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An exhaustive study of all of the e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia by the AP has found that they demonstrate that scientists are working earnestly, presenting data accurately, and there's not a shred of evidence to support the ridiculous anti-science claims made by many conservatives. They found that, placed in their proper context, the supposedly damning quotes rather make sense. It's clear is that these men have done very poorly in the field of open government, but with regard to science, it's all entirely on the up and up. This has to come as a significant blow to anti-science—given over a million words of confidential communications between climate scientists, there's not a word that supports any of their wild-eyed conspiracies.
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Leonard Eisenberg's chart of evolution is both nice to look at and informative. The narrative of the first half of life on earth is of ever-increasing populations. The narrative of the second half is of mass extinctions.
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Over 22,000 Americans will die this year because they can't afford treatment. (A recent Harvard Medical School study estimated it's 45,000 people.) That's between 60 and 123 people who died today. I wonder how many of those are children who had the bad luck to be born to poor parents?
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It’s been enjoyable watching the climate change crowd try to unring that bell.
“Hey Phil, do you have any friends in the press?”
“Of course, Keith. Lots of ’em. You know they’ve always been very kind to us. What’s up?”
“See if you can give somebody a call. We need to do something about that email debacle.”
“Ah… good idea — I’ll get right on it.”
Just see if you can work the new world order, The Bilderberg Group, and the Illuminati in there somewhere. :)
C’mon Waldo, you should know better than to cite a bogus statistic (sorry, “estimate”) like the “45,000 people will die from lack of health care” one.
No Illuminati or Build-a-Bear Group involved.
The study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, run by Harvard Medical School, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, published in the American Journal of Public Health:
This isn’t monkeys throwing darts at a board here, Michael. If the United States has the best healthcare system in the world, as so many people are fond of claiming, these are the very organizations that make it the best in the country. If I’m not to believe their research, I’m not sure whose I research should believe.
This evolution chart is nice to look at, but I think you are reading too much into it in saying that there are these 2 different narratives in the first and second halves of life on Earth. The author has left out earlier events like the End-Ediacaran extinction, and perhaps more importantly we have much less information to work with when we try to look back 700 million years ago and earlier.
Mass extinctions are easier to identify when there are organisms with hard structures in their bodies that produce good fossils to examine. Prior to the development of cellulose, chitin or calcified structures in life forms we don’t get so many nice fossils. It is difficult to say whether a mass extinction occurred during a period when most of the life on Earth consisted of bacteria which aren’t very easy to differentiate between in fossils. When we look at a fossilized mat of decomposed bacteria we can’t always tell for certain whether we are looking at 1 species or 10. So who is to say whether the number of species suddenly drops in the fossil record?
No, Waldo, I meant that the study was full of holes and extrapolations that may not be correct. Harvard is great, and I support the science program there, but I also support sound science, and not jumping to conclusions where there may not be all the facts. I think there’s a difference between sound hard sciences (drug research, chemical analysis, physiology, etc.) and some of the more “malleable” sciences (statistics, economics, psychology, etc.) where human bias/interpretation/etc. plays a much heavier role.
That widely touted statistic has some issues. Namely, the authors were using some statistics that were not validated (not their fault), and while stating that it may dilute their argument, they go ahead and use them anyway. Also, they used data from a single point in time to classify people for “future events” (basically if someone was uninsured at the time, they treated them as uninsured going forward with no measure of gaining (or losing) insurance).
And the entire thing was done by a group of single payer advocates where they advocate the political policy of universal coverage as a scientific conclusion. This doesn’t negate everything they studied, but it highlights the importance of not politicizing science. I think most studies would show that there are some people that die from a lack of insurance. However, there’s a reason we discount many of the politically charged scientific studies about climate change from groups associated with Exxon, etc.
We all know that we can make statistics say anything. We need to be aware of what they’re really saying, and why they’re saying it. Do you think the person who spearheaded a group whose stated mission is “single-payer national health insurance” would come to any other conclusion?
Not statistics plural—just one. The Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey asked people whether they had health insurance, but didn’t verify that with their health insurance companies. (It’s not possible, of course, to verify that somebody doesn’t have health insurance, because you can’t prove a negative.) The authors report that “[e]arlier population-based surveys that did validate insurance status found that between 7% and 11% of those initially recorded as being uninsured were misclassified,” but the effect of that potential problem is weak enough to be insignificant to the estimation of the authors, their respective institutions, and the American Journal of Public Health.
It’s a bit like asking people who they voted for. You can’t know for sure, but you know the extent to which people tend to lie (claiming to have voted for the winner), and just account for it as best you can.
Accusing these people of falsifying their data is an awfully serious accusation. I hope you can back that up.
You “think” that “most” studies would show that “some” people die? It’s self-evident that people who cannot afford health care are more likely to die. The purpose of studies is determine how many people die because they lack health insurance.
That’s not true. We discount those studies not because they have an opinion, but because their very existence is premised on the outcome of those studies. No matter how this study turned out, all of the involved institutions would continue unaffected.
So your conclusion is…what? That we must ignore all statistics? (92% of people think that’s a lousy idea. ;)
Heh. :-) My point is not to ignore all statistics, but simply beware of where the statistics come from and how they came to be.
Not falsifying anything. Interpreting differently than if some whacky Americans For Prosperity/Hands Off Health Care group took the same data and drew conclusions. Which is why I don’t have a problem with saying that people die from lack of insurance. Determining exactly how many is a valient (although perhaps impractical) goal. And in this instance, I feel that they made some missteps. Your opinions clearly differ.
So a group whose mission is to get universal health care would be unaffected if we got universal health care? It’s one of those paradoxes (Icarus Paradox?); if a group is successful, there is no longer a need for the group. I just prefer to get my information from independent sources, not a group whose hand is so in the pot (so to speak). That’s why I feel the lower estimates from the IOM are probably more accurate. To steal a phrase, “So your conclusion is… what? That we must believe all statistics?”
Let’s just say that I hate typing (I wish this was a more verbal discussion) and will give you the last word. Lay into me, old boy. :-)
“I feel that they made some missteps.”
I know you said you’re not posting anymore on this, but seriously, if you think the American Journal of Public Health was wrong to accept this paper because it draws unsupported conclusions, the least you could do is explain where specifically their research is faulty. I really don’t care who funded a study if its critics can’t do this much.
I mean, your initial comment indicates you think this is so cut-and-dry that Waldo is remiss to cite the number, so obviously it must be a pretty big problem with the paper.