff could make your heart attack you. According to a study the risk of myocardial infarctions went up 43% for Avandia users.
I wasn’t too worried, because a 43% increase isn’t much when it comes to epidemiology. Statistics are a yardstick, not a micrometer. Even studies that are well done and honest don’t yield exact numbers, just approximate increases in probability. Because of that, and because there are errors in every study, increases of less than 100% are usually not worth getting excited about. But still, I was taking the stuff, so I set out to see if there was any validity to the claims.
The first article I found said it was based on combined information from 42 studies. That means it’s a meta analysis. That means it’s probably crap. Meta analysis, a study of studies, is the most difficult kind of study to do correctly, and the easiest to fake and manipulate. They are almost always garbage.
Other articles explained that Avandia increases water retention, and that can, in turn, cause a slight increase in heart attack risk. OK, that sounds plausible , but what were the real numbers?
I found the entire study on line, and discovered it was even more useless than I expected.
The Risk Ratio of increased heart attacks (RR) was 1.43, which translates to a 43% increase. But the Confidence Interval (CI) was 1.03 to 1.98. Although the CI is technically not the same as a margin of error, it works the same way. The real number could be a .03% increase. Or a 98% increase. Or any number in between.
If the lower bound of the CI had been 1.00 instead of 1.03, the RR would have been statistically insignificant. The study would probably have never been published, and we wouldn’t be reading all these scary articles.
But wait, there’s more. In the methodology section of the report we’re told: “Six of the 48 trials did not report any myocardial infarctions or deaths from cardiovascular causes and therefore were not included in the analysis because the effect measure could not be calculated.” A half dozen studies showed no heart attacks so they left them out. This is the very definition of cherry picking.
And then my mother-in-law, who is also a diabetic, sent me this article. It fills in even more details and shows just how appalling this study was. It explains that there were 14 additional deaths out of 25,000 people taking Avandia. Statistically, a variation that tiny means nothing.
Oh, and the Doctor behind it? He’s funded by Takeda. Takeda manufactures Actos, a drug that competes with Avandia.
I think I’ll keep taking the stuff.
If you’d like to become an expert at ferreting out dishonest medical studies, read Statistics 101 and Statistics 102 on The Facts.
Comments (3)
06.4.2007 | 11:19 pm | Junk Science, Religion
Those wacky fundies are at it again. This time they’ve got a board game parents can use to reduce the IQ of their children. Or, as they describe it:
At last, a board game that reveals the insanity of perhaps the greatest hoax of our times — the unscientific “theory of evolution.”
“Intelligent Design vs Evolution” is unique in that the playing pieces are small rubber brains and each team plays for “brain” cards. Each player uses his or her brains to get more brains, and the team with the most brains wins.
So he prize for winning this game is, literally, tiny brains.
Perfect.
Comments (2)