Times Columnist Research Articles

“Statistics Help us See The World Clearly if We're Willing to Look”

Abstract Brian Tarran interviews Tim Harford, the More or Less presenter and Financial Times columnist, about his new book, How to Make the World Add Up

A Dose Of Reality

Book Review Health AffairsVol. 37, No. 11: Patient Safety A Dose Of RealityRick Mathis AffiliationsRick Mathis ([email protected]) teaches health policy at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is a health researcher in information delivery at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, also in Chattanooga.PUBLISHED:November 2018Free Accesshttps://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.1098AboutSectionsView PDFPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsDownload Exhibits TOPICSDietary habitsCancerGovernment programs and policiesThere is a certain sense of regret that those of us over fifty may feel when reading the popular literature on healthy living. Much of this genre advances lifestyle changes purporting not only to make us healthier but to extend life as well. But what about all of the years we’ve spent not following these recommendations? Are we not going to live healthily into our eighties and beyond because we failed to adhere to a certain diet or engage in mindfulness practices when we were younger? Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest book is a good if somewhat sobering antidote to this kind of despair. Ehrenreich, who has a PhD in cellular immunology and has written several books related to health care and medicine, questions our tendency to become obsessed with lifestyle fads in hopes of cheating illness and death.In Natural Causes, Ehrenreich effectively lampoons the modern tendency to see death as more of a choice than a combination of unfortunate circumstances and natural processes. We subject anyone who dies at anything less than extreme old age to a kind of “bio-moral autopsy,” asking whether the person smoked or drank excessively or ate too much fat. We wonder, for example, whether David Bowie would have lived beyond what once was considered the respectable age of sixty-nine if he had never smoked. Instead of seeing death as the natural end of life, we see it, in a sense, as suicide.Undergirding Ehrenreich’s argument against this perspective is the fact that increasing infirmity is part of the aging process. She also notes the randomness of biological processes in the development of such conditions as cancer. Further, cells once thought to improve healing are now seen as capable of turning on their hosts and exacerbating illness. Our bodies are best characterized as battlegrounds of conflict rather than sites of harmonious processes capable of being trained toward perfect health. We may influence this conflict through personal habits and medical technologies so that immune cells act more responsibly. However, we cannot completely control the conflict, and we certainly cannot forestall its inevitable outcome of death. Moreover, efforts to prolong life often result in a poor quality of life toward the end. “The price we’re paying for extended life spans is a high rate of late-life disability,” writes a New York Times columnist whom Ehrenreich quotes. Or, as the late novelist Philip Roth wrote, “old age isn’t a battle; old age is a massacre.”Although this attempt to inject a dose of reality into popular thinking about health is certainly laudable, Ehrenreich at times overstates her case. She observes, for example, that most of the medical screenings she has been advised to undertake lack evidence. As an example, she cites the recommendation that women in their forties and fifties get a mammogram annually. Yet she doesn’t provide enough evidence to make the case convincingly not only against annual mammograms but against all screenings. Since she is a breast cancer survivor, one wonders how she would assess her own diagnosis and treatment. She also mentions some notable people who died prematurely in spite of slavish devotions to diet and exercise: Jim Fixx, author of The Complete Book of Running, died of a heart attack at age fifty-two, and Steven Jobs, a strict vegan, died of pancreatic cancer at age fifty-six. As intriguing as such observations may be, they are individual reports and hardly rate as scientific evidence.That being said, the very readable Natural Causes serves as a knock on the head for those of us who are easily swayed by the latest lifestyle fad that promises to extend life and prevent chronic disease. It can also help assuage concerns. While I was reading this book, a female friend who is my age expressed concern about a diagnosis of osteopenia, or mild bone thinning, and wondered what she could have done to prevent this. I was able to cite Ehrenreich’s comment that osteopenia is not so much a disease as a normal feature of aging. In health and health policy, as in life in general, it helps to remember not only that we age, but also how we age—and adjust our expectations accordingly. Loading Comments... Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. DetailsExhibitsReferencesRelated Article Metrics History Published online 5 November 2018 Information© 2018 Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.PDF download

Average is Over

The popular perception of statistical distributions is depicted by the iconic bell curve which comprises of a massive bulk of ‘middle-class’ values, and two thin tails — one of small left-wing values, and one of large right-wing values. The shape of the bell curve is unimodal, and its peak represents both the mode and the mean. Thomas Friedman, the famous New York Times columnist, recently asserted that we have entered a human era in which “Average is Over” . In this paper we present mathematical models for the phenomenon that Friedman highlighted. While the models are derived via different modeling approaches, they share a common foundation. Inherent tipping points cause the models to phase-shift from a ‘normal’ bell-shape statistical behavior to an ‘anomalous’ statistical behavior: the unimodal shape changes to an unbounded monotone shape, the mode vanishes, and the mean diverges. Hence: (i) there is an explosion of small values; (ii) large values become super-large; (iii) ‘middle-class’ values are wiped out, leaving an infinite rift between the small and the super large values; and (iv) “Average is Over” indeed.

Climate-consensus advocates ignore a whopper of a false-balance proposal

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens merits attention. But what about physicist Steven Koonin at the Wall Street Journal? New York Times columnist Bret Stephens merits attention. But what about physicist Steven Koonin at the Wall Street Journal?

Bobby Wonderful: An Imperfect Son Buries His Parents

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessBobby Wonderful: An Imperfect Son Buries His ParentsRoger Peele, M.D., and Mahrokh ShayanpourRoger PeeleSearch for more papers by this author, M.D., and Mahrokh ShayanpourSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:3 Oct 2016https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.671011AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail by Bob Morris; New York, Twelve, 2015, 192 pagesBob Morris, who in his mid-forties is a New York Times columnist, stand-up comedian, and spouse of the publisher Ira Silverberg, provides a moving, insightful, and captivating story of the deaths of his parents. His mother was in her seventies and his father was in his early eighties when they died.As the title suggests, Morris describes himself as not living a life his parents might have hoped for him, and he describes his older brother as the responsible one. But when his mother begins her long physical and mental decline, Bob gradually becomes very attentive and helpful to his father’s and brother’s care of his mother. Her last word was “Bobby.”Already close and accepting of each other, Morris and his father become even closer. After his mother’s death, Bob and his father decide to search for love, captured in Bob Morris’ 2008 book, Assisted Loving.His father’s eccentricities, free spirit, and lack of pretense or concern about appearances make for a lovable being who is very accepting of others. In contrast, the author comes across as quite picky and presents himself as far less likable than his father.When his father becomes terminally ill, his free spiritedness does not diminish. Bed-ridden and attached to intravenous lines, Morris’ father asks that the lines be removed, sits up in bed, and, just before dying, shouts, “Wonderful!” Such was his life. So is the book.Dr. Peele is with Behavioral Health and Crises Services, Montgomery County, Maryland. Dr. Shayanpour is with Saint Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D.C.The reviewers report no financial relationships with commercial interests. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 67Issue 10 October 01, 2016Pages e15-e16 Metrics PDF download History Published online 3 October 2016 Published in print 1 October 2016

Staying Afloat in the Rising Tide of Science

New York Times columnist and science writer Carl Zimmer discusses the challenges of effectively communicating with the public about science.

The Gate to the Village: Shlomo Carlebach and the Creation of American Jewish “Folk”

The Gate to the Village: Shlomo Carlebach and the Creation of American Jewish “Folk” Ari Y. Kelman (bio) and Shaul Magid (bio) “Chassidim believe that in the highest heavens there is a sanctuary that song alone can unlock. Could these songs be the keys to that Gate? Sing them and see.” Rachel Anne Rabinowitz, liner notes for Shlomo Carlebach: Live at the Village Gate “Hevra, let’s pretend we’re happy.” Shlomo Carlebach, Waban MA, 1995 “Please open the gates for me. Please open the gates.” That’s how Shlomo Carlebach introduced himself to his audience at The Village Gate, the legendary Greenwich Village club where he performed on a number of occasions during the early 1960s. This beseeching, almost liturgical invitation opens his 1963 album, “Shlomo Carlebach: Live at the Village Gate,” and serves as an introduction to his version of Psalm 118: “Open the Gates of Righteousness / I long to enter and give thanks.” According to Carlebach, he wrote the melody for the song on his way to the performance, when he may well have been contemplating the connection between his music, its connection to sacred Jewish texts, and the music scene of the moment in New York’s Greenwich Village in which he had become an active participant as a singer, performer, composer, and somewhat marginal figure in the Folk Revival. In other words, Carlebach wasn’t necessarily talking about the club, but he might as well have been. Gates, after all, are places of admission and transformation. They open and close, they protect and they make possible. They are liminal places. Literal thresholds. They are places of tricksters and traders, of migrants and paupers and, in the legends of Jewish midrash and folklore, they are where the messiah, appropriately dressed as a vagabond changing the dressing on his wounds, will eventually be found. And, of course, gates, both closed and open, gesture to the Holocaust, a term barely more than decade old in 1962, its survivors trying to reconstitute their broken lives, and something about which was deeply embedded in [End Page 511] Carlebach’s psyche.1 As a child, Carlebach barely escaped Belgium as the Nazis entered the country and this unspeakable tragedy inflected almost everything he did. He was a post-Holocaust itinerant and his was surely an immigrant experience. He came from elsewhere. It is therefore no mistake, as Stephen Petrus and Ronald Cohen have noted in their recent documentary history, Folk City: New York and the American Folk Revival that the phenomenon consisted largely of individuals who were not native New Yorkers but who were themselves immigrants from elsewhere.2 By the 1940s, New York and Greenwich Village specifically, had become a destination for aspiring bohemians and folkies looking to find a community of like-minded, politically progressive people for whom music played a powerful organizing force. It is also widely known that Jews played a prominent role in this revival. Bob Dylan became the most well-known but others such as Theodore Bikel, Jack Elliott, Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul, and Mary), Arlo Guthrie, John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, and Millard Lampell, lyricist and performer with The Almanac Singers (with a young Pete Seeger) were also Jewish performers, though only Bikel included Jewish material as a regular part of his act.3 Bikel, who was also already successful on Broadway, became widely known in the folk world through his live radio show on WBAI, “Theodore Bikel at Home,” recorded at the folk music club The Bitter End. Bikel’s show included folk music, poetry and commentary on the Folk Revival. On the production side, prominent Jewish figures included Moses (Moe) Asch, the founder of Folkways Records and son of Shalom Asch, the celebrated Yiddish novelist and poet, Maynard and Seymour Solomon, founders of Vanguard Records, Irwin Silber, co-founder of Sing [End Page 512] Out! magazine, Israel “Izzy” Young who established and operated the Folklore Center, New York Times columnist and folk music devotee Richard Shelton (nee Shapiro), Jac Holzman founder of Elektra Records, Manny Roth who founded the folk club The Cock and Bull on Bleeker Street (later bought by another Jew, Fred Weintruab and re-named...

Revisiting the Latvian and Greek Financial Crises: The Benefits of Front-Loading Fiscal Adjustment

This paper discusses why Greece has done so poorly in comparison with all other European Union countries since the onslaught of the global financial crisis in 2008. To show what was wrong with its fiscal adjustment, this paper compares Greece with the other European Union country that was hit be the most severe fiscal crisis, namely Latvia. The conclusion is that front-loaded fiscal adjustment works much better. Greek economic policy has been a popular topic among opinion writers, notably Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who claimed that Greece suffered from austerity. Because of his prominence in the international public debate, I shall scrutinize his arguments on the Greek crisis. The paper also examines what policy the International Monetary Fund has pursued with regard to Greece, and how its views have been influenced by the debate and Greek economic developments. Finally, the paper assesses what lessons can be drawn from the contrasting experiences of Latvia and Greece. The conclusion is that a fiscal adjustment should be sufficient to resolve the crisis to restore confidence and that it should be as front-loaded as is practically and politically possible.

Greening the Economy or Economizing the Green Project? When Environmental Concerns Are Turned into a Means to Save the Market

The “green economy” is fast becoming the new alpha and omega for many policy makers, corporations, political actors, and NGOs who want to tackle both the environmental and economic crisis at once. Or would it be better to speak about “green capitalism?” Going green is not only important in the fight against environmental destruction, it also makes a country “stronger, healthier, safer, more innovative, competitive and respected,” argues Thomas Friedman, the well-known New York Times columnist. “Is there anything that is more patriotic, capitalist, and geostrategic than this?” Indeed, the rationale underlying the nascent project of the green economy is that if the market could become the instrument for tackling the environmental crisis, the fight against this crisis could be the royal road to solving the problems of the market. Focusing in particular on the green economy’s impact on climate change, this paper analyzes the green economy as a hegemonic project that tries to retranslate environmental concerns into a new jargon, and to turn environmental conflict into a new motor for economic development.

What’s Wrong with Economics: A Discussion Between Paul Krugman and Jeff Madrick

Jeff Madrick raised several criticisms of mainstream economics in his book, Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World. The Nobelist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman sat down at the City University of New York Graduate Center to discuss the issues last November. A lightly edited transcript follows. Janet Gornick, a director of the Luxembourg Income Study, where Paul Krugman also does research, moderated the event.

Our Future is Now

Our Future is Now

Agnotology: "a neologism signifying the study of the cultural production of ignorance"

A Los Angeles Times columnist publicizes a Stanford scholar's research on antiscience and organized subversion of fact.

A Living Wage -- Not a Minimum Wage

A Living Wage -- Not a Minimum Wage

Offline: The evolution of ignorance

The name Paul Krugman may lead you to think of the celebrated economist who won a Nobel Prize in 2008 for his work on international trade. Or you may be reminded of the prolific New York Times columnist who regularly takes aim at the Republican Party. Economist or columnist, they are, of course, one and the same man. And if you read Krugman you will also know that he projects formidable confidence, even certainty, in his pronouncements. It was not always so. Once Krugman was simply a young academic trying to forge a reliable reputation, a man struggling to be heard by the popular mainstream of his discipline. 20 years ago, that Paul Krugman was less confident, more reflective, and, in many ways, a great deal more compelling. His subject back then was what counts as valid evidence. His meditations on what we know—or choose to know—are pertinent to all areas of inquiry today, including medicine.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman tries to escalate the science wars

The Nobel laureate in economics wonders if a senator's geology comment presages America's inexorable decline. The Nobel laureate in economics wonders if a senator's geology comment presages America's inexorable decline.

Scientists share blame for public’s ignorance of science

Social scientists call for “smartening up” the process of disseminating scientific information to lay audiences.

Dear Rin Tin Tin: An Analysis of William Safire’s Dog-Naming Survey from 1985

AbstractThis paper contributes to the study of how and why we bestow particular types of names upon companion animals, specifically dogs. The research is based on a cache of letters written in 1985 in response to a request from New York Times columnist, William Safire. Although the survey is in no sense scientific, it nonetheless taps trends in dog naming that have become steadily more prominent to the present day. Dog names as well as the criteria by which they are selected reflect central aspects of the relation- ship between pet owners and their canine companions. The letters reveal a growing preference for people names for dogs, which accords with the increasing treatment of companion animals as human. Dog nicknaming is common, particularly for those pedigree canines registered with the American Kennel Club. Dog naming provides pet owners a creative outlet, and a way to reinforce and communicate publicly a particular self-image.

Black Nativity as Valence of Cultural Survival

Black Nativity as Valence of Cultural Survival Macelle Mahala (bio) When Black Nativity premiered in New York City in December 1961, the usage of the term "black" was still considered a contentious and political act. New York Times columnist Sam Zolotow suggested that several cast members found the title "in bad taste," and the lead actress quit the production after producers discarded the more folksy title Wasn't It a Mighty Day? in favor of the more militant Black Nativity (49). Traditionally performed as a gospel musical, Langston Hughes's "song play" exists at the intersection of religion, theatre, politics, and cultural practice. Black Nativity re-imagines both the narrative and performance of Christ's birth in a way that creates an African American cultural space in a holiday performance season otherwise dominated by European works such as Dickens's A Christmas Carol, Handel's Messiah, and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, not to mention the more plebian performances of innumerable white shopping-mall Santa Clauses. Claiming this cultural space and, at the same time, labeling it "black" is just one example of what the production of Black Nativity accomplishes in terms of the enactment of a specifically African American theatrical practice within the public sphere. Since its original production, Black Nativity has become a holiday staple for many African American theatre companies and other companies that seek to attract African American audiences. In 2007, American Theatre magazine featured four companies that produced versions of the play as evidence of the continued national appeal of this now-classic work. The article recognized Penumbra Theatre Company's production in St. Paul; Lorraine Hansberry Theatre's production in San Francisco; Congo Square Theatre Company's production in Chicago; and The Classical Theatre of Harlem's Broadway production in New York (14). Penumbra's production of the play contributes to African American cultural practice on three key fronts. First, the play is a religious celebration that equates the Nativity with various aspects of African American identity, such as the cultural survival of African Americans up from and out of slavery. The staging of these narratives ritually enact the collective memory of a common history in service of the survival and maintenance of a culturally specific group identity. Second, the production helps to maintain the theatre's relationship to the local community as the production where local artists, youth, and clergy are most broadly represented. And last, Penumbra's production of Black Nativity supports the vitality and survival of the theatre as a viable cultural institution and the livelihood of the artists who work within it. As one of the strongest selling show in the theatre's season each year, the company counts on it to bring in a certain amount of earned income. In the following pages, I examine how each of these different valences of cultural survival inform and interpenetrate one another. Black Nativity as Narrative of Cultural Survival Penumbra began producing Black Nativity in 1987 and has performed this work every year since, with the exception of the 2003–04 season (Penumbra Theatre Company 2009b). As a consequence of repeated annual productions and in order to differentiate Penumbra's more recent versions of the play from past productions and other companies' interpretations, the theatre occasionally varies the framing device of the play. In these cases, Hughes's original minimalist script operates more as inspiration than directive. Looking comparatively at the narrative frames featured [End Page 11] in Penumbra's various manifestations of Black Nativity reveals how each production concept stages African American cultural survival differently by emphasizing diverse aspects of black identity, history, and spirituality. Because black identity changes and is both temporally and geographically constructed and experienced, the narratives that support the expression and interpretation of black identity must also necessarily change from one historical moment to the next. Performance studies scholar E. Patrick Johnson writes that "[f]ar from undergirding an essentialist purview of blackness, performance, as a mode of representation, emphasizes the ways in which cultures struggle to define who they are and who they want to be" (606). Penumbra's evolving interpretation of Black Nativity is involved in precisely this ongoing process of continuous self-definition. Treating the Nativity...

The ‘most twisted and unaccountable force in the state’? Newspaper accounts of social work in the Republic of Ireland in troubled times

• Summary: This article investigates how newspapers in the Republic of Ireland are delivering ‘social work news’ during a period of professional flux and evolving economic crisis. • Findings: Many citizens in the Republic are currently experiencing serious economic hardship partly related to the global recession. It is important to understand the shape which the crisis is taking and to try to ascertain how this is impacting on social work. The article refers to an unpublished study of newspaper coverage of social work between January 2006 and January 2008. In this context, in the second part of discussion, particular attention will be devoted to the interventions of The Irish Times columnist, John Waters. Also, to accounts of ‘high profile cases’, particularly those appearing to highlight the urgent need to establish a national emergency or ‘out-of-hours’ social work service. Here, the work of the social affairs correspondent, Carl O’Brien, will be discussed. • Applications: Social workers and social work academics need to strive to understand, and politically situate, newspaper accounts of social work and related forms of activity. Moreover, social workers should seek to intervene and shape newspaper accounts of their work. The article suggests that a recent report produced in England may aid social workers deliberations and actions in this respect ( Social Work Task Force, 2009 ).

When everything changed: the amazing journey of American women from 1960 to the present

WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED begins in 1960 when American women actually had to get their husband's permission to apply for a credit card. In the years since, American women have witnessed exciting changes, expectations about what their lives could be smashed in just a generation. The story ends in the 21st century, with a woman winning a Presidential primary. This book tells us how women got from there to here, in politics, fashion, economics, sex, families and work. A comprehensive mix of oral history and Gail Collins's keen research, WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED is the definitive book on five crucial decades of progress, told with the down-to-earth, amusing and agenda-free tone for which this beloved New York Times columnist is known. Collins spoke with the women who lived these transformative years, including an advertising executive in the 60s who was not allowed to attend board meetings that took place in the all-male dining room and an airline stewardess who was required to bend over to light her passengers' cigars on a men-only 'Executive Flight'. Picking up where her highly-lauded book America's Women left off, WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED is the dynamic story of cataclysmic change, a story Gail Collins seems to have been born to tel