Why would anyone take Forbes or Murdoch seriously?
Jay Cuze
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Big data misused to justify vaccination
From: Gustaf Rydevik <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, February 03, 2014 4:25 am
To: [log in to unmask]
I agree with Ben. While the Forbes article is woefully incomplete, the
datasciencecentral article is simply wrong. The main thesis (that saving
children from dying leads to overpopulation) is disproved by simply
observing that the countries in the world with the highest population
growth are the same countries that suffer from the highest child
mortality. Hans Rosling, a person who knows the data sets he's working
with inside-out (as any statistician should strive for) explains it well
in this Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkSO9pOVpRM
Best,
Gustaf
On 3 February 2014 10:23, Queex <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
The bitly-linked article also has other problems - the assumption that
there will be 'increased health insurance premiums' which presupposes a
non-socialised healthcare system (while the costs might rise in a
socialised system, the presence of more healthy people contributing to
the economy might well ameliorate, cancel out or more than cancel out
that effect) and the idea that foods people might be allergic to will be
banned (rather than clearly labelled, alternatives offered or eliminated
when a by-product is used in manufacturing).
The most baffling part is the appeal to conspiracy: "As a US resident,
the main reason why I refuse to be vaccinated is lack of trust in the
pharmaceutical industry and its bedfellow, the current government.". A
mild mistrust of corporate medical interests is justified, but the link
to the 'current government' is laughable - vaccination programmes are
decades long and not part of any specific administration. It says far
more about the author than it says about vaccination or the government.
Frankly, the article is altogether imbecilic. I feel ashamed as a
statistician that someone in my profession has written tripe like that.
Not that any of this excuses slack reporting in Forbes, of course, but
to me that's a minor issue by comparison.
Cheers,
Ben
On 3 February 2014 09:16, Anthony Staines <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
There is perhaps a more critical point.
The article linked to also brings out a very old eugenic argument
against vaccination - roughly, vaccination saves the lives of the unfit,
who would otherwise die, and so allows the 'weaker ones' to breed, and
so prevents natural selection doing its pre-ordained work.
This argument, which shows alike profound confusion about natural
selection, about evolution, about human population dynamics, and about
the actual factors that influence decision on family completion, was
discredited before I was born (1960). Perhaps some of our more
enthusiastic Big Data advocates, and practitioners, need to catch up
with basic knowledge in public health, before they open their beaks?
Regards,
Anthony Staines
On 03/02/14 05:47, Vincent Granville wrote:
The following article published in Forbes on January 23, Big Data
Crushes Anti-Vaccination Movement, illustrates why data should be
processed and interpreted by data experts, not by journalists or
professionals lacking analytic judgment or experience. First this is not
big data, but small, summarized data. Using big data in the title makes
big data practitioners (the real ones) look bad - as the public will
eventually associate the keyword "big data" with "analytic
incompetence".
But there is even something far worse about this article: the fact that
they used one data set, and that they are missing the big picture, which
is found in other data sets, or even by using intuition and good
judgement. While there is no direct causal relationship between
vaccination and autism, there are indirect causal relationship between
vaccination and a number of medical conditions, possibly including
autism and peanut allergies.
Read our article at http://bit.ly/MQgVDc
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