Deinonychus antirrhopus

Prediction Time

I predict that Gov. Schwarzenegger will grant clemency to Stanly Tookie William the triple murderer. Lets face it, when we get right down to it, Schwarzenegger is a girlie man. What a freaking wuss.

Economics 101 and Immigration

I've never understood the economic arguments made by opponents to immigration. Or I should say, I understand them I just find them blindingly stupid. Case in point, this post by Kevin Drum. Kevin writes the following,

Now that's an odd thing, isn't it? Immigration foes like Gilchrist insist that if we only cut down on the supply of Mexican farm workers, wages and benefits would go up and plenty of Americans would be available for harvesting our leafy greens. And yet, despite this year's severe shortage of Mexican labor, Vessey is apparently offering the same backbreaking work, brutal conditions, low pay, and nonexistent benefits that he always has. Likewise, Ed Curry, a chili farmer who has given up on employing legal workers because the H2A program has "too many snafus," says only that he would be willing to pay legal workers "a bit more" than he does now.

This is often the argument that many who oppose immigration put forward. We'll limit the number of immigrants (illegal and legal--after all most immigration opponents nearly had a complete bowel prolapse when Bush came up with his guest worker plan) and wages will rise, Americans will now take the jobs and nirvana will result. What never seems to enter the calculus of these anti-immigration warriors is another possibility: the farmers and other firms simply shttp://hut down and don't hire all that many more Americans or even result in more Americans losing their jobs.

Even Kevin Drum, who is no foe of immigration, doesn't seem to get this point at all. For example, he writes,

Is this reluctance to increase wages caused by a fear that higher labor costs would make their produce too expensive to sell? On its face, that seems unlikely. Even a whopping 40% increase in farm wages would increase the wholesale cost of produce by only about 10%. But a shortage caused by letting crops go unharvested would surely have the same effect — and supermarkets would continue to buy.

That's not to say that foreign competition isn't a real issue for California farmers. It is. Still, the lesson from this natural experiment along the Arizona border seems pretty clear: farmers are flatly unwilling to pay their workers more. Whether that's because it would price their produce out of the market or because even a big wage increase wouldn't attract enough legal workers hardly matters. The evidence indicates that farmers would rather let their crops rot in the field than pay ten bucks an hour.

What is missing is a look at the profitiability of the farms. The wholesale cost goes up by 10% yet the cost of labor goes up by 40%. Now maybe labor is only a quarter of the total costs in running a farm, but it may very well be a larger portion, like say 50%. So why would the wholesale price go up by only 10%? Supply and demand. Look at this picture,

Notice the supply curve has shifted "downwards". This could represents a shift in supply due to an decrease in costs. But look closely at the distance between the curves S₀ and S₁ and the price decrease P⁰ and P¹. The distance between the two curves is greater than the price increase. And the same thing works in reverse. Suppose we started at curve S₁ and went to S₀. In this case, the price increase would be less than the increase in costs. This is why firms cannot simply pass along 100% of their cost increases to their customers. Demand curves are downward sloping. I know this is obvious, but most people just don't seem to get what the freaking Hell this means. Most people assume that a firms costs go up by $1/unit of output and so the price goes up by $1/unit of output. I'm sure firms would like to do this, but the reponse by consumers prevents this. And the "flatter" the demand curve, the smaller the price increase. For example, if the demand curve was horizontal then there would be no price increase at all. Would supermarkets still buy more expensive produce? Sure. Would consumers? Again, sure. But they wouldn't have to buy as much. So noting that people would still buy is stupid. Of course they are, the question is how much will they buy. Just as much as before? Maybe, but that tells me that demand is perfectly inelastic, which frankly I doubt.

Still, Kevin does come to the right (in my opinion) conclusion about illegal immigration:

In other words, Gilchrist and his nativist ilk are barking up the wrong tree. What we need isn't a bunch of yahoos dotting the border with their lawn chairs and cell phones. Instead, we need to recognize that — like it or not — Americans very clearly want and rely on immigrant labor. The key, then, is not to eliminate it, but to figure out a rational way of limiting illegal immigration without simultaneously demonizing immigrants themselves. This might include programs that make it harder to cross the border illegally, but only if we also provide legal status to many more immigrants than we do now.

Funny, did Kevin just endorse a guest worker plan...just as President Bush has advocated a guest worker program? Egads!

Uhhh...What?

Over at Angry Bear PGL tells us that Cheney gives us the reason why the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

First Cheney askes the question:

"Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with (Abu Musab al-) Zarqawi, (Osama) bin Laden and (Ayman al-) Zawahiri in control of Iraq?" he asked. "Would be[sic] we[sic] safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?"

Then PGL gives us Chris Bertram's reply:

Let me get this straight. At time t you advocate a policy involving the invasion and occupation of Iraq on multiple grounds, none of which include the forestalling of an Al Qaeda seizure of power in Iraq (since such an eventuality is risibly improbable). At time t+n , as a direct consequence of that brilliant policy, the only options are (a) its continuation or (b) an Al Qaeda takeover of Iraq. Genius. No wonder that man got re-elected.

Ummm...call me confused, but I'm not seeing why Cheney's question and implied justification for a continued U.S. presence in Iraq is now justification that the invasion was the wrong policy.

Actually, I think one of the commenters to Bertram's post has a more cogent response,

Well, but an al Qaeda takeover of Iraq is STILL risibly improbable, even if every US solider were out of there tomorrow. Nasty civil war, yes; Shiite fundamentalist takeover, yes; massacre of Sunnis and secularists, yes; but Sunni fundamentalist takeover? Not enough of them.

It does seem to me that the idea of Al Qaeda taking over Iraq seems a bit far fetched. Of course, who knows what would happen if the U.S. pulled out immediately. Maybe there would be a nasty civil war, and maybe there would be three countries where there is currently one. I don't know, I'm no Middle East expert, but Bertram's response and PGL's endorsement of it strike me as just goofy.

I Can't Believe That Was Published...

...in a peer reviewed journal. Not that I think the research was done badly, but because the answer was so damned obvious. Of course, my guess for another person's "optimal gift" is going to a higher probability of being wrong than correct.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the most efficient gifts (those with the smallest deadweight loss) were those from close friends and relations, while non-cash gifts from extended family were the least efficient. As the age difference between giver and recipient grew, so did the inefficiency. All of which suggests what many grandparents know: when buying gifts for someone with largely unknown preferences, the best present is one that is totally flexible (cash) or very flexible (gift vouchers).

Perhaps not surprisingly? I would have guessed that right off the bat. For example, my roommate from college was having a surprise birthday party thrown for him. He loves to read, so the obvious gift is a book. The not so obvious part is which one. Even if I found a book I thought he'd like, there was a good chance he's already read it. Solution: gift card for Borders. This way, he could get the exact book(s) he wants and I don't have to spend 2 hours wandering the bookstore wondering which books he might have read.

Of course, sometimes a gift can be better than simply getting the cash value of the gift itself as the article notes. In fact, I already have a gift in mind for my college roommate; one I'm pretty sure he'll get lots of use out of.

Natural Gas Hysteria?

"We need to declare a national crisis," Andrew N. Liveris, the chief executive of the Dow Chemical Company, said in recent testimony before the Senate. Dow, the nation's largest chemical maker, has shut 23 plants in the United States in the last three years in places like Somerset, N.J.; South Charleston, W.Va.; and Elizabethtown, Ky., as it shifted production to Kuwait, Argentina, Malaysia and Germany, where natural gas is cheaper.--Link to New York Times story

Whenever I read something like that from an industry exec my first instinct is to grab onto my wallet. The problem is, in my view an fundamental misunderstanding of economics and markets. For example, after looking at a litany of proposals to "deal with the problem", the author of the article writes,

Some of these projects might eventually materialize, but none quickly enough to bring natural gas prices down substantially before this winter. Still, the proposals are part of a major push by the energy industry to raise imports and overturn decades of environmental limits on domestic exploration.

Brilliant, except for one small detail. To the extent that natural gas is a world wide market, these programs would have little impact on the world wide price for the most part. And even if the U.S. prices are higher, then the idea of subsidizing an industry whose prices are increasing is just nonsense. Profits are usually an increasing function of price. Hence, it would be like subsidizing a fat person's potato chip consumption--i.e. stupid. However, getting the government out of the way to the extent of allowing for more drilling, more imports, and not building new import terminals on the coast of Louisiana and Texas for crying outloud would be a good place to start. Further, they'd be cheap in that we wouldn't have to spend billions subsidizing companies that are already posting record profits.

One could argue that places like Canada and the Middle East could produce more natural gas. That's fine, but the current prices are not just a function of what is out of the ground now, but how much can be produced, and how much is also estimated to be in the ground. And anything that reduces the price of natural gas will only reduce the incentive to produce natural gas.

And don't be misled by statements such as this,

The hurricanes made a bad situation worse. The American Chemistry Council estimates that 100,000 jobs at companies that rely largely on natural gas have been lost since prices for the fuel began climbing in 2000. Chemical companies have been particularly outspoken in calls for the Bush administration and Congress to focus on curbing consumption and repairing energy infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sure, 100,000 sounds like alot of jobs. However, that is not even a noticable blip when spread over several months in an economy with well over 1,500 times as many worker. Calling something like this an emergency requires that we re-define the word emergency to mean a rainy day or traffic congestion. And with prices already high and profits rising very fast, there is no need for the government to step in and do more to repair the energy infrastructure damaged in the Gulf. Those companies want that infrastructure repaired as soon as possible to take advantage of the high prices. And given that their competitors are thinking precisely the same thing, getting the government involved is just a way for these companies to get consumers to subsidize the repairs.

So what will the "national emergency" likely mean? More subsidies for energy companies and either higher taxes today or in the future. Personally, I say let the prices rise and let the alternatives become relatively more attractive in terms of price. For example, if the price of natural gas stays high, then generating plants like the one at Mohave may stay in operation. Sure, such a policy will be painful in that it will raise cost for electricity and heating homes, but one thing to keep in mind, in economics there is never a free lunch. The idea of lowering prices and increasing supply just tend not to work together.¹ If there is one lesson that we should have learned from the oil crises is that when the government gets involved it usually screws things up royally.
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¹The only thing that could result in increased supply and lower prices is if there is a downward shift in the cost function for all firms producing the good in question. One could argue that a subsidy would achieve this, but all we'd be doing is paying higher taxes (along with the deadweight loss inefficiency) to get the lower prices, probably not a good exchange.

Decting Design: Elimination vs. Comparison

"How are design hypotheses properly inferred, simply by eliminating chance hypotheses or by comparing the likelihood of chance and design hypotheses?"

This is a question that William Dembski has asked and tried to answer. Currently, most philosophers of science prefer to use the Bayesian approach. The Bayesian approach can be seen as an outgrowth of the Likelihood Principle. This approach is essentially comparative. That is, we decide on which hypothesis (theory) to use based on a comparisons of the probabilities for each hypothesis being true, given the data (evidence). William Dembski has tried to argue that this approach is insufficient when it comes to design vs. chance hypotheses.

To illustrate the problems he gives us two "simple" examples to highlight how the Bayesian and what he calls the Fisherian (I'd call this the Frequentist or Classical, but whatever) approaches to (statistical) inference work. The Fisherian example is the simpler of the two. With the Fisherian approach we specify a rejection region, say 1%, and if the data fall within that region then we reject the chance hypothesis. To see how it works, Dembski uses and example with a coin. The coin could be fair (the chance hypothesis) or unfair (the design hypothesis). If fair the probability of getting heads is 0.5, and if unfair the probability of heads is 0.9 (don't ask me how one represents chance and the other design when both involve chance--i.e. uncertainty in the outcome). Now, if we flip the coin 10 times and get 10 heads we note that if the coin is fair we'd reject this hypothesis at the 1% level because if the coin is fair such an outcome occurs only .01% of the time. That is the data is within the rejection region so we reject the chance hypothesis. So far, so good.

Now with the Bayesian example, Dembski makes things a bit more complicated. First, we have two coins. One is fair the other unfair (with the same probabilities as above in regards to obtaining heads). But, before we flip we must make a draw from an urn. In the urn are 1 million equally sized balls, with all but one being white and the one exception being black. Now, if we draw the black ball we flip the unfair coin, and if we draw a white ball we flip the fair coin. Now suppose we observe 10 heads. What is the probability we are flipping the unfair coin? It isn't as easy with the Fisherian approach. In this case, we have to factor in the probability of drawing the black ball from the urn. Factoring in this information and using Bayes Theorem it turns out the probability that we are flipping the unfair coin is 0.0003569. The reason is because the draw from the urn means we are almost surely flipping the fair coin.

So what is wrong with the Bayesian approach? Well a bunch of things according to Dembski, but I am only going to focus on two of them to show that either he is being dishonest or he doesn't know what he is talking about. The first is when he writes the following,

When the Bayesian approach tries to adjudicate between chance and design hypotheses, it treats both chance and design hypotheses as having prior probabilities and as conferring probabilities on outcomes and events. Thus, given the chance hypothesis H, the design hypothesis D, and the outcome E, the Bayesian theorist attempts to compare the posterior probabilities of H and D on E (i.e., P(H|E) vs. P(D|E)). If the posterior probability of D on E is greater than that of H on E, then E counts as evidence in favor of D, and the strength of that evidence is proportional to how much greater P(D|E) is than P(H|E). Unfortunately, calculating posterior probabilities requires knowing prior probabilities (i.e., P(H) and P(D)), and often these are not available. In that case, one may merely calculate the likelihoods of E on both H and D (i.e., P(E|H) vs. P(E|D)).

There’s a stripped down version of the Bayesian approach known as the likelihood approach that essentially ignores prior probabilities and simply looks at the likelihood ratio (i.e., P(E|H)/P(E|D)) to determine strength of evidence in favor of a hypothesis. This, however, makes for an idiosyncratic understanding of evidence. Evidence, as usually understood, refers to what causes us to revise our beliefs. But likelihoods ratios are in no position to do that without help from prior probabilities.

This is, in my view, somewhat misleading. Dembski wants the reader to think that there are problems coming up with prior probabilities, and he is right. But what he fails to tell the reader is that the very same source of information for prior probabilities is the source of information for Dembski's notion of specification,

If we can spot an independently given pattern (i.e., specification) in some observed outcome and if possible outcomes matching that pattern are, taken jointly, highly improbable (in other words, the observed outcome exhibits specified complexity), then it’s more plausible that some end-directed agent or process produced the outcome by purposefully conforming it to the pattern than that it simply by chance ended up conforming to the pattern.

In other words, if our background information allows us to select certain outcomes that are specified such as 10 heads or 10 tails. These are specified because our background information with fair coins says this result is strange, unlikely, etc. But this "background information" is precisely where prior probabilities come from. Prior probabilities represent what we think the probabilities of some event occuring prior to seeing any data. For example, we know there are many more fair coins in the world than unfair coins. Hence if we find the coin on the sidewalk we'd be justified in setting a low prior probability for the coin being unfair. And if all else fails we can set the prior probabilities to what are called "non-informative" priors. Interestingly enough, in things like linear regression, non-informative priors and Bayesian analysis yield the "Fisherian" estimates of the parameters. But apparently this is a Bad Thing according to Dembski (yes, in a sense he is arguing against himself).

The other problem is when Dembski looks at the kind of evidence necessary to reject the fair coin/chance hypothesis with the Bayesian approach. Dembski writes,

(5) Backpedaling priors. As a variant of the last point, return to the earlier example of an urn with a million balls, one black and the rest white. As before, imagine that a fair coin is to be tossed if a white ball is randomly sampled from the urn but that a biased coin with probability .9 of landing heads is to be tossed otherwise. This time, however, imagine that the coin is tossed not ten times but ten thousand times and that each time it lands heads. The probability of getting ten thousand heads in a row with the fair coin is approximately 1 in 10³⁰¹⁰ and with the biased coin approximately 1 in 10⁴⁵⁸ (with ten thousand tosses, heads are bound to turn up for either coin). A Bayesian analysis then shows that the probability that a white ball was selected is approximately 1 in 10²⁵⁴⁶ and the probability that the lone black ball was selected is 1 minus that minuscule probability.

Should we therefore, as good Bayesians, conclude that the black ball was indeed selected and that the biased coin was indeed flipped (the selection of the black ball being vastly more probable, given ten thousand heads in a row, than the selection of a white ball)? Clearly this is absurd. The probability of getting ten thousand heads in a row with either coin is vastly improbable, and it doesn’t matter which urn was selected.

First off, what does Dembski mean by "which urn was selected."? There is only one urn in his example. Was he "plagarizing" some of his earlier writing with two urns?

The second problem is far more serious, IMO. These probabilities that Dembski is talking about aren't absurd because the Bayesian approach is absurd, but because Dembski has set up the example so that the prior probability is so close to 1. The closer the prior probability for a given hypothesis is to 1, the more extraordinary the evidence/data is going to have to be to over turn that prior probability. For example, suppose we had 10 balls with 5 black and 5 white in the urn. Now our prior probability is 1/2 for getting the unfair coin. Now what is the probability of having flipped the unfair coin, given ten heads? That is what is

P(Unfair|10 heads) = 0.997.

In other words, we are pretty darned flipping the unfair coin. So by selecting such an extreme prior the data necessary to "swamp" that prior also has to be extreme. But, there is another way of looking at this point. What this says is that even with extreme priors, given enough data the extreme priors can be overcome. This isn't a flaw, it is a feature! So while prior probabilities are important, and selecting an extreme probability can make it very hard for the evidence to rule out the hypothesis, it is still possible for it to happen. The other lesson is to try not to select extreme priors unless you are really justified in doing so. In Dembski's example, the extreme prior is justified due to how he set up the example. But to then turn around and feign shock and dismay over the amount of evidence necessary to overcome the extreme prior Dembski himself set up is like a used car salesman feigning shock and dismay that one of his rust buckets broke down once off the lot.

These two "problems" that Dembski has highlighted are not problems, or they are not fatal problems and/or they are also present in Dembski's own methods. The Bayesian/Likelihood approach is still the best approach. Further, Dembski's approach has other problems he doesn't even consider; such as considering data that might have happened, but didn't. We could have come up with 10 tails and we should consider that too, even though such data didn't come up. What about the rest of Dembski's complaints? In my view they are without much merit, and given his bungling of the issue of the importance of prior probabilities and inability to interpret the results of his own examples correctly this should not be surprising.

Update:Dembski's notion that the 10,000 heads outcome is absurd and neither coin was randomly tossed is of course just silly. Here he sets up an example, then he wants to come up with an outcome that is exteremely unlikely and say, "See, see! That Bayesian approach is no good!" I submit that if we had done the Fisherian test we'd be unlikely to say that the results are any good. Why? Because the results are so out of whack. Let me be clear on this point. Suppose we conduct the test just as Dembski has laid out and we do our Fisherian test with 10,000 heads. We'd reject chance and conclude design. Alternatively we do the experiment and the subsequent Bayesian test and reject chance and conclude design. But, in both cases these conclusions would be unwarranted. Why? Because something went wrong with the test. That is what Dembski is implying when he says such results are absurd. Yes, they are and the results should be jettisoned with either approach. In short, this isn't just a problem for the Bayesians, it is also a problem for those using the "Fisherian" approach as well.

And yes, there is an "escape-hatch" for the Bayesian. The Bayesian analyst didn't condition on all the relevant information. For example, suppose both coins are unfair in that they are two headed. Once we condition on that information, the results are no longer absurd, but are quite reasonable. Are we using a "Fisherian" test here? I guess, but then again there are instances when the Fisherian method does prove useful (such as nonparametrics).

Bush a Commie Mole?

Maybe Nathan Newman is onto something here. Bush's Medicare Prescription Drug Program (or as I like to call it the Blackhole) is not only going to be insanely expensive (when Medicare is already slated to run-up a huge deficit), but is also ridiculously complicated for those who sign up. Bush's policies really don't strike me as being overly market friendly in that he loves spending the government money not only collected today, but that will collected in future years (most people call this deficit spending).

Of course, one thing Nathan misses is that most government programs are usually like this. They are either mind staggeringly complex, or they offer no choice. Note the problem Nathan highlights,

Bush administration officials said Medicare drug plans were offering more benefits at lower cost than had been expected. But that does not mean that a person's local pharmacy will be in every plan. "In some rural areas," Ms. Lenker reported, "beneficiaries say: 'There are 40 Medicare drug plans to choose from, but my pharmacy takes only one or two plans. How does that give me choice?' "--?link

In other words, the problem is that some people want choice, but they don't get it because their pharmacy doesn't offer that many plans. Nathan's solution: simplify it. That sounds quite a bit like creating one single plan. That offers no choice either. I suppose one could make that single plan very flexible, but the problem is that such a plan would likely be very expensive.

The problem is that we are not talking about insurance or any other type of market activity anymore. Medicare and the prescription drug program that go with it are subsidy programs. If you have a pre-existing condition, no problem you still qualify. This means that a person's "premium" should be equal to their treatment costs. With Medicare this is not the case and hence it is a program that subsidizes the consumption of health care resources (gee could this be one factor contributing to the rise in health care costs?). Offering a simple but "flexible" plan will simply mean larger subsidies. Or even more simply put, Medicare is likely going to run out of money even faster. And if you think Social Security running out of money is scary, please don't look at the dollar figures for Medicare, you'll likely soil yourself right were you sit.

But, it seems the liberals/Democrats have pretty much won this fight, after all even a whacked out conservative nut like Bush is going down the same road. My big objection is that the liberals and Democrats aren't honest about it. They don't say, "Look, we need to raise taxes on everybody and by alot to pay for these existing programs. Oh, and we'll be back to raise taxes again when we propose new programs." Instead they have this silly belief that if everybody has access to health care that costs will somehow decline.

Some fall for that bromide that an ounce of preventioin is worth a pound of cure. While true in some cases it isn't true in others. How do you prevent leukemia, autism, breast cancer, Chron's disease, etc.? Don't know? Well don't beat youseld up about it as doctors and researcher's don't know either. So this notion of lowering costs this way is highly dubious.

Some argue that administration costs can be cut. Really? You mean we'll turn this over to government and we wont get a huge bloated money sucking agency? Personally I find this one to be a bit hard to swallow. The government usually excells at creating more administration not less. New rules for this, that, and the other thing. This means new forms, in triplicate, that need to be filled out. Government agencies, to put it mildly, are not usually thought of as the paragons of efficiency and cost control. After all, there is little to no incentive to be efficient or cut costs. A firm lives or dies by profit. Maximizing profits implies minimizing costs. There is no profit maximization objective for a government bureaucracy. One could argue that election outcomes provide some incentive, but that strikes me as weak. The seperation between voting outcomes strikes me as to far removed from the day-to-day operations of most bureaucracies.

The last argument I've seen that even with a subsidy people aren't going to start going to the hospital in droves. After all, a triple bypass is not fun and people aren't going to do it if they don't need it. While this is true, there are two problems with this argument. First, it is an irrelevant argument in terms of reducing costs and/or the growth of costs. All this argument says, if it is true, is that people aren't going to increase their usage. Or to put it another way, that subsidizing health care consumption for everybody wont increase costs. Of course, this latter conclusion is also dubious. After all, there was a recent report that people in the U.S. do put off medical treatment of ailments due to cost. Remove the cost barrier and those people will most likely seak treatment which will raise costs.

In short, the idea that we can reduce health care costs by subsidizing health care consumption (alone) sounds about as sensible as reducing one's weight by overeating. Of course, we could still subsidize health care and reduce costs, but it would require another step or steps. Some possibilities would be to make some procedures effectively illegal as in Canada and fertility treatments. Another is to increase non-pecuniary costs such as longer wait times. A third is to simply set the health care budget at some fixed amount and when that is gone, then no more until the budget is set again. Of course, this would mean a decline in health care quality for the most part. My guess is that the Democrats/liberals will continue to plug some sort of health care reform without the need to raise taxes, and Republicans will continue to avoid looking for market based solutions, and in the end will end up with something really, really expensive and bad.

Richard Sternberg: Martyr?

Well you'd think so based on how whiney the guy is. Glenn Reynolds has bought the spin on the story of Sternberg coming out of the Discovery Institute and Sternberg himself hook, line, sinker, and the entire fishing pole. Glenn rights,

I'M DEEPLY UNIMPRESSED WITH "INTELLIGENT DESIGN," but this NPR story on the harassment, firing, and intimidation of scientists and academics who support intelligent design, or even seem like they might, is pretty appalling. (More accurately, the story is very good, but what it reports is appalling). This is pretty much scientific McCarthyism, and it ought to be stopped.

Hold the phone for a second here. Exactly what damage did Sternberg suffer?

Was he fired? No. Oh...hmmmm.

Was he intimidated? As far as I can tell from the letter from the Office of the Special Counsel the answer is again, no.

Was he harassed? Well funny thing this notion of harassment. Is this the same Glenn Reynolds who wrote, "...hundred examples of kangaroo-court sexual-harassment policies"? Maybe it is because Sternberg wasn't harassed sexually.

In short, the actual "harm" done to Sternberg is questionable. Was a key taken from him? Yes, according the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) it was a master key. I suspect that such a key would let Sternberg into not only areas with his research, but areas occupied by other researchers as well. So, lets re-think this. You work someplace and if turns out a colleague does something rather shocking and that you consider at least unprofessional and dishonest and possibly embarassing for you. Do you want him to continue to have access to your work area? Or might you request that his supervisor restrict his access because you feel you can no longer trust this person?

The Creationist "smear" is also very bizarre. Sternberg was on the board for a Baraminology study group. Baraminology is the study of "kinds" that Young Earthers talk about when they discuss "Creation Science". Is it such a heroic leap, upon finding this affiliation, that Sternberg might very well be a Young Earth Creationist? There is a cliche, "lie with dogs you'll get up with fleas". It is a cliche for a reason. On top of this, the article itself uses a common ploy used by young earth creationists, the Cambrian explosion and lack of transitional fossils. Now maybe Glenn thinks that harassment laws prevent people form making reasonable conclusions, and discussing them via e-mail.

The bottom line is that Sternberg's job was never in jepeoardy (he doesn't work for the Smithsonian, but for NIH). Sternberg was not locked out of his research area. Sternberg still has/had the access he had prior to publication of Meyer's paper.

The sole "complaint" was that some people at the Smithsonian wanted Sternberg gone. This strikes me as a very stupid complaint. Most companies have policies that if employees do anything to embarass the company they get fired. In publishing the Meyer paper Sternberg sure did embarass the Smithsonian. Why? Because Sternberg serruptitiously included an article in a journal that was not simply based on Intelligent Design (ID), but couldn't even get the arguments right. The article was later disavowed and retracted by the entire staff of the journal.

Dean Esmay also picks up on this story and errorneously cocnludeds the following,

His crime? Being willing to publish a paper by a scientist who argued that there was evidence of intelligent design behind some phenomena found in biology. Sternberg didn't even agree with the paper, he just published it in the spirit of free and open debate.

Uhhhmmmm, no. As already noted Meyer's article is nothing but junk. And Sternberg, as previously noted, was not even close to being thrown out of anyhere, as Dean asserts.

Sternberg decided to do something that anybody with half a brain would know would be bad for his career. Then afterwards Sternberg is upset because people feel betrayed and don't like him anymore. And this constitutes the new definition of harassment: people don't like Mr. So-in-so, therefore harassment. Release the lawyers and the lawsuits!

Health Care Survey

A few days ago a survey of health care in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany was published and seemed to mentioned in every newspaper and many blogs. The conclusion of the news outlets and many blogs: American health care sucks.

But is this really the case? According to the study itself the answer is not so simple. In looking at the various catagories things were not so clear cut, IMO. For example, in discharge experience I don't see anything indicating that the U.S. was consistently worse than any other country. In fact, the U.S. scored the best in terms of having procedures and risks explained. And yet the U.S. scored low on the question for dealing with pain control. But the U.S. ranked at the bottom when it came to failing to invovling the patient in decisions (this is a good thing).

For medical mistakes overall the U.S. had the same score as Canada and was 1-2% different from Australia, New Zealand and Germany. And when it came to failing to tell patients about mistakes in medication Germany was by far the worst. However, when it came to the medication errors leading to serious health problems, all countries were statistically the same except for New Zealand who was the worst offender.

Basically, in looking through all the statistics the picture is that while the U.S. health care isn't great and does have room to improve, it isn't as bad as many would like people to think. About the only place that the U.S. stood out as being worse than the other countries was in the financial burden section. Here, the U.S. fared poorly, but I'd be willing to bet that the study did not factor in tax burdens for those countries where health care is nationalized. Tax burdens, comes out of the patients pocket just as paying the doctor.

Have You Stopped Beating Your Wife Dean?

Now that is clearly a loaded question if we restrict the answers to only 'Yes' or 'No'. Either way, Dean looks like a scumbag (and Dean isn't a scumbag). These kinds of questions are great rhetorical tricks, but are grossly unfair. Dean is probably aware of this, but he still finds these kinds of question amusing:

1. Has the chance occurrence of life been demonstrated in the laboratory? Yes or no.
2. Do we really know, as distinct from guess, hope, or imagine, of what the primeval seas consisted? Yes or no.
3. Do we know, as distinct from guess, pray, wave our arms, and hold our breath and turn blue, what seas would be needed for the chance formation of life? Yes or no.
4. Can we show mathematically, without crafted and unsupportable assumptions, that the formation of life would be probable in any soup whatever? Yes or no.

Now, limited to just 'Yes' or 'No' the answers for these are all 'No' (I'm not sure about number 4 in that I don't think even Fred Reed knows what he is asking, for example is he asking for a mathematical model or probabilities?). Of course, the real answer is a bit more complicated. Do scientists have some ideas about what the earth was like several billion years ago? Yes. Do they have some ideas of how organic compounds and amino acids could form? Again the answer is yes. Is this what happened? No self respecting scientist would say that the Miller-Urey experiments are conclusive proof of how life started. On the other hand they are suggestive of how life may have started.

Furthermore, the very same problems apply to creationists. Do they really know that God created life? The answer is clearly no because no creationist was there, and no creationist has proof. And even more interestingly, while Fred Reed is trying to pooh-pooh the idea of abiogenesis, his beliefs are a type of abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is literally, life from nothing. If God rolls up to the scene and creates life from nothing, that is abiogenesis.

Personally, I don't have problems with people who want to believe in God and God creating the earth, life, and even causing a world wide flood. That is their personal views and who the heck am I to tell them what to think. However, when it comes to government funded education I think teaching creationism is bad thing. The problem is two fold.

1. It isn't science.
2. It violates the law.

The first one should be obvious. Belief in the supernatural is not science because it can explain everything and hence nothing. There is no data that is inconsistent with God, magic, fairies, or the Sacred Space Cow, doing X. If these supernatural entities are omnipotent, then they can do anything and any and all data is consistent with this belief/hypothesis. Hence you cannot evaluate God vs. natural processes. Science by its very definition precludes the supernatural. So when Dean writes,

The courts did a tremendously stupid and destructive thing back in the 1980s when they banned so-called "creation science." The impression was made loud and clear to tens of millions of parents and students: scientists are intellectual bullies and cowards, and science teachers are liars who censor arguments that don't fit their prejudices.

It is a sad day, IMO. The problem with IDists is that they are the ones who have a problem with telling the truth. For example, I have shown that William Dembski's statements about Bayesian/Likelihood based methods in regards to hypothesis testing and his explanatory filter are false. IDists have routinely used quotes from other scientist out of context, thus twisting the very meaning of the quote to suit the IDists purpose to such an extent to often be 180 degrees opposite of what the original source of the quotation intended. Also it should be pointed out that scientists are not trying to use the political process to force an inappropriate topic into high school science courses.¹

And Dean's bizzare claim that the book Of Pandas and People is going to be banned from the classroom is silly. Lots of books are banned from science classrooms. If I had walked into my biology class in 10th grade and popped open my history book the teacher would have been rather annoyed. In effect, the book was banned from that class. Of course, the book wasn't banned in the sense that it was prohibited from being in my backpack or some such, but the same applies to Of Pandas and People. If a student had a copy and was reading it in his free time I imagine it would be just fine. The problem is that Of Pandas and People as an official school book runs afoul of the establishment clause. It is quite clear that Of Pandas and People is a book that claims that the Christian view of creation is the correct view.

As for it being censorship that is just too over the top. Nobody is being forbidden from talking about Creationism anywhere and everywhere. Creationism is not going to be a topic covered in a public school science course. If you don't like this, you are perfectly free to go ahead and go to a private school that does have such a curriculum or pursuing such studies outside of the classroom. There is, simply put, no censorship.

For all these reason is it a bad idea to bring creationism and ID (a form of creationism) into the science curriculum. ID is not science since it relies on the supernatural (this as to be the case since the premise of ID is that natural processes are insufficient to bring about certain biological structures). To call something that isn't science science is to lie, which oddly enough Dean is arguing both for and against. There is no censorship nor banning of books in any real sense. And the truly funny thing is that Dean claims that the current books have been "Carefully Filtered By The Commissars Of Science To Remove All Dangerous Thoughts". What makes this so amusing is that according to the IDists, it is evolutionary theory that is so dangerous. It is evolutionary theory that promotes atheism, moral decay, permissivness and could eventually lead to the downfall of our civilization. I tell ya you just can't make up irony like that.
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¹That is, even if ID turned out to have some scientific value, bringing it up in an introductory high school course is highly inappropriate. Introductory courses are not the place for teaching alternative theories, controversies in the theories, etc. It is a place for teaching the fundamentals. For those students who master the fundamentals and go to study the topic in more detail then you bring in other theories, controversies and other advanced topics.