• About

Sacred Cow Chips

Sacred Cow Chips

Tag Archives: Precautionary Principle

Risk Realism, COVID Hysteria

29 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by pnoetx in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

All-Cause Mortality, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Sciences, Asian Flu, Covid-19, David Zaruk, Engineering and Medicine, Hydroxychloraquine, Infection Fatality Rate, Mollie Hemingway, Precautionary Principle, Spanish Flu, The Risk Monger, Tyler Cowen, Wired

Perhaps life in a prosperous society has sapped our ability and willingness to face risks. This tendency undermines that very prosperity, however. If we ever needed an illustration, the hysteria surrounding COVID-19 surely provides it. Do we really know how to exist in a world with risk anymore? During this episode, the media, public officials, and much of the public have completely lost their bearings with respect to the evaluation of risk, acting as if they are entitled to a zero-risk existence. Of course, COVID-19 is highly transmissible and dangerous for certain segments of the population, but it is rather benign for most people.

Perspective On C19 Risks

Just for starters, the table at the top of this post (admittedly not particularly well organized) shows calculations of odds from the CDC. These odds might well overstate the risks of both C19 and the flu, as they probably don’t account well for the huge number of asymptomatic cases of both viruses.

Another glimpse of reality is offered by a recent Swiss study showing the C19 infection mortality rate (IFR) by age, shown below. You can find a number of other charts on-line that show the same pattern: If you’re less than 50 years old, your risk of death from C19 is quite slim. Even those 50-64 years of age don’t face a substantial mortality risk, though it’s obviously higher for individuals having co-morbidities. These IFRs are lower than all-cause mortality for younger cohorts, but higher for older cohorts.

And here are a few other facts to put the risks of C19 in perspective:

  • The current pandemic is relatively benign: thus far, the U.S. has suffered a total of about 145,000 deaths, or 440 per million of population;
  • the Asian Flu of 1957-58 took 116,000, according to the CDC, or 674 per million;
  • the Spanish Flu of 1917-18 took 675,000 U.S lives, or 6,553 per million.

It should be obvious that these risks, while new and elevated for some, are not of such outrageous magnitude that they can’t be managed without bringing life to a grinding halt. That’s especially true when so-called safety measures entail substantial health risks of their own, as I have emphasized elsewhere (and here).

The Schools

Nothing illustrates our inability to assess risks better than the debate over reopening schools. This article in Wired is well-balanced on the safety issue. It emphasizes that there is little risk to teachers, students, or their families from opening schools if reasonable safety measures are taken.

Children of pre-school and elementary school age do not contract the virus readily, do not transmit the virus readily, and do not readily succumb to its effects. This German study on elementary schools demonstrates the safety of reopening. It is similar to the experience of other EU countries that have reopened schools. This article reinforces that point, but it emphasizes measures to limit any flare-ups that might arise. And while it singles out Israel as an example of poor execution, it fails to offer any evidence on the severity of infections.

Furthermore, we should not overlook the destructive effects of denying in-classroom learning to children. They simply don’t learn as well on-line, especially students who struggle. There are also the devastating social-psychological effects of the isolation experienced by many elementary school children during extended school closures. This is of a piece with the significant risks of lockdowns to well being. Perhaps not well known is that schooling is positively correlated with life expectancy: this study found that a one-year reduction in years of schooling is associated with a reduction in life expectancy of 0.6 years!

It’s true that children older than 10 might pose somewhat greater risks for C19 contagion, but those risks are manageable via hygiene, distancing, and other mitigations including hydroxychloraquine or other prophylaxes against infection for teachers who desire it. Capacity limitations might well require a temporary mix of online and in-school learning, but at least part-time attendance at brick-and-mortar schools should remain the centerpiece.

As Tyler Cowen points out, teenagers are less likely to remain isolated from others during school closures, so their behavior might be more difficult to manage. It’s quite possible they could be more heavily exposed outside of school, hanging out with friends, than in the classroom. This illustrates how our readiness to demure from absolute risk often ignores the pertinent question of relative risk.

Judging by reactions on social media, people are so frightened out of their wits that they cannot put these manageable risks in perspective. But here is a statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics. And here is a statement from the American Association of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. They speak for themselves.

Excessive Precautionary Putzery

Our reaction to C19 amounts to a misapplication of the precautionary principle (PP), which states, quite reasonably, that precautionary measures must be invoked when faced with a risk that is not well understood. Risk must be managed! But what are those precautions and on what basis should benefits we forego via mitigation be balanced against quantifiable risks. That was one theme of my post “Precaution Forbids Your Rewards” several years back. Ralph B. Alexander discusses the PP, noting that the construct is vulnerable to political manipulation. It is, unfortunately, a wonderful devise for opportunistic interest groups and interventionist politicians. See something you don’t like? Identify a risk you can use to frighten the public. Use any anecdotal evidence you can scrape together. Start a movement and put a stop to it!

That really doesn’t help us deal with risk in a productive way. Do we understand that well being generally is enhanced by our willingness to incur and manage risks? As David Zaruk, aka, the Risk Monger, says, “our reliance of the precautionary principle has ruined our ability to manage risk.”:

“Two decades of the precautionary principle as the key policy tool for managing uncertainties has neutered risk management capacities by offering, as the only approach, the systematic removal of any exposure to any hazard. As the risk-averse precautionary mindset cements itself, more and more of us have become passive docilians waiting to be nannied. We no longer trust and are no longer trusted with risk-benefit choices as we are channelled down over-engineered preventative paths. While it is important to reduce exposure to risks, our excessively-protective risk managers have, in their zeal, removed our capacity to manage risks ourselves. Precaution over information, safety over autonomy, dictation over accountability.”

To quote Mollie Hemingway, in the case of the coronavirus, Americans are “reacting like a bunch of hysterics“.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Statists Might Like To Vaccinate Against Many Things

25 Monday Nov 2019

Posted by pnoetx in Vaccinations

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Anti-Vaxxers, Community Protection Threshold, Contagion, Contra-Indications, Externality, Federaalism, Herd Immunity, Immunization, Jeffrey Singer, Lancet, Measles, Mercury, Michigan Vaccine Law, Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, Precautionary Principle, Price Discrimination, Private Governance, Vaccine Hesitancy, Vaccine Preservatives, Vaccine Resistors, Whooping Cough

The vaccine debate illustrates a widespread misunderstanding about the meaning of an “advanced society”. It does not mean that difficult social problems must be dealt with always and everywhere in a uniform way, as supporters of vaccine mandates seem to assume. Instead, it often means that society can respect differences in the preferences of individuals by allowing varied approaches to problem-solving across jurisdictions, as well as across public and private institutions. This latter notion of advancement respects individual freedom and facilitates experiential social learning. But is that varied approach wise in a world of communicable diseases?

One standard of “community” protection assumes that vaccines work with a high degree of certainty within groups of individuals, especially with a second booster. The share of the population vaccinated against most common childhood diseases is fairly high. In fact, these shares mostly exceed their respective “community protection thresholds” — the percentage required to prevent a particular disease from spreading. That means achieving so-called “herd immunity”. Of course, that will not be true across many local subgroups. Nevertheless, if one accepts this standard, a runaway contagion in the U.S. is an extremely remote possibility, affording some flexibility for respecting preferences for and against vaccination.

My Friend, the Vaccine Resistor

One of my best friends is a passionate vaccine resistor (VR). I won’t say he’s “vaccine hesitant” because that doesn’t come close to his position. I won’t call him an “anti-vaxxer” because he doesn’t mind if others avail themselves of vaccines (and besides, the term has taken on such derogatory connotation. He’s a fine fellow, very smart, lots of fun to be with, and we have plenty of mutual interests. We’ve argued about vaccinations before, and a few other medical and nutritional issues, but we mostly stay out of each others’ ways on these topics.

But I recently witnessed my pal get into a “debate” on social media with a mutual acquaintance and some of her connections. She happens to be a nurse. She’d posted a photo of an attractive young woman in a t-shirt imprinted, “Vaccines Cause Adults”. My buddy spoke up and said “Not for everyone!’, and he posted a link to an article that he felt supported his position. Of course, a number of barbed responses came his way. Okay, some of those were fair debate points, though barbed, but others were quite derisive, ad hominem attacks on him. He responded by posting links to more articles and research, which might not have been productive. It’s usually a waste of time to argue with people on social media. But to his great credit he maintained his equanimity. The episode made me feel a bit sad. People can be such assholes on social media. I was put off by the nurse’s refusal to moderate . That’s a typical pattern: posters allow their other friends to hurl terrible insults at anyone who disagrees, even when it’s an old friend. Mind you, I stayed on the sidelines in this case, except that I originally “liked” the nurse’s meme.

Later, I had a private exchange with my friend. I’m on board with vaccinations. I believe that widespread immunization contributes to public health, but I told him there are certain points on which I can sympathize with VRs. Without knowing the details, he encouraged me to write a blog post on the subject. I’m not sure he’ll like the results. However, as noted above, I’m willing to make a few concessions to my buddy’s side of the argument, and I wish we could identify a path that would settle the debate.

My Standpoint

This is one part my pal won’t like. Are VRs anti-science? First, VR’s come in several varieties. Some might resist only some vaccines and not others. But VRs do not disavow empiricism, as they claim their own set of empirical findings to support their position, however one might regard the research quality. 

I believe many VRs are misled by a serious post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy: after this, therefore because of this. For example, for many observers, the purported link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine was put to rest when the British medical journal Lancet retracted the original article supporting that claim as faulty. That doesn’t wash with more radical VRs, many of whom seem to have someone on the autism spectrum in their own families. They are understandably sensitive, but please forgive me: that suggests a need to find some external explanation, a source of blame not related to genetics.

Radical VRs are selective proponents of the precautionary principle: any risk of harm from a vaccine delivered in any amount is too great a risk. They seem reluctant to acknowledge the reality of a dose-response relationship, which bears on the risks of exposure to certain compounds often present in vaccine formulations. VRs will not acknowledge that vaccines present a manageable risk. And then there are the misleading references to disease incidence counts, as opposed to disease incidence rates, that are all too common (though my friend is almost certainly innocent on this count).

Vaccine resistance is not a new phenomenon, as the cartoon above from 1802 illustrates. Certain people will always find the idea of injecting germs into their systems deeply unsettling. Of course, that’s a very natural basis of resistance. A person’s body is their own property, after all. My default position is that an individual’s control over their own body is inviolable, and parents should always be the first authority over decisions about their children. The real issue, however, is the question of whether unvaccinated children inflict external costs on others.

Points of Contention

The major objections of VRs fall into several categories: 1) preservatives; 2) multiple viruses; 3) vulnerable infants; 4) contra-indications; 5) inefficacy; and 6) free choice. There may be others, but I’ll go with those.

Preservatives: Some vaccines still use a form of mercury, but a much more innocuous variant than the one VRs found so objectionable a few decades ago. Still, they object. And they object to many other compounds used in minute quantities as preservatives, such as formaldehyde, which occurs naturally in our bodies. I think the following test is helpful: if it were proposed that VRs take new versions of the vaccines that had zero preservatives, many would still refuse, especially if they were asked to pay the additional cost of providing them in that form. Thus, preservatives are revealed to be something of a side show.

Multiple Viruses: VRs object to the administration of vaccines that inoculate against several viruses in one dose or within a short window of time. This objection has some plausibility, since an injection of several different “bugs’ at once might place excessive stress on the body, even if the risk is still small. But again, would VRs volunteer to take single strain vaccines in a schedule over a lengthier period of time? Probably not.

Vulnerable Infants: VRs say it’s too risky to vaccinate infants in their first few months of life. This too is a plausible objection, and it would seem like a relatively easy concession to make in the interests of compromise … except, it won’t ever be good enough. Radical VRs will not agree to having their children vaccinated at any age.

Contra-Indications: There are undoubtedly genetic factors that pre-dispose certain individuals to an adverse reaction to certain vaccines. These might be rare, so an effort to compromise by requiring a thorough genetic profile before vaccination would be costly. I believe profiling is a reasonable demand for individuals to make, however, provided they pay the cost themselves.

Inefficacy: My friend posted an intriguing article about the drastic declines that occurred in the incidence of various diseases before the introduction of vaccines to prevent those diseases. This might not be the same link, but it makes the same argument. That doesn’t mean vaccines don’t work, of course. There is a vast literature that shows that they do. Bing it! And in cases such as smallpox, the use of “folk applications” of puss to a small scratch in the skin were in use long before the vaccine was available. Nevertheless, the VRs contend that the historical rates of disease incidence provide evidence against vaccinating. They also contend that diseases like measles are not serious enough to warrant precautions like vaccines. Measles can be deadly, though not as deadly as the flu.

Free Choice: This is the point on which I’m most sympathetic to VRs. Again, we own our own bodies and should have authority over our own minor children, yet communicable diseases seem to be a classic case of externality. Susceptible individuals may inflict a cost on others by refusing vaccination or segregation. Other people own their bodies too, and they have a right to avoid exposure. They too can isolate themselves or take precautions as they deem necessary. If both parties wish to participate in society, then both hold rights they allege to be threatened by the other. That complicates the task of reconciling these interests in private, voluntary ways, and yet they often are reconciled privately.

Solutions?

The debate today often revolves around mandatory vaccination, which would be an extreme measure relying on the coercive power of the state. The rationale is that even a vaccinated majority would be subject to an unnecessarily high risk of infection when in frequent contact with an unvaccinated minority. It’s difficult to endorse such broad intrusiveness when we’re dealing with a negative externality of such minute probability. And such a policy is not at all defensible without exceptions for individuals for whom a vaccine is contra-indicated.

Tolerating differences in vaccination rules across cities, school districts, or even states, may be a reasonable approach to settling the debate in the long run. These variations allow empirical evidence to accumulate on the efficacy of different vaccine regimes. It also allows individuals and families to “vote with their feet”, migrating to jurisdictions that best suit their preferences. These are the basic foundations of federalism, a principle of great usefulness in preserving freedoms while addressing regional differences of opinion on contentious issues.

Michigan has a policy allowing unvaccinated children to attend schools, but a waiver must be obtained requiring the child’s parents to attend a vaccine education program. The policy is credited with increasing vaccination rates. The problem is that VRs tend to view this requirement as an infringement on their rights. Advocates of the policy might argue that the situation should be viewed as an arms-length, voluntary exchange between two parties, in this case a family and a public entity. The vaccine education program is just the price one must pay in lieu of vaccination. The exchange is not arms length, however, as it would be if the school were a private entity. The VR parents who refuse the waiver are not rebated for taxes paid for local schools. In fact, like all taxes, the payment is coerced.

It’s not always necessary to appeal to some form of government action, even at local levels. For example, private schools may require vaccination among enrollees, and private businesses, especially health care providers, may require staff to be vaccinated. Life and health insurers may wish to price risk differently for the unvaccinated. VRs might object that they are subject to discrimination by institutions requiring immunization, or who price discriminate in favor of the immunized, but VRs are free to form competitive institutions, even on small scales or as mutual companies. To the extent that such private rules are unjustified, the institutions who discriminate are likely to learn or lose eventually. That’s the beauty of market solutions. In these ways, non-coercive private governance is far preferable to action by the state.

Dr. Jeffrey Singer is an advocate of immunization who opposes mandatory vaccine laws, as he explained a few years ago in “Vaccination and Free Will“. He suggested elsewhere, in “Seeking Balance In Vaccination Laws“, that schools, instead of requiring immunization, could mitigate the risk of a contagion by insisting that unvaccinated children be held out of school when a particular threat arises and remain out until it passed. That’s a reasonable idea, but I suspect many pro-vax parents would fear that it doesn’t go far enough in protecting against the introduction of a disease by an unvaccinated child.

Conclusion

Recent increases in the incidence of diseases such as measles, mumps and whooping cough are extremely troubling. Whether these outbreaks bear any relationship to patterns of vaccination in the population is certainly a valid question. To the extent that more families and individuals wish to be immunized, and that private institutions wish to take action to increase vaccination rates within their sphere of influence, I’m all for it. Vaccination laws are a different matter.

Political action at the local level might mean that school districts and other public entities will require vaccinations or vaccine education programs. Alternatives exist for those refusing to vaccinate, but broad mandatory vaccination is too coercive. Such measures carry significant costs, not least of which is a loss of liberty and normalization of losses of liberty. It’s not clear that a vaccination mandate at the national level, or even a state vaccination mandate, can offer benefits sufficient to justify those costs. Nudges are irritating and may be costly, but forcible intrusions are way out-of-bounds. Unfortunately, there are parties that simply can’t resist the temptations of behavioral control, and that’s worthy of resistance. Let’s continue to muddle through with an essentially federalist approach to vaccination policy. I regard that as a hallmark of an advanced society.

 

The Bad News Industrial Complex

20 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by pnoetx in Big Government, Corruption, Risk Management

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beepocalypse, Cronyism, Matt Ridley, NASA, News Media, Oxfam, Precautionary Principle, rent-seeking behavior, Risk Aversion, Risk Mitigation, The Lancet

Matt Ridley had an interesting piece on his blog last month entitled “Bad News Is Sudden, Good News Is Gradual“. It’s about the timing of news, as stated, and it’s about our bias toward bad news more generally. There is no question that bad news tends to be more dramatic than good news. But with steadily increasingly lifespans, growing prosperity, and world poverty at an all-time low, surely good news must come as much or more frequently than bad. But good news can be inconvenient to certain narratives. It is therefore often ignored, and some other purported disaster is found as a substitute:

“Poverty and hunger are the business Oxfam is in, but has it shouted the global poverty statistics from the rooftops? Hardly. It has switched its focus to inequality. When The Lancet published a study in 2010 showing global maternal mortality falling, advocates for women’s health tried to pressure it into delaying publication ‘fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause’, The New York Times reported. The announcement by Nasa in 2016 that plant life is covering more and more of the planet as a result of carbon dioxide emissions was handled like radioactivity by most environmental reporters.“

Tales of bad outcomes can be alluring, especially if they haven’t happened yet. In fact, bad things might even happen gradually, but dark visions of a world beyond the horizon impart a spooky sense of immediacy, and indeed, urgency. Ridley notes the tendency of people to regard pessimists as “wise”, while optimists are viewed as Pollyannas. And he recognizes that risk aversion plays an important role in this psychology. That brings me to the point I found most interesting in Ridley’s piece: the many vested interests in disasters, and disasters foretold.

Risk management is big business in an affluent society. There is a lot to lose, and a squeamish populace is easily cowed by good scare stories. The risk management and disaster-prevention narrative can be wrapped around any number of unlikely or exaggerated threats, serving the interests of the administrative state and private rent-seekers. One particular tool that has been most useful to this alliance is the precautionary principle. It is invoked to discourage or regulate activities presumed to pose risks to the public or to the environment. But there are three dimensions to the application of the precautionary principle: it provides a rationale for public funding of research into the risk-du-jour, for funding projects designed to mitigate its consequences, and for subsidizing development of alternative technologies that might help avoid or reduce the severity of the risk, often at great expense. The exaggeration of risk serves to legitimize these high costs. Of course, the entire enterprise would be impossible without the machinery of the state, in all its venality. Where money flows, graft is sure to follow.

Well-publicized disaster scenarios are helpful to statists in other ways. Risk, its causes, and its consequences are not distributed evenly across regions and populations. A risk thought to be anthropomorphic in nature implies that wealthier and more productive communities and nations must shoulder the bulk of the global costs of mitigation. Thus, the risk-management ethic requires redistribution. Furthermore, wealthier regions are better situated to insulate themselves locally against many risks. Impoverished areas, on the other hand, must be assisted. Finally, an incredible irony of our preoccupation with disaster scenarios is the simultaneous effort to subsidize those deemed most vulnerable even while executing other policies that harm them.

Media organizations and their newspeople obviously benefit greatly from the subtle sensationalism of creeping disaster. As Ridley noted, the gradualism of progress is no match for a scare story on the nightly news. There is real money at stake here, but the media is driven not only by economic incentives. In fact, the dominant leftist ideology in media organizations means that they are more than happy to spread alarm as part of a crusade for state solutions to presumed risks. There are even well-meaning users of social media who jump at the chance to signal their virtue by reposting memes and reports that are couched not merely in terms of risks, but as dire future realities.

Mitigating social risks is a legitimate function of government. Unfortunately, identifying and exaggerating risks, and suppressing contradictory evidence, is in the personal interest of politicians, bureaucrats, crony capitalists, and many members of the media. Everything seems to demand government intervention. Carbon concentration, global warming and sea level changes are glaring examples of exaggerated risks. As Ridley says,

“The supreme case of unfalsifiable pessimism is climate change. It has the advantage of decades of doom until the jury returns. People who think the science suggests it will not be as bad as all that, or that humanity is likely to mitigate or adapt to it in time, get less airtime and a lot more criticism than people who go beyond the science to exaggerate the potential risks. That lukewarmers have been proved right so far cuts no ice.”

Other examples include the “beepocalypse“, genetic modification, drug use, school shootings, and certain risks to national security. Ridley offers the consequences of Brexit as well. There, I’ve listed enough sacred cows to irritate just about everyone.

In many cases, the real crises have more to do with government activism than the original issue with which they were meant to reckon. Which brings me to a discomfiting vision of my own: having allowed the administrative state to metastasize across almost every social organ and every aspect of our lives, a huge risk to our future well-being is continuing erosion of personal and economic liberties and our ability to prosper as a society. Here’s Ridley’s close:

“Activists sometimes justify the focus on the worst-case scenario as a means of raising consciousness. But while the public may be susceptible to bad news they are not stupid, and boys who cry ‘wolf!’ are eventually ignored. As the journalist John Horgan recently argued in Scientific American: ‘These days, despair is a bigger problem than optimism.'”

Precaution Forbids Your Rewards

19 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by pnoetx in Regulation

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Carbon forcing, Climate models, Climate Warming, Coyote Blog, GMOs, Precautionary Principle, psuedoscience, regulation, Risk Management, Warren Meyer

health-and-safety-cartoon

The precautionary principle (PP) is often used to justify actions that radically infringe on liberty, but it is an unreliable guide to managing risk, both for society and for individuals. Warren Meyer makes this point forcefully in a recent post entitled “A Unified Theory of Poor Risk Management“. The whole post is worth reading, but PP is the focus of second section. Meyer offers the following definition of the PP from Wikipedia:

“The precautionary principle or precautionary approach to risk management states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action.”

He goes on to explain several problems with PP, the most important of which is its one-sided emphasis on the risks of an activity while dismissing prospective benefits of any kind. Enough said! That shortcoming immediately disqualifies PP as a guide to action. Rather, it justifies  compulsion to not act, which is usually the desired outcome when PP is invoked. We are told to stop burning fossil fuels because CO2 emissions might lead to catastrophic global warming. Yet burning fossil fuels brings enormous benefits to humanity, including real environmental benefits. We are told to stop the cultivation of GMOs because of perceived risks, yet the potential benefits of GMOs are routinely ignored, such as higher yields, improved nutrition, drought resistance and reduced environmental damage. Meyer asks whether there is an irony in ignoring these potential gains, as it entails an acceptance of certain risks. Forced energy shortages would bring widespread economic decline. Less-developed countries face risks of continuing poverty and malnutrition that could otherwise be mitigated.

The terrifying risks cited by PP adherents are generally not well-founded. For example, climate models based on CO2 forcings have extremely poor track records. And whether such hypothetical warming would be costly or beneficial, on balance, is open to debate. The supposed risks of GMOs are largely based on pseudoscience and ignore a vast body of evidence of their safety. As Meyer says:

“… the principle is inherently anti-progress. The proposition requires that folks who want to introduce new innovations must prove a negative, and it is very hard to prove a negative — how do I prove there are no invisible aliens in my closet who may come out and eat me someday, and how can I possibly get a scientific consensus to this fact? As a result, by merely expressing that one ‘suspects’ a risk (note there is no need listed for proof or justification of this suspicion), any advance may be stopped cold. Had we followed such a principle consistently, we would still all be subsistence farmers, vassals to our feudal lord.”

The PP has obvious appeal to statists and fits comfortably into the philosophy of the regulatory state. But it’s a reasonable conjecture that widespread application of the PP exposes the world to greater natural and economic risks than without the PP. Under laissez-faire capitalism, human action is guided by the rational balancing of benefits against costs and risks, which has brought prosperity everywhere it’s been practiced.

The Bee Population Is Stable

29 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by pnoetx in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bee Die-Off, Bee Population, Chensheng Lu, Colony Collapse Disorder, Joe Entine, neonicotinoids, Precautionary Principle, Science 2.0

Larson-TheresABeeInTheCar

The extinction of the bees has been greatly exaggerated. I have questioned this from my own local perspective: despite a stream of ominous reports regarding colony collapse disorder (CCD), their numbers always seem robust in my neighborhood. While local is not global, fear not for the bees and the fulfillment of their important role in agriculture. The bee population in various parts of the world has been steady. There have been occasional bouts of decline (and later recovery) precipitated by various causes, and winter die-offs can magnify losses. And CCD is a real phenomenon, but it is not the end of the bees. Here is a link to Part I of a two-part series on the “bee death mystery.” Part II is here. Recently, the great bee bruhaha has been inflamed by: “…two controversial studies, both authored by the same researcher, that have become the linchpin for those who argue that bees and potentially the planet are facing a Beemageddon. It addresses:

  • Who is Chensheng Lu, the nutritionist who has become the face of the movement claiming that Big Ag is threatening bees, humans and our food supply?
  • What are neonicotinoids, the supposed time bomb at the center of the controversy?What role have journalists played in mis-reporting the bee death story.
  • Do prominent entomologists and beekeepers endorse Lu’s belief that the world faces a “bee crisis” as Lu’s research, held up by activists as seminal and groundbreaking, contends?
  • Will—or should—’neonics’ be banned as a precautionary measure?“

The findings of the nutritionist-cum-bee expert Lu are hyperbolic in light of the bee population numbers, and they receive little support from entomologists. Part II demonstrates that the evidence against the supposed culprit for CCD, neonicotinoids, is rather weak:

“… Lu’s data suggests the opposite of his stated conclusion—bees appear to do fine when exposed to field realistic doses and even increasingly higher amounts of neonics, but ultimately succumb to astronomical levels.”

The so-called “bee crisis” thus appears to be a fraud, and the campaign against a whole class of pesticides is without merit and a tremendous waste of resources. This is another misapplications of the precautionary principle by well-meaning advocates of naturalism (who happen to be enemies of agricultural productivity). Just wash your produce, especially if it’s composted organic!

Taleb’s Crock Pot: Whip Statistical Theory and Rhetoric To a Fine Agitprop

29 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by pnoetx in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Biofortified, Black Swans, David Tribe, DebunkingDenialism, Emil Karlsson, Fat Tails, GMO Pundit, GMOs, Luddites, Nassim Taleb, NeuroLogica, Precautionary Principle, The Motley Fool

scary-crockpot

Nassim Taleb, a well-known statistical theorist, and two coauthors (a physicist and a philosopher) have written a working paper in which they purport to show that GMO’s should be banned worldwide lest we flirt with complete ruination, quite possibly the end of humanity. The paper may come to represent sacred writ to anti-GMO activists, as it seems to imply that their position is supported by statistical theory. Ultimately, the paper merely uses statistical theory in the service of rhetoric. It relies on a series of ill-defined dichotomies that the authors use to classify genetic plant engineering into the most “ruinous” category of processes. Among other things, GE is categorized by the authors as a “top-down” technology, it creates global risks and systemic risks, it involves interconnected factors, it is irreversible, its outcomes can be characterized by a probability distribution with “fat tails,” its true risks are “unknowable,” and (worst of all?) it is “human-made,” as opposed to a natural process devoid of human intervention. Perhaps the last condition is meant only to classify processes into the so-called “precautionary approach” to policy assessment, rather than “standard risk management,” but it may reveal something significant about the predisposition of the authors toward human technological endeavors.

The statistical theory presented by the authors is fine, as far as it goes. I have admired some of Taleb’s earlier work, such as Fooled By Randomness, which sought to demonstrate the irrationality of assigning likelihood or even meaning to chance events. Taleb achieved real stardom following the publication of The Black Swan, which warned of severe “outlier” events so rare that they cannot be predicted or even assigned probabilities by humans. The true risks are “unknowable.” Applied work involving “fat-tailed” distributions of possible outcomes, which characterize a wide range of phenomena, is typically supported by prior experience or data, but that is not possible with “ruinous” black swans. Perhaps “extremely long- and fat-tailed” is more descriptive of distributions giving rise to black swans, but of course the extreme outcomes might not be observable ex post.

Taleb, et al, contend that development and cultivation of GMOs carry risks of a black swan ecocide. “Significant” risks? Wait, that involves statistical precision… and data! “Excessive” risks? That implies measurability of one sort or another, not to mention a coherent tradeoff of some kind. “Any” risk of a certain qualitative nature (as defined by the “precautionary approach,” with possible ruin on any time scale)? Of course, the authors are not biologists, agronomists, or geneticists (neither am I), but they claim to have sufficient knowledge to make this judgment:

“Ecologically, in addition to intentional cultivation, GMOs have the propensity to spread uncontrollably, and thus their risks cannot be localized. The cross-breeding of wild-type plants with genetically modified ones prevents their disentangling, leading to irreversible system-wide effects with unknown downsides.” [emphasis added]

The article contains a comparison of GMOs to nuclear energy risks, which seems intended to defuse criticism that the authors are simply Luddites. They express guarded optimism that nuclear power-generating risks are “local” in nature, and that problems associated with long-term storage of nuclear wastes are manageable. Clearly, however, those risks are just as “unknowable” as those associated with GMOs. We might add to the list of dangerous human endeavors all research and development of artificial intelligence. After all, a complete ban on AI research would prevent the coming singularity, when we’ll otherwise be lorded over by ruthless, self-serving machines! On a less sarcastic note, I do not discount the possibility of a singularity, but we have the luxury of some time to develop AI in a cautious way, just as we have time to minimize risks in the continuing development and application of GE.

Here is a subset of the many assertions made by Taleb, et al in support of their view:

  • GMOs have the propensity to spread uncontrollably.
  • Healthwise, the modification of crops “impacts” everyone.
  • GMO risks are associated with “fragility” (essentially increasing costs).
  • GMOs imply monocultures.
  • GMOs are qualitatively dissimilar to selectively-bred crop varieties.
  • Selective breeding does not remove crops from their evolutionary context.
  • GMOs remove crops from their evolutionary context.
  • The ecological implications of releasing modified organisms into the wild are not tested empirically before release.
  • The health effects of GMOs have not been tested sufficiently.
  • Incremental varieties of GMOs cause the risk of ecocide to increase.

All of these points are debatable to one extent or another. For example, the common assertion that GMOs promote monocultures reflects a common confusion over GMOs versus adequate crop rotation in mechanized farming. The authors exploit this confusion by linking monocultures and GMOs to reduced genetic diversity (apparently within single crops) and assert that this makes crops more vulnerable to blight, though it is hard to see why this is a foregone conclusion regarding the effects of introducing desirable traits.

More fundamentally, Taleb, et al give short shrift to the idea that there is a risk-reward tradeoff in the use of GMOs, that there are potential benefits and risks of GMO alternatives, and the fact that GMOs do not, in fact, suspend evolutionary processes. If a mutation embodied in a GMO also confers an evolutionary advantage, chances are the mutation will be propagated. If not, the mutation will tend to vanish. This is a safety mechanism provided by nature. Of course, anti-GMO activists seek to conjure images of mad geneticists whipping up monster “Audrey” GMOs with evolutionary advantages, but that is not the character of biotechnology.

Taleb, et al, also wish to equate GMOs with Monsanto. The fact that they are so eager to invoke the company’s name in a negative context within an ostensibly academic paper is a giveaway that the paper is agenda-driven. Monsanto and GMOs are not synonymous, and it is highly misleading to conflate the technology with a single company.

The authors attempt to upstage critics with the choice of the adjective “non-naive” to describe their use of the precautionary principle to guide their policy prescription:

“… it is essential to distinguish the PP so that it is neither used naively to justify any act of caution, nor dismissed by those who wish to court risks for themselves or others. The PP is intended to make decisions that ensure survival when statistical evidence is limited—because it has not had time to show up —by focusing on the adverse effects of ‘absence of evidence.’”

So, they excuse themselves from bringing anything empirical to bear on the issue of GMO risks because, they contend, “unknowability” is the very nature of the risk/ruin problem, despite the fact that evidence supporting GMO safety does exist, in scads!

Here are a few other sources who have commented on the article:

This post on the NeuroLogica blog questions Taleb’s understanding of biology and genetic engineering. The author, Steven Novella, also notes that Taleb, et al, do not assess the risk of alternatives:

“Growing enough food for 7 billion people has consequences, in terms of land use, fertilizer, pesticides, and displacing natural ecosystems. GMO as a technology can potentially add to our efficiency. Banning GMO means relying more heavily on other technologies that may have even more risks.”

In addition, Novella says:

“… Taleb’s arguments to still come down to hyping the risk of unforeseen consequences due to the inherent limits of scientific knowledge. I don’t agree, however, that GMOs have the potential for global ruin. This is still largely based on a naive belief that transgenes are inherently risky, when there is no scientific reason to believe that they are. …  He failed to make a compelling argument that his principle of zero risk should apply to GMO.”

The Motley Fool, generally an admirer of Taleb’s previous work, also believes that he is off-base in the case of GMOs.

David Tribe at the GMO Pundit refutes a couple of assertions made by Taleb, et al. about natural variation and the “track record” of nature as an evaluator of risk.

And at DebunkingDenialism, Emil Karlsson is particularly galled, as he should be, by the comparison the paper makes of the risks of Russian Roulette to GMOs. He writes that Taleb and his coauthors fail to understand basic biology:

“In the end, the authors have clearly demonstrated that they do not care about biology, medicine or rational risk analysis. They have negligible knowledge of molecular biology, plant breeding and genetic engineering. It does not matter how much knowledge they have of statistics. If your model is based on flawed premises, then the application and conclusion of that model is going to be flawed. Garage in, garbage out.”

Taleb, et al have adorned their paper with statistical theory, and they are certainly correct that “unknowable” risks may be ruinous. But their case against GMOs ignores the substantial body of known evidence on GMO safety. They bring absolutely no evidence to bear to the contrary. Their arguments mislead by relying on false premises and arbitrary classifications. Unfortunately, that won’t stop reverent anti-GE crusaders from heralding Taleb’s “proof” that GMOs are ruinous and must be banned.

Precautionary Genocide

22 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by pnoetx in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Biotechnology, conspiracy theories, Farmer's Daughter, food purists, GMOs, natural healing, Precautionary Principle, Pseudoscience, Skeptical Libertarian

LifeCoachCartoon

The claims of radical food purists, promoters of natural healing, medical skeptics and conspiracy theorists carry a high cost. For an articulate delineation of some major varieties of this sort of hogwash, take a look at “‘What’s The Harm’: The Body Count of Pseudoscience” at The Skeptical Libertarian blog:

“The answer is that the cost of misinformation is too large to ignore. It is real. It is devastating. It is counted in billions of dollars wasted on junk cures, in billions spent on treating preventable diseases. It is measured in lifetimes shortened, bodies crippled, eyes blinded, and children lost.

The costs of medical conspiracy theories and baseless fear-mongering are immense and ghastly. Millions upon millions of people are hurt and killed because [of] them every year. It is a veritable holocaust of ignorance. But it is a holocaust that is still happening, year after year, extinguishing countless of lives that could have been saved by good science, free markets, and sound policy.”

The bogus scientific claims are often simply examples of the precautionary principle gone berserk. Medical and biotechnology that has been proven safe and effective is rejected at the urging of activists whose goals are political, or snake oil salesmen whose goals are pecuniary, while innocents are put at risk. The author(s) of the post linked above cover several areas of pseudoscience worthy of condemnation. Read the whole thing, as they say.

One special topic mentioned in the post is scaremongering related to GMOs, which have demonstrated potential to enhance agricultural productivity and nutrition. That such anti-GMO nonsense can gain any traction with the public and policymakers is a tribute to effective promotion of bad science disguised as legitimate research. The Farmer’s Daughter USA blog has a couple of recent posts on GMO safety worth reading: “Just Ignore Those 2,000+ Studies Showing GMOs are Safe!” and “1 Trillion Meals Later: The GMO Safety Debate Is Over“. From the latter:

“Anti-GMO activists always refer to “scientific” studies done on animals eating genetically modified food with horrid results as proof that biotech isn’t safe. Yet, we have never encountered similar side effects or results in animal agriculture. Unlike the claims of tumors in rats, inflamed pig stomachs, or infertile sheep, animal agriculture has not encountered these problems while feeding their animals GMO feed.

Never.“

Can White Elephants Cheer the Public?

12 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by pnoetx in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Big Dig, economic growth, infrastructure, Neal Stephenson, optimism, Peter Theil, Precautionary Principle, quality of life, regulation, Technology, Virginia Postrel

infrastructure bridge

Has the American public’s sense of progress been diminished by the lack of “big projects” in recent memory? No moon shots or space elevators, no Hoover dams, no ubiquitous high-speed rail? Would these types of massive projects bring with them a new sense of optimism? Virginia Postrel doubts it, quite aside from whether such efforts would be successful in technical or economic terms. In her critique of business icon Peter Theil and science fiction writer Neal Stephenson on this point, Postrel says they confuse satisfaction from an improved quality of life in the mid-twentieth century with optimism about the future impact of iconic public investments in infrastructure and technology:

“People believed the future would be better than the present because they believed the present was better than the past. They constantly heard stories — not speculative, futuristic stories but news stories, fashion stories, real-estate stories, medical stories — that reinforced this belief. They remembered epidemics and rejoiced in vaccines and wonder drugs. They looked back on crowded urban walk-ups and appreciated neat suburban homes. They recalled ironing on sweaty summer days and celebrated air conditioning and wash-and-wear fabrics. They marveled at tiny transistor radios and dreamed of going on airplane trips.”

Postrel also points out that technology has always provoked some anxiety about the future, just as it does today. In addition, Theil and Stephenson under-appreciate noteworthy projects of the not so distant past, both public and private. That’s not to say that all of those projects were well-executed (the Big Dig?) or economically successful.

Postrel’s argument suggests that the current sense of malaise has more to do with weak economic growth and its causes. She emphasizes an excessive application of the precautionary principle. The growth of the regulatory state and arbitrary, czarist rule-making is an outgrowth of this phenomenon. As I said earlier this week, “Life’s Bleak When Your Goal Is Compliance.” Poor results of most public initiatives (e.g., public education, student loans, the war on poverty) do nothing to inspire confidence, with an increasing proportion of the population dependent on public support. Meanwhile, rewards seem to flow to well-connected cronies, a result that seems assured when resources are allocated to big public projects. There is a growing sense that not much can be accomplished without privilege or luck.

Above all, let’s hope we never take to evaluating massive projects based on their potential to foster a renewed sense of public optimism.

Aside

Can the Carbon Tax

22 Thursday May 2014

Posted by pnoetx in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Australia, Carbon Tax, Climate Sensitvity, Externalities, Pigouvian Taxes, Precautionary Principle

carbon tax footprint

Economists often fall victim to the naive view that government technocrats can measure the external costs or benefits of an activity accurately. Having performed the necessary calculations, the idea is that optimal taxes or subsidies can be promulgated through the political process and applied to an activity in order to correct or “internalize” these kinds of social effluents. In their focus on private market failure, many economists fail to appreciate the extent to which governments usually “fail” in these and many other efforts. At best, one might hope that such intrusions are directionally correct, but even that is fraught with risk.

A particularly good example involves the presumed social costs of carbon emissions. Carbon tax proposals are very much in vogue, but they are not without controversy. The well-meaning assertions of climate alarmists rely on rather fatuous claims about anthropomorphic warming and an overly broad and unwise application of the precautionary principle. There is a vocal minority of climate researchers who do not believe we have sufficient knowledge about climate sensitivities to make judgements about the true social costs and even some likely benefits of a warmer climate, should that be an ultimate consequence. Moreover, accurately measuring the presumed costs is out of the question. Meanwhile, carbon taxes impose costly burdens in the here and now that are difficult to justify.

This response to Irwin Selzer on carbon taxes is worth reading (with a link to Selzer’s article).

Here is a review and further links regarding the disastrous Australian carbon tax.

And here is Robert Murphy on carbon taxes, in which he discusses some prominent estimates of costs and benefits which show the sometimes enormous danger of setting non-optimal carbon taxes (granting the conceit that an optimal tax is positive).

FYI, the unfortunate Julia in the cartoon above refers to Julia Gillard, the former PM of Australia who pushed for the country’s ill-fated carbon tax.

Follow Sacred Cow Chips on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Education Now vs. Teachers Unions
  • CDC Flubs COVID Impact on Life Expectancy
  • Everything’s Big In Texas Except Surge Capacity
  • A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Blobum
  • Hooray For Florida!

Archives

  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014

Blogs I Follow

  • OnlyFinance.net
  • TLCCholesterol
  • Nintil
  • kendunning.net
  • DCWhispers.com
  • Hoong-Wai in the UK
  • Marginal REVOLUTION
  • CBS St. Louis
  • Watts Up With That?
  • Aussie Nationalist Blog
  • American Elephants
  • The View from Alexandria
  • The Gymnasium
  • Public Secrets
  • A Force for Good
  • ARLIN REPORT...................walking this path together
  • Notes On Liberty
  • troymo
  • SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers
  • Miss Lou Acquiring Lore
  • Your Well Wisher Program
  • Objectivism In Depth
  • RobotEnomics
  • Orderstatistic
  • Paradigm Library

Blog at WordPress.com.

OnlyFinance.net

Financial Matters!

TLCCholesterol

The Cholesterol Blog

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The future is ours to create.

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

CBS St. Louis

News, Sports, Weather, Traffic and St. Louis' Top Spots

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

The Gymnasium

A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

Public Secrets

A 93% peaceful blog

A Force for Good

How economics, morality, and markets combine

ARLIN REPORT...................walking this path together

PERSPECTIVE FROM AN AGING SENIOR CITIZEN

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers

Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

Miss Lou Acquiring Lore

Gallery of Life...

Your Well Wisher Program

Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

Objectivism In Depth

Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

RobotEnomics

(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

Orderstatistic

Economics, chess and anything else on my mind.

Paradigm Library

OODA Looping

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×