ShrinkWrapped

Does It Matter What a Doctor Believes? A Response

Artemis Retriever has had some unfortunate interactions, along with some very good experiences, with members of the Medical community.  She asks a very good question:

Does It Matter What a Doctor Believes?

Shrinkrap posed a question as to whether it matters what a psychiatrist believes, in response to a letter to some columnist at the NYT.

[Shrinkrap is no relation and I have not been able to access his/her website today.]

The doctor in question had asked if he should lie (as an avowed atheist) when patients ask if he believes in God: "I am a physician, not a priest. Religious beliefs seem as relevant to my profession as they are to an accountant’s."

What an asinine comment from that M.D. A psychiatrist is a very different kind of physician. I don't give a damn about the beliefs of a neurosurgeon, only that they not be a drug addict, that they have steady hands, be intelligent and up to date. But a psychiatrist? What they believe about God, or do not believe, tells me a great deal about them. Reveals a lot about what they believe about people as well. I might go to an atheist shrink, but I would want to know beforehand.

...

And a physician may not be a priest, but their vocation is far closer to that of a priest's than that of an accountant's. Physician and priest alike are in the healing, saving business. One treats hurting bodies and minds, another ministers to the soul. Anyone with half a brain knows that all three are intertwined. But an accountant? They just track the reimbursements...Necessary, useful, but different...

As far as what a doctor believes? I care more that they believe at all. I would rather receive care from a devout Jew than an agnostic Christian. Of course I am odd, in that I am a believer. Perhaps psychiatrists who are not would do well to remember that more Americans are than are not....I don't know the statistics on atheism and agnosticism in the medical profession, tho. Perhaps there's a gap between the professionals and those they serve there?

There is a great deal more in her post, much of which has nothing to do with the initial question of religious belief but does have a great deal to do with th kinds of qualities she values in her Doctors.  Read the whole thing.

I can appreciate why Artemis feels the way she does about Psychiatrists.  My profession has a well earned reputation for devaluing religious belief as at best neurotic and at worst a particularly virulent form of shared psychosis which has led to untold misery through human history.  Sigmund Freud was a secular Jew, very well assimilated, and his influence over the field was imprinted in attitudes toward religion that persist.  It is certainly understandable that a patient who does have religious faith would seek to find a Psychiatrist who shared the fundamentals of belief (ie, belief in a Deity) even if the specific form of that religious belief is not shared.  However, I think a more nuanced attitude on the part of the Psychiatrist (or any therapist) would be warranted.

A good Psychoanalyst (the basic model upon which all Psychotherapy rests) is trained to understand as much as possible about his own irrational mind (via his personal Psychoanalysis) so that he can better assist his patients in separating their neurotically imposed pre-existing representations of reality (transferences) from the closer approximation of reality that persists once the most egregious distortions have been removed (analyzed or interpreted.) 

A simple example would be of person who was abused as a child and had grown up believing that even though their mother or father punished them excessively, this was out of an excess of love and caring.  Such a person might unconsciously seek potentially abusive partners in order to achieve a relationship that resembles their earliest emotional ties.  Clarifying their need to see their parent as loving when their behavior was anything but can help the patient differentiate between a person who loves and values them without the necessity of emotional or other abuse as proof of their love and devotion.

What does this have to do with faith and religious belief?  As much as possible, the Psychoanalyst attempts to keep his or her own emotional investments out of the therapy.  That means that while a good therapist is respectful of his patient's beliefs, regardless of his own beliefs, he must have great humility about all those things which he knows to be true that might not be.  In other words whether I am a committed atheist or an avowed believer, the position I take within the consulting room is a confirmed agnosticism about all things that are emotionally meaningful.  Once the Psychoanalyst allows his own emotionally invested beliefs into the office, the therapy is no longer primarily about the patient's life. 

[I do believe that, in general, people who have faith in G-d tend to have more resiliency than those who have faith in a null/god.  I also am quite convinced that for society as a whole, belief in G-d offers dramatically improved potential for survival.  many terrible atrocities and countless murders have been committed in he name of various Gods but the most terrible atrocities in human history have been perpetuated by those who believe that Man has replaced G-d as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong.]

This is a topic worthy of a great deal more discussion but time pressures interfere.  I do want to make one final point.  In terms of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, there must be no reason for the therapist to privilege religious belief over any other belief.  Once any belief is privileged (beyond the basic position of being curious about our patients and interested in how their minds work)  it will skew the therapy.  An avowed atheist does his patients great harm if he privileges his faith (after all, atheism is a faith based belief just as much as any traditional religion; religion and science exist primarily on different axes of experience) since it will lead him to devalue his patient's emotional life.  I suspect this is what Artemis has experienced with "sophisticated" Psychiatrists who just know that religion is irrational.  They do not have to express such feelings openly to discourage their patients from expressing some of their most deeply held beliefs.

[There have been many occasions over th years when Patients have been more ashamed talking about their religious beliefs than their sexual activity all in the expectation that I would find them naive or stupid for having such beliefs.  The relief and surprise at finding a Jewish Psychoanalyst who does not disparage religion has been almost palpable.]

When it comes to religion, my position, were Artemis to consult with me, would be that I have no special knowledge or expertise in determining the optimal faith for anyone but myself; my expertise can be most usefully devoted to helping Artemis understand herself, including why it would be so important for me to reveal to her my faith.  If she needed to know more than that (and why stop there; shouldn't someone who is worried about relationships know whether I have a happy marriage or am divorced or whether I believe in polygamy or some other variant; should only those who have successfully raised children to happy adulthood be appropriate for treating children?  These questions are on the same continuum)  and Ii were unable to show her that I can help her understand herself better, then she might have to see someone else.

The Terrorism Conundrum

The recent escalation of the TSA demonization of the American public in conjunction with the most recent failed Islamist terror atrocity illustrates a(n unnecessary) conundrum.  While we continually ratchet up our defensive measures to ensure that no terrorists get onto airplanes (and may eventually spread such measures to trains and buses soon enough; after all, they are more tempting targets now than airplanes are) the actual terrorists who attempt attacks are increasingly seen as, for want of a more accurate word, losers.  Jeremy Lott at The American Spectator explains why the terrorists tend to have their greatest success with their first success:

Latest Mad Muslim Would-Be Bomber Blows It

Four years ago in these cyber pages, I coined Lott's Law of Diminishing Returns on (Islamic) Terrorism. For some reason, I noticed, a pattern had emerged in Western nations following September 11, 2001. Jihadist terror networks would get one really big bang for their buck, followed by a series of screwups and failures. This was true in the U.S. (9/11), the UK London Metro), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Bali).

Moreover, I speculated why that was the case. I argued the world political situation had changed so that Islamo-terrorism now sets a six-part process in train:

(You can read points 1-5 in his post; for my purposes, the outcome, number 6, is what is most relevant.)

Six, what the neighborhood division of the forces of darkness has left over is mostly the bottom of the barrel: would-be bombers with fantastic imaginations but zero expertise, loners, and screw-ups like Mohamed Mohamud, who couldn't even wipe that smile off Santa's face.

One point that is implicit in what Jeremy Lott describes is that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies can do a terrific job if allowed to use all the tools at their disposal, albeit with some risks to our civil liberties.  That brings up the second half of the equation:  In order to protect the Civil Liberties of non-terrorists who merely fit the profile of a terrorist, everyone's civil liberties must be equally impinged upon, with no actual increase in our safety.  If we refuse to use all of our tools to protect ourselves proactively, we will necessarily use inferior tools to protect ourselves reactively; further, our diffidence means that the risk of a successful attack increases in proportion to how safe we feel.  If our police and intelligence agencies do a good job, the actual risks are decreased; when the bottom of the barrel Islamist terrorist is caught, and the Media pile on their critiques of his mental status (a predictable result of their attempt to "understand" the motivation of those who have little problem telling you, repeatedly, what motivates them) the result is to convince the professional Civil Liberties lobby to try to minimize our ability to use the very tools which protect us.  The administration is left in the unfortunate position of trying to square the circle: protecting us without the profiling that is the best way to protect us.  (Please note that by profiling I mean something much more sophisticated than simple ethnic profiling; profiling for terrorists will work best if accompanied by good intel internationally and domestically.  Every terrorist that has been caught, and most who were successful, had been identified before their attempted attacks, but the information was not acted upon under the rubric of Civil Liberties.  Continuing to find these needles in our gigantic haystack means that we must monitor all sorts of communications, as per FISA, and do good policing in Muslim neighborhoods.)

[This is not dispositive but suggestive that relaxing our guard does encourage more terrorist attempts: Politically correct Portland rejected feds who saved city from terrorist attack:

In 2005, leaders in Portland, Oregon, angry at the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror, voted not to allow city law enforcement officers to participate in a key anti-terror initiative, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.  On Friday, that task force helped prevent what could have been a horrific terrorist attack in Portland.  Now city officials say they might re-think their participation in the task force -- because Barack Obama is in the White House.

Read the whole thing.]

Consider a few interesting anomalies in the case of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the Somali immigrant who decided that his life would have more meaning if only he could murder hundreds of people, especially women and children, in Oregon at a Christmas tree lighting.  The New York Times headline is priceless:

Suspect in Oregon Bomb Plot Is Called Confused

Mohamed Osman Mohamud had seemed to be a well-adjusted American teenager: a solid student whose interests included basketball, girls and the night life at Oregon State University, where he studied engineering.

But those who know him say he changed in recent months. He dropped out of school and stopped attending mosque. And, perhaps most telling, he began lying about his plans for the future.

“He seemed to be in a state of confusion,” said Yosof Wanly, the imam at the Salman Al-Farisi Islamic Center in Corvallis, which Mr. Mohamud attended while at college. “He would say things that weren’t true. ‘I’m going to go get married,’ for example. But he wasn’t getting married.”

There is actually nothing in the article that suggests he was confused; if anything it sounds like he was quite certain about his goals and intentions: [Emphases mine-SW]

Many questions remain about the extent of Mr. Mohamud’s connections to Islamic extremists, whom investigators say he wrote to and plotted with, as well as about the apparent contradictions in his personal life, as a studious, friendly teenager and a young man seeking to wage jihad within his adopted country.

“When you think of someone doing what he did, you think of some crazy kind of guy,” said Mohamed Kassim, 21, a fellow Oregon State student who knew Mr. Mohamud from around campus. “He wasn’t like that. He was just like everybody else.”

Many Muslims in Oregon worried that they would face a backlash. And on Sunday, local Muslim leaders emphasized that the case was an isolated incident.

“If this kid’s being radicalized, it’s not from the locals,” said Jesse Day, a spokesman for the Islamic Center of Portland and Masjed As-Saber, where Mr. Mohamud sometimes worshiped.

The president of the center, Imtiaz Khan, shared that concern, and said in an interview that he worried that the mosque and Islam in general would be portrayed unfairly because of the arrest. On Sunday morning, a Portland police car was parked outside the mosque.

“We have women and children here that we want to protect,” Mr. Khan said.

But a sense of suspicion and worry prevailed.

Mr. Khan and Mr. Day said several people who worship at the mosque said that F.B.I. agents had knocked on their doors late at night on the day of Mr. Mohamud’s arrest, but that none had agreed to speak to the agents.

Here are all the usual problems that raise suspicions about the Muslim community.  Their first reaction is to worry about a backlash and then, rather than engage in some reasonable self-reflection, they immediately point away from themselves at nameless others, and then compound their disavowal by refusing to help the authorities investigate the attempt.  This does not instill confidence. 

And what about the local mosque?

The mosque, the largest in Portland, has been at the center of controversy before. In 2002, the mosque’s imam, Sheik Mohamed Abdirahman Kariye, also a naturalized American citizen from Somalia, was arrested at Portland International Airport.

Prosecutors said that trace elements of TNT were found in his luggage, though those tests were later said to be inconclusive and he was not convicted of any crime.

The tests could have been erroneous, there may be innocent reasons for having traces of TNT in one's luggage, but with so many atrocities being committed in their name it might be wise for the American Muslim community, just for public relations purposes, to adopt Caesar's rubric and remain above suspicion.

One last point:  Typically in the aftermath of a terrorist attack or attempt by Islamist terrorists, there is a concerted effort made by almost everyone from the highest levels of the administration to the local news reporters to present the attack as the result of the psychological derangement of the individual perpetrator.  This is a mis-use and misunderstanding of the Individual Depth Psychology which began with Sigmund Freud.  Each individual who comes to Jihad in America may have particular failings of his own yet we will never be able to understand their motivation or behavior by referring to their individual psychology alone.  Whatever constellation of psychological damage and vulnerability that leads one to violent jihad, their goals and methods are defined by their community, a sub-set of Islam that idealizes the murder of innocents in the name of Allah.  Major Hasan did not kill his fellow soldiers because he was distraught over his impending deployment; many people, including many Muslims, are unhappy, even distraught, over deployment, yet a vanishingly small cohort elect to murder in response.  

The Islamist community replaces the goals and aspirations valued by the larger community with pathological goals and aspirations valued by their insular community.  For an American to adopt such goals and aspirations means that they have rejected this country, see themselves involved in a war against this country, and are no longer, in their self defined identities, Americans.  For Mohamed Osman Mohamud, whatever the form of his psychology, he became a traitor to his nation and became a member of a transnational community dedicated to destroying this nation and killing innocent men, women and children (who, of course, were all guilty of being infidels, supporting a Nation at war with Islam, and therefore deserving of death.) 

All psychopathology is delimited by the cultural values in which it can be found and must be understood in those terms.  Mohamed Osman Mohamud can not be understood as an angry teenager expressing a more intense than usual teen angst.  He can only be understood as an Islamist expressing his hatred.

[For a deeper exploration of how culture defines psychopathology, see Psychological Aspects of the "Lone, Psychiatrically Deranged" Terrorist.] 

Questioning Conventional Wisdom on North Korea and China

The conventional wisdom on the relationship between China and North Korea, held to by foreign policy analysts on the left and the right, is that China has the power to rein in North Korean excess but refuses to do anything that would destabilize the North for fear of a failed state on their border.  Here is how Judith Miller and William Tobey summarize the situation in City Journal:

Peninsula of Fear

North Korea is not a viable state without Chinese support. Beijing has leverage to thwart Pyongyang’s nuclear program, but to date it has refused to do so, fearing political instability and refugee flows. Marcus Noland, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, notes that China has been unwilling even to implement existing sanctions against North Korea. Under UN sanctions, for example, member states are not supposed to send luxury goods to North Korea; but not only has Beijing never formally submitted or publicly released a list of luxury goods it will refuse to send, he says, its exports to North Korea of items that appear on other countries’ luxury-goods lists have increased since 2007. Moreover, he notes, for months China prevented the committee of experts charged with implementing UN sanctions from reporting to the Security Council. If anything, the planned dynastic succession in North Korea—in which Kim Jong-il would pass power over to his son, Kim Jong-un—has made China even more reluctant to pressure North Korea over its nuclear activities.

The United States could help China take the hard steps needed to halt and reverse North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programs. First, we should insist that there be no more nuclear blackmail payments made to Pyongyang. Second, we must persuade China that North Korea’s actions are antithetical to its security interests because they increase the need for American forces in the region, push South Korea and Japan closer to Washington, and encourage them to expand their current missile-defense systems. China holds a powerful sword over North Korea’s head: it can withdraw its apparent approval of the regime’s dynastic succession plan.

I wonder if this is an accurate read on the situation.  It makes a few assumptions.  First, it assumes that, primarily because of China's dependence on its trade with us, that China values stability in its neighborhood more highly than it values the ability to discomfort and diminish the influence of South Korea,  Japan, (important economic competitors) and the United States, its primary military competitor.  It is a truism that China highly values stability and is terrified of internal chaos, but it may well be that the events on the Korean peninsula simultaneously increase the power and stability of the North while decreasing the power and stability of the South.  They could well see this as a win-win for them.  In fact, short of a nuclear exchange, the Chinese may not be at all motivated to rein in their clients (protégés) in the North. 

Second, the Chinese leadership has a long pedigree of valuing their own power and position far above any concerns about the well being of their subjects.  They need to maintain a growing economy not because they care about the average Chinese individual but because they can read the tea leaves and understand that a stall in their economic growth would risk their power.  They certainly do not care about the well being of the average Japanese or Korean, including the well being of the North Korean slaves.

[I do believe that as the next generations of Chinese leaders come of age there will be a significant and growing cohort who explicitly believe in helping their countrymen advance toward greater economic and civic freedom; I think this is inevitable if China is to become a true great power, but we may still be one or two generations away from a Chinese leader who has to win the hearts and minds of his citizens, née subjects.]

It is also possible that the Chinese leadership, with its own collection of professionally paranoid and nationalistic cadres, find a North Korean nuclear program to their liking.  The North Koreans threaten Chinese competitors (perhaps still thought of as enemies in many precincts) and supply weapons expertise to others who explicitly threaten the interests of their number one rival/competitor/enemy, the United States. 

At the moment, it is not clear the China will inevitably evolve into either a friend, a more neutral colleague (in managing a stable planetary equilibrium), a friendly or aggressive competitor, or an overt enemy.  The future of Chinese-American relations is highly path dependent and decisions made now will reverberate.

Finally, the conventional wisdom that China has as much of a stake in a healthy United States as we do in a healthy China may also be open to question.  It is true that China has an immense store of American dollars but that raises two questions:

If China thinks we are too eagerly devaluing our currency (which we are) and threatening their well being by doing so, their interest in our well being will diminish in kind.  China would like nothing better than to supplant the United States as the world's hegemon.  We have a President who is committed to assisting a shift away from a system based on American hegemony and our country has mismanaged its finances to such a degree as to make such a shift more likely.  Further, if China is playing a zero-sum game, which is at least a good possibility if not a probability, than the threat of war between the North Koreans and the South Koreans, which would inevitably pull in America and cost us blood and treasure that would dwarf Iraq and Afghanistan, would not be a worst case scenario for them while it would certainly be a worst case scenario for us.  Were a war to break out and the United States went ahead and massively retaliated, reducing North Korea to a rubble filled country filled with starving people (which is not a bad description of current reality), this would not be a disaster for China if it cost the United States enough to accelerate our decline.  Why would anyone think that in the aftermath of such a disaster the Chinese would be bothered by allowing the North Koreans to starve to death more quickly?  They are already tolerating the starvation of millions now.

I suspect that there are Chinese war games that have demonstrated that a war between North Korea and the United States, which eventuated in the destruction of one or two American carrier groups and perhaps some missile attacks on the West Coast, at the price of the complete destruction of North Korea*, would be an exchange that redounded to the advantage of China.  Following such an exchange, a Chinese take over of Taiwan would be trivial and Chinese hegemony in the Pacific would be assured.

Just to be clear, I do not think the current Chinese leadership is eager for a real war to break out on its borders but I also don't see any evidence that they are terribly discomfited by North Korean aggression, especially when our response has been to avoid responding on every prior occasion. 

In all of this I must caution that I am not an expert and have no particular knowledge of North Korean military capabilities or planning, but I do think these speculations are worth considering and would be curious as to how those who defend the conventional wisdom would respond. 

*A North Korean attack on the American military that fell short of major death and destruction would not trigger an overwhelming response, especially with our current administration in place.  Anything short of the destruction of one of our carrier groups would be met with a "proportional" response.  The loss of a carrier group, which would trigger a massive response, would be a game changer for American power and influence.

AGW is REAL!!!

The date of this front page from the Paper of Record is Monday, July 29, 1940.  The world was in turmoil and Global Warming had killed almost as many people in two days as the German Air Force raids of London in two weeks.  This is courtesy of Richard North: [Click to expand.]

Talking the usual garbage 

The year 1940 saw the start of the "little cooling". That year and the subsequent period was marked by dreadful winters and, in some areas, fierce heatwaves (see above, column on the left - click to expand). On 20 July 1940, the Daily Express had reported that 160 Americans had died in two days because of the heat - as opposed to the 168 who had died in two weeks of air raids in Britain. "Global warming worse than Hitler, shock!" writes the Louise Gray of 1940?

When the weather is hotter than average, it is Anthropogenic Global Warming; when the weather is colder than average, it is Anthropogenic Climate Change (née Global Warming, the name having been changed because most people are too dumb to understand how we could freeze because the planet is getting too warm.  As has been pointed out here on numerous occasions by various commenters, when computer modeling is used to "prove" contradictory data and consistently fails to predict future events, the problem is with the models, not with reality, and some modesty in making policy prescriptions based on the faulty models would be a welcome development.

A Post Thanksgiving Feast

As you recover from your Thanksgiving feast (it is an American tradition to overeat on important holidays) here are a few items that may help you keep your appetite under control, if not directly provoke anorexia:

First, finally a simple explanation of QE2: {HT: CF]

 

Follow up that appetizer with an interview by Shawn Macomber with Charles Gasparino, author of Bought and Paid For: The Unholy Alliance Between Barack Obama and Wall Street, at The American Spectator.  Many non-ideological liberals sneer at the rubes associated with the Tea Parties because they find them unsophisticated.  The Tea Parties are not prominently filled with, or led by, Harvard and Yale graduates, or denizens of the Coastal Urban communities, who see themselves as having a monopoly on virtue and sophistication.  It is unfortunate that they do not recognize that the Tea Parties are natural allies of those who despise Crony Capitalism.  They still believe the Republicans are the party of Wall Street and Big Business, where in reality, while both Democrat and Republican elites eagerly took large sums of Wall Street money and were most eager to do the bidding of Goldman-Sachs and GE, among others, the Tea Party has already begun to change the culture of the Republican party.  Perhaps one of these days Liberals will take some time to actually listen to what the Tea Parties are saying rather than what they imagine they are hearing.  Here is a first course to whet your appetite for the rest of the interview:

Who Owns Whom?

TAS: Do you think the difference between the media caricature of Wall Street as a militant free-market bastion and its limousine liberal reality will ever be cleared up in the general public's mind?

Gasparino: I think it already has been. That's why the President started attacking Wall Street like a minute after Scott Brown won Teddy Kennedy's seat. The public has definitely started to put it all together. I'm not a member of the Tea Party by any stretch of the imagination, but I will say one of the good things about that movement is that they understand this inside game, they don't like it, and they want it to end. They understand how corrupting it is for the entire system when Big Business can exploit the growth of Big Government. They instinctively know there is huge hypocrisy in Obama calling these guys fat cats when Wall Street is just exploiting what he presented them to exploit. Now, Wall Street shouldn't be commended for that, but let's be honest about it: this was a partnership…. This country is in desperate, desperate straits because government has skewed the incentives. The free market, which has been demonized, wouldn't have given these guys a bonus. It would have destroyed all of their businesses.

Read the whole thing and think carefully about 2012.

Thanksgiving, 2010

I have so much to be Thankful for that it is too much to list. 

I am Thankful for the wonderful woman who shares my life; without her, my life would be empty.

I am Thankful for my four, healthy children and and my bonus son and daughter in laws who answered my most important question: what is life all about?

I am Thankful for my extended family who give me more pleasure than grief.

I am Thankful for our many dear friends, who enrich our lives almost everyday.

I am Thankful for the little community of people who come to visit ShrinkWrapped and read and comment; you add to my life immeasurably.

Most importantly I am Thankful to be living in the most wonderful experiment man has ever devised, the United States of America.  My country is not perfect but it has sheltered and nurtured my family and my very extended family when almost every other nation on earth would have been all too happy to see us disappear.  There is no greater nor more moral and ethical nation on the planet than the United States of America.

Finally, I am Thankful for the US military, who have freed more people from tyranny than any other force since man stood upright on the Savannah.  Many of them are far from home, still protecting us, away from their families, on this quintessential American holiday.  Keep them in your thoughts as you enjoy America's bounty on Thanksgiving, 2010.

More Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

“It isn’t that Liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
                                    -- Ronald Reagan

I do not mean to pick on Liberals in this post but when the Obama administration came into office a great deal was made, by Liberals, about how decisions would now be based on science rather than politics.  Further, although both Republicans and Democrats have used shaky science to support their political positions, it seems that many of the most important public policy proposals (to combat global warming, for example) and political ad hominem attacks (Conservatives are more rigid than Liberals, for example) have been heavily promoted by Liberals and their colleagues in the media as based on science.  Whether we are discussing Democrats or Republicans, Liberals or Conservatives, it is worth recognizing when science is being mis-used and understanding the limitations of certain types of scientific inquiry.

A recent study in submission for publication by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers, Ruud Wetzels, Denny Borsboom, & Han van der Maas at the University of Amsterdam (available on Ruud Wetzels' web site) raises questions about how Psychologists analyze their data.  They looked specifically at recent studies purporting to show evidence for Psi, specifically, precognition.  Here is the abstract: [HT: Next Big Future]

Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi

Does psi exist? In a recent article, Dr. Bem conducted nine studies with over a thousand participants in an attempt to demonstrate that future events retroactively affect people’s responses. Here we discuss several limitations of Bem’s experiments on psi; in particular, we show that the data analysis was partly exploratory, and that one-sided p-values may overstate the statistical evidence against the null hypothesis. We reanalyze Bem’s data using a default Bayesian t-test and show that the evidence for psi is weak to nonexistent. We argue that in order to convince a skeptical audience of a controversial claim, one needs to conduct strictly confirmatory studies and analyze the results with statistical tests that are conservative rather than liberal. We conclude that Bem’s p-values do not indicate evidence in favor of precognition; instead, they indicate that experimental psychologists need to change the way they conduct their experiments and analyze their data.

You don't need to know much about statistics to understand what the objections are to the way Bem's experimental results were evaluated and how this might be an issue in other reports on scientific research results.  Here are the key points:

The most important flaws in the Bem experiments, discussed below in detail, are the following: (1) confusion between exploratory and confirmatory studies, brought about by what we have termed the Bem Exploration Method (BEM); (2) insufficient attention to the fact that the probability of the data given the hypothesis does not equal the probability of the hypothesis given the data (i.e., the fallacy of the transposed conditional); (3) application of a test that overstates the evidence against the null hypothesis, an unfortunate tendency that is exacerbated as the number of participants grows large.

What does it mean?  As you read this, consider as a couple of examples, the claims of the proponents of Anthropogenic Climate Change (née Anthropogenic Global Warming) or  the "Science" of Intelligent Design.  They cherry pick their data and use their science to confirm preconceived ideas of causality; they then use those conclusions to propose extreme measures which would, coincidentally I'm sure, increase their own power, influence, and wealth.

Consider the first point, "confusion between exploratory and confirmatory studies".  What this means is that the researchers collected data and then looked for data that confirmed their pre-existing bias; not only did they neglect alternative explanations of the data, they didn't even look for such explanations:

These explorative elements are clear from Bem’s discussion of the empirical data. The problem with Bem’s BEM runs deeper, however, because we simply do not know how many other factors were taken into consideration only to come up short. We can never know how many other hypotheses were in fact tested and discarded; some indication is given above and in Bem’s section "The File Drawer". At any rate, the foregoing suggests that strict confirmatory experiments were not conducted.

What is the fallacy of the transposed conditional?

The interpretation of statistical significance tests is liable to a misconception known as the fallacy of the transposed conditional. In this fallacy, the probability of the data given a hypothesis (e.g., p(DjH), such as the probability of someone being dead given that they were lynched, a probability that is close to 1) is confused with the probability of the hypothesis given the data (e.g., PHjD), such as the probability that someone was lynched given that they are dead, a probability that is close to zero). This distinction provides the mathematical basis for Laplace’s Principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. This principle holds that even compelling data may not make a rational agent believe that goldfish can talk, that the earth will perish in 2012, and that psi exists (see also Price, 1955). Thus, the prior probability attached to a given hypothesis affects the strength of evidence required to make a rational agent change his or her mind.

The third comment is a little more technical and has to do with the types of statistical tests used and the need to evaluate the data using multiple statistical approaches in order to assure the conclusions are warranted by the data:

Consider a data set for which p = >.001, indicating a low probability of encountering a test statistic that is at least as extreme as the one that was actually observed, given that the null hypothesis H0 is true. Should we proceed to reject H0? Well, this depends at least in part on how likely the data are under H1. Suppose, for instance, that H1 represents a very small effect—then it may be that the observed value of the test statistic is almost as unlikely under H0 as under H1. What is going on here?

The underlying problem is that evidence is a relative concept, and it is not insightful to consider the probability of the data under just a single hypothesis. For instance, if you win the state lottery you might be accused of cheating; after all, the probability of winning the state lottery is rather small. This may be true, but this low probability in itself does not constitute evidence—the evidence is assessed only when this low probability is pitted against the much lower probability that you could somehow have obtained the winning number by acquiring advance knowledge on how to buy the winning ticket.

Even the most well meaning Scientists can all too easily fool themselves.  Using statistics and the most carefully designed studies, they are still fully capable of "discovering" nonsense.  One might think that after so many failures of expert opinion in the last few hundred (thousand?) years that some modesty would be forthcoming from those who believe they have the answers.  Alas, there is no indication that those who desire to control how other people live have recognized, let alone assimilated, the natural boundaries of certainty. 

Its Their Nature II

In Its Their Nature I discussed how the character of a culture can fail when its elites adopt impossible standards for the societal ego ideal.  An example from the life of George Soros, a man who has devoted himself to increasing freedom but has evolved into believing that West Civilization, exemplified by Israel and the United States, is the greatest danger to freedom in the world today, sparked a fair amount of discussion.  It is clear that our character is being tested by the current times in fundamental ways.  What of our enemies?

The people who speak in the name of Sharia supporting Islam, whether radical Sunnis in al Qaeda or Hamas or radical Shia in Iran or Hezbollah, have summed up their Cultural Ego Ideal in a simple statement:

We love death more than you love life!

In the bizarro world of radical Islam, murdering one's enemies while killing oneself is reason for eternal glory and acclaim.  The highest aspiration of a Palestinian child is to be a Suicide murderer and the highest aspirations of his parents are attained when he blows himself up killing infidels, whether Americans, Brits, Israelis, Hindus, et al.  (Their list of enemies of Islam are very long and often include those who follow a version of Islam of which they disapprove.)

Sadly, most Americans remain woefully ignorant of the beliefs propagated throughout the Islamic world: (Report courtesy of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.)

THE OPEN RACISM OF THE FUTURE STATE OF PALESTINE

During a meeting with the Egyptian press in Cairo at the beginning of August, Mahmud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority, and the man on whom the United States and Europe have placed all of their hopes for peace, revealed what was at the back of his mind with regard to the Jews and the nature of the regime he plans to set up in the future State of Palestine. The official demands of the Palestinians for a settlement are known: Israel’s agreement in advance to withdraw to the borders of 1967, a freeze of construction in the territories including Jerusalem, the division of this city, including the Old City, which must become part of the Palestinian Authority, the solution of the problem of the “refugees” in conformance with Arab demands and Resolution 194 of the General Assembly of the U.N.).

When considering the possibility that a third force, such as NATO, could be given the responsibility of overseeing the implementation of the planned agreement, Mahmud Abbas imposed a condition: that there should not be a single Jewish soldier and any Israeli. “I am ready to accept a third party which supervises the implementation of the agreement, NATO forces for example, but I will not accept the presence of Jews in these forces or a [single] Israeli on the Land of Palestine.”

Anti-Semitism is the Mother's milk of Islamic radicals:

International Union of Muslim Scholars calls to destroy Israel

The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has said the only solution for the Arab- Zionist conflict was “comprehensive resistance against the Zionist enemy with the aim of liberating all of the occupied Palestine,” local Arabic newspapers reported.

IUMS chairman Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi, who opened the Union’s permanent headquarters in Doha, expressed gratitude to HH the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani for granting the facility.

The IUMS warned of sectarian and doctrinal conflicts among Muslims, which it said would serve “only the Zionist and American interests”.

The Union described Palestinian issue as the central problem of the Muslim Nation and as the most dangerous against its future, Rohama reported.

Here is the actual statement of the IUMS.

Qaradawi is possibly the most influential Sunni religious figure in the world.

Although anti-Semitism is the apotheosis of Islam's hatred, fear, and genocidal rage at the other, we cannot take comfort in the knowledge that so much of their discourse is directed at Jews.  Their hatred of Christians is only marginally less, as witnessed by the ethnic cleansing of Christian communities that go back over a thousand years in Lebanon, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories, or the current straits in which the Egyptian Copts find themselves.

Islam's love of death is complicated by our fecklessness; since Islam is a "perfect" system, any problems with the world must be due to external forces arrayed against it.  There is no tradition of self reflection or self criticism in Islam and as a result there is an extremely limited potential for self correction:

Muslims Project Islam's Worst Traits onto Israel and the Jews

Sometime back, I noted that Muslims have been projecting the worst aspects of Islam(ism) onto the Copts, Egypt's Christian minority.  This raised more questions: Is Islamist projection onto the Copts a unique phenomenon? Do Muslims project against other non-Muslims? Is there a trend?

To answer this question, it seemed logical to begin with how Islamists approach their archenemy: Israel and the Jews.  Thinking this may be difficult to prove—it is one thing to hate your enemy per se, another to project unconsciously your worst traits onto them—I expected this might require some research.  I went to MEMRI and, lo and behold, in mere minutes, came across three blatant examples.  Consider the following excerpts, especially the italicized portions:

On September 7, Egyptian cleric Abdallah Samak made the following remarks on Al Rahma TV: "The Jews are known for their merciless, murderous, and bloodthirsty nature… The number one characteristic of the Jews – which appears in the Bible – is that they are always prepared for combat. They believe that it is their fate and destiny to be in a state of perpetual war. This is not what we want. We are seekers of peace and security. We seek to spread love. But we are dealing with a people, a society, that believes that its destiny is linked to war. The number one characteristic of the Jews is that they are a people that believes that its destiny is linked to war. They cannot live without war. They can only live if they attack others. They can only live through annihilation, revenge, and mercilessness."

In fact, the notion of "perpetual war" is straight out of Muslim doctrine and history—best recognized by the word "jihad"—and has no corollary in Judaism or any other religion.  Even temporary truces are permissible only when Muslims are weak and incapable of going on the offensive: according to sharia, once Muslims are strong enough and have proper leadership (e.g., a caliph), they are obligated to expand the realm of Islam through offensive jihad until, in the words of the Koran, "all religion belongs to Allah" (8:39). History unequivocally attests to this approach.  Moreover, while the Old Testament certainly contains many allusions to violence, these are of a historical, as opposed to doctrinal, nature. Conversely, Koranic verses dealing with violence have been codified in sharia and thus have a juridical and perpetual quality (note the word "until" in the most violent passages of the Koran, e.g., 9:5 and 9:29; see here for more on the differences between Judeo-Christian and Muslim violence). Finally, by quickly adding that Muslims "do not want" perpetual war, but instead seek "to spread love," Samak reveals that, immediately after evoking "perpetual war," Muslims naturally came to his mind, betraying a rather telling train of thought.

Raymond Ibrahim's article is well worth your time; read the whole thing. 

In my series on The Arab Mind I wrote at length about the elements that led to the kinds of skewed developmental pathways that summed easily to an Honor-Shame paradigm.  An Honor-Shame culture can take two different pathways.  In the Japanese approach, one accepts responsibility for faults and pays for one's transgressions against the people's Honor.  In Japan failure can lead to suicidal despair but does not threaten the entire Group (family/clan/religion/ethnic group) with a calamitous loss of Honor.  The Muslim Honor-Shame paradigm went in a different direction.  In the Muslim version no man of power ever accepts responsibility for failure; it must always be assigned to others, in part, because a loss of Honor by the Leader puts the entire family and clan at risk of destruction.  Once the failure is disavowed and projected (Externalized, or when done on a more pathological level, Projected) the resolution is to destroy the one who now bears the dishonor.  In this way a woman who has been raped is seen to have dishonored the family and must be killed to restore Honor.  In this system, Israel and the Jews, with the help of the Americans who they control, contain all of the disavowed hatred and dishonor of the Palestinians and thus a monster who murders children is a hero.

It took a hundred years and more, and a great deal of bloodshed, before the West understood the value of self reflection and self correction.  There is no indication that the Arab world will voluntarily take on such a difficult process, a process necessary for them to undergo if they are to join the modern world as anything more than spoilers.  When a people are committed to externalization and projection, only the force of inimical reality can redirect their attention inward.  In the Psychiatric Hospital we can administer powerful drugs which help the patients give up their compensatory delusions; there is no such treatment for sick cultures.  Either the Islamist trend in the Muslim world will burn itself out in the next two or three generations as Islamism confronts and fails in the modern world or one of two outcomes is likely.

1) As time goes on the Muslim world will be increasingly walled off and kept away form the civilized world.

2) A great enough atrocity (would it require losing a Western city or two?) would up the ante to such an extent that the Arab World would face an ultimatum that would force them to begin the difficult task of reformation.  Such an ultimatum could include mostly words but may also include demonstration projects less welcome, more intense, and of shorter duration than the current projects in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I suppose a third outcome is possible, but unlikely: we could simply surrender.

The Descent of the (Narcissistic) Intellectuals

The current issue of the Claremont Review of Books includes a revealing article by Denis Boyles: [Emphasis mine-SW] 

Spineless Intellectuals
A review of The Flight of the Intellectuals, by Paul Berman and The New Vichy Syndrome: Why European Intellectuals Surrender to Barbarism, by Theodore Dalrymple

In reviewing Berman's book, critics have pointed out that the self-delusion of liberal intellectuals has been the subject of other books. The New York Times's review cites Nick Cohen's What's Left? How the Left Lost Its Way (2007) and Julian Benda's celebrated Treason of the Intellectuals (1927). But the most apt comparison, I think, is with Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970). Unlike Berman, Wolfe saw clearly that fear of fact-checking—repeating the "gotcha" mantra—would never be enough to inspire real intellectual rigor, the kind that can swim upstream and destroy the insipidity of "conventional wisdom."

The reason for this is simple. The victory of Tariq Ramadan has been due to his ability to manipulate the ignorance of friendly intellectuals—men and women whose intellectuality has been consecrated by a kind of laying-on of the hands of other intellectuals. These are people who cannot both confess ignorance and maintain their intellectual claims.  Ramadan demonstrated this brilliantly in 2006, when Pope Benedict, making a scholarly reference at a theological conference, quoted 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus's comment that there is little rationalistic tradition in Islamic theology—a problem, when it comes to dialogue. The editorialists at the New York Times may not have known whether there was any truth to that, but the paper nonetheless lamented "Muslims' shock at the Pope's remarks," and invited Ramadan to contribute an op-ed piece to express said shock. Ramadan dutifully denied the pope's assertion, and cited one of his grandfather's favorite teachers, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, an early 12th-century Persian mystic, as the source for his claim that Islamic theology has a strong rationalist tradition.

Except it doesn't; rationalism has always been viewed with suspicion in Islam. (Berman looks at that claim carefully, although not in connection with Benedict's comment.) If he is a student of al-Ghazali, Ramadan's "rationalism" isn't the "rationalism" Benedict obviously intended as a basis for discussion. Although some claim Al-Ghazali may have ultimately paved the way for some sort of Islamic adaptation of Aristotlelianism, in The Incoherence of the Philosophers he specifically rejects rationalism as a means to faith. This was a turning point in Islamic theological and philosophical development and has led to an Islamic antagonism toward reason.(As another Ramadan critic, Caroline Fourest, argues, Ramadan routinely employs a "double discourse"; that's a polite way of saying he talks out of both sides of his mouth.) But in making his claim, Ramadan knew that few people—even intellectuals—reading the Times would have a clue about al-Ghazali, and that they would believe what they needed to believe in any case.

* * *

The idea of manipulating intellectuals by exploiting the gaping holes that no self-respecting modern intellectual can acknowledge, yet which exist in every person's education, is easier than ever. This also works with memory, as Henry Rousso pointed out in his 1987 classic, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. In creating a cogent, intellectual point-of-view, some facts are worth remembering more than others, and some are worth nothing at all and should be forgotten. In the end, most people—but especially contemporary intellectuals—believe what they believe because it's too uncomfortable (or just too much work) to disrupt the seamless narrative of a carefully shaped worldview by trying to accommodate contrary evidence. The result is the kind of ignorance of obvious factors that has so irritated Berman. In fact, simply tracking the needed refutations to these intellectual narratives can make one tipsy with anger.

I write a great deal about Narcissism and especially the ways in which, once an ideological point of view becomes incorporated into one's Ego Ideal, reason and rationality are at great risk.

[For a more in depth discussion of the Ego ideal and its role in the formation of character, Narcissism and Paranoia: Part I and  Narcissism, Malignant Narcissism, and Paranoia: Part III.  For a glimpse of what happens when the Ego Ideal of a culture is psychotically disturbed, see Who is Samir Kuntar?  Who we pick as our heroes is extremely revealing of a culture.]

 The intellectual values language facility and abstract ideas far more than they value other people or mere artifacts.  Further, only people who share their positions (other intellectuals) are worth idealizing (hence the ridiculous media idealization of Barack Obama) while those who come from a more modest (ie, inferior) class only earn scorn (as in the ridiculous media devaluing of Sarah Palin.)  For contemporary intellectuals the verbal construct, the more obtuse, prolix, dense, and complex the better, is the height of sophistication and beauty.  Structures which hold Civilization together, shared values for example,  are devalued as simplistic "opiates of the masses" while the actual physical structures that form the bedrock upon which our Culture stands, the nuts and bolts of civilization, are dirty, necessary but best kept out of sight.

The intellectual lives above the fray in a world he and his ilk have created in which there is never any room for the confusion and chaos of reality.  At the same time, the Intellectual admires the brute man of action.  There is a reason Che Guevara has become the icon of the modern Left.  He was not a demasculinized word-smith, living a materially wealthy life as a parasite on the greedy capitalist body politic.  He was a man of action, not reluctant to do what was necessary to (in the intellectual's fantasy) bring about the Utopian Civilization that never seems to show up on schedule.  Today's intellectuals are the same people who gave a Pulitzer Prize to Walter Durante for covering up the genocidal crimes of Stalin and now lie and blind themselves to cover the genocidal crimes of the people Tariq Ramadan fronts for. 

Growing up means that we have to relinquish our Utopian fantasies of a perfect world and our "rightful" place in it.  We must struggle to earn our way in the world and do the best we can with an untidy and often unjust reality.  To be an intellectual means one never has to give up the fantasies of one's youth.  It does require pruning one's perceptions to avoid knowing anything that might bring one's world view into question.  The Intellectual must maintain a comfort zone where he knows that he is among the best and the brightest, the finest of human beings in all ways.  To question the basic beliefs of the Intellectual means you are questioning his self worth; his ideas and his self worth are inseparable.  When our Narcissism comes into contact with reality and fails, as it must as we pass the threshold from adolescence to young adulthood, terrible things can ensue.  Yet we make the transition because we must and we suffer and tolerate the sadness and depression at watching our dreams slip away because only then can we find more real and more powerful dreams (if we are lucky.)

Many attempt to hold reality at bay for various amounts of time by resorting to the 1960's Holy Trinity of "sex, drugs, and rock and roll."  They either eventually comes to terms with themselves and their future or are lost.  The Intellectual is terrified of giving up his dreams because they are all too often all he has.  To avoid such devastating results, surrendering to Sharia must seem like a small price to pay.

TSA (Il)logic

This is so obvious that you would think we would all recognize its inevitability:

Following the logic of TSA screening to its conclusion

Read Dinocrat's brief post and ask yourself: Could al Qaeda be strategically smart enough to avoid what he suggests?  Al Qaeda could do nothing and as a result they would continue to completely foul up our airline security and disrupt the entire industry; they would  continue to erode what little confidence we have in our "leaders"; and they would continue to cost us an inordinate amount of time and money with a near infinite ROI*.  Alternatively, maybe they will just have to try the obvious next step because "its their nature."

*At the cost of essentially nothing but an occasional threat posted on line, they get us to expend billions of dollars to maintain an illusion of safety; by doing nothing their Return on Investment is nearly infinite.