Public Address - Hard News (Home)

Just some links, really | Jul 12, 2007 10:49

Colin Espiner blogs the Labour caucus's annual press drinks, and includes the following tidbits:

Prime Minister Helen Clark was there, too, circulating around the room. It's always interesting at these things to see which MPs and journalists Velcro themselves to her side at such events. I'm not going to name any names, since I still have to work here.

I bailed about 10pm, declining a lift in David Cunliffe's Crown limo since I'd brought my own wheels. TV3's Duncan Garner cheerfully accepted a lift with Cullen, however. And because if you give Duncan an inch he will take a mile, he got the driver to drop Cullen off at his flat and then head back to the party to pick up a few mates before directing the Crown limo back into town to a late-night bar. Only in New Zealand.

No word on how Damian Christie got home.

Interesting: in the US, Nielsen NetRatings is de-emphasising page impressions as its principal measure of website traffic in favour measuring minutes spent on site. This has a general virtue: it de-incentivises chopping up content to maximise page views; and a specific virtue for us: in Nielsen's figures, Public Address is usually the top site in the country for average time spent on each page.

In a related vein, and against the backdrop of Murdoch's tilt for Dow Jones, Jason Kemp surveys opinion on the prospects for print media. Interesting observation on how much more bountiful Fairfax's margins are in New Zealand than Australia.

Nice post by Nat Torkington on Google's authentic voice problem. Nat also noticed this CoffeeGeek post about antipodean coffee culture.

The official Hansard is now searchable back to 2000. (Hat tip: No Right Turn)

As a follow-up from Monday's broadside here, Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge's Autism Research Centre has spoken to The Times about the bizarre stories in The Observer last weekend. He thinks it's a Wakefield jack-up too …

And, finally, climate change denialists are going to have to find another tune. It's not solar activity. Really.

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Public health: the new terror threat | Jul 11, 2007 10:28

Just when you think Fox News can't surprise you any more, they come up with National Healthcare: Breeding Ground for Terror? The interview at that link, in which National Review Online's Jerry Bowyer explains to Fox's Neil Cavuto how the National Health Service puts the British at risk of terrorism because of its reliance on foreign-trained doctors, is astonishing on any number of grounds: not least that Bowyer doesn't seem to have a clue what he's talking about.

About 28% of NHS doctors are foreign-trained - but so are 25%, and rising, of American doctors. That's hundreds of thousands of potential terrorists right there, surely? Yet oddly, only 23% of doctors in Canada's socialised medical system are foreign-trained (New Zealand, with 41% of its doctors trained elsewhere, is clearly the most dangerous place in the world). And the US takes 60% of its foreign doctors from lower-income countries, which any fool knows are hotbeds of terror. So, surely some mistake?

Ah, but no: the American health system was also safer, Bowyer explained, because instead of being "civil servants", doctors in the US work in small practices, so "if one of your guys is a jihadist, if one of your doctors is spending all the time online reading Osama bin Laden fatwas, someone's going to notice that. But the National Health Service is more like the Post Office, you know there's a lot of anonymity, it's easy to hide in the bureaucracy."

Amazingly, this line of argument has gained legs in wingnut circles; where it fills both the need to respond, somehow, to Michael Moore's Sicko and to perpetually perceive threat.

Meanwhile, on the podcast today, Craig Ranapia finds the Herald relying on anecdote for its story on an alleged local backlash against foreign doctors after the foiled bombings in Britain. And Australian Opposition leader Kevin Rudd clearly isn't above talking about terrorism and foreign doctors in the same breath.

Frankly, there are valid reasons for concern about having to constantly import doctors doctors trained in other systems. I don't think the fact that they might be secret jihadis is among them.

PS: We got to go to the cast and crew screening of The Devil Dared Me To last night. It's great: very funny, and bursting with character. And it looks astonishingly good for a movie made on such a small budget. Those guys know how to make films.

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Transmogrithingy | Jul 10, 2007 10:08

The Princeton WordNet search defines transmogrification as "the act of changing into a different form or appearance (especially a fantastic or grotesque one) 'the transmogrification of the prince into a porcupine." Such a process, if we are to believe the man himself, has been visited upon John Banks as part of rendering him newly fit to contest the Auckland mayoralty.

Banks' transformation involves not only a conversion to the virtues of public transport, but a disavowal of Auckland's stormwater upgrades being funded through water charges (thus putting himself on the same side of the argument as the very-left Water Pressure Group). He allows that debt should be raised "strategically" to cover such investment, at the same time as he accuses the current council of allowing debt to blow out.

The alleged financial wizardry of Banks' last term was achieved almost solely by selling half the council's Auckland Airport shares -- 38 million at $4.90 -- in 2002. The share price had appreciated by nearly 50% a year later. The shares topped $8 in 2005 before the airport company made a four-for-one stock split. They closed yesterday at $3.28. You do the math.

So Banks won't have that one to play with again, but he does have an opening via the indifferent performance - and, in some cases, obsession with pet issues - of the current council. I actually think Dick Hubbard himself has performed relatively well, especially when we consider the ludicrous behaviour that was a feature of Banks' term.

Meanwhile, he was on the radio this morning accusing Hone Harawira of belonging to a "racist" organisation: ie, the Maori Party. Sigh …

Speaking of which, the Australian federal government has thought the better of its poorly conceived announcement that it would be conducting forced medical checks on all aboriginal children in targeted communities. Now there will only be examinations when there is some reason to believe abuse has occurred. This is apparently not a backdown. No, it's a bloody shambles.

TVNZ's general manager of digital services, Eric Kearley, is writing a blog as part of a policy of looking to engage the public in the broadcaster's move into the Freeview platform. The most recent post is an invitation to public briefings in Auckland and Wellington next Monday, on the TVNZ 6 launch schedule. He has previously introduced himself to readers and offered some interesting resources on the future of television.

As is the case with similar efforts at Fairfax and APN, the retrofitting of blog functionality to TVNZ's existing publishing platform is a work in progress -- the same set of comments is still appearing beneath every post -- but I think this is a laudable initiative. And they do have a feed.

Also, the Public Address Radio interview with TVNZ's Jason Paris about the YouTube deal, and what comes next, is up on the podcast this morning.

PS: We've brought together our friends in SJD and our friends at Karajoz for a promotion for the new SJD album, Songs from a Dictaphone. If you click here, or on the ads on the site, you can order the album from Real Groovy and get delivered a bag of Karajoz' No.1 blend coffee. Get in there.

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Bad journalism, old stories | Jul 08, 2007 18:27

It is useful, if not exactly pleasant, to sometimes be reminded just how misleading "quality" journalism can be. Case in point: New health fears over big surge in autism, the lead story in The Observer yesterday. It reports "a study, as yet unpublished [that] shows that as many as one in 58 children may have some form" of autism.

It is, of course, pretty rash to report on the results of an unpublished study. But the paper's health correspondent, Denis Campbell, doesn't stop there:

Seven academics at Cambridge University, six of them from its renowned Autism Research Centre, undertook the research by studying children at local primary schools. Two of the academics, leaders in their field, privately believe that the surprisingly high figure may be linked to the use of the controversial MMR vaccine. That view is rejected by the rest of the team, including its leader, the renowned autism expert, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen.

The claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism emerged, notoriously, from the work of Professor Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield's practices were exposed and his theory debunked in part through newspaper investigations and a Channel 4 documentary by Brian Deer, who has a comprehensive website dedicated to the project. Wakefield sued Deer for libel, but ended up dropping the action and paying compensation to Deer.

Over the past two weeks, Wakefield's credibility has been shredded by expert testimony in a special omnibus hearing in a US court of claims by parents who believe that vaccines caused their children's autism. (Oddly, the claims hold that it is not the vaccine itself that caused autism -- Wakefield's theory -- but the presence of a form of mercury used as a preservative. MMR has never contained thimerosal.) .

Autism Diva has been providing exhaustive coverage of the proceedings. ScienceBlogs had a withering post too.

(Autism Diva also has plenty to say about the Observer's interview with Wakefield.)

Wakefield, who no longer works in Britain, has returned to face serious charges relating to his fitness to practice before the General Medical Council, relating to the 1998 research on which he based his claims. Campbell interviews him in a story appearing under the somewhat sympathetic headline I told the truth all along, says doctor at heart of autism row, which eventually goes on to say of the charges:

They include allegations that the three undertook research with the 12 children without proper approval from the Royal Free's ethics committee, failed to conduct their study along the lines they had sought ethical approval for, and did not treat their young patients in accordance with the ethical approval given. The trio are accused of carrying out procedures on children in the study, such as lumbar punctures and colonoscopies, that were not in the best interests of the health of some seriously ill young people.

According to the charge papers, the GMC will also hear claims that Wakefield and Walker-Smith 'acted dishonestly and irresponsibly' in failing to tell The Lancet how they had recruited the patients, and that the pair also acted irresponsibly when they gave one child 'a purportedly therapeutic substance for experimental reasons prior to obtaining information about the safety of the substance'.

Wakefield himself is further accused of being 'dishonest and misleading' when he obtained research funds from the Legal Aid Board, of ordering investigations to be carried out on some children even though he did not have the paediatric qualifications to do so, and that he took blood from children at a birthday party to use for research purposes after offering them money.

So let's return to Campbell's main story, in which he names the two "leading" academics on the study team as Dr Fiona Scott and Dr Carol Stott. Stott is a psychologist and is about as qualified to comment on diseases of the gut, immunology and PCR testing (all of which are relevant to the MMR claims) as I am. But there's more to it. Her name will be known to anyone who has looked at this saga. It was Stott who sent a string of abusive emails to Brian Deer, which led to a formal warning from the British Psychological Society. (Stott accused her colleagues of failing to support her in her battle with Deer because they were in thrall of drug companies.)

Campbell doesn't tell his readers all that. He also forgets to note that Stott is no longer employed as a junior researcher at Cambridge. She now works with the California-based clinic Thoughtful House, which is run by - did you see this coming? - Andrew Wakefield. As you might expect, Deer takes a dim view of what goes on there.

Until Deer started writing about it, Stott and Dr Fiona Scott shared a website, on which they touted their "substantial experience in medico-legal and educational-legal expert witness work" to parents who might have been minded to pursue legal action in the belief that the MMR vaccine had caused their children's autism.

It would appear that either or both of Stott and Scott are Campbell's source, and that the timing of the story around Wakefield's return to face the music before the GMC is no accident. NB: Dr Scott has accused The Observer of fabricating quotes, which I find unlikely, but it does perhaps suggest she isn't Campbell's source. Full text and link in the discussion for this post.

As I noted, the study on which the story is based has not been published. It may suggest that there is a rise in the incidence of autism spectrum conditions that cannot be explained by a broadening of diagnostic criteria. But the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge describes autism and Asperger Syndrome as "strongly heritable", and its director, Simon Baron-Cohen, explicitly rejected the vaccine theory when Campbell approached him:

Genetics, better recognition of the condition, environmental factors such as chemicals and children's exposure to hormones in the womb, especially testosterone, were more likely to be the cause, he commented. "As for MMR, at this point one can conclude that evidence does not support the idea that the MMR causes autism."

So why, when the centre is doing such fascinating and important research work across a range of disciplines, from psychology to genetics and neuroscience, has The Observer led with "new health fears" that are simply old allegations from an associate of a discredited researcher who is about to face serious ethics charges?

There will be some letters flying over this one.

PS: It is useful to understand what a test for autism actually is: it's a questionnaire - in this case, the Childhood Asperger Syndrome Test (CAST), which you can view here, along with other test material from the Autism Research Centre. The screening study mentioned in the Observer story is here.

PPS In unrelated news, a torrent among torrents has appeared on the interwebs: 139 episodes of Horizon, 1980-2007, totalling 78.1GB. Crikey.

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