"The doctor who fooled the world."

And, no he's not Walter Reed's Sean Conley, who's not fooling anyone outside the MAGA cult. 

My latest Science Magazine hardcopy arrived. 

A book review of timely interest therein:

Flawed research and its enduring repercussions

On 26 February 1998, the Royal Free Hospital in London held a press conference to announce that a study conducted by one of the hospital's clinicians would be published in The Lancet, one of the world's oldest and most prestigious medical journals. Sitting at the front of the room was the senior author, Andrew Wakefield, who explained that the combination measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine could cause developmental delays, including autism. Wakefield argued that the MMR vaccine suppressed the immune system in some children, freeing the measles vaccine virus to damage the intestine, which allowed encephalopathic proteins to enter the circulation, cross the blood-brain barrier, and destroy brain cells. He called for MMR vaccinations to cease until more research could be conducted.

Wakefield became an international hero. A biopic starring British actor Hugh Bonneville portrayed him as a courageous man willing to speak truth to power. In the United States, Wakefield testified before the Congressional Committee on Government Reform and appeared on 60 Minutes with Ed Bradley. Then along came Brian Deer, an investigative reporter working for The Sunday Times. Deer would become the first to expose the clinician's undisclosed financial associations and unearth troubling problems with the Lancet paper. In The Doctor Who Fooled the World, Deer recounts in vivid detail how he came to learn that Wakefield and his study were not what they appeared to be…

As a consequence of these and other revelations, The Lancet retracted the paper, and Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine. Subsequent studies have shown that children who receive the MMR vaccine are at no greater risk of developmental delays than those who do not receive it.

Nonetheless, the damage was done. The Wakefield study helped to accelerate the antivaccination movement that has imperiled children and led to the resurgence of once-controlled diseases. 

Although many people think they know this now-infamous story, it is likely they are unaware of all its dramatic details. Curious lay readers and vaccine experts alike are sure to learn something worthwhile from Deer's well-chronicled account.

I've been aware of this Wakefield guy for a long time, e.g., via "Science Based Medicine."

Their Wakefield post archive contains hundreds of critical articles. They loathe him.    

THE AMAZON BLURB

From San Francisco to Shanghai, from Vancouver to Venice, controversy over vaccines is erupting around the globe. Fear is spreading. Banished diseases have returned. And a militant "anti-vax" movement has surfaced to campaign against children's shots.But why?

In The Doctor Who Fooled the World, award-winning investigative reporter Brian Deer exposes the truth behind the crisis. Writing with the page-turning tension of a detective story, he unmasks the players and unearths the facts. Where it began. Who was responsible. How they pulled it off. Who paid.

At the heart of this dark narrative is the rise of the so-called "father of the anti-vaccine movement": a British-born doctor, Andrew Wakefield. Banned from medicine, thanks to Deer's discoveries, he fled to the United States to pursue his ambitions, and now claims to be winning a "war."

In an epic investigation spread across fifteen years, Deer battles medical secrecy and insider cover-ups, smear campaigns and gagging lawsuits, to uncover rigged research and moneymaking schemes, the heartbreaking plight of families struggling with disability, and the scientific scandal of our time.

AntiVax lunacy is lethally dangerous. Particularly now. to wit:

How disgraced anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield was embraced by Trump's America

THE DOCTOR WHO FOOLED THE WORLD EXCERPT

PROLOGUE: Resurrection 

On the first night of the Donald Trump presidency, a video went up on the World Wide Web that sent a shudder through medicine and science. It featured a sixty-year-old man in a black tie and tuxedo, grinning into his phone under blue and white lights from a ballroom in Washington, DC.

“Sorry about that, guys,” he says, in a mellow British accent that would suit James Bond or a Harry Potter wizard. “I don’t know whether people are back on. Yeah?”

Then he repeats himself. “Sorry about that.” 

Below medium-brown hair, his face glistens with sweat. White light flashes on gray eyes. As he talks, he walks: first in brightness, then shadow, pursing full lips as if searching for a thought. Then raising a fist to cough. “Just looking round to see if there’s anyone important here,” he says, unzipping a smirk at his proximity to power. “If I can prevail upon them.” 

The picture is shaky and doesn’t last long: two-and-a-half minutes of sideways-turned images, streamed live on Periscope, a self-broadcasting app, from that night’s most exclusive event. A muffled beat thumps. Spotlights blaze. Secret Service agents take up positions. 

To some of us watching—as I was, from London—he looked like the perfect party guest. People once said he was “handsome,” even “hot,” with a sportsman’s physique, a charismatic charm, and a confidence that led others to trust him. That night, in a winged collar and pretied bow, he might have passed for a diplomat, a knighted stage actor, or a retired major league baseball star. 

But to others around the world, his appearance provoked gasps. You’d think the Prince of Darkness had stepped onto the dance floor. For this was Andrew Wakefield, a disgraced former doctor who’d been booted from his profession on charges of fraud, dishonesty, and a “callous disregard” for children’s suffering. 

“Too much to comprehend,” sneered a Texas gastroenterologist, in a flurry of Twitter posts fired that night. “I need anti-nausea meds,” moaned a chemist in Los Angeles. A Dutch autism researcher: “Scary times indeed.” A Brazilian biologist: “An administration for charlatans.” And from a PhD student on the North Island of New Zealand: “I hoped he’d just crawled under a rock.” 

No chance of that. This man reveled in infamy. His nature and predicament required it. Not since the 1990s and the arrest of one Harold Shipman—who serially murdered two hundred of his patients—had a British medical practitioner been so scorned. The New York Times described Wakefield as “one of the most reviled doctors of his generation.” Time magazine listed him among history’s “great science frauds.” And the Daily News spat that he’d been “shamed before the world,” under the headline: 

Hippocrates would puke 

His fall wasn’t recent, or easily missed by Trump’s team tasked to check the night’s guest list. By now, his disrepute was both acute and chronic, absorbed into popular culture. He’d been drawn as the villain in a cartoon strip (“The Facts in the Case of Dr. Andrew Wakefield”), sweated over by students in high school exams (“Was Dr. Wakefield’s report based on reliable scientific evidence?”), and his name embraced in public conversation as shorthand for one not to be believed. 

   The Andrew Wakefield of biology 

   The Andrew Wakefield of politics 

   The Andrew Wakefield of transportation and planning 

Yet here he was at the Liberty Ball, on Friday, January 20, 2017, at a little after seven in the evening. Behind him, on Level 2 of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, the first of the night’s revelers to pass through security rustled in their finery toward fluorescent-fronted bars. And Trump would later shuffle here with the first lady, Melania, to Frank Sinatra’s 1960s classic “My Way.” 

“So, uh, yeah, very, very exciting times,” Wakefield gushed. “I wish you could all be here with us.” 

Me too…

Deer, Brian (2020-09-28T23:58:59). The Doctor Who Fooled the World. Johns Hopkins University Press. Kindle Edition.

THERE'S MORE...

‘There will be a war if they make us take a vaccine’: Anti-vaxxers defiant as world searches for Covid-19 cure

Struck-off former UK doctor among those spearheading efforts

Interesting that Donald Trump, having now declared the arrival of "his" incipient Miracle Covid19 Vax by election day, now calls Joe Biden an "Anti-Vaxxer."

SBM BOOK REVIEW

Click the cover image.

"MICROGLIA?"

Also in the Science Magazine issue cited above:

Of abiding interest to me in light of my December 2019 Parkinson's dx.

It is becoming increasingly clear that amyloids are not necessarily the smoking gun of neuronal dysfunction and cognitive decline in neurodegenerative diseases. This is displayed in centenarians who have both apparently good cognitive health and brains populated with amyloids (1). Epidemiological data also point to the concept of cognitive reserve, where certain individuals appear more resilient to pathological changes in their brains (2). Hence, a challenge in neurodegeneration is to understand how certain aging brains successfully maintain proper neuronal function despite chronic amyloid buildup, whereas others do not. Several genetic studies have suggested that microglia, the primary tissue-resident macrophages of the brain, may be key in determining this success (3, 4). Emerging data in developing, adult, and diseased brains collectively suggest that microglia are critical to neuronal homeostasis and health. These observations raise the question of whether, and which, microglia-neuron interactions may be impaired in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) to confer neurodegeneration. Insight into this question will enable the development of methods to assess and modulate microglia-neuron interactions in the aging brain and allow for a desperately needed expansion of focus from clearing amyloids alone to monitoring neuronal health in biomarker and target engagement efforts…

Apologies to Little Feat.

__________

The New England Journal of Medicine says #VoteHimOut

Covid-19 has created a crisis throughout the world. This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.

The magnitude of this failure is astonishing…

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

Read the entire blistering editorial. Signed by all of the Editors. #VoteHimOut, indeed.

"No, I don't take responsibility at all." —Donald Trump, March, 2020, White House Covid19 press conference.

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DIY Covid19 vaccines R&D?

What could possibly go awry?

From my Science Magazine:

As the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to sweep the globe, several groups have been working to develop and self-administer unapproved, unproven interventions that they describe as vaccines for COVID-19 (1–4). Some of the interest in these do-it-yourself (DIY) approaches apparently stems from a belief that self-experimentation is never subject to time-consuming ethics board review or regulation, such as by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This belief is legally and factually incorrect, and the misunderstanding has potentially important public health implications. Any failure by the FDA to regulate DIY vaccines would permit vaccines of dubious safety and effectiveness to endanger public health and would signal a lowering of standards that—in an age blighted by vaccine skepticism and during a highly politicized pandemic—could undermine public trust in all vaccines, however developed (5). Further, some self-experimentation can qualify as human subjects research that is required to undergo ethics review, by law or institutional policy. Even when ethics review is not required, citizen scientists must take seriously their heightened ethical responsibilities when promoting DIY interventions, especially those with potentially serious public health and societal effects, such as COVID-19 vaccines. Given the proliferation of citizen science efforts to fight COVID-19 and the general c onfusion (even among sophisticated scientists) that surrounds the regulation of DIY research, regulatory leadership is badly needed.

“The FDA Can't Stop You”

In July 2020, six months after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in the United States, scientists associated with the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVaC) reported administering to themselves a product of their own making that was intended to be a vaccine against the disease. As described in the group's white paper, the putative intranasal vaccine consists of synthetic peptides that mimic those of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, and is designed to elicit only a local immune response (6).

By its own account, RaDVaC is engaged in “citizen science,” which broadly describes activities having a scientific aim that invite public participation. RaDVaC's chosen research path—which involves a homemade intervention, an evolving protocol, and unclear plans for collecting and analyzing outcomes data—is in contrast to traditional paths to vaccine development, which require randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with well-defined endpoints, such as demonstrated immune responses, and protocols concerning the retention and use of data.

Although some citizen scientists have antiregulatory leanings, RaDVaC has explained that it is not anti-FDA. Rather, its stated mission is a humanitarian one, animated by a belief that open, crowdsourced vaccine efforts will hasten the widespread availability of a potentially life-saving vaccine through development activities that it believes are not subject to FDA regulation (6). To that end, RaDVaC published on the internet instructions on how to self-manufacture and self-administer its DIY vaccine. RaDVaC also has provided materials for those activities, reporting as of several weeks ago the delivery of vaccine materials to 70 individuals (1). RaDVaC has made clear to potential users that its vaccine has not been reviewed or approved by the FDA. It also believes, as one of its leading scientists stated, “If you are just making it and taking it yourself, the FDA can't stop you” (1)…

Although many citizen scientists appear to take seriously the ethical responsibilities associated with their activities, it is important to recognize that those responsibilities expand when public health is at stake, such as with COVID-19 vaccine development. Characterizing or positioning research as self-experimentation does not eliminate risks to bystanders or the collective good. Given those potential risks, citizen scientists who are involved in open vaccine development and testing efforts outside of traditional scientific institutions should seek review by an independent IRB. The cost is not necessarily prohibitive for all projects and should be prioritized the same as critical safety equipment. Ethical and efficient development of a vaccine shown to be safe and effective against COVID-19, and broad dissemination of such a vaccine, are goals we all share and should be able to work together to achieve.

Click image for link.

____

DIY "biohacking" is not entirely "news."

WASHINGTON — As a teenager, Keoni Gandall already was operating a cutting-edge research laboratory in his bedroom in Huntington Beach, Calif. While his friends were buying video games, he acquired more than a dozen pieces of equipment — a transilluminator, a centrifuge, two thermocyclers — in pursuit of a hobby that once was the province of white-coated Ph.D.’s in institutional labs.

“I just wanted to clone DNA using my automated lab robot and feasibly make full genomes at home,” he said.

Mr. Gandall was far from alone. In the past few years, so-called biohackers across the country have taken gene editing into their own hands. As the equipment becomes cheaper and the expertise in gene-editing techniques, mostly Crispr-Cas9, more widely shared, citizen-scientists are attempting to re-engineer DNA in surprising ways.

Until now, the work has amounted to little more than D.I.Y. misfires. A year ago, a biohacker famously injected himself at a conference with modified DNA that he hoped would make him more muscular. (It did not.)

Earlier this year, at Body Hacking Con in Austin, Tex., a biotech executive injected himself with what he hoped would be a herpes treatment. (Verdict: No.) His company already had live-streamed a man injecting himself with a home-brewed treatment for H.I.V. (His viral load increased.)…

Don't anybody tell the MyPillow guy.

Seriously, garage-tinkerers and independent biotech startups and crowdsource funding have their places, but the public health stakes in these R&D domains are far too high for unfettered clinical libertarianism. 

Then there's this guy:

#SAMMIES2020: FEDERAL EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR

Thank you, sir.

UPDATE

IN OTHER NEWS

apropos...

to wit, see my prior Climate Change posts.

_____________

Positive POTUS

32 days out from Election Day, Donald and Melania test positive for Covid19...

Who could have possibly seen that coming?

There are now calls for Speaker Pelosi (3rd in line of succession) to isolate as a precaution.

ERRATUM: Recall that precisely 4 years ago, Hillary Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia.

OCT 3RD UPDATE: COVID19 CHAOS AT THE WHITE HOUSE

Trump is now evincing symptoms and has been admitted to Walter Reed. Administration staffers and GOP senators are turning up positive left and right—uh, make that right and right.

What a mess. 31 days to Election Day.

SUNDAY UPDATE

“Trump has all his life posed a moral puzzle: What is due in the way of kindness and sympathy to people who have no kindness and sympathy for anyone else? Should we repay horrifying cruelty in equal measure? Then we reduce ourselves to their level. But if we return indecency with the decency due any other person in need, don’t we encourage appalling behavior? Don’t we prove to them that they belong to some unique bracket of humanity, entitled to kick others when they are writhing on the floor, and then to claim mercy when their own crimes and cruelties cast them upon the floor themselves?

Americans are dead who might have been alive if Trump had met the challenge of COVID-19 with care and responsibility—or if somebody else, literally almost anybody else, had been president instead. Millions are out of work, in danger of losing their homes, living in fear. Tens of millions of young people have suffered disruption to their education, which will follow them through life. The pandemic was not Trump’s fault, but at every turn, he made things worse than they had to be—because at every turn, he cared only for himself, never for the country. And now he will care only for himself again…”

     —DAVID FRUM

Trump brings out the worst in everyone, supporters and critics alike. Difficult to be Zen with this guy.

Now 30 days to election day.

WALTER REED PRESSER UPDATE

On originally lying to the press regarding whether the President had gotten any O2 post-dx.

UPDATE

Just came to my attention. House Subcommittee Covid19 Report (15 pg. PDF).

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis examined the Trump Administration’s failed public health response to the coronavirus crisis, which has led to the deaths of more than 207,000 Americans. The analysis demonstrates that over the last eight months, the Administration engaged in a persistent pattern of political interference—repeatedly overruling and sidelining top scientists and undermining Americans’ health to advance the President’s partisan agenda.

The Administration’s interference has occurred both in public view and in private, led by President Trump, Vice President Pence, White House officials, and political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies. The apparent goal of this unprecedented, coordinated attack on our nation’s public health agencies during the pandemic was, in the President’s words, to “play it down.”

Yeah, I'm sure it's "partisan." But, facts are facts (notwithstanding Kellyanne Conway), evidence is evidence. There are 7 Democrats and 5 Republicans on the subcommittee. Notable that there is no "Minority Report."

UNREAL

It gets worse....

210,000 dead Americans are unavaiable for comments.

And, it gets even worse. Per CNN:

CODA

Now, as we enter the final month of the election, this period of convulsion careens toward its climax. Donald Trump is in the process of shredding every norm of decent behavior and wrecking every institution he touches. Unable to behave responsibly, unable to protect himself from COVID-19, unable to even tell the country the truth about his own medical condition, he undermines the basic credibility of the government and arouses the suspicion that every word and act that surrounds him is a lie and a fraud. Finally, he threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy in November and incite a vicious national conflagration that would leave us a charred and shattered nation. Trump is the final instrument of this crisis, but the conditions that brought him to power and make him so dangerous at this moment were decades in the making, and those conditions will not disappear if he is defeated….

     —DAVID BROOKS

I can't take any more of this topic, gotta move on. On Deck, "DIY Vaccines R&D?"

_____________

35 days out

“Democracy depends on belief in democracy—on an extraordinary leap of faith by ordinary people that their rulers will abide by the rules, that their votes will count, that their compatriots won’t tear the country apart, that lies won’t become truth. When the checks and balances have all given way, the last barrier to an authoritarian regime is public opinion. It will stand or fall on November 3.” — George Packer

Read all of it closely (click his name)

ALSO, SEE MY PRIOR "REINVENTING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY"

UPDATE: POST-PRESIDENTIAL "DEBATE" REFLECTION

I stayed up for THAT!?

OCT 1ST UPDATE: 33 DAYS OUT

Our mail-in ballots came, late last night (the DeJoy USPS is running chronically late).

We will NOT be mailing them back in, we will hand-deliver them to the Elections Board office, and document our doing so.

_____________

U.S. Covid19 cases trending back up

US reports its highest daily new COVID-19 case total since mid-August

Johns Hopkins University confirmed 55,054 new COVID-19 cases in the US on Friday. That is the highest single-day increase since August 14...

UPDATE

Wisconsin Is on the Brink of a Major Outbreak

The state’s coronavirus cases and hospitalizations are at an all-time high.

In New York, the decisive moment came in March. In Arizona and other Sun Belt states, it struck as the spring turned to summer. In every state that has so far seen a large spike of COVID-19 cases, there has been a moment when the early signs of an uptick are detectable—but a monstrous outbreak is not yet assured. Can a state realize what’s happening, and stop a surge in time? Wisconsin is about to find out.

In the past week, Wisconsin has crashed through its own coronavirus records, reporting more cases and more COVID-19 hospitalizations than it has at any time since the pandemic began, according to the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. It now ranks among the top states in new cases per capita, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and it is reporting more new cases, in absolute terms, than all states but California, Texas, and Florida…

Buckle up.

He's referring to Dr. Scott Atlas, non-practicing neuroradiologist (since 2012) with no experience in infectious diseases, public health, epidemiology, and virology. A "herd immunity" advocate (or, "herd mentality," as Trump would and did say).

ANOTHER LOOMING MILEPOST

______________

Sad U.S. Covid19 fatality milestone

Per Johns Hopkins, 200,284 as I post this.

President Trump repeats his self-awarded grade of an "A+" response.

 

Sometime this week, alone on a hospital bed, an American died. The coronavirus had invaded her lungs, soaking them in fluid and blocking the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide that makes up our every breath. Her immune system’s struggle to fight back might have sparked an overreaction called a cytokine storm, which shreds even healthy tissue. The doctors tried everything, but they couldn’t save her, and she became the 200,000th American taken by COVID-19—at least according to official counts.

In reality, the COVID-19 death toll probably passed 200,000 some time ago. And yet “the photos of body bags have not had the same effect in the pandemic” as after other mass-casualty events such as Hurricane Katrina, says Lori Peek, a sociologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies disasters. “Is our national empathy—our care and love and concern for one another—at such a low level that we are not truly feeling, in our bones, in our hearts, and in our souls, the magnitude of the loss?”…

"At 74 years old, President Donald Trump falls smack in the COVID-19-death demographic. Yet he has also minimized the threat of the virus repeatedly."

Good article (click the linked title image). Notwithstanding one small semantic pick: "Empathy" is not a synonym for "sympathy." A closer term would have been "compassion" (and, yes, I know there is some implicit overlap). Donald Trump has very high "cognitive empathy"—in the Time Share Closer sense. He knows how to read the gullible so as to "get over" on them. But, "compassion?"

BTW: Let's stipulate, in fairness, that perhaps ~20,000 U.S. Covid19 deaths were unavoidable even given actual "A+" comprehensive and sustained public health / clinical countermeasures from early on. The excess fatalities tally remains egregious. We comprise 4.3% of world population, and more than 20% of global Covid19 deaths. There is no rationally explaining away that discrepancy.

___

Think back through the pandemic. Think about the moments that stand out as beacons in the haze — signposts of how it would change all of our lives.

Not all of these moments were clear at the time. China’s decision to shut down cities of millions of people in January was staggering, but to most Americans, this new coronavirus remained an ocean away, not something that would demand our own version of a lockdown.

Other moments form pits in our stomachs when we look back. Perhaps, for you, it’s when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention touted it was developing its own test for SARS-CoV-2 instead of relying on international designs. Or when leaders in New York delayed containment plans as cases built. Or when President Trump embraced the unproven and ultimately fruitless hydroxychloroquine as a miracle drug…

Again, click the title image. Fairly long read. Worth your time.

My back-of-the-envelope rough estimate at this point is roughly between 270,000 and 300,000 U.S. Covid19 deaths by the end of 2020.

NEWS HEADLINE UPDATE

Well, now that her credibility is totally tanked. Maybe Ivanka will replace her.

_____________

More to come...

192 daze

I'm starting to look pretty ratty.

On August 23rd, 2018 I underwent open-heart surgery to replace my failing aortic valve. That December I "graduated early" from post-op cardiac rehab. A year later, having now moved to Baltimore, I was back on the court playing pickup hoops 5-6 hours a week (cleared by my new cardiologist).

Then, on Friday, March 12th, 2020, my BYKOTA center in Towson closed because of Covid19. That was my last time on the court. It remains shuttered 192 days later. I'm still getting about 3 weeks to the gallon of gas. We continue to lie low. My Parkinson's is increasingly no fun. But, everyone should have my "problems."

We live in the bucolic Homeland District of Baltimore, due north of downtown. Walking distance nearby are the University of Notre Dame of Maryland and Loyola of Maryland. Quick rides to the south, southeast, and north of us are Johns Hopkins, Morgan State, and Towson Universities respectively. The campuses all sit eerily silent. No clear end in sight at this point.

___

Losing focus during the Covid19 pandemic?

Below: Just finished this excellent book (click the cover). All part of a piece to come.

DEMOCRACY AND HUMILITY 

We do not have much equality of condition today. Public spaces that gather people together across class, race, ethnicity, and faith are few and far between. Four decades of market-driven globalization has brought inequalities of income and wealth so pronounced that they lead us into separate ways of life. Those who are affluent and those of modest means rarely encounter one another in the course of the day. We live and work and shop and play in different places; our children go to different schools. And when the meritocratic sorting machine has done its work, those on top find it hard to resist the thought that they deserve their success and that those on the bottom deserve their place as well. This feeds a politics so poisonous and a partisanship so intense that many now regard marriage across party lines as more troubling than marrying outside the faith. It is little wonder we have lost the ability to reason together about large public questions, or even to listen to one another. Merit began its career as the empowering idea that we can, through work and faith, bend God’s grace in our favor. The secular version of this idea made for an exhilarating promise of individual freedom: Our fate is in our hands. We can make it if we try. 

But this vision of freedom points us away from the obligations of a shared democratic project. Recall the two conceptions of the common good we considered in chapter 7, the consumerist and the civic. If the common good consists simply in maximizing the welfare of consumers, then achieving an equality of condition does not matter in the end. If democracy is simply economics by other means, a matter of adding up our individual interests and preferences, then its fate does not depend on the moral bonds of citizens. A consumerist conception of democracy can do its limited work whether we share a vibrant common life or inhabit privatized enclaves in the company of our own kind. 

But if the common good can be arrived at only by deliberating with our fellow citizens about the purposes and ends worthy of our political community, then democracy cannot be indifferent to the character of the common life. It does not require perfect equality. But it does require that citizens from different walks of life encounter one another in common spaces and public places. For this is how we learn to negotiate and abide our differences. And this is how we come to care for the common good. 

The meritocratic conviction that people deserve whatever riches the market bestows on their talents makes solidarity an almost impossible project. For why do the successful owe anything to the less-advantaged members of society? The answer to this question depends on recognizing that, for all our striving, we are not self-made and self-sufficient; finding ourselves in a society that prizes our talents is our good fortune, not our due. A lively sense of the contingency of our lot can inspire a certain humility: “There, but for the grace of God, or the accident of birth, or the mystery of fate, go I.” Such humility is the beginning of the way back from the harsh ethic of success that drives us apart. It points beyond the tyranny of merit toward a less rancorous, more generous public life.

Sandel, Michael J.. The Tyranny of Merit. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition. 

I can scarcely think of a better place to hide a $100 bill from Donald Trump than inside this book.

Speaking of "daze," there are, at this posting, 44 left until Nov. 3rd Election Day.

_____________

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has died

My condolences to her family and friends.

(CNN) - President Donald Trump on Saturday said that Republicans have an "obligation" to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's vacant seat on the Supreme Court "without delay," as Democrats argue the Senate should refrain from confirming a replacement until after the next president is sworn in...

Nothing subtle there, nor did he tarry: "... make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us?" As in the minority of eligible 2016 voters?

What's at stake for American women going forward?

_____________

Disinformation Technology

    

An important Netflix documentary. I watched it last night, and will study it closely again. Highly recommended. Well worth an hour and a half of your time. See the film's website.

Stay tuned, just getting started here. Hope there's a script transcript. BTW, apropos, see my prior

Big tech economic hegemony and the future of markets

UPDATE: A critic is not impressed. (h/t to one of my neighbors)

Also, a review from the Neurologica Blog.

RELATEDLY, FROM SCIENCE

The field of computational social science (CSS) has exploded in prominence over the past decade, with thousands of papers published using observational data, experimental designs, and large-scale simulations that were once unfeasible or unavailable to researchers. These studies have greatly improved our understanding of important phenomena, ranging from social inequality to the spread of infectious diseases. The institutions supporting CSS in the academy have also grown substantially, as evidenced by the proliferation of conferences, workshops, and summer schools across the globe, across disciplines, and across sources of data. But the field has also fallen short in important ways. Many institutional structures around the field—including research ethics, pedagogy, and data infrastructure—are still nascent. We suggest opportunities to address these issues, especially in improving the alignment between the organization of the 20th-century university and the intellectual requirements of the field.

We define CSS as the development and application of computational methods to complex, typically large-scale, human (sometimes simulated) behavioral data (1). Its intellectual antecedents include research on spatial data, social networks, and human coding of text and images. Whereas traditional quantitative social science has focused on rows of cases and columns of variables, typically with assumptions of independence among observations, CSS encompasses language, location and movement, networks, images, and video, with the application of statistical models that capture multifarious dependencies within data. A loosely connected intellectual community of social scientists, computer scientists, statistical physicists, and others has coalesced under this umbrella phrase.

Misalignment of Universities

Generally, incentives and structures at most universities are poorly aligned for this kind of multidisciplinary endeavor. Training tends to be siloed. Integrating computational training directly into social science (e.g., teaching social scientists how to code) and social science into computational disciplines (e.g., teaching computer scientists research design) has been slow. Collaboration is often not encouraged, and too often is discouraged. Computational researchers and social scientists tend to be in different units in distinct corners of the university, and there are few mechanisms to bring them together. Decentralized budgeting models discourage collaboration across units, often producing inefficient duplication…

"Computational social scientists must make the case that the result will be more than the publication of journal articles of interest primarily to other researchers. They must articulate how the combination of academic, industrial, and governmental collaboration and dedicated scientific infrastructure will solve important problems for society—saving lives; improving national security; enhancing economic prosperity; nurturing inclusion, diversity, equity, and access ; bolstering democracy; etc..."

We can hope. But, "hope is dope."

Tangentially, I'm reminded of this book I'd cited:

How many experiments do you think you’ve participated in over the past year? We’re talking about randomized controlled trials—experiments designed to test the impact of different treatments by randomly assigning you and other participants (often called subjects) to various treatment conditions, like those you might have participated in if you took Psych 101 or if you’ve tried out an experimental drug. 

So, what’s your number? At first blush, you might think the answer is zero. But unless you live in a bunker with no Internet access, you’ve likely participated in many experiments over the past year. If you logged onto Facebook right now, there’s a good chance you’d be an unwitting subject in a variety of the company’s ongoing experiments as you scroll through your News Feed and peruse the ads being shown to you. You are also likely to be a test subject if you search for an item on Google, watch a movie on Netflix, respond to email surveys, or call companies for customer support. 

In a dramatic departure from its historic role as an esoteric tool for academic research, the randomized controlled trial has gone mainstream. Historically, experimental methods may have been alien to the managerial toolkit. These days, companies like Google wouldn’t dare make a major change in their platforms without first looking at experiments to understand how it would influence user behavior...

Luca, Michael (2020-02-06T22:58:59). The Power of Experiments (The MIT Press) . The MIT Press. Kindle Edition. 

So, Big Tech is using you in psych "randomized controlled trials" (computational social science) without your knowledge and consent? Nice. (BTW, it should be noted that minors are legally incapable of giving "consent." To the extent they are included as data elements in social media "experiments," each of those is properly a violation of law.)

UPDATE

More on "The Social Dilemma."

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More to come...