University GIGO

An article in the Australian, Ratting on the Ratings, gives an excellent example of the GIGO Fallacy. David Woodhouse is the executive director of the Australian Universities Quality Agency, and he discusses the flaws of the University ranking system employed by Shanghai University:

THE central criticism of whole-of-institution rankings relates to the methodology that addresses quality in a superficial way but projects a complex image. Most rankings rely on two types of data: information from institutions that may not be validated and data obtained from opinion polls in the name of "expert opinion". With both components providing shaky foundations, the use of complex formulas with weights and indicators helps to project a pseudo-scientific image to outcomes that may be statistically irrelevant.

Put simply: GIGO. That is, even though a complex calculation is applied to the data to come up with a rank order of universities, given the input data may not be validated and is based on opinion; the output should be treated with skepticism. It does not matter how powerful the analytic tools being applied are, if the raw data being supplied is suspect, any conclusion based on this data is suspect too. Woodhouse goes on:

Rankings rely on quantification, indicators and weights, assigning weights to indicators and using the weighted scores to rank the institutions. This forces the multidimensional quality aspect into a linear scale. In this process, aspects of the institution that cannot be measured with weightings and numbers get distorted… Furthermore, they are sensitive to relatively small changes in the weightings used. Small changes in the weightings of indicators alter the results from year to year without any tangible change between institutions.

Not only is the input data suspect, the data is weighted and it only takes a minor change in the weighting to alter the results. This adds to the GIGO.

Now, this is not to say such a system in inherently useless. It gives us information which we can use to inform judgments about universities. However, it is to say one needs to be aware of the limitations of the system and that one should not take its results as “Gospel”.

You can't vaccinate against ignorance...

even if you can legislate against it:

Authorities are still searching for a Sydney couple who are in hiding after refusing to have their newborn baby vaccinated against hepatitis B...

The mother of the four-day-old baby boy has had the virus for several years and doctors say the child runs a high risk of contracting it unless he is immunised within days.

The New South Wales Department of Community Services has taken out a Supreme Court order to force the parents to immunise their child, but has so far been unable to locate the couple...

The parents, who are from Croydon Park in western Sydney, believe the illness can be managed more effectively than any potential damage from the vaccine.

The couple believes aluminium in the vaccine could cause the baby more damage than contracting hepatitis B.

What deluded and ignorant pr!cks. Even if it was the case that aluminium in vaccines was shown to cause harm, which it hasn't been - moreover it's aluminium hydroxide (I'd love to know if these parents take antacid tablets or use anti-perspirant deodorants?), it would still be a False Dilemma. Statistically the chances of the un-immunised baby getting hep-B is far more significant than any perceived risk of side effects from the vaccine, and the consequences of hep-B are far more significant:

Professor David Isaacs from Sydney's Westmead Children's Hospital, said yesterday that the child's rights were being ignored...

He said if a baby gets hepatitis B at birth he or she will become a chronic carrier of the virus.

"About a third of those chronic carriers will die young from cancer of the liver or cirrhosis of the liver ... this is a horrible disease," he said.

Note the article has a big picture of a needle and refers to aluminium, not aluminium hydroxide (the equivalent of talking about the chlorine in all our food, instead of sodium chloride). What type of message are they trying to send? The more appropriate image would have been the following:

_________________

UPDATE: (7th Sept 2008)

The baby's still not vaccinated and the New South Wales Supreme Court has not let the case go for legal reasons, as opposed to scientific ones:

Today, the department asked the court to dissolve the order saying a lesser order for the parents to present their child for medical assessment may encourage them to come forward.

But Justice Paul Brereton declined the request, saying the court should not back down to those who put themselves above the law.

The SHAM fallacies

A few posts ago I mentioned a book by Steve Salerno, SHAM: Self Help and Actualization Movement - How the gurus of the self-help movement make us helpless. I've just moved into a new job, and as a token of appreciation from the employer I was leaving I was given a book voucher. (I was told they gave me a voucher rather than choosing a book for me, as they know I've read almost everything and I have very particular tastes... not that they knew nothing about me and could not be bothered to think about it, as I had originally assumed.) I decided to hunt down SHAM, and was successful.

I've just finished the introduction and already it is apparent that Salerno has a great understanding of fallacies. For example, Salerno points out the typically circular - Begging the Question - type of points made by SHAM authors:

This is not to say that all SHAM rhetoric is patiently false. In fact, there are whole categories of self-help precepts that can't possibly be disputed. That's because they're circular - the guru who espouses them is saying the same thing in different ways at the beginning and end of sentence. The conclusion merely restates the premise. Here's a perfect example from Phil McGraw's New York Times number one best seller Self Matters: "I started this process by getting you to look at your past life, because I believe that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. That being true, the links in the chain of your history predict your future." The "that being true" makes it sound as if McGraw is rousing to some profound conclusion. But he isn't. The part after "that being true" merely repeats what he said in the first sentence, with slightly altered wording. It's not a conclusion at all. It's what logicians call a tautology.

(Dr. Phil's facial expression, when asked whether he has any data that demonstrates the efficacy of his work, speaks for itself.)

The other technique SHAM authors are fond of is Gibberish:

Other SHAM kingpins, or ambitious pretenders, achieve a certain contrived plausibility by using puffed-up, esoteric-sounding jargon. In August 2004, Dan Neuharth, PhD, the author of Secrets You Keep from Yourself: How to Stop Sabotaging Your Happiness, told the readers of magazine First for Women that "avoidance is a knee-jerk response to a core fear that threatens your ego." Translation: We avoid things we're really afraid of.

It's one of those books that has me nodding in agreement every page. The question I put to people I know with these self-help books in their house is: "How come you have more than one?"

Crocodile happy people believe cr@p

Often us skeptics are accused of being party poopers.

"Just let people have their fun, believing in astrology and other such bunk", I'm repeatedly told. "What's the harm?"

Yep - belief in mystical bullsh!t sure is harmless:

A CROCODILE killed and ate a 25-year-old man in Bangladesh after he waded into a pond next to a shrine hoping to be blessed by the animal, police say.

One for the Darwin Awards.

WTF? Rainbows and crazy lady

This speaks for itself as a WTF? fallacy (I don't think it's funny enough to be a spoof).



Hat Tip: SGU.

Historical Origins of Acupuncture

Contrary to the common assumption of Chinese cultural origins of acupuncture...

Acupuncture was first used in the American midwest.

It was commonly offered by a husband and wife team of traditional medicine practitioners. The husband usually took the role of acupuncturist, while the wife specialised in mercy killing (now more commonly known as euthanasia).

The mere prospect of treatment usually resulted in the instantaneous recovery of the patient.

The practice died out along with patients and the rise of scientific medicine in the West.

The Chinese continue the practice on a large scale today, but because they use woosey little needles instead of pitchforks, at least they do little harm.

The Devil made me do it!

A heartrending post by my son (and co-blogger) Theo some little while ago recounted a frightening episode of night terrors he experienced as a child. He eventually dismissed it as an artefact of brain chemistry and rejected the existence of dark forces. However what I have never told him is that while he was away at school camp I did some experiments designed to test the existence of a netherworld. I drew a pentagram under Theo's bed and invoked the name of Beelzebub, Prince of Darkness. Nothing happened after an hour or so of chanting and I forgot about it. Apparently Beelzebub (pictured) was busy or uninterested in appearing to me, so Theo copped a belated visit when he got back from camp - sorry cobber.