"The model of thought that says we need to go out and extend unemployment benefits and health insurance benefits and so forth is not, I think, one that is commensurate with the American spirit."
- Richard "Dick" Armey of Texas, House Republican Whip.
Yeah yeah, I know, I have sadly neglected my blog. The plain truth is that October (as I mention every year) is a very busy time for me, this year more so than usual! There is my super scary Seance Show (which this year is completely booked, sorry), I am trying to get my paper organized, and it has turned out to be much harder than I thought.
Then there is the volunteer work I am doing for the eventual defeat of George W. Bush. I don't talk about it because I don't want my political activity to run the risk of crossing the blogger line, and I like saying what is on my mind just fine thank you! Nevertheless I am doing as much as I can to make sure that the Resident in Thief does not have another chance to steal an election.
Then there has been my horrible computer problems. I have a very old VIA chipset to match my Pentium III and for some reason it won't accept the new Hyperion 4 - in - 1 drivers. This is bad because without the updated drivers, the hard drives won't allow me to turn on their DMA. This is bad because without DMA my drives massively under perform. At one point I reformatted my drive 10 times in three days. Yuck!
In addition I am thinking of changing "A Skeptical Blog". I found another piece of blogging software that I want to try, but I am pretty sure that means changing the template and losing all my archives once again. So this week promises to be rather light too!
With a new look will come a new emphasis. No it don't mean I won't be writing about politics and it don't mean that I won't be writing about skeptical subjects. But I think that instead of these super long articles (which are becoming fewer and farther between) I will be doing a bit more link work. Again this does not mean I won't write super long articles, just that they will be a bit more rare. The upside is that I might be able to update more often.
So sorry for the extra long break. Hopefully "A Skeptical Blog" will come back after this month better than ever!
Warning! Shameless Begging Ahead. Forewarned is forearmed.
Yeah I know I said I was going to offer you some final thoughts on the John Stossel, Dan Rather thing but darn I am just too excited. So let's put a quick wrap on this...
The right wing is chocked full of hypocrites. There was a lot more but time to move on.
Believe it or not (I am still unsure I believe it) Professor Ron Hall gave me a call on Wednesday. True enough he had some questions to ask, some statements to make and a few assurances.
The bottom line is that my humble offering will likely be chosen to be presented at The Amaz!ing Meeting "Call for Papers" (excuse me while I dance around my room). For those of you that have no idea what I am talking about click here. For those of you that know exactly what I am talking about it is time for me to really push for funding.
To tell the truth I did not think that I had a ghost of a chance in hell (and yes I know skeptics don't believe in ghost or hell, sheesh stop being so anal) of being able to present this paper. Even as I talked to Professor Hall, I told him I did not have much confidence that my paper would be chosen. But the good Professor assured me that he thought that my chances were excellent! So here we are.
Professor Hall was very friendly and seemed quite interested in what I had to say. He asked me what I thought of three shows, the one on second hand smoke, the one on GM crops and the one on the environment. We also agreed that I probably needed to tone the rhetoric a bit, after all, I don't really want to piss Penn & Teller off (of course of they have read anything I've written on their boards....). I went out and bought the first season DVD on Saturday and am busy writing an outline. The presentation is twenty minutes plus questions. Any insights, suggestions, advice, and anything else you care to offer will be much appreciated.
This has stopped being a joke and is fast becoming a reality. One of the biggest problems I will have is funding. I don't have enough of a regular fan base to have any confidence that this pledge drive is going to work. Yet I am determined to go. My first course of action will be to write to other liberal bloggers, asking for a link. And since I hope to have a bunch of new readers I am going to explain things a bit better later in the week. We are also working on alternate methods of getting the money but please don't let that stop you.
If you look to the left you will see my pledge meter. Feel free to click on the link. Starting in November, after I have official notice that my paper was chosen, I will be calling in the pledges. Right now I only have a hundred dollars...
So help me strike a blow for accurate information. Help me get to Vegas. Hell just help me.
For those that have never read my stuff on Penn & Teller, below are the URLs that lead to the articles I have written so far. You will note that I started out as an excited fan. I ended up a not-so-happy skeptic.
I did not write the following article, the ever popular QrazyQat did. It fleshs out the differences between animal husbandry and genetic manipulation and I will probably use some of the references included
On Friday August 11 John Stossel was forced by ABC News to apologize for this fiasco. It was an apology that apologized for nothing. As one writer put it "By the time he was done he was almost snarling". After having reviewed the transcript of the apology several times I note that once again John managed to screw it up. Is there any doubt at this point he lied? (link to the apology, which used to be on the ABCNews site no longer works).
John apologized:
"The Organic Trade Assn. and Washington’s Environmental Working Group wrote us complaining the E. coli test our experts used was the wrong test because it tests for all kinds of E. coli, not just the kinds that can make you sick. Well, its true that this test was for all kinds of E. coli.
But government and other experts we spoke to confirm that this is a standard test for contamination of food, because the presence of E. coli on produce is an indicator for fecal contamination, and fecal contamination means the product may contain various kinds of bacteria that could make you sick."
Really John? That will come to a surprise to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Robert L. Epstein, Acting Deputy Administrator for Science and Technology Programs at USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service wrote to the EWG that generic E.coli tests of the type conducted for the ABC News investigation on organic food "do not distinguish between pathogenic and non-pathogenic strains, and therefore cannot definitively identify a sample as containing bacteria harmful to human health. Generic E.coli tests can be used as an indicator of overall sanitation, for example in a food processing facility, but cannot alone determine whether pathogenic bacteria are present in a given sample."
John apologized:
"For the record, here’s what those tests found: no bacterial contamination on either conventional or organic chickens. Six chickens were tested for pesticides. Two were organic, and had no pesticides. Some of the conventional chickens had what the expert who did the test called "trace amounts of pesticides," which he said were too small to be of any public health significance."
I couldn't help but notice that in the transcript "trace amounts of pesticides" were in quotes where "were too small to be of any public health significance" was not. I wonder if Dr. Crawford would agree with that. He did not agree with John on much. One wonders just how much economic sense it makes for ABC News to pay a scientist and then ignore what he says. John went from the claim that "neither organic or conventional produce contained pesticides" to "trace amounts to small to be of public health significance". I wonder (as I always will from now on. Way to go John) just who the person was that determined how small is small. Was it the Doctor? Or was it John?
John apologized:
"Then we made things worse. In July, I repeated the report! And the error. It was an inadvertent error, and just two sentences in a ten-minute report, but it was wrong."
It was a lot more than two sentences, as we know now it was the whole damn report.
John's last words to his audience was :
"All we have in this business is our credibility - your trust that we get it right - I will make every effort to see that it never happens again."
What really sucks is that if John wanted to do a real story on organic farming the story was there. Even the Environmental Working Group agreed with that. As organic food become more and more a part of our food supply, reporting on it's testing, checking it out for economic sense, and making sure that organic producers live up to their certification, makes perfect sense for a reporter to pursue. But lying to the American public to buttress a political viewpoint that is not valid is unethical to say the lest.
I really don't think ABC News or John really ever understood the problem. Remember I liked John Stossel. But I have the bitter certainty that I can no longer trust anything he says and history has bourn me out. An apology would have helped had John gave it before they rebroadcast the report. However, it is clear that there was no way John did not know that a) The test that ABC News did not include a test for pesticides, b) the test for E.coli was not a test for dangerous pathogens and c) the test on organic vs. non-organic chicken DID show the non-organic chicken was exposed to pesticides whereas the organic chicken showed none.
We pay a lot of lip service to the idea that we don't like the media or politicians to lie to us. But this is not true, we LOVE it when they lie to us. Especially if the lie agrees with our own bias.
Well I refuse to pay lip service to honesty. When I say I don't want the media to lie to me, I mean exactly that, even if the lie agrees with my belief! Rather I let go of the belief that to believe in a lie.
Robert A. Heinlein said it best. "A man who lies might as well be talking to the wind for all the attention people will pay him". I will NEVER be able to enjoy a report by John Stossel again. I can't trust him to be honest, as this regrettable episode had all too clearly shown.
My main problem has always been with the rebroadcast. I cannot see how John could have remained blissfully ignorant that those test were bogus for five months. Remember this too, when the test were proven to be worthless, the entire thesis of John's report, that organic food was more dangerous to eat than conventional food, fell down like a house of cards. Lack of pesticides on the conventional, plus the presence of dangerous bacteria on the organic samples plus higher cost of the organic, equaled picking organic food over conventional food was foolish. John was very accusatory to Katherine DiMatteo, Executive Director of the Organic Trade Association (OTA). even though in the videotape transcript that EWG has on it's website, Stossel himself admitted that the samples size were too small to be significant. To ask her if he should put a warning label on organic produce saying that eating it "might kill you" was alarmist to say the least.
The most disturbing part of that conversation was the after segment chatter between Cynthia McFadden
Cynthia McFadden: "Well John, I buy organic produce because I want to avoid the pesticides. Bad idea?"
John Stossel: "You pay much more."
McFadden: "I do."
Stossel: "It's logical to worry about pesticide residues, but in our tests, we found none on either organic or regular produce, and it's never been proven that the pesticide residues hurt anyone, yet we know there are about 5,000 deaths from bacteria so I think you're worrying about the wrong thing."
Remember that this conversation took place five months later. After being put on notice that there were serious questions about those lab test.
I can't see it any other way than that John Stossel lied to his audience. To claim he did not lie, one has to assume that John was simply too lazy to fact check the story, or too damn stupid. Six of one kind, half dozen of the other if you ask me.
I find it completely ironic that the right calls for the dismissal of Dan Rather, where all evidence suggests that this was a mistake, one that Dan forthrightly admitted once it became clear that the forms that he had were fake. This is much much more than I can say for John Stossel. And I note that no one on the right called on ABC to fire Stossel. who's crime was much more egregious.
The "Save John Stossel" movement was as dishonest as John himself.
Sorry about lack of update on Friday. Once again I had to re-format my hard drive. I am thinking it is time for me to invest in a new machine. In any case I am going to wrap up this old piece of history tomorrow.
I really hated having my machine down since I had planned to live blog the debate. And man what a debate it was. I have never seen G. W. look so pissed off. It was a real pleasure to watch. I do plan to live blog the next three debates so be sure to stay tuned.
Onward and upward.
Just when it seemed I could get no more depressed over this debacle a web page goes up. It was called "Save John Stossel" (now called "Support John Stossel") and it is sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It was a perfect example of form over substance. It was nothing more than a propaganda piece to insure that John Stossel never meet a fate that he is no danger of meeting, namely being fired.
Yet there were people out there like myself, reasonable people that try to make good decisions based on the best available knowledge. We were not at all happy with John's "apology" (more on that "apology" tomorrow). What to do about us? Organic farmers at the time were threatening to take ABC to court in a class action suit. People might get the wrong idea about organic food. What can a free marketer to do? Why, build a web page! It can be built to "defend" John Stossel, you can take cheap shots at EWG, OTA and FAIR and even better, you can keep up the job of burying the organic farmer.
The first thing I noticed about these pages is that they usually fail to mention the second broadcast of the story, sans correction or apology. From the Save John Stossel.Org webpage "Why Should I Care?"
"Activists have been waiting for an opportunity to trip up Stossel, and now they think they have it. The Environmental Working Group, working with the organic food lobby and other left-leaning activists, is now calling on ABC to fire the star reporter because he and his colleagues at ABC made a mistake in a February 20/20 report titled: "How Good Is Organic Food"?
"Mistakes happen, and reporters should render corrections when they do. John Stossel rightly offered an apology for himself and ABC on the August 11 edition of 20/20. But a public apology is not enough says the Environmental Working Group and the Organic Trade Association."
No mention of the July broadcast. Kinda makes you wonder why they leave it out eh? But they are not the only people that have made this mistake.
"On February 4th, the ABC television newsmagazine 20/20 presented a report by the iconoclastic and anti-PC reporter John Stossel. He pointed to the increased health risks that might accompany organic food. Stossel’s report flew in the face of the accepted PC wisdom that organic food is safer because it is cultivated without pesticides. Environmentalists were outraged by the broadcast that included the statement: "Our tests [ABC’s] surprisingly found no pesticide residue on the conventional samples or the organic." This statement was Stossel’s mistake and it could be his undoing if ABC caves to PC politics. It gave a Washington-based environmental watchdog - the left Environmental Working Group (EWG) - an opening to conduct a media circus through which to call for Stossel’s dismissal."
"According to the EWG - who seem to be correct - scientists working for ABC tested produce for bacteria, not pesticides. Although poultry were tested for pesticides, the organic chickens had passed with a clean bill while the regular chickens evidenced residue. This means that Stossel’s claim "Our tests surprisingly found no pesticide residue [on produce]..." is inaccurate. He should have said "bacteria residue." In the Brave New World of news reporting, where NBC jerry-rigs gas tanks to explode as part of an 'impartial’ exposé, such a slip may seem inconsequential. No individual was libeled. No company or brand name was slanderously mentioned. No deaths or property damage ensured. The mistake could have easily resulted from sloppy copywriting (sic) or research on the part of ABC staff. It was the sort of inevitable mistake that will happen in a long and fast-paced career that depends on the input of many people. Moreover, ABC publicly apologized and Stossel offered an on-air retraction."
Note once again there is no mention of the July rebroadcast. Simply amazing. Of course, it is easy to explain this as a mistake if you manage to leave out major facts.
JunkScience.com's Steven Milloy, took his own stab at it. He wrote a report called "The Greens' Yellow Science". I will give him this, he did manage to catch the rebroadcast. He also managed to miss the letters that EWG sent to ABC News in response to the story. He did not even try to explain how John could have gone five months without knowing that his test were bogus, not that I blame him. It is very hard to explain without making John look stupid or lazy. It was easier to simply attack the EWG.
All of these sites made the mistake of trying to slay the messenger to avoid the message. They all attempted to shift the blame for this "mistake" to the shoulders of the EWG. They all made the claim that, bottom line, John was right in the long run, even if he was "wrong" (aka lied) on the broadcast. The Save John Stossel Page even claim Dennis Avery as an "agriculture expert" without telling you that Dennis just might have a tad of an agenda himself. He is, once again the author of "Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastics". Dennis is also the director of the Center for Global Food Issues for the Hudson Institute, another Libertarian think tank. So respected is Mr. Avery that he has been corrected numerous times for putting words in people's mouths. For example Mr. Avery took the Food and Drug Administration to task for failing ''to issue any warnings to consumers about the higher levels of natural toxins their researchers regularly find in organic foods.'' He said that this assertion was based on a statement by Dr. Robert Lake, an official in the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Nutrition. Dr. Lake denied saying any such thing. He disputed what Avery reported saying, ''We don't go out of our way to sample organic food, and hence I don't think we are in a position to say anything one way or another about it.'' Or how about the story behind "Organic Food Creates Higher Risk for Food Poisoning"? In the body of the story you find a quote attributed to Dr. Robert Tauxe chief of the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the CDC saying "Organic food means a food was grown in animal manure." Well Dr. Tauxe denied ever making that statement and said he believes the rumor originated with none other than Dennis Avery. But Avery's most famous claim is that "people who eat organic and 'natural' foods are eight times as likely as the rest of the population to be attacked by a deadly new strain of E. coli bacteria (0157:H7)." Avery says his data comes from Dr. Paul Mead, an epidemiologist at the CDC. Well that came to quite a surprise to Dr. Mead. He called the claim absolute bunk. "What happened is that he (Avery) called me up and announced that eight percent of the outbreaks of food borne illness were from organic food. I took some exception to that and said I didn't know him and what his purpose was, but our data don't support that." With op-eds that bear titles such as "The Silent Killer in Organic Foods" and "Wallace Institute Got it Wrong: CDC Data Does Indicate Higher Risk From Organic and Natural Foods" Avery continued to claim he got this information from the CDC. On January 14, 1999 the CDC issued a press release stating, "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not conducted any study that compares or quantitates the specific risk for infection with E. coli 0157:H7 and eating either conventionally grown or organic/natural foods." Dr. Tauxe took the additional step of calling Avery to tell him to stop claiming that the CDC was the source of this allegation. Avery responded by telling Tauxe, "That's your interpretation, and I have mine." So much for "Agricultural Expert" Dennis Avery.
The most important point about these pages is that none of them, not one, attempted to dispute EWG's report "Give Me A Fake". I couldn't find a link on any of these pages to the report, and I think that is telling. The Save John Stossel.org site has many links to many stories about this mess, yet not one to the EWG's report itself. Wonder why?
The fact is that the report is damning to the idea that John Stossel made a "mistake". If he did not lie, then he was either stupid or lazy. Any reporter worth his salt is going to listen when the very scientists he hires to run test tell him that the way he reported the results were wrong. John managed to cover his ears for five months.
Reading the Saving John Stossel pages around the net made one thing perfectly clear. This is not an issue of politics, even though they tried to say otherwise. It was not a matter of left vs. right, or organic vs. conventional. It was simply a question of a reporter's honesty, honor, and integrity. I used to think that John Stossel was one of the "good guys". I was wrong. With John's total lack of personal responsibility it seemed pretty clear that John Stossel is nothing more than a PR hack. He is not interested in giving me the news. He is only interested in giving me his version of the news. So I guess I should not be surprised that the Save John Stossel movement would be no different.
