Vaccinazioni, Euristica, e al Governo

The Bocca family was recently awarded €174,000 in Italian courts in a case in which they claimed that the MMR vaccine caused autism in their son Valentino. This is not a determination made in a scientific setting, but in a court room. It smells of the Illinois senate decision that "as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois' night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status". The ability of laymen to differentiate valid science from nonsense is unfortunately quite limited, and this problem doesn't magically go away when it comes to the legal system.

From a research publication by Dr MB Kovera entitled 'Legal Decisions about Scientific Evidence', "The Daubert decision highlighted several procedural safeguards that may prevent flawed research that is admitted at trial from influencing jurors' decisions. Cross-examination does not seem to increase juror sensitivity to methodological flaws (Kovera, McAuliff, & Hebert, 1999). Although opposing experts do identify flaws when they are asked to testify against an expert with flawed research (Kovera et al., 2002), opposing expert testimony about flawed methodology appears to increase juror skepticism about expert evidence rather than increasing sensitivity to methodological quality (Levett & Kovera, 2008; 2006). Opposing experts appear to activate jurors' heuristics about experts being hired guns and that competing experts indicate a lack of consensus within the scientific community. These heuristics mediate the skepticism effect."

So we see that, at least in the case of a jury, people aren't really getting at the meat of the science, they're using heuristics to see whose experts are more convincing, but most importantly, they percieve the lack of agreement as a lack of consensus within the scientific community. That's something we see quite a bit of. You see it in people who don't believe in evolution or global warming, as well as among anti-vaxers. They point out one or two quacks who happen to have PhDs, but are really on the fringe, and say there's no consensus when 99% of the scientific community is in agreement. Judges, jury members, and politicians aren't somehow inherently less likely to use heuristics and shy away from actually putting together the pieces, because they're not scientists.

To most laymen, the actual processes behind scientific discoveries and a complete understanding of their implications are more or less a black box. We kind of know what it does, but we don't really know quite how. For some people, more of the components are outside of the box, for others, less. Some people only read articles about papers, some people read abstracts, some people read full studies, check all the math, and try to reproduce it themselves. Most people aren't even touching the abstracts, let alone getting very deep into the methodology or the actual findings that they've summarized and drawn conclusions from. The fact of the matter is that most people aren't going to connect point A to point B on their own. Not most judges, not most jurors, and not most senators. We need something else.

What we need, if you ask me, are scientific advisors, elected to positions within the legal systems by the scientific community. Science isn't going to turn back the other way and become simpler, and with open mass communication the signal to noise ratio doesn't show any signs of improving. Instead of what essentially amounts to public opinion deciding, for the purpose of the legal system, what is or isn't valid science, let's have some people who are trained specifically to determine what consensus exists in the scientific community make those calls. Not to say they should be making philosophical or moral determinations, but when somebody brings up a scientific study as evidence, there ought to be someone pointing out whether or not they've got any ground to stand on.

In the mean time, the world is at the mercy of public opinion.

Bad News

Information today is perhaps more complicated than it has ever been. There are more sources than ever before and word travels at the speed of light. We have the opportunity to learn more about our world than any other people ever have. The bulk of human knowledge lies at our fingertips, and yet misconception and superstition still abound, and to a greater degree than they did a few decades ago. The internet is full of misrepresentative and even fabricated accounts of just about anything, and these things have an impact on people. Look to the birthers or the anti-vaccination people, most of the rest of us can see that they don't know what they're talking about, but they're convinced that they're right. They read an article or saw something on TV and never really investigated any further than that, or did so through biased sources. Of course there are some people who do actually fabricate nonsense for their own benefit, from modern snake-oil salesmen to corrupt polticians, there's not really much we can do to change their minds. Lying is rather profitable. With people like that, you have to take Harry Houdini's approach and pull the rug out from under them.

So how do you immunize a society against nonsense? First look at why we're so susceptible in the first place. I can't speak for everyone, but I know I certainly wasn't taught how to check up on the validity of sources or fact-check their claims in school, and it seems as though I'm far from alone in that. It wasn't as important a skill to have in life as it is today for the general public, because the responsibility for gathering and interpreting information wasn't on us, it was on journalists. At medium-dependent intervals ranging from a few times a day to once a month or so, we were given neatly packaged bits of information generally harvested by professionals. While it wasn't always accurate, it generally tried to be, and error correction was not an uncommon practice. Now we've got a 24 hour news cycle and more widely available sources than anyone can keep track of. If error correction happens, it often goes unnoticed. Most stories aren't compelling enough to keep our attention as they develop. Unless we specifically decide to look further into something, or it happens to become a topic of general interest, all we're going to see is a flash in the pan of a few headlines, never knowing the end result. Even if you're doing more digging than the average person, we can't fact-check everything, so source quality is a big issue. The best sources still get things wrong sometimes, so how can anyone hope to improve the quality of information they're getting? By identifying and cutting out the worst offenders. Let's talk about what that entails.

How can you tell if a source is particularly biased, or even fabricating stories? The first line of defense is Google. A quick search on a source will often bring up criticism regarding neutrality or accuracy of reporting. Searching for the story in question, or other stories on the site, can also be helpful. If you find that the only other places reporting the story are copypasta blogs, forums, and biased "news" sites, that can be a good indication that you're dealing with a source that's not very reliable. Reputable sources generally want to print interesting stories if they're real, so chances are you'll be able to find some decent sources talking about it if a story is legit. Again, even that's not a 100% guarantee of the veracity of the claims made in the story, but it's a hell of a lot more likely to be accurate than something you read on InfoWars. Another big indicator of lack of authenticity can the image they try to project in what they report on, how they report on it, and even their name. When a site advertises itself openly as conservative, liberal, religious, anti-establishment, pro-establishment, "natural", etc, it's coming out and telling you that it's going to stack the deck in favor of the opinions it endorses. Even if they don't fabricate information themselves, they're more susceptible to repeating fabricated or misconstrued information without carefully examining it. They're also more likely to report stories that seem to confirm their beliefs and fail to report stories that would hurt their position, so even if they actually manage 100% factual accuracy in all their stories, they're going to present them in such a way that it skews the apparent degree to which the world conforms to their ideas about it.

With this in mind, I'd like to address a few particularly bad sources.

Fox News - Has a well documented history of sensationalist reporting, misrepresentation, and outright lies. Responsible for the Tea Party.

The Daily Mail - A British paper with a strong conservative bias with a history of fabricating news, as well as sensational, misrepresentative headlines.

RT (Russian Times) - A Kremlin mouthpiece covered in conspiracy nonsense.

The Huffington Post - As if anti-vaccination propaganda and advocating homeopathy weren't enough, they're also in the habit of tossing around other bad science and conspiracy garbage. Occasionally they have a decent article on something, but with the quality of reporting you really can't trust that it's got any basis in reality.

Natural News - Bad science and conspiracies again. Note the name. There are many other sites that are very similar to this one that run the same stories and have very similar names.

Infowars et al - These sites make a point of letting you know that they're telling the truth, because what everyone else is telling you is a lie. That's a pretty good indication that they're off their rockers.

Again, even the best source gets things wrong sometimes, but by cutting out the worst sources, and by doing the extra footwork when we can, we can fill our heads, and the heads of those around us, with a little less garbage. Don't take my word on this stuff, don't take anyone's word on anything, check up on it yourself. Half of us have computers in our pockets wherever we go now, we might as well start doing what we can to have some idea what we're talking about.

5 Ways Jason Pargin is Not Representative of Males as a Group

Well a year later this article seems to have attracted some attention. Lovely. Anyway, as I wrote this article a year ago my views have changed a bit. I may write a followup at some point, but not today. There are a few things I'd like to mention, though. First of all, a few people have pointed out that I'm responding to "a comedy article", as if the fact that Pargin thinks he's being funny makes his assertions any less nonsensical. This isn't the Onion taken seriously, this is one of Cracked's unfunny writers trashing men with tumblr-feminist drivel. That said, I'm not really a fan of this article. I don't like the way I wrote it and I think it gives far too much attention to something that doesn't really need it. Of course, at the time that article was being passed around with the suggestion that it was something men could really learn from, which put it in a bit of a different context. Now it's just some shitty cracked article that isn't funny. Oh well. Also, some of you seem to have construed this article as anti-feminist. It's not, and I'm not. There's nothing feminist about sexist generalizations.

I recently read an article on Cracked by one Jason Pargin, Senior Editor, under the pen name David Wong entitled "5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women". Frankly, I was appauled. I don't know whether this is a reflection of Pargin's own life or something he's cobbled together from the worst the internet has to offer, but what it is not is an accurate reflection of men. I'm sure there are some people out there who will fit the bill, but that's not what he's saying. This guy's making blanket statements about this stuff, and that's complete nonsense. I'm going to address this one part at a time.

First, the introduction. Pargin points out misogyny on both FreeRepublic, a conservative site, and Reddit, a fairly liberal site. These are actual posts that exist on the internet, but what are they really reflective of? I can go find as many posts as you want about any extremely offensive subject that you like, advocating horrors and espousing utter filth. It demonstrates that there are some pretty fucked up people out there, but we already knew that. It doesn't demonstrate that they're anywhere near the norm, and we have no reason to believe they are.

#5. We Were Told that Society Owed Us a Hot Girl

Here the author states that men feel entitled to a woman because the media has trained them to think that way. He seems to derive that idea of entitlement from the emotional reaction that may sometimes accompany rejection. Of course, there's no reason to assume the presence of anything extra to explain someone being emotional after being rejected. They got their hopes up and stuck their neck out and it didn't work out. Men try to protect their conception of themselves, just as women do. We don't want to think of ourselves as devalued because someone we put value in didn't put value in us. Some men respond to this by feeling worse about themselves, some men respond to it by rejecting the woman (you can't fire me, I quit), and others respond rationally by telling themselves they just weren't compatible, but even that last guy is probably still kinda bummed, especially if it wasn't a spur of the moment thing.

One of the things that irritated me so much about this article is that some of the points he's trying to get at actually have some room to give advice to people who need it and instead of that he's painting with very broad strokes and not offering any suggestions. It really is helpful to be able to step back and look at your situation so you don't blow your top. Lack of control has no preference for gender, there are women who deal just as badly with rejection as any men do.

After a few assertions phrased like questions at the top he, moves on to detail some "examples" of this in media. His argument is that in movies, tv, books, and games the good guy wins the girl. There are a few problems with this. First, he ignores every story in which the lead has no romantic interest. Whoops. Second, he's breaking the fifth wall in regard to character decision making. To say that the romantic interest has no choice but to fall in love with the hero (which she doesn't always do), is the same as saying that the hero has no choice but to defeat the villain. You can't just erase character motivation because you think you know the archetypal elements of the story you're looking at. Are there instances where the hero gets the girl and her opinion isn't addressed? Sure, in older or more simplistic stories (the archery contest in Robin Hood, Donkey Kong), but there are also instances where the girl has no interest in the hero despite his success, or where the hero doesn't succeed at all. There are many stories in which the hero's love is unrequited and stays that way, and not every hero is a hero. Many heroes are losers. Again, blanket statements and cherry-picking.

Now he comes back to entitlement, and again asserts that men's problem is with women exercising choice, rather than with men being just as emotional as anyone else. That he finds a causal connection with media here is laughable. Clearly he's forgetting the mating practices of the rest of the animal world.

#4. We're Trained from Birth to See You as Decoration

Here Pargin talks about how men only think about sex, ever. He says that the fundamental difference between male and female sexuality is that sometimes women aren't thinking about sex. So now we know that Pargin thinks about sex every minute of every day. This explains why he has such a warped perspective. If I was constantly distracted by sex I'd probably half-ass my social commentary too. He moves on to cherry-pick that awful FreeRepublic site some more. Again, yes, there are extreme examples of all kinds of crazy offensive shit if you go looking for them, but that doesn't say anything about everybody else. A little more cherry-picking and we're on our way.

#3 We Think You're Conspiring With Our Boners to Ruin Us

Here he starts out talking about public masturbation. He details stories about men who get their dicks caught in things and have to be freed, using this to suggest that women don't masturbate in public, just men. I'm sure the fact that it would be impossible for a woman to get stuck in something she was fucking has no impact on the number of women who get stuck in the things they're fucking. None at all. Also, apparently all these men were interviewed by "Wong" after wedging their wangs while wanking, and personally asserted that they were not, in fact, fetishists, but terribly impatient. Fascinating.

Next he starts making a bunch of claims about the brain that he doesn't really seem to fully grasp. He claims to have a "theory" but offers no scientific papers or peer review related to it. He cites a study that mentions an increase of activity in the amygdala and hypothalamus in men, but not women, while viewing arousing pictures, but this study makes no claims related to his own. He then goes on to accuse men of being so helplessly enthralled by their sexuality that even at their grandmother's funeral they'll be busy looking at tits. I lost my grandmother last year and I can assure you, I was not looking for tits. A stiff drink, maybe, but not tits. I don't really have anything else to say about that claim other than it's insulting and demeaning.

Now he gets into the idea that men are angry with women for wearing provocative clothing because it turns them on. I'm sure this is true of some men, but again, he's painting with broad strokes and has no evidence for his claims. He talks about how his female friends balk when he explains to them that their bodies have given them mind-control powers over him. I'd balk too. Moving on.

#2 We Feel Like Manhood Was Stolen from Us at Some Point

He's almost touching on something real here. Almost. He talks about learning that you're not supposed to show people your dick, piss wherever you want, attack people, jump off of high objects, or light things on fire. These things, he says, are "core male urges" that we now supress. Let's examine that.

First, the penis. One thing we did learn at a young age is that society wants nothing to do with our penises. Not only should we not take them out, we should hide them so that people can pretend they don't exist. Failing to do so isn't just impolite, either, you can go to jail for it. Of course, women can be arrested for indecent exposure as well. Consider, though, the reaction to finding a man lying naked in his yard on a hot day and a woman lying naked in hers. Which, in America, at any rate, do you think is more likely to have the cops called on them? There are certainly places in the world where women's bodies are vilified and hidden, but that's not the society being addressed here. In Western society women's bodies are beautiful and men's bodies are tolerable at best but closer to disgusting. Now it may well be that the reason for this is that men are more receptive to visual arousal, which sets the tone for what is and isn't visually attractive in an unbalanced way, but that by no means reduces the impact on men, and it's something that women contribute to as well.

So yeah, male nudity has intrinsic maleness, he hit the nail on the head with that one. The rest of the things he listed, however, are not intrinsically male. They're socially identified with maleness, but girls learn not to do these things too. They're no more core male urges than passivity, cooking, and home-making are core female urges. I don't burn things down, attack people and jump off of buildings because I don't want to, not because women as a whole "took it away from me". I also don't enact retribution on an entire gender as a response to some imagined slight. Are there guys out there who do view the world through Pargin's warped perspective? Sure, but there's no reason to believe they're anything but a minority. Of course, you'll find a ton of them if you go looking for them, but that's true of anything. It says nothing about everybody else.

#1 We Feel Powerless

Here Pargin says that when men interact with women, it's like when a person is hungry in a cartoon and sees their friend as actually being made out of food, or being a floating ham or what have you. Again he's coming back to the whole "men only think about sex" thing in the form of "everything men do is related to impressing women". This has no basis in reality. He does a little more cherry-picking and we're out the door.

So what we have here is a man who is obsessed with sex, only ever thinks about women, and hates women for being attractive. Having begun to realize this he projects it onto his entire gender rather than coming to terms with his own personal flaws. It can't possibly be him, so it must be all of us. Suddenly instead of a pathetic jerk admitting to himself that he's a pathetic jerk and needs to get his shit together, he becomes a crusader. He points out his flaws in everyone else whether they have them or not, and seeks out places where those flaws are common so he can become irritated and further affirm his distance from his own problems. If this article can, as people keep saying, "help men grow", it's by their own ability to realize that Jason Pargin is a spineless weasle who hides from his problems out in the open and drags others into his venomous bullshit like so many other guilt-ridden cowards, and that they should neither emulate him nor buy into the bile spewed by him and his ilk.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not that guy who thinks all feminists have it out for men, or that no male privilege exists. Women have to think about things and deal with things that men never encounter, but it goes both ways. There is an experiential gap between the genders, and rather than arguing over who has it worse or building dogmatic and confrontational camps, we ought to try to understand one another. It has to go both ways, though, and we can't make judgemental leaps of logic to conform to our preconceptions or project our problems onto everyone else so we don't have to deal with them.