View a useful Guardian podcast interview with Ben Goldacre on the theme of his recent book Bad Pharma about the practises involved in the Pharmaceutical industry.
(with thanks to Paul Marchant for the link)
Author Archives: web-editor
Riotstats – Issue 106 of Radical Statistics
Aside
Editorial – by Alastair Greig
The following is a reprint of the Editorial in the special issue of Radical Statistics: Riotstats.
The August disturbances, we are led to believe, brought out the “best” and “worst” of contemporary British society. It is not difficult to find a range of views on the causes and the most appropriate response to the rioting that followed the death of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, London, in the summer of 2011. In this issue of Radical Statistics a couple of articles question the statistical basis for making sweeping empirical claims about the riots. We also have a debate about causes of the riots, which mirrors the one which has taken place in the public domain. Ultimately, however, the statistics do not provide any simple answers, and it remains up to individual readers to decide upon the most compelling approach to understanding the cause and effect of these riots and to contribute to the analysis and dissemination of our understanding of these events.
Roger Ball and John Drury provide, in time-honored Radical Statistics style, a critical analysis of the way in which data have been used, particularly in the media and by politicians, to support various ideological interpretations of the disturbances. The article refrains from putting forward the authors’ own account of the causes of the riots, while providing a convincing account of the way in which dubious statistical evidence appears to have been used to promote narrow sectional and political interests.
Carly Lightowlers and Jon Shute, using the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) and Manchester court records, show that individuals from deprived neighbourhoods were disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system as a result of the rioting. To Carly and Jon, the dominant narratives do “not acknowledge the structural roots of the problem or the counter-productivity of ‘get tough’ policies designed largely to appease voter’s concerns”.
Nigel Williams and Nick Cowen argue that the IMD should be disaggregated. Their analysis shows that not all forms of deprivation were associated with areas in which those ‘rioters’ charged were living. Nigel and Nick argue that although crimes were committed in part due to the deprivation-related incentives of the rioters, these would have been averted with a more conspicuous policing deterrent. This aspect of their analysis echoes similarly dispositional interpretations of the riots (Waiton, 2011), which Carly and Jon take to task in a rebuttal. Among other things, they argue that the “rational choice” explanation that Nigel and Nick present inhibits understanding of the myriad of plausible situational factors at work.
Janet Burja and Jenny Pearce recently authored Saturday Night & Sunday Morning: The 2001 Bradford Riot and Beyond, which documents years of work dedicated to making sense of the rioting that occurred in Bradford 10 years ago, and the legacy it has had on the city. Those riots had a particularly striking racial dimension, not entirely dissimilar to the August Riots and in other ways the participants were very similar to the more recent rioters. Janet argues that, in Bradford, local institutions – the police and local government – needed to recognise legitimate grievances of young, deprived individuals. Perhaps to the shock of some Radical Statisticians, Janet argues that statistical analyses have limitations in understanding, and developing responses to, such grievances.*
We are then left with a letter from Brian Quinn, which argues that the Radical Statistics overpopulation working group in its contribution to issue 105, has overlooked the ecological impact of having another child. This is followed by a brief response by the working group in which they address Brian’s points. The issue ends with news from the newly formed Reduced Statistics group.
Changes in Editorship
I would like to thank Janet Shapiro, who is standing down as editor. She had done a miraculous job as editor, and lately had taken on a hefty workload by herself. I am sure I am not alone in thanking her for the marvellous work she has done for Radical Statistics over the years. Rachel Cohen, from the University of Surrey, will take over from her and I am sure all our members look forward to her contributions in the months and years ahead.
Radical Statistics is a not-for-profit membership organisation, and our journal does not aspire to be exclusively academic. We look for contributions from all walks of life and, thanks to our diverse membership, offer a peer review service upon request. If you would
like to help review for the journal or contribute, feel free to contact any of the editors for further information. This year, we are particularly interested in receiving shorter articles from as wide a range of authors as possible. These may highlight the misuse of statistics or promote results, which may not be given a fair hearing in other settings.
References
Waiton, S. (2011). Wellfare Culture: the English Riots and the Collapse
of Authority. Journal of Scottish Affairs, 77, 54-78.
Mis-measurement of health and wealth: Radstats Conference & AGM, 24-25 Feb 2012, London
February is upon us! If you’ve not had the chance, please note that you can still book a space for the Radical Statistics conference to be held on Friday, February 24th 2012 at the British Library Conference Centre, followed by a half-day interactive workshop and AGM on Saturday 25th.
Don’t miss our challenging and engaging programme with talks on:
· Measuring health – history and methods
· Deception in medical research – scientific and regulatory failure
· Deception in financial statistics – how this contributes to financial mayhem
Speakers: Roy Carr-Hill, Val Saunders, Dr Aubrey Blumsohn, Prof. David Healy, Prof. Prem Sikka, Ann Pettifor, Prof. Allyson Pollock & Howard Reed.
Both days will provide a great opportunity to learn and discuss how misleading statistics are used to bolster political preferences and how difficult issues can be demystified with clear statistics.
All interested in research and statistics are welcome – the conference is neither technical nor limited to professional researchers.
Please find the programme and related information at www.radstats.org.uk/conf2012, where you can make your booking now!
Consultations, consultations
If January is your slow month, now’s the time to act on these current data user consultations:
(1) Beyond 2011 – Public Consultation
Opening date: 17 October 2011
Closing date: 20 January 2012
Department: Office for National Statistics
Category: General
The User Needs Consultation aims to ensure that we have a clear understanding of users’ needs and priorities.
The views expressed will be critical in determining how we develop our assessment criteria, how we evaluate alternative approaches and what option we recommend for further development beyond 2014.
The User Needs Consultation document can be downloaded from our website (626 Kb Word document) .
This document provides brief discussion and guidance on the questions included in the questionnaire and we would appreciate it if you could look at it before responding.
Thanks in advance for your help on this.
Please complete the questionnaire online – or use the questionnaire included in the consultation document and return electronically to beyond2011@ons.gov.uk by 20 January 2012.
If you would like to share your views on the issues behind the Beyond 2011 Public Consultation you can join the conversation on the Royal Statistical Society Statistics User Forum.
(2) Lifestyles Surveys Consultation Review
As you will be aware, the NHS Information Centre (IC) publishes the following Lifestyles survey publications:
- Health Survey for England – Health, Lifestyles and Social Care
- Smoking, Drinking and Drug Use Among Young People in England
- Infant Feeding Survey
The findings are used to provide an insight into the health and behaviour of people in England. The longevity of the surveys also enables changing trends to be studied over time. They can be used to help decision makers improve policies and services and ultimately improve the health of population in this country.
The NHS IC has launched a public consultation on the Lifestyles surveys with the following aims:
- to engage with the users of the surveys to develop a more complete understanding of the use made of this data
- to ensure the surveys are relevant and meaningful to the needs of users
- to seek the views of users on the content and format of the publications
This consultation will run for 12 weeks from Friday 30 December 2011 to Friday 23 March 2012. Please ensure you submit any comments prior to the closing date so they can be considered.
Further details, along with the full consultation document are available at www.ic.nhs.uk/work-with-us/consultations/lifestyles-surveys-consultation-review
1967 Census of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Digitized Tables
Shu’fat Refugee Camp by Decode Jerusalem on Flickr
In the summer of 1967, just after the Six-Day War brought the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israel’s control, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics conducted a census of the occupied territories. The resulting seven volumes of reports provide the earliest detailed description of this population, including crucial data about respondents’ 1948 refugee status.
In recent decades, these volumes of tables — over 300 tables in all — have received little or no attention from historians of the occupation, not least because it is not easy to use the reports in print form and in any case the volumes are not widely available even in good research libraries.
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College is making the contents of these volumes available in machine-readable form for the first time, free of charge to anyone with access to the internet. The tables can be downloaded in Excel format for intensive research.
Many tables provide information cross-tabulated with several social characteristics at once (for example, education or occupation cross-tabulated with age, gender and refugee status) and presented for small geographic locales as well sub-totaled for regions.
Also, in conjunction with the Palestinian Authority’s censuses of 1997 and 2007 these tables help provide an understanding of trends over 40 years. We hope that the data can be exploited by researchers interested in a fuller understanding of the social history of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
For an overview of our project and to access the hundreds of tables contained in the 1967 Census database, go to http://www.levyinstitute.org/palestinian-census/
Feel free to circulate notice of this website to anyone who you think would be interested.
Joel Perlmann
Project Director
Levy Economics Institute of Bard College
Your memories of Radical Statistics
by JoSzczepanska on flickr
Radical Statistics Group’s 36 years of activity is to be archived for all to learn from. Documents are being collated with a view to offering them to Wellcome Trust library in London, aiming to have as much as possible online and all catalogued.
Much of our activity is documented in the newsletter, which is available on the Radical Statistics website. But the experience and impact of the group has been much wider than is reflected there, with influence through public meetings, press releases and publicity, support to campaigns and inspiration to individuals and groups in the UK and in other parts of the world.
Send your documents, or memories that you can document for the archive, to admin@radstats.org.uk
Radstats 2012 Conference Announcement
Bookings are open for the Radical Statistics conference on February 24th 2012. This year we are hosted by the British Library and have a challenging programme on:
- Measuring health – history and methods
- Deception in medical research – scientific and regulatory failure
- Deception in financial statistics – how this contributes to financial mayhem
This conference gives an opportunity to learn how misleading statistics are used to bolster political preferences and how difficult issues can be demystified with clear statistics.
All interested in research and statistics are welcome – the conference is neither technical nor limited to professional researchers. There are eight speakers and smaller group sessions, with lunch included.
The Radical Statistics AGM and activity debate will be on Saturday morning February 25th.
Please pass on by email, print and distribute the
A4 flyer advertising the programme, and visit the conference site at www.radstats.org.uk/conf2012, where you can make your booking now!
—
Alistair Cairns, admin@radstats.org.uk
Administrator
Radical Statistics
Results of the Radstats 2011 Critical Essay Competition
The judges have chosen the following winners to the Critical Essay Competition which closed in July, 2011 with decisions in Oct 2011.
Two prizes were awarded in the student category. No prizes were awarded in the open category.
The essays will appear in an upcoming issue of Radical Statistics.
- 1st Prize: Nick Wattie – Relative age effects in education and sport: An argument for human, not statistical solutions.
- 2nd Prize: Chi-lin Tsai – Would both the trade unions and the Labour Party benefit from an amicable divorce?
The award for first prize is £60 and the second prize of £40, both in vouchers.Each prize winner has been given a one-year subscription to Radical Statistics and free entry to the 2012 conference.
Owing to the high standard of the entries this year, a few of the shortlisted entries were given a one-year subscription to Radical Statistics.
Congratulations to the prize winners entries on behalf of the Radical Statistics Troika!
Also, many thanks on behalf of to the contest organisers Alan Marshall and Lee Williamson to our judges Claire Boag, Jay Ginn and Paul Norman for making the 2011 Radstats Critical Essay Competition a success.
Moral panic about overpopulation: the distracting campaign of Population Matters
Moral panic about overpopulation: the distracting campaign of Population Matters
—For Immediate Release —
28th October 2011
On the 31st October the world population will pass 7 billion. It is essential that evidence rather than myth informs the challenges and opportunities that such population growth presents.
Population Matters describe themselves as “the leading environmental charity and think-tank in the UK concerned with the impact of population growth on the environment”. The group have promoted their apocalyptic views of population in well funded media campaigns to mark the passing of 7 billion global population.
Radical Statistics’ Population group of UK demographers/population scientists and statisticians, have examined the claims and policy of Population Matters finding them guilty of frequent overstatement, rhetoric and one-sided assertion rather than evidence that population growth is the main cause of environmental threats. Like others concerned about overpopulation before them, Population Matters promote policies that erroneously focus on the groups who consume the least. The Radical Statistics group calls on high profile patrons of Population Matters to reconsider their support, including the naturalists and broadcasters David Attenborough and Chris Packham, environmental campaigner Jonathan Porritt, and senior academic and cultural figures.
Seven key myths that are promoted by Population Matters are summarised below:
| Myth 1Population growth is increasing at an ever faster rate.Evidence
Current UN projections indicate slowing growth and a maximum world population that remains between 10.0 and 10.5 billion from 2083. In the UK levels of fertility are below the level required to replace the current population. |
| Myth 2Population causes resources to run out.Evidence
This myth has a long history; it has been expressed by Malthus, Plato, Aristotle and Tertullian, and many times since. Resources are not fixed or knowable; what is considered a resource changes over time. This myth overlooks the potential for human ingenuity to overcome problems, discover and use resources more efficiently. Historical evidence of steadily increasing population fed by successive productive revolutions demonstrates that a fixed human carrying capacity for planet earth is nonsense.
For more detail on the critique of Population Matters see the paper ‘Moral panic about overpopulation: a distracting campaign?’ by the Radical Statistics Population Studies group available at: https://www.radstats.org.uk/popgroup/ Dr Alan Marshall is the contact for Radical Statistics Population Studies Group on this matter and is available for comment on Friday 28th October 2011: 07858447308 —END— |
Editorial: Cuts and Corporations Conference issue
The Radical Statistics Annual Conference 2011, held at the newly opened Heart Centre in Leeds was very successful with a record attendance. There was a full programme of papers that focussed on the twin themes of the ongoing effects of the coalition’s financial cuts and the increasing influence of corporations. This issue [104] includes four of these conference presentations and two workshops based on the presentations.
One issue that has been a thorn in the side of many scientists at least since Simon Singh published his book on homeopathy (co-authored with Edzard Ernst) is litigation in the area of science criticism. Dr Peter Wilmshurst presented a harrowing and yet very humorous account of what began with his participation as principal cardiologist in a sponsored clinical trail. This involvement led to severe and painful disruption of his career and family life over three years, caused by extended legal action. His commitment to professional integrity left him victim to UK libel laws, and his case is not alone. There are other examples of scientists being sued for libel for scientific presentations and research publications. This should be a concern for scientists, statisticians and the public, restricting as it does scientific communication.
Speaking before Dr Wilmshurst, Stuart Parkinson, Executive Director Scientists for Global Responsibility, presented an analysis that anticipated the experiences reported by Peter Wilmshurst. He argued that, while links are increasing between business and science and
technology, there is growing evidence that the science commercialisation agenda brings with it a wide range of detrimental effects, including bias, conflicts of interest, a narrowing of the research agenda, and misrepresentation of research results. All of these can reduce the reliability of statistics based on scientific research. Stuart permits the reprint of an article dated 2009 presenting evidence for these effects across five sectors: pharmaceuticals; tobacco; military/defence; oil and gas; and biotechnology. Recommendations are made for improving the openness, independence and reliability of
academic research.
The opening presentation was given by Jay Ginn and Susan Himmelweit. With illustrative charts they refuted the government’s claim that its measures to reduce the financial-sector-created deficit are designed to be ‘fair’, that is distributing the pain across the whole of society. Vulnerable groups were shown to be suffering the worst effects of the package of cuts and tax changes, particularly older people and women. The authors’ paper ‘Unkindest Cuts: the impact on older people’ has already been published in Radical Statistics #103;
this was covered in the presentation. The paper printed here covers the additional material without duplication.
Alan Franco spoke on his article published in #103, ‘From Witney to Wigan: How national changes to welfare benefit rules have a differential impact on local communities’. He presented further analysis that demonstrated that while significant cuts in the levels of welfare benefits and tax credits are typically portrayed as ‘targeting help on
those most in need’, a geographical analysis of their differential impact on communities suggests that significant disinvestment in Britain’s most impecunious communities is underway. Alan’s data can be retrieved from the website, but no paper is included.
A similar message was conveyed in Howard Reed’s presentation that showed that the poorer you are the more the cuts bite and vice versa, which is the opposite of what the government has claimed about them. The work carried out for the TUC by Horton, T. and Reed, H. ‘Where the Money Goes: How we benefit from public services’, cited by Ginn &
Himmelweit, is an invaluable source for evidence. Permission has been given to summarise Howard’s presentation and this will appear in Part II #105.
Victoria Johnson’s presentation on the redefinition of wealth and progress argued that it is impossible to have a growth economy indefinitely. She began with a thought experiment on a hamster eating and thereby growing – which if allowed to continue – would eventually outstrip the world’s food supply for it. A real experiment of this kind was carried out in the mid-20th century by an experimental psychologist, Teitelbaum. Upon ablation of a rat’s ventro-medial hypothalamus, he discovered that the rat ate until it became so large that it was unable to move to obtain food and eventually died of starvation. Both experiments, one conceptual the other real, show that indefinite growth leads to a community exceeding the carrying capacity of its environment with catastrophic consequences. A further upshot of developing a new attitude to growth is the necessity of reassessing the implications of population growth and its inextricable relationship to the carrying capacity of the earth.
At the end of the afternoon we broke up into groups to discuss what activities could be conducted between AGMs. Two of the workshops are presented here. One, led by Women’s Budget Group, considered the effectiveness of equality impact assessments (EIAs) of government policy on gender and other inequalities. The other, led by Dr Wilmshurst, examined how libel law operates in the UK and the implications. The workshop concluded with a call for support for the Libel Reform Campaign petition.
The editors hope to trace a report of the third workshop ‘Cuts to Government Social Research Budgets and Ongoing Projects since May 2010: Increasing the Evidence Deficit?’. This was led by Simon Tanner. Please let us know if you attended that one. Hopefully it could be reported in Part II #105 together with full records from the Annual
General Meeting that was held during the lunch break.
In addition to conference papers #104 includes several other items that have accumulated during the delay in publication. These include Jane Galbraith’s response to Danny Dorling’s reply in #103 and articles by Ecob, Marchant and Noble. Russell Ecob proposes an alternative proportional representation voting system and Paul Marchant questions whether new street lighting schemes have reduced crime in London. Hugh Noble’s commentary is designed to raise the level of discussion on the ‘Spirit Level’.
The Troika are given the last word reporting on recent decisions and offering promotional material for Radical Statistics.
Larry Brownstein
Alastair Greig
Janet Shapiro
editors@radstats.org.uk