Seth's Blog

Andrew Gelman, in a comment on the previous post, said that he believes the science of climate change is “much more settled” than I do. He’s right — in the sense that I believe the state of the world is different (less certain) than claimed. Andrew sees correct certainty; I see false certainty. Because science slowly becomes more accurate, I think the science will slowly shift toward “less settled” — a prediction I don’t think Andrew would make. Here’s an example of such a shift. According to the Mail on Sunday, Phil Jones

admit[s] that there is little difference between global warming rates in the Nineties and in two previous periods since 1860 and accept[s] that from 1995 to now there has been no statistically significant warming.He also leaves open the possibility, long resisted by climate change activists, that the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ from 800 to 1300 AD, and thought by many experts to be warmer than the present period, could have encompassed the entire globe.

Phil Jones slowly shifts.

The New Yorker website has a weekly podcast called The Political Scene. I’ve listened to almost all of them. This week’s was unlike any other.

The brief description is “Elizabeth Kolbert and Peter J. Boyer discuss recent attacks on climate science.” Never before have the discussants been so far apart. They should have replaced discuss with debate. Boyer hasn’t written a word about climate science — or even science. He moved from the New York Times to The New Yorker after he wrote an (excellent) book about television. Recently he’s covered politics. Kolbert has written dozens of articles and a book about climate science. In spite of this, the moderator (Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the magazine), asked Boyer to describe the Climategate emails and their significance. They showed, he said, “an intolerance [by the scientists] of skepticism of their narrative . .  this was a real shock to the system and a real shock to the global warming consensus.” I think any unbiased observer would agree.

Then Wickenden asked Kolbert what she thought:

KOLBERT  I don’t agree with him [Boyer] . . . One of the things that comes out in these emails is the climate scientists’ frustration with having to deal with people who use the data in all sorts of irresponsible ways. . . I’m not aware of any instances where people have had to go back and had to say “you’re right and the conclusion we drew was wrong.”

BOYER Perhaps we could say that language was used in these communications that would allow for an interpretation that perhaps there was fudging or something going on that needed to be obscured. There was a whole tone of intolerance of questioning of their data or — and this was what was so disturbing to hear from scientists — any questioning of what sounded an awful lot like their mission.

Boyer went on and on — as if he were the expert. (And he clearly knew what he was talking about.) Then Wickenden turned to the United Nations IPCC report and asked Kolbert what she thought of recent criticism (which Wickenden learned about from the NY Times).

KOLBERT . . . [The error was in Part 2.] In [Part 2 of] this report, which was literally 986 pages long, there were a couple of things inserted that weren’t from the peer-reviewed literature. . . .

BOYER Well, Betsy, I’m sorry, these aren’t just 986 pages of Scripture, and then a couple of little awkward errant notations on the side. The IPCC isn’t an inconsequential body. Al Gore and Mr. Pachauri shared the Nobel Prize. They are granted a level of authority when they speak. These reports were certainly granted authority. . .

KOLBERT [interrupting] I guess I should ask you: What is your point? . . .

BOYER . . . The consensus about the consensus has begun to crack. That’s just the political reality . . . There is a crack in the consensus.

Kolbert has published hundreds of thousands of words about global warming in the most prestigious magazine in the world. That she is unable to see or at least say this basic truth but must have someone else say it is another sign of problems with her reporting.

Until now, all speakers on The Political Scene have sounded calm and confident. On rare occasions they disagree, but never like this. And the conversation always has a relaxed tone. Not this time. Boyer sounded calm and confident but I thought Kolbert sounded nervous and upset. With good reason: It struck me as a huge and public rebuke from her employer. She’s been the expert. Now someone with no credentials has been allowed to say she’s wrong — has been brought on the program, apparently, in order to disagree with her. As if it’s no longer clear she’s right. And her dismissal of the Climategate emails, as if they taught her nothing, didn’t help her. The debate with Boyer was preceded and followed by softball questions by Wickenden to Kolbert. They struck me as attempts to soften the blow, as did a comment at the end by Boyer about a Super Bowl commercial.

• lotta kefir info
• xkcd on acne self-experimentation. Puzzled by the punchline, as I was? Explanation here.
• the Vioxx story

Thanks to David Cramer.

Jonathan Cole used to be provost of Colombia University. He has written a book called The Great American University, in which, according to this review,

He lists their dazzling achievements, which in biology and medicine include findings on gene-splicing, recombinant DNA, retroviruses, cancer therapies, coch­lear implants, the fetal ultrasound scanner, the hepatitis B vaccine, prions, stem cells, organ transplantation and even a treatment for head lice. . . . In a chapter on the social sciences, he cites, among many others, such useful innovations as theories of human capital and social mobility, research in linguistics and even the use of prices to reduce traffic jams.

“Research in linguistics”? Yes, that sounds dazzling. I’m sure those “theories of human capital” have been v v “useful”. And who would have thought that if you raise the price of something (“use of prices to reduce traffic jams”) . . . people use less of it? Which was traffic engineering, not social science. Did the reviewer, an economics professor at Harvard named Claudia Goldin, write this with a straight face?

The “dazzling achievements” in biology and medicine are only slightly less unconvincing.”Gene splicing” and “recombinant DNA” research are different names for the same thing. Fetal ultrasound scanners may cause autism. Vaccines were not invented by an American university professor. The discovery of prions has had no obvious non-laboratory use — besides being questionable. Stem-cell research has yet to produce anything of use outside of labs. To be fair, gene splicing has been used to produce human insulin, which is better than the insulin previously available, but conspicuously absent from the list of accomplishments is prevention of diabetes — not to mention allergies, obesity, depression, arthritis, stroke, or any of the other lifestyle problems that a large fraction of Americans suffer from. Such achievements would be truly useful. Great American universities haven’t given us any of those . . but they have given us a treatment for head lice.

There’s a reason for the term ivory tower. Apparently Cole, conscious of the term, is trying to argue against it — but merely shows why it exists. (I’m assuming the review is accurate.) It reminds me of the time that top Chinese students, visiting top American colleges such as Harvard and Yale, found the American students ignorant and arrogant. The theme of Cole’s book is that American universities are in trouble and need more support. What useful stuff they’ve accomplished is central to his argument. When I was an undergrad, I read Thorstein Veblen’s bitter The Higher Learning in America, which said American universities were dysfunctional. He mentioned “committees for the sifting of sawdust.”

More “Graduate school in the humanities is a trap” (via Marginal Revolution).

Gut And Psychology Syndrome (GAPS) is a book by Natasha Campbell-McBride about how to treat allergies, autism, and similar conditions.  In this entry, Cheeseslave talks about her own son and then quotes another mother about the effects of the GAPS diet (plus other changes) on her autistic son.

Kevin lacked oxygen at birth, so in the first year of life, I already saw that he was not developing like my other kids (he is our 5th). His motor skills lagged and he cried a lot, didn’t sleep so well, etc.At two, his behavior was just not right. He never responded right to correction, would throw things in anger or frustration, cried all the time, especially when waking up, basically never happy. He didn’t walk until two and then he would fall down constantly.

He also began to always be starving. When he was really hungry, his face would get distorted and frozen in a strange way. I now think he was having seizures of sorts.

We did not vaccinate at all and we figured out that if we fed him lots of protein type foods like meats, he would relax his body and face and be able to go play for a bit until it happened all over again in a short time.

I do think that because we didn’t vaccinate and figured out to keep feeding him this way, we were able to “coast along” like this for years. He had learning disabilities, lacked social skills and continued to have autistic traits like sensory issues, hiding under blankets, reacting to sounds, not liking people around, rigid in routines, and spinning and going on his head along with head banging.

Long story shorter, we did get a diagnosis of Aspergers at one point. We took him to doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist to no avail. He also strangely was NEVER once sick (we later learned that his immune system was not working a bit).

At 9 years old, he got pneumonia, followed by asthma and allergies. His eating [problems] had escalated to the point of feeding him every 20-30 minutes or he would have gigantic meltdowns. We eventually could not even have people over.

He was given an inhaler for the asthma and suddenly, without us making the connection, he began to not respond when called, became extremely hyperactive and began to run away at all hours of the day and night requiring police to find him and being very dangerous. (we once lost him in the middle of downtown Chicago). He would also try to jump out of moving vehicles, out of windows and required constant restraining.

The seizures got bad, he would fall down the stairs and lose consciousness several times per day. They tried psych drugs and he almost died twice from his reaction to them (I am now grateful that we couldn’t go that route).

We became so desperate that we brought him home from hospital and got deadbolts to keep him from running, did all our own restraining and called alternative docs to help us.

We began kefir and diet from nutritionist (basically a BED [Body Ecology Diet]/GAPS version), took him off inhaler. His allergies were totally out of control, he could barely open his eyes from swelling, and his chin was deformed and swollen, his belly too, his whole body. He would only eat junk food and fast foods and it was incredibly difficult to transition him to the diet.

The DAN (Defeat Autism Now) protocols we followed, made him worse in lots of ways b/c the chelation made him extremely violent, the B12 shots kept him awake for nights on end without any sleep, the antifungals and all those other interventions were nightmarish for him.

Eventually, I resolved to use only foods and do this without any kind of doctors. So for this past year, I researched and researched and was determined to bring him back from this state. We have done a combo of GAPS (and BED) very successfully along with lots of fermented foods and drinks.

The allergies and asthma are 100% gone, the seizures we have had only one in 65 days and very mild (compared to 5-10 per day). He sings every morning and has cried once in the last 2.5 months (he used to cry for 1-3 hours at a time each day) and he can go outside again without running away. He is in martial arts, acting appropriately at church, having eye contact, no autistic traits of late and learning academics after two years of not being able to open a book. He reads before bed at an 8th grade level.

This story has many interesting elements. 1. Huge improvement. Very plausible that it’s due to the dietary change. 2. Autism and allergies go away at the same time, suggesting same cause. 3. Treatment with fermented foods. 4. A different “radical” solution failed, meaning there is no reason to think this is a placebo effect. 5. The mystery of why an inhaler made things worse. 6. Autism not due to vaccination.