He Blinded Me With Science
Posted by Dave Cross
November 3rd, 2009
[Reposted from davblog]
The story so far:
In January 2004, in an astonishing display of common sense the government downgraded cannabis to a class C drug. This didn’t play well in the shires and in January 2009 it was reclassified as Class B. Last week, Professor David Nutt, head of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, said what every rational person knows – that the reclassification was a political decision which completely ignored the scientific evidence. He was sacked by the Home Secretary. Over the weekend two other members of the council resigned in protest.
This has lead to a lot of discussion of the relationship between scientific evidence and government policy. Today the Daily Mail (who else?) published one of the most ill-informed articles on the subject that it would be possible to write. It’s written by that most highly respected of science writers, A N Wilson. In the future, this article will no doubt be used as the basis of introductory level courses on the philosophy of science where students will compete to find the largest number of logical fallacies in the piece.
Let’s pick off some of the easier targets.
But [Professor Nutt] was not content simply to give advice, of course. What he appeared to want to do was to dictate to the Government, and when it refused to acknowledge his infallibility, Professor Nutt started to break ranks and to denounce the country’s law on drugs.
That’s putting a more than slightly biased slant on events, of course. Professor Nutt was employed for his expertise on drugs. He can’t be expected to change his opinions to fit in with government policy. Science doesn’t work like that.
The trouble with a ’scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative
academic relying solely on empirical facts.
Oh no! Those troublesome scientists with their “unimaginative” empirical facts. If only they had a bit more imagination so that they could make up facts that better fitted the policies that the government want to implement.
Try saying that ecstasy is safe in the sink estates of our big cities, where police, social workers and teachers work to improve the lives of young people at the bottom of the heap.
Ah, yes. But nowhere has Professor Nutt suggested that ecstasy is safe. He is saying that it is less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. That doesn’t mean it’s safe. This is a blatant misrepresentation of his views.
If you add together all the winos and self-destructive alcoholics, then throw in the smokers who’ve died of respiratory or cardiac disease, the total will far outstrip the number of young people who die after taking an ecstasy pill – and you could conclude from this that smoking and drinking are more dangerous than ecstasy.
Well, yes. No-one is likely to disagree with this. But saying this in the middle of the article strongly implies that this is how Professor Nutt and his colleagues reached their conclusions. And that, of course, won’t be the case at all. This shows, at least, a terrible lack of knowledge of the scientific method or, perhaps, a shameful attempt to misrepresent the amount of work that will have gone into Professor Nutt’s research.
Going back in time, some people think that Hitler invented the revolting experiments performed by Dr Mengele on human beings and animals.
But the Nazis did not invent these things. The only difference between Hitler and previous governments was that he believed, with babyish credulity, in science as the only truth. He allowed scientists freedoms which a civilised government would have checked.
Ok, now we’re really on dodgy ground. This is getting dangerously close to saying that all scientists are one experiment away from becoming Dr. Mengele. It’s like Wilson has never heard of Godwin’s Law. Originally, the online version of this article had a picture of Hitler next to these paragraphs. This has been removed in the last hour or so.
It’s also worth pointing out that the Mail is sending out mixed messages here. Surely a comparison to the Nazis is showing some kind of grudging respect to the scientists.
In fact, it is the arrogant scientific establishment which questions free expression. Think of the hoo-ha which occurred when one hospital doctor dared to question the wisdom of using the MMR vaccine.
Isn’t it astonishing that the Mail is still banging on about this? Wakefield was wrong. And his deeply flawed study would had been given no publicity at all if it wasn’t for papers like the Mail jumping on the bandwagon without doing the smallest amount of research on the story.
And to every one who thinks otherwise, I would ask them to carry out a simple experiment. Put a drug, bought casually on the street corner, and a glass of red wine on the table when your teenager comes home from school. Which of them, in all honesty, would you prefer him to try?
See? That’s Wilson’s idea of a scientific experiment. He doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about. He needs (in fact most journalists who write about science in the popular press need) a course in the scientific method and basic statistics. It should be law that you can’t write about science until you’ve read and understood Bad Science.
I’m glad to see that Wilson is getting pulled apart in the comments. But people reading the paper won’t see the comments. The Mail needs to publish a retraction. And Wilson needs to be stopped from writing about things he knows nothing about.
Categories: Politics |
Absolutely spot on, and rather a lovely breakdown of the complete lunacy espoused by Mr AN Wilson. What struck me as odd was the amount of Mail readers commenting that this sort of rubbish did damage to the Mail’s reputation. I thought that it was entirely line with the usual tripe they print, no? (Littlejohn, Phillips, Platell, Moir…the list goes on.)
Perhaps you could do the same with Melanie Phillips’ article yesterday that suggested – on the basis of one scientist who objected to Professor Nutt – that all the evidence does not support the ‘Nutty professor’ – which is how she describes him.
So much of tabloid journalism is precisely this: idiots writing about things that they know nothing about.
Uponnothing,
Someone has already done a fine job in demolishing the Melanie Phillips article.
http://www.leftfootforward.org/2009/11/why-melanie-phillips-is-nutts-on-drugs/
I might have more sympathy with the criticism of Nutt if the government had stuck to the political reasons for its decision.
But they lied about the science, and lied about the scientific advice they had received. Therefore it was absolutely right for Nutt to clear his name, as the government were effectively claiming that he had advised them that cannabis was more dangerous than previously thought.
I was with you till “Wilson needs to be stopped”. In a free society, he’s free to write idiotic rubbish, just as Jan Moir was.
“the ‘Nutty professor’ – which is how she describes him.” -upponnothing.
a joke she seems to have stolen from jon gaunt.
…make of that what you will.
“the ‘Nutty professor’ – which is how she describes him.” -upponnothing.
Or “Professor Poison” as the smug git Peter Hitchens has labeled him in his pious and ill informed column last Sunday.
Thanks for this excellent demolition of possibly one of the most illogical and hyperbolic editorials I’ve read in some time.
Andrew,
You’re right to point out that my final conclusion was overstating the case somewhat. But I sometimes find it hard to reconcile the idea of a free press with the dangerous nonsense that some writers come up with.
So, no, I don’t believe that Wilson should be banned from writing this stuff. But I really want to find some way that the reliability of newspaper opinion pieces can be communicated to their readership.
Perhaps we could start by encouraging honest by-lines. Something like “A N Wilson has a degree in something fluffy from Oxford. His opinions outside of this area should probably be ignored”.
“The trouble with a ’scientific’ argument, of course, is that it is not made in the real world, but in a laboratory by an unimaginative academic relying solely on empirical facts.”
Wow, that’s simply an incredible quote! – Thanks for running this site, it cuts through the hyperbole as only the truth could.
I think anyone should be allowed to write for the papers. I also believe that it should be peer reviewed and checked for facts versus blatant lies before being published.
In my experience, most papers want to write shock stories to make people buy them. The don’t care whether it’s true or not, and thus are quite happy to ruin someones life, just to earn 20 quid.
Unfortunately a large proportion of people believe that journalists write the truth. They’re wrong.
Most are at best overtly opinionated, but based on little fact, and at wort are utter fallicy based on the wrong end of the wrong stick, from the wrong tree in the wrong country.
*sigh*
As far as it goes, Cannabis (as in the stuff grown in the 60’s) was fine, but I’ve been told (by mates in the police) that drug growers are producing stonger and stronger strains. Also, it’s often mixed or coated with other stuff.
Plus, it depends on the individual taking it, and dosage as to how you react to it.
Doctors are scientists. They base their treatment on ‘emperical facts’ and save hundreds/millions of lives a day with it.
I’d rather trust a scientist with drug related facts than a journalist or politician!!
Yeah, well, you can prove anything with ‘facts’.
Mouse, cops are just as full of shit, probably even more so. Sorry to say it.
There was potent grass in the 60s, and there’s even more of it now obviously with many generations of selective breeding. Higher THC content only means you can smoke less. Gravity is still holding us down, and cannabis is as safe as ever. The “200x stronger than in the 60s” and “dealers lace it” are both arguments intended to appeal to adults who experimented with the drug in their youth but need a non-hypocritical reason to condemn their children for doing the same. You’re right to think it comes down to individual responsibility, and that’s how it should be.
Let’s face it, the ONLY reason the Mail has made this attack is because, on this issue at least, the Tories’ position is broadly in line with the Government’s. Had the Tories disagreed with the Government and backed the professor the Mail would have been defending the Prof. while attacking the Home Secretary’s outrageous behaviour and baying for his resignation.
The Mail has no integrity; they are simply aligning themselves with their readers’ prejudices because that is what maximises their profits.
The subheadings in the online version of the article are beautiful though. Bluster.. and after it comes a load of bluster. The next heading is Irrationality – and that’s what we find. Lastly Naivety.. and it does what it says on the tin.
I look forward to A N Wilson’s next article, hopefully to be subheaded ‘Illogical’, ‘Biased’, and ‘Lies’.
Wow. You’re right – I know Bed Goldacre does go on rather a lot about “humanities graduates”, but that article is a textbook example of the yawning gulf between between artistic and scientific thinkers.
Prof. Nutt is an expert in his chosen field.
Wilson, Phillips(?) et al are a bunch of cunts who write stories for a bunch of cunts to read.
Alan Johnson is a cunt.
So, on the one hand we have someone who knows what he’s on about, and on the other hand a bunch of cunts.
This is only my opinion- but i’m stating it as fact.
Funny- i thought the mail would trot out some objection to this suppression of truth . Tut! it’s just like that book by that chap who wrote the one about the pigs isn’t it?
This is agreat article, and you’re right – journalists who write about science should be obliged to actually learn something about scientific methods. The Daily Mail’s irrational response to this entire ‘Nutty Prof.’ thing just serves to prove Nutt’s point about media bias on drugs.
http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Triumph-of-Unreason
http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Write-for-The-Daily-Mail
Very well argued article. I linked to it here:
http://www.quietriots.com/organisations/1793-daily-mail/share the site is designed to be a platform for anyone to change anything – so the good old mail should hopefully stir up some action
It was pretty surprising to see that Melanie Phillips was definitely and by a clear majority among even the DM commentors being called laughably out of touch and spouting factless ignorance.
Maybe there’s hope yet that we might see a sane and effective drug policy in the UK some time in the next decade?
I think Joseph Goebbels would have been proud to have written Wilson’s piece of anti-intellectual bullshit.
”I think Joseph Goebbels would have been proud to have written Wilson’s piece of anti-intellectual bullshit.” This has to be one of the most absurd comments that I have ever read. A. N. Wilson is one of the most humane and thoughtful writers that you will find in the British Press. I would far rather live in a society ruled over by him than by most of the smug, arrogant science-worshipping lefties who have been commenting here. He may or may not be right about cannabis, but his general suspicion of scientists is entirely justifiable. Scientists have behaved despicably time and again; the track record of scientists in the Third Reich was indeed atrocious. Hardly any German scientists went to the concentration camps for opposing the regime, in striking contrast to many thousands of religious people. In Japan the evil beast who had been in charge of their germ warfare research, conducted on many thousands of human subjects, was elected head of the Japanese Academy of Sciences AFTER the war, even though it was no secret among his fellow scientists what he had done. In Iraq under Saddam Husssein and in North Korea numerous germ warfare experiments were/have been carried out on political prisoners. British and American scientists carried out various germ and drug tests on servicemen without telling them. There is no dictatorship in the world that has been stopped from carrying out atrocities as a result of non-cooperation from scientists. I was thinking of finishing this outburst of mine by expressing the wish that most of you be reincarnated as laboratory animals, undergoing the kind of suffering that these creatures undergo…but I wouldn’t wish that on anybody. And don’t anyone dare say that conditions in laboratories have greatly improved for animals. That there have been any restrictions on the vivisectionists is only due to campaigning by the anti’s. If it had been left to scientists then there would have been no improvements at all. Is science then the work of Satan? I shall remain agnostic on this particular question, not entirely sure. But I am prepared to go along with that great journalist and humane mystic Arthur Machen, who expressed his belief that scientists were for the most part very wicked men. I see no reason to doubt that, either from my own personal experiences or from the history of the twentieth century. Oh and btw Dave Cross, if your education had been even half as good as you like to think, you would understand that knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom and that arrogance is a vice and not a virtue.
So my comment is still awaiting moderation is it? I am certain that it will never be published here. The defining characteristic of the radical left is their suppression of dissident opinions. Nice to know though Dave Cross and co that you can’t cope with my arguments. What this shows is that you are just the same as the ‘Daily Mail’ which also doesn’t like publishing articles that don’t conform to its world view.
Neander, Apologies, I didn’t realise your comment needed approval. I expect it was because it was so long. I’ve approved it now.
I have no objection at all to publishing your comment. I think it’s funny.
Neader, Please forgive me, I’m sorry. I’m a scientist with thirty years working in the health care sector. All this time I thought I was helping. But you’ve made me see the light. I hadn’t realised that I was so wicked. I’ll go and pray to the big sky fairy for forgiveness and hope I’m bathed in all his woo so I can denounce ’science’ as the evil it really is.
No. Not really. I think you’re a loony, sorry.
[...] /// Holocaust comparison: Brazil: Shimon Hilter. US/UK: Far right Tory Dan Hannan is at it again, in bed with Ron Paul in attacks on the NHS using dodgy WWII references (source). UK: Exposing the right-wing press use of dodgy Hitler references (e.g. liberals are fascists, binmen are nazis or all scientists are Josef Mengele). [...]
I think a vital point is being missed here: the scientific method is merely a tool for extracting useful information from raw data, e.g. anecdotal evidence aside, does a particular vaccine actually work and does it really have any harmful effects? There is no inherent moral code in this method; that is imposed by the society that uses the method. (In the same way a knife is a tool that can be used to chop vegetables or to kill someone depending on the morals of its owner.)
Nazi Germany was a highly immoral society so it may well have used the scientific method in a highly immoral way. But don’t assume all the people the Nazis called scientists were actually using the scientific method. I’ve not studied them in detail but I bet they had a few ‘scientists’ who could ‘prove’ all sorts of things that were convenient to the regime, but that is pseudo-science, not science.
But hang on, were talking about 21st century Britain here. The moral code for scientific research is decided by public debate in Britain. Our scientists are part of our society and thus party to its morality. So all this stuff about the Nazis is surely irrelevant. The fact that it was ever introduced into the discussion suggests an attempt to undermine the credibility of the scientific community and thus avoid a constructive debate.
I demand a second opinion from famed intellectual powerhouse Michael Hanlon…
My admittedly lengthy diatribe about science does not seem to have gone down very well. Let me briefly make a helpful suggestion, this time sticking rigidly to the original topic, ie the safety of cannabis. Why not set up a special research centre where spliffs could be tested on beagles the way cigarettes used to be (perhaps still are). Get the beagles strapped down into those ingenious devices where they can be forced to smoke, (diabolic ingenuity?), smoking several hundred spliffs a day. After several years, and several thousand dead beagles, pretty good evidence would surely emerge re: the effects of cannabis. Maybe monkeys would be better research subjects though, being more like us physiologically. Neil in MIcro, being a helpful kind of guy, could oversee the research.
And you Mr Cross could be the PR man for the project. I am sure that you would be admirably suited for this role.
Mail Watch indeed. They should consider having a “Guardian Watch” , just to show all the out of touch ideas like being soft on crime, when its usually working class people who are victims, making petrol very expensive so working class people can’t afford to get to work on top of all their other financial worries!
Yep Lefty Guardian all for the out of touch middle class socialist intellectuals, stuff what the normal working class person thinks!
I find the viz more sensible and educatinal that the guardian!
Wrote by a Working class tax paying person who thinks the working class deserve the right to be heard.
Strangely I have some respect for the ideas of Mao Tse Tong, he said its the peasents that should rule the land not a bougerois intellectal elite, socialist or not.
Wonder what the DM made of the deaths of three asylum seekers in Glasgow who committed suicide? I guess in their book that its less less that will ‘threaten our way of life’ while claiming benefits.
Anyway who’s worked with asylum seekers knows that almost all of them are shunted off to slums with little or nothing to live on. Hell, they’re not even allowed to work!
Interestingly enough, the Straight Statistics blog examines many of the DM’s ’stats’ – ‘immigrants’ for example could mean anyone not born here, even folk who came here in the 50s or your Spanish girlfried. Even dirty Rupert Murdoch counts.
These people are scum for the hatred and fear that they propagate. Simple as that.