CDC and the White House

A good cartoon tells it the best sometimes. I am behind on this story, and a bunch of other folks have covered this really well. Such as Mr. Mooney, Pugwash, and Mr. Mad Biologist. So all I have to offer is this clever cartoon by David Horsey from my local newspaper. The incident referred to is just the latest in a string of censorship that our great leader has perpetrated against science.
I would like to think that this sort of thing will not continue after Jan 20, 2009. But something deep inside me feels like the threat of political interference in science will always be there...

UW Stands Up for Science

A few weeks ago, University of Washington researchers issued a press release that they had found evidence that exposing very young children to educational videos actually decreases vocabulary development. From the Seattle PI story (adapted from the press release),

Overuse of baby videos may slow the growth of vocabulary among babies 8 months to 16 months old, but didn't have an effect on children from 17 months to 24 months. There is no reason to panic, researchers said, because babies are resilient, and there isn't evidence that videos cause permanent damage. The study didn't examine the effect of videos on older children.

After checking out the original paper, I concluded this is a very fair representation of the findings. I even made a mental note about the findings should I ever have young children. This news tidbit also came in handy during last weekend's NPR show, "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!" That's the typical science news release cycle.

Science to Press Release to National Syndication to Local Coverage to Useless Trivia.

Did the cycle end there? Well... I'm still writing.

It turns out that the researchers used that popular DVD series, "Baby Einstein" as their experimental group. Guess who makes "Baby Einstein." Your favorite multimedia conglomerate, Disney. (News Corporation is your other favorite.) What did Disney have to say about this?

Baby Einstein said its products were designed to spur interaction between parents and their children, not as solitary experiences. "The entire Baby Einstein DVD collection is specifically designed to promote discovery and inspire new ways for parents and babies to interact -- such as clapping, pointing to objects and verbally interacting with their baby," the company said in a statement.

Okay, fair enough. But have you seen the packaging for these videos? That message must not have made it through marketing.

Fortunately for us, Seattle PI reporter Paul Nyham has done a great job following this story. Disney was not content to let some scientists hurt their sales, so what happened next? Strong-armed threats of course! Nyham describes Disney's actions here, but for the full effect, read Disney's letter. Unless you are in no mood for whiners. Disney makes a few minor points, but seems to have misinterpreted the right that scientists have to disseminate knowledge. Furthermore, the study was published after careful peer-review. Sure peer-review has its issues, but one of the best things about it is that it is free from corporate meddling. That's more than the US government can say about how drugs are approved and health guidelines are established!

As an advocate for scientific citizenship, there is no question where I stand on the importance of disseminating science. I am still critical of the press release mechanism for announcing science news, but right now, that's what we've got. As long as researchers have integrity in writing releases and reporters do some amount of background work, the system kindof works. So I was pleased to hear that the University of Washington decided to stand up to Disney's thugs. From a new PI report,

The University of Washington refused to withdraw a press summary of research on baby videos on Thursday, rejecting claims by Baby Einstein owner The Walt Disney Co. that the statement misrepresented the underlying research. "The researchers find no inconsistencies between the content of the news release and their paper. They believe the release accurately reflects the paper's conclusions and their commentary," UW president Mark Emmert wrote in a letter sent to Disney CEO Robert Iger.

If only the UW would stand up to the RIAA and refuse to release private information about students to the multi-billion dollar recording industry.

Meddling With Public Health

Today's Washington Post revealed the specific machinations behind the Bush administration's gagging of former Surgeon General Richard Carmona. Carmona testified to congress earlier this month about the obfuscation and silencing of reports from the SG's office. There are no surprises here, except for perhaps the extent of nepotism and good-'ole-boyness in government right now.

The individual responsible for carrying out the long arm of the Bush/Cheney law is William Steiger. Heres some background:

Steiger, 37, is a godson of former president George H.W. Bush and the son of a moderate Republican who represented Wisconsin in the House and hired a young Dick Cheney as an intern. The elder Bush appointed Steiger's mother to the Federal Trade Commission in 1989. Steiger's parents, now deceased, were "lifelong friends" of the Rumsfelds and the Bushes.

In reference to a report on global health, Carmona said that a senior Bush aide (now known to be Steiger) told him "this will be a political document, or it will not be released." The Post reports that

Steiger said that "political considerations" did not delay the report; "sloppy work, poor analysis, and lack of scientific rigor did." Asked about the report's handling, an HHS spokeswoman said Friday that it is still "under development."

This all comes from a man without any public health or scientific experience or credentials. So what are his credentials, apart from being born into the right family? A Department of Health and Human Services spokesman invites us

"to look at his skills as an executive leader in spite of the fact that he doesn't have a medical degree or a public health degree."

I am not buying that. How about this insight from a different career HHS employee:

"Steiger always had his political hat on," he said. "I don't think public health was what his vision was. What he was looking for, and in general what he was always looking for, was, 'How do we promote the policies and the programs of the administration?'"

There it is! The chief qualification for being a Bush appointee: Never cautious about giving your boss an "Atta Boy!" Steiger had it. Carmona didn't. Carmona's out. Steiger's in. Let's tell him what he's won: Steiger is now awaiting a Senate vote on his nomination as Bush's ambassador to Mozambique. Send your senator an email. Ask him or her to vote no for Steiger. Tell the Senate you've had enough of Bush's patsies. For his political meddling with public health reports, Steiger gets a thumbs down from me on scientific integrity. From Bush et al., he gets an ambassadorship? Just say no!

America's Next Top Doctor

The confirmation hearings for America's Next Top Doctor are in a couple of days, so hopefully you will start to hear something about that in the media. The first big story I came across came by way of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing where the former Surgeon General spoke. From what I can gather, Dr. Richard Carmona, a Bush appointee, was interested in applying scientific evidence to the practice of medicine and public health. He was most notably silenced on his perspectives concerning human embryonic stem cell research, and a commitment to comprehensive sex education.

Carmona reported that his Surgeon General predecessors - Republican and Democratic appointees - told him, "We have never seen it as partisan, as malicious, as vindictive, as mean-spirited as it is today, and you clearly have it worse than anyone's had."

It is sad how familiar this refrain has become. From his prepared comments (I recommend listening to these words from his own mouth in an online NPR segment):

"The reality is that the nation’s doctor has been marginalized and relegated to a position with no independent budget, and with supervisors who are political appointees with partisan agendas. Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological, or political agenda is ignored, marginalized, or simply buried."

For respecting the principle that public health should be based in sound science rather than a political agenda, Carmona's term was not renewed. Let's see if Dr. James Holsinger, the next appointee in line for this will be able to toe the Administration's line. If he does, he deserves to be sacked in 2008. If he doesn't, good for him. Holsinger might be facing an uphill battle; comments denigrating homosexuality have already earned him two 'no' votes on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, who will be holding the confirmation hearings this week.

Update 7/13/07: Yesterday, Dr. Holsinger testified for the first time. Of note was this statement referring to an anti-gay position paper he wrote for the Methodist Church in the early '90s:

"First of all, the paper does not represent where I am today. It does not represent who I am today," Holsinger replied. He said he was not anti-gay, and that he wrote the paper in response to a request from religious scholars who wanted him to summarize the medical literature.

Which scientist among us has never changed his or her mind in the face of evidence that contradicts previous assumptions or hypotheses? Isn't the point of bringing science and/or rationality into the political process so that people will change their minds to adopt a truer course of action. Somehow this always gets mixed up in that political character flaw known as flip-flop.

Carmoma's prepared remarks to the committee are available here.
A nice NPR review of Holsinger's testimony is here.

Objectivity in Studying Abortion

Do women who receive abortions experience lasting psychiatric trauma as a result of that choice?

A lot of (pro-life) groups claim yes, while (pro-choice) women's clinics say no. The mere existence of post-abortion syndrome (PAS) is controversial. Cherie Black of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote a nice article in today's paper about this topic. She seemed not to favor a particular view, and objectively presented opposing sides on this debate (both a Christian program called Project Rachel and physicians decrying the hijacking of medical terminology); Black even addressed the misuse of science occurring in each groups' claims.

One question the author did not raise was whether it is even possible to set up an objective study of whether there is anything real about post-abortion syndrome. I can imagine that the academics or interest groups that have the skills and means to conduct a study might also have considerable underlying bias. If such a study were conducted, what methods could be applied to assure objectivity?

The anecdotes presented in Black's article suggest patients' backgrounds and beliefs before the treatment might inform their response to having an abortion afterwards, but that women report mental trauma should keep open the possibility that their psychiatric pain is real. One side claims support from science, while the other (populated more heavily with scientists) claims uncertainty.

Could there be other situations that could inform this one? What other sorts of personal experiences have the potential for lasting effects from a personal decision? Military post traumatic stress disorder doesn't count in my book - soldiers don't make explicit decisions to see specific horrific situations. Nor does criminal remorse provide the same situation - abortion is legal.

Unless we can find someone familiar with this issue who is undecided on abortion (good luck!), the only way to honestly purse the question of post-abortion syndrome is to form a team consisting of investigators with opposing viewpoints. Such a team will need more than luck!

Update July 3: The Seattle P-I printed a vitriolic editorial today criticizing Project Rachel's misrepresentation of science. I think the emotion was justified if targeting the misuse of science, but I have the feeling that collateral damage could include the individuals seeking counsel for their grief. I responded in their Soundoff comments section, and a commenter named veritas rex offers there more scientific data and medical history related to this issue.

Update July 5: Some folks asked me what my personal take on the abortion issue was. My answer: I find dubious the claims made by many fellow Christians that the Bible prohibits abortion, but am uncomfortable with the widespread acceptance of abortion as a birth control method. My reading leaves ambiguous the Bible verses often cited as determining fetal personhood. (These are the same as those championed by Pro-Life advocates as proof that abortion is murder.) Please see this post for more details.

Update July 10: An OB/GYN doc has a guest column in the Seattle P-I today and offers a retort against there being any evidence of post abortion syndrome. The problem I find with her rebuke is that she stakes her claims on statistics that could actually be used against her argument. Pointing out that "76 percent of women report feeling relief after abortion", she asserts that

no negative medical or psychological consequences

arise from abortion. Okay, I follow that - in politics, this would qualify as an overwhelming majority. In medicine however, 17% is a pretty high rate for side-effects.

17% is particularly important given the columnist's take-home message:

There are 1.3 million abortions performed every year in this country and one in four American women has at least one abortion while reproductively active.

Every year, 221,000 women feel guilt from abortions, and that its possible that 6.7 million women in America regret undergoing the procedure. Don't you think there is a small chance that a few of these women could experience more serious psychological consequences? Will you not take these women's claims seriously? Even if the grief does arise from existing social or religious constructs, isn't it the care provider's prerogative to address these concerns? Perhaps physicians' refusals to acknowledge these women's pain belies the success of programs like Project Rachel.

The more this argument escalates, the more devices from the denialist's deck of cards are employed. I've identified a couple for you in this post.

Misused Math

This morning, I received an anonymous comment on my post about farmers' markets and eating local. The post made from Alexandria, VA (Thank you SiteMeter!) at 3:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time links to a site that informs us of "which states are greener." The content doesn't have much to do with farmers' markets and would probably be better placed on my Live in the Northwest entry, but I checked it out anyway. It turns out that this site is a commercial supplier of solar panels called Hughes Solar Energy, that is based in... Alexandria, VA. It looks like this company is in the business of selling anything that could be remotely tied to solar power.

The section of the website referred to us offers a list all of the states and ranks them according to total carbon output. That metric is useful if you are an energy company marketing low carbon generators (like solar panels), but in terms of modifying individual behavior and identifying where meaningful mitigation can occur, it is useless. What you need to look at is per capita emissions. That number says something about where energy consumption can be improved. So I took 15 minutes to rearrange the data in a spreadsheet so you can see where we need to work the most at reducing emissions. It's also confusing that they order their information using the double negative of "Ranked Worst Pollution." This is the per capita data next to the information from Hughes Solar Energy, and here's a list where you can see which state is beating yours. What a surprise that the rankings nearly inverted! It seems as though high-density blue states use less carbon per capita than the rest of the country.

I remember in 8th grade I had to make a report about how statistics is misused by commercial entities. I think I focused on the Sylvan Learning Center's flawed comparison between American and Japanese school children's workloads and performance. If I were to wite this report over again, this solar energy company's clever (if not disingenuous) presentation of carbon emission data would be my topic!

This is not to say that buying a solar product from Hughes is a bad idea... I just don't like it when people mess around with data to serve their purposes. Okay - when other people mess around with data...

And don't forget how state emissions values can be altered due to geology. For a while, Mt. St. Helens spewed more carbon than all of the rest of the major polluters in Washington State combined!

Scientific Integrity

I've been thinking about scientific integrity a lot recently, and want to put some of my ideas out there. It's almost summer, and this means that the Biomedical Research Integrity series at the University of Washington is about to start. The question I have for this post is:

When you teach ethics to scientists in training, how much do you talk about the history of science?

I think it's fair to say that most people enter science for altruistic motives, each of which could probably be categorized as 'improving society' or 'seeking the truth.' It's only along the way that we are introduced to financial gain, advancement requirements, prestige, funding pressures and the other incentives to lie, cheat and steal.

If we think about the development of empiricism and the scientific method, we can identify that the small number of men who were natural philosophers (there weren't even 'scientists' then) were in it for the altruistic reasons. Am I sugar-coating this to say that there was not motivation for scientific misconduct?

What I am getting at is that it might be useful to contrast the historical conditions surrounding the rise of the scientific tradition in relaying why integrity is such an issue today. We can all identify the pressures that lead to lapses of integrity, but fewer of us admit to temptations and I think fewer of us will (even anonymously) report actions of falsification or plagiarism. The last time I checked there is no Office of Research Integrity ethics topic on history of science.

Maybe it is altruistic to appeal to the traditions and foundations of science, but I think if more people held honesty as the scientist's prime directive, we would not see as many problems with scientific integrity.