Liberal Vision

Why I Hate ‘Neutral’ News

I hate ‘neutral’ news outlets and yet they don’t exist.

That’s because every news outlet has a bias. That is inevitable. The only news outlet that comes even near to having no bias is Drudge Report and let’s face, it’s not a text heavy site…

News doesn’t have to be neutral any longer. We don’t all get our news from the same 2 or 3 radio or TV channels anymore. We pick and choose from hundreds of thousands of web, tv and radio outlets and gravitate to the ones that fit our innate bias and preferences.  We like having our own prejudices reaffirmed.

Because of this, I would argue that it would be better if news outlets just stopped trying to be neutral. The BBC has a bias and because they think they’re not biased, they’ve ended up with a bias they’re not aware of. This annoys me so much more than outlets who have biases I don’t agree with.

The Daily Mail and Fox News are unabashed about having a bias and they do what they do very well. They are incredibly good at engaging the people who consume news from them. These individuals return again and again to their outlets. It appears to me that the reason Fox News became as aggressive as it is was because other news outlets were so adamantly calling themselves neutral when they weren’t. Most journalists in the US are liberal arts graduates, have a moderate liberal bias and, until the inception of Fox News, lacked seemingly all introspective analysis.

I think the reason deliberately biased outlets work so well is because admitting your bias gives you freedom. If I were told to write a neutral article on China’s ‘one child’ policy it would be a lot harder to write than if I wrote an article on China’s ‘one child’ policy with my own bias (I think it’s abhorrent, if you were wondering…).

We’ve got to stop thinking of bias as a dirty word. Bias used to be synonymous with poor quality but I don’t know if that has ever truly been the case. Jezebel has a strong liberal (US) bias but it’s content is usually incredibly novel and high quality. BBC News has a liberal bias and it’s decline is painful to watch… The Times and The Sun are both owned by the same owner, both hold a right-leaning bias but are of noticeably different qualities.

If you’re not neutral don’t pretend to be. Forgo the pretense and strive for quality.

The Stacked Deck

There’s a great discussion regarding income/wealth equality over at Cafe Hayek and Bleeding Heart Libertarians:

I care – very deeply – whether the process for pursuing one’s life’s goals is fair or not.  I want everyone to have as fair a chance in the economy as is humanly possible.  I despise special privileges that stack the deck either in favor of Jones or against Smith.  (We can have a debate about what the details of “fair process” and “special privileges” look like, but this post is not the place for such a debate.)  But I do not care about differences in monetary income or wealth as such.

If (by whatever criteria) the process is fair, then the outcomes are fair.  If the process is not fair, then at least some outcomes are lamentable.  If those lamentable outcomes involve too little income for Smith and too much for Jones, then this income difference is evidence of the unfair or skewed or crony-fied process.  But the object of my concern in such situations isn’t the income difference as such; rather, it’s the unfair or skewed or crony-fied process that gave rise to it.

I’m all for correcting the process, and would be no less in favor of correcting the process if I were told that such a correction will increase income inequality as I would be in favor of correcting the process if I were told that such a correction will decrease income inequality.  Again, income differences can at best serve as evidence of a problem; the differences themselves – the income inequalities themselves – are not the core problem.

Interesting stuff.

Thoughts on UKIP

The rapid rise of the UKIP vote and collapse of the LD vote does, I think, put the relative value of narrative and campaign tactics into sharp relief. Does anyone, for example, think UKIP activists out-worked or out-delivered the LDs in the last four years? Or even came close to doing so? I think not…

Similarly some of the big historic Liberal Democrat by-election wins begin to look more about capturing the protest Zeitgeist than out-leafleting opponents.

Competing for a better Capitalism

What do rich people have that poor people don’t? I imagine that ‘money’ is the first answer that comes into your mind. Well, yes, but let’s break this down. What does money give you? It gives you choice.

Farmers began co-ops in the mid-19th century because they were being sold expensive, rotten food by private food sellers. Because co-ops were providing better produce at cheaper rates, other private food sellers had to up their game. Farming co-ops weren’t non-profits; they were a different type of capitalism. The free-market doesn’t just mean the consumer wins because they have a choice of products to buy; they have a choice between outlets which are structured differently. Different forms of capitalism compete to create better capitalism.

At the time of the financial crisis, I remember seeing very little analysis about how the Co-operative Bank fared in comparison to it’s shareholder counterparts (although, to be fair, the Co-operative bank is not a true democratic co-operative).  If we had a greater mix of co-operative banks and shareheld banks, with co-operative banks being perceived as being more ethical – the theory goes that a greater amount of customers choosing to bank cooperatively would signal to the shareheld banks that they wanted more ethical banking. The shareheld banks would have to get more ethical in order to compete. On the other hand, if a greater number of consumers perceived the shareheld banks as more efficient/cheaper, the co-operative banks would have to get more efficient/cheaper in order to compete. Thus, the pendulum would swing, increasing the efficiency, cheapness and the ethical credentials of banking.

What I’m arguing for is a greater plurality in the structures we interact with. In order for this to come about the State must recede. The main argument against greater marketisation of public services is the perception of capitalism as being unethical. A greater plurality could mean adding a dimension to capitalism that means organisations/outlets have to compete with each other on grounds of their ethical credentials as well as with prices, quality and providing shareholders with dividends. Most people don’t think about this dynamic between capitalist organisations when they think of the free-market.

The sector I fear for most is education. Classrooms don’t look that much different than they did in the 1930s. Even though almost every other area of our lives have changed our schools still look the same. Children don’t all learn the same, but we teach them all the same. Education does not seem to be moving with the times at all. I know no one who makes their living as a fine artist. I know a great deal who make their living using Adobe Creative Suite. Yet, I was taught fine art in school and I was not taught how to work any part of the Adobe Creative Suite.

Ultimately this rot is due to a lack of plurality ergo a lack of incentive to change and innovate. In my ideal world there would be three different types of school structure – schools run by private shareholder capitalist companies, schools run by cooperatively owned capitalist companies and schools run by private charities/non-profits. There would also be three types of funding – private funds, charitable donation and government vouchers. Vouchers give poor people what rich have. Choice. Were this the case education would look different in a very short period of time and unrecognisable after a long period.

This lack of choice is precisely why social democracy sucks. It sucks flexibility and plurality out of the system. The NHS, state schools and other public services are as good as they’re going to get. If that’s good enough for you, fine. But it may not be good enough in 50 years time. Changes in structure and competition change the game for the better, both ethically and efficiently. Embrace it.

Smoking ban health miracles

Earlier this year a paper was published in a peer reviewed journal that was so contrived and so flawed that I had hoped it would convince any doubters that the evidence for miraculous immediate health effects from smoking bans is entirely the figment of activist’s febrile imaginations. Sadly, it appears that I was wrong and that true believers including David Cameron still cling to the notion that smoking bans “have had a pretty dramatic health effect”.  This delusion is shared by Anna Soubry who unforgivably and untruthfully claimed reductions in heart attacks and childhood asthma admissions as a result of the English smoking ban in evidence that she gave to the House of Lords (page 11).  The fact that she was standing next to the less than impartial Andrew Black at the time is no excuse as only someone without interest in truth or reality would take anything Black says at face value.

The “growing body of peer reviewed evidence” used to justify these counter-intuitive claims is an indictment of public health industry ethics and medical journal standards. This recent contribution claiming a 12% reduction is asthma admissions as a result of the smoking ban originates from Imperial College London which is cause for further concern because Imperial is a top UK research establishment and as such charges young people a small fortune to be educated by what one would hope are top academics.

The culprits behind this affront to science are Stanton Glantz and Christopher Millett. In case anyone is labouring under the illusion that these two are objective scientists, Glantz is a well-known anti-tobacco activist who together with Millett holds extreme views on smoking in movies. Glantz was recently mentioned in the US congress in relation to a $680,000 grant that he used to make the bizarre claim that the Tea Party was created 25 years ago by big tobacco. It is extraordinary that we ban tobacco company funded research on the basis of scientific objectivity but, by a widely accepted double standard, treat the output of blatantly biased activist obsessives as “scientific evidence” fit for Prime Ministers.

This paper is yet another example of torturing numbers to fit a theory. The authors produce a lot of complex statistical waffle to obscure the deception but their essentially simplistic claim can be illustrated using annual data for childhood asthma admissions from the same NHS source they use. In the figure below the blue bars are years pre-ban and the orange ones the year of the ban and one year later. The solid red line is a simple linear fit to the pre-ban data.

The claim that the ban reduced asthma admissions depends on showing that admissions rates were increasing pre-ban and that after the ban admissions were lower than predicted had that trend continued along the path illustrated by the dashed red line.  Millett uses the period 2002-2007 to model the “rising trend” in admissions but the NHS data goes back further and if we use all the available data the “trend” changes somewhat.

Cherry picking time periods is a common deception practiced by the public health industry together with taking advantage of coincidental variations in data series that happen to fit a theory or policy.

Those desperate to believe might argue that I am being too simplistic in that the “experts” took a more sophisticated approach and used monthly data. A 12% fall in admissions should not need sophisticated techniques to be apparent but it is true that 2007-08, the year of the ban, saw a big fall in admissions compared to the previous year. However, a look at NHS data for monthly admissions covering three years around the ban serves only to illustrate how the second element of the trick works.  

If I asked a group of seven year olds which of the lines on the chart above was the odd one out, I would expect the majority to say the orange one. The orange line represents monthly admissions for the year before the ban. We can align the data on the month of July which was when the ban came in but it makes little difference. Admissions were low in the year the ban came into force but not unusually so. Both the alleged upward trend before the ban and the apparent fall in the year it was enacted work for the activists only because peak season admissions were unusually high in the year before the ban. That stroke of fortune combined with the cherry picked time frame form the basis of the deception.

This peer reviewed paper appears to be nothing more than a cheap trick, an abuse of academic freedom for political purposes. The authors admit to some of its flaws but this did not prevent them from issuing a carefully worded press release that inevitably led to a misleading claim being widely broadcast by a gullible and uncritical media. It even made BBC TV news! This is not an isolated incident. It forms part of a body of highly publicised but fundamentally flawed “research” that has led some politicians and at least one national leader to erroneously believe in unlikely health miracles associated with interventions such as smoking bans. This might well influence opinions when reviewing existing or considering additional interventions, which one can argue is the main purpose behind such publications and their attendant publicity.

Of course, those politicians obsessed with public health are never slow to accept even the most unconvincing “evidence” if it suits their prejudices. Despite widespread incredulity over the facile “evidence” underpinning the implausible notion that smoking bans produce big falls in heart attacks, Sarah Wollaston of minimum alcohol pricing fame has claimed that the UK smoking ban:

“…was a very good example of evidence-based policy. If you look at what has happened in terms of deaths of cardiac disease, it has been staggering. There’s been a huge drop … It surprised even the health experts.”

Wollaston exhibits blind faith in “evidence” that is of no better standard than the article reviewed here. Her need to believe does not make it true, or a good basis for policy.

I have contacted Pediatrics and asked how something so obviously contrived as the Millett paper could survive peer review. I was informed that it was reviewed by people who are “experts in their field”.  I wasn’t told what field, but expertise in either mathematics or ethics was apparently not considered necessary in this case. There are reasons why political stunts like this usually appear in medical journals rather than elsewhere in the literature and it is remarkable just how low some set the peer review bar. Peer review is supposed to be a minimum requirement able to identify fundamental methodological errors or false claims. Every time an article such as this is published in a “peer reviewed” journal, respect for this gold standard and science in general declines a little bit further. The collective damage is becoming significant and the implications extend way beyond smoking.

I have also contacted Imperial College press office but they have declined to comment on why they inflicted this press release on the general public. From direct experience I know that Imperial College employs many excellent lecturers and research scientists but based on this output I think that we should question what exactly young people are being taught for £9,000 a year and who is doing the teaching. Honesty, integrity and academic excellence are qualities that I would expect to see in those who benefit from the fees young people are now being asked to pay. I appear to be in a minority.

By Chris Oakley. Chris’ previous posts on Liberal Vision include: Minimum pricing – policy based evidence ,  Alcohol is Old News – Minimum Pricing for Digestives is the “Next Logical Step” , Soviet Style Alcohol Suppression Campaign Called for By Public Health Activists , Alcohol Taxation: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ,  Lies, damn lies, statistics &… , The Department of Health is Watching You! , New bounty on smokers helps GPs balance their books.

Tags: Anna Soubry, asthma, Christopher Millett, health miracles, Imperial College, smoking ban, Stanton Glantz