Stupid science scare story of the day: Fox News on hairspray

Headline: “Study: Exposure to Hairspray May Lead to Increased Birth Defects“

Conclusion:

“However, there is no proof that exposure to hairspray can cause hypospadias, said the authors of the study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. “Women shouldn’t be alarmed,” said study leader Professor Paul Elliott.”

Bit late for that…

When confirmation bias affects global warming analysis

The report about an enormous goof in collating global temperature data  in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper – “The world has never seen such freezing heat” – has generated it’s own storm system of hot and cold air, with global warming skeptics declaring it “Another dagger in the heart of global warming” and environmentalists responding that one screw up does not a trend undermine.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) had declared that October was the warmest on record, despite evidence that some parts of the world were experiencing record or near-record shifts in the opposite direction.  In the U.S., as the Telegraph reported, “the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.”

So what accounted for this startling discrepancy? Here’s how the Telegraph’s Christopher Booker put it:

GISS’s computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs – run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious “hockey stick” graph – GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new “hotspot” in the Arctic – in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen’s institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

A colder than usual fall does not mean that global warming is not happening, nor does one or more errant sets of data suggest that it’s all a bunch of hooey; but the admission that there isn’t “proper quality control” over how this data is collected should be seen as alarming – as should the failure to spot the anomalous findings until critics began speaking up.

What it suggests is a bad case of confirmation bias: Goddard’s researchers are so focused on confirming that global warming is getting worse that they were overly disposed to accepting data which confirmed their worst fears and under disposed to double check its veracity. This is how science gets skewed.

This may well be a singular mistake, and one should perhaps not suddenly embrace global warming skepticism; but the skeptics have demonstrated that the data cannot be taken for granted, and that, at the very least, the Goddard Institute would benefit from less consensus among its staff.

Autism and rainfall: a statistical sleight of hand?

A new study claiming that counties with high levels of rainfall in the Pacific Northwest had higher autism rates generated a flood (sorry) of media coverage. As the Times of London notes, the study conducted by economist Michael Waldman of Cornell University and published in the Archives of Paediatrics & Adolescent Medicine

“has been seized on by those who claim, against the evidence, that mercury poisoning causes autism. Rain, they suggest, might be the conduit by which mercury pollution from industry is reaching the ground environment.”

Largely missing in a flurry of speculation over what accounted for the findings was that the study did not report a direct link between rainfall levels and autism. This could be because it tried to correlate the two and failed – or because it didn’t actually find a correlation. Instead, it found a link between a “relative preciptiation variable” and autism. Relative precipitation is a measurement of how far a county’s rain level is from the average level of precipitation. So the authors are arguing that when rain levels are “out of the ordinary,” autism is more likely to develop or be diagnosed.

As the Time’s science editor also points out,

Rainfall, too, is variable from year to year, but the trend of rising autism diagnoses goes in one direction. Prevalence is also similar in many countries with different climates. These inconvenient truths compromise the credibility of the link, yet they pass unexplained. There is every chance that this link is a statistical artifact – and one found in a single region. There is no reason to think it can be generalised beyond the US West Coast.

For an in-depth examination of the study, check out surgeon-blogger Orac’s post Rain man? Or does rainfall cause autism?

A rational conversation about breast feeding and formula

The blog “rational moms” is a welcome antidote to the tendency of the Internet and blogging to foster uncritical thinking. “Julie” – a “diehard breast feeder” – writes:

On an intuitive level, it seems obvious that the best food for baby humans is human milk. But the prevailing sentiment that all women can breast feed, if only given enough “support,” is counterintuitive. Some women do have low supply, and that’s that. And some women cannot keep up with pumping when they return to work. Even with things going swimmingly, nursing is a hell of a commitment. After doing it a few months, I was somewhat amazed that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends breastfeeding for a year. I mean, really? A year? That seems quite intense. And they’re not even going all the way. World Health Organization recommends two years.

Although I never questioned that breast milk is optimal, facing a year of nursing made me wonder: how optimal are we talking here? I read the AAP’s statement on breastfeeding, which claims that breast feeding can reduce illnesses and may reduce the incidence of SIDS as well as provide a host of other long term health benefits. However, becoming more of a critical thinker means that I can’t accept the ubiquitous phrase, “Studies have shown,” without asking some key questions about the studies. What kind of studies were they? Were confounding factors taken into account in these studies?

As STATS has pointed out (in an investigation written by three scientists all of whom breast fed their children), when you look at what the data really says, the credibility gap between data and health policy can be hard to swallow.

Slate says RFK “unconfirmable” as EPA head

Slate’s Timothy Noah goes rationalistic on RFK for either the EPA or Interior Secretary:

Do not hire Robert Kennedy Jr. He’s too partisan and kind of a nut when it comes to policy. Check out this dangerously alarmist 2005 Rolling Stone piece about the purported link between autism and childhood vaccines. (To learn why Kennedy’s piece was alarmist, see “Sticking Up for Thimerosal” by Arthur Allen in Slate, August 2005.) Throw in Kennedy’s 1983 heroin bust, and you’ve got yourself an unconfirmable nominee.

Science blogger worries about RFK heading to EPA: “he’s a booster of pseudoscience”

A panicked plea from surgeon blogger “Respectful Insolence” over rumors that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be picked by President-elect Obama to run the Environmental Protection Agency:

he’s a booster of pseudoscience, a hothead prone to comparing political enemies to Hitler and Mussolini, and a lawyer whose science background appears to be primarily torturing science to fit his agenda more than anything else. I started to rest easy for a while, convinced that the report was nothing more than idle speculation or a trial balloon. I really hoped that Obama would not jeopardize his promise to take science seriously and depoliticize it by appointing someone who would trample on science just as much as the worst ideologues in the Bush Administration, the only difference being that he’d stomp on it with his left foot instead of his right foot, if you know what I mean.

Now I’m not resting so easy anymore. There are now several reports that RFK, Jr is being considered for an even worse position, a position where he could do incalculable mischief and at the same time provide credible ammunition to Republicans that the complaints of Democratics that science was politicized under the Bush Administration were hypocritical, given that Kennedy has been politicizing science with gusto and pushing pseudoscience ever since I can remember. I’m talking about numerous reports that RFK, Jr. is being considered to be tapped to as the run the Environmental Protection Agency. He has even been quoted on that repository of all things antivaccine, The Huffington Post, as saying “if asked, I will serve.” Meanwhile, antivaccinationists like Generation Rescue founder J. B. Handley are salivating at the prospect, and, betraying liberal claims to be part of the “reality-based” community, the denizens of Democratic Underground are (mostly) orgasmic at the prospect of an RFK, Jr.-led EPA.

Say it ain’t so, Barack! Please don’t do it. It would be a huge mistake so early in your administration. By appointing such a strident and die-hard advocate of pseudoscience, in one fell swoop, you would seriously damage your credibility as a pro-science President and leave yourself open to charges that you’re just as willing to politicize science as the Bush Administration was.

Sexing up sexed-up TV’s effects on teens?

Maia Szalavitz

A study linking teen pregnancy to high exposure to sexy media has received enormous play in the media (STATS even linked to it in its vital stats column).  But all but one of the mainstream articles online about it that I read – including coverage by USA Today, WebMD, Time, MSNBC, and the Associated Press – failed to note that it’s just as possible that the teens who are already most interested in sex watch the sexed-up shows, rather than sexed-up shows provoking teens’ interest in sexual activity.

Only the Washington Post noted that the connection might not be causal,and this was after the jump in a two-page story online.  But the Post didn’t explain why that would matter.

It matters because if teens who are already interested in sex are seeking out hot scenes on TV or elsewhere, reducing access to that media is not going to do much to solve the problem.  Solutions like talking to your kids, which is widely recommended for obvious reasons anyway, may still help, of course.

Nonetheless, it’s important for reporters covering science to look at the causal connections in the studies they highlight.  Sure, it might make a better story if sexed-up TV makes teens go wild.  And you can hedge by using words like “linked” and “associated” to imply cause without saying it.  But to help readers and viewers make sense of the world, it’s better to explain the science, rather than add to the hype.