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12. februar 2005
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Wändi Bruine de Bruin, of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has researched decision processes, and not very surprisingly, she has found that judges tend to rank candidates they see last better than those they see first. Thus, it is a bias in any process where judges see one contestant after another, and award points consecutively.
This applies to competitions like figure skating.
If contestants are all of a high standard, as in the figure-skating championships, any unique features will probably be considered positive, and the contestant will seem better than previous ones. "You ask yourself, did the last one have this neat new thing?" Bruine de Bruin explains.
However, the question is if the same effect also applies to competions like the Eurovision Song Contest, which cannot be descrived as "high standard." American readers who have been lucky enough to avoid this spectacle of eurojunkpop, can think of it as a competition where the Ashlee Simpsons of all European countries (and some Middle East) compete by singing new, dreadful pop songs. To be fair, sometimes artists with some talent manage to turn up, but it's not worth the risks to wait for that to happen.
Of course, one might question whether the Eurovision Song Contest is an event in which all the contestants are of an impeccable standard. And Dan Ariely, a decision scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, warns that although the positive unique features in each performance may push scores up in skilled competitions, other situations are rife with negative features, and so scores may well slide downhill over the sequence.
"It is a complex picture. I expect that her results would not hold in more general circumstances where negative things are more salient," he argues.
It sounds like nobody has tested if the theory holds for bad performaces, too, then. It should be an easy job for somebody mildly competent in statistical analysis (don't look at me!) and with access to the historical results of the Eurovision Song Contest. Anyone?
7:08:09 PM 
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Columnist Carl Hamilton in Aftonbladet writes about a very troubling conflict between science and politics in Sweden. My translation:
The government bans opinions on men's and women's brains
In one respect Sweden's government is unique in the world. It has a definite opinion about a scientific controversy: whether women's and man's brains are different, or not. The first time i realised that the government had involved itself in neurobiology, was when gender equality minister [! - ed] Jens Orback in a speech about sexual deviations and living with horses [!!! - ed], affirmed:
- The government considers female and male as social constructions, that means gender patterns are created by upbringing, culture, economical conditions, power structures and political ideology.
Apart from taking a position on this scientific question, the government has deiced to side with the most extreme researchers: gene theoreticians who for ideological reasons state that biology can not have any saying in explaining why male and female behaviour differs.
This reminds me about the Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko. Lysenko was by Stalin proclaimed a scientific genius and his "creative darwinism" was hailed as a huge step forward for genetic research. Lysenko argued that learned traits could be inherited and that by manipulating the environment one could easily cause fundamental changes in plants and animals. Career hungry politicians loved him. Ideology meant everything, experiment and science nothing.
The real scientists, who protested, were cleaned out (and executed).
One of the reasons I write this is that the county government (länsstyrelsen) in Norrbotten has banned the publication of a book about gender equality because it contains an interview with a scientist who argues that the difference between men and women is not only caused by the environment, but a combination of inheritance and environment.
According to professor Annica Dahlström, one of the world's leading neurobiologists, men's and women's brains are different. Thus she has entered an area where Sweden's government has already ruled what is scientifically true and false.
The result is that the book is being censored. The county government has demanded that the interview with Dahlström has to be removed, or there will be no money and no book.
The county government doesn't hide what this is about:
- Since our job is to execute Swedish policy, we cannot stand behind a book that expresses these opinions.
Thus, no deviating opinions about gender roles, especially not if they happen to be correct.
If the Swedish governent decided that the Earth is flat, all Swedes would fall over the edge.
PS: We remember the controversy around Harvard President Lawrence Summers.
Update: Those who read Swedish may want to read the concurring editiorial from Dagens Nyheter, which also gives the full banned interview with Annica Dahlström. From the editorial:
"Our Swedish gender equality policy is based on us being equal and being socialised into different gender roles," declared Britt-Marie Lugnet-Häggberg in the Wednesday DN. "Annica Dahlström is an essentialist feminist (särartsfeministisk) and believes that boys and girls are totally different. The county government cannot publish material with that opinion."
One should believe that the gender equality director is joking. But she is not.
The term I have chosen to translate "essentialist feminist" refers to feminists who believe that men and women are different biologically, and that gender equality can be achived by emphasising the strengths of the feminine nature. Many ecofeminists are in this category. I have no idea if this characterisation of Dahlström is correct, but it is somewhat amusing to see a book being banned not only for promoting a mainstream scientific opinion, but also for promoting a heretical branch of feminism.
PS 2: I have somewhat reluctantly used the term "gender" in this posting, even though I consider it a misnomer when discussing sex differences. "Gender" really refers to noun forms in grammar, where languages like Greek, Latin, German, Norwegian and many others have (especially) nouns separated into feminine, masculine and neuter categories. This term was then used by feminists to describe sex as a social construction (as opposed to a biological one). Since using "gender" avoids the term "sex," which easily brings our mind to think about sexual relations, this neologism has been a huge success. I know a lost philological battle when I see one, but I don't have to like it.
Feminine in grammar sometimes, but not always, reflects feminine in nature. Many are endlessly amused that the German word for girl, Mädchen, is neuter.
1:26:21 PM
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"Red" Ken Livingstone, the left-wing Mayor of London, is facing an inquiry for saying a Jewish reporter of the Evening Standard was "just like a concentration camp guard." There is no love lost between the controversial mayor and the London newspaper. Livingstone is making it worse for himself by refusing to apologise.
The conversation was taped, and here are parts of the transcript:
Oliver Finegold Mr Livingstone, Evening Standard. How did tonight go?
Ken Livingstone How awful for you. Have you thought of having treatment?
OF How did tonight go?
KL Have you thought of having treatment?
OF Was it a good party? What does it mean for you?
KL What did you do before? Were you a German war criminal?
OF No, I'm Jewish, I wasn't a German war criminal and I'm actually quite offended by that. So, how did tonight go?
KL Arr right, well you might be [Jewish], but actually you are just like a concentration camp guard, you are just doing it because you are paid to, aren't you?
OF Great, I have you on record for that. So, how was tonight?
KL It's nothing to do with you because your paper is a load of scumbags and reactionary bigots.
OF I'm a journalist and I'm doing my job. I'm only asking for a comment.
KL Well, work for a paper that doesn't have a record of supporting fascism.
In Red Ken's world, Islamofascists like Yusuf al-Qaradawi are heroes and a Jewish journalist is a nazi. He's an embarrassment for the great city of London.
11:53:53 AM
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While medical scientists are struggling to beat back AIDS, the HIV virus is staying ahead by mutating:
A previously unknown strain of HIV that is highly resistant to virtually all known drugs and appears to lead to the rapid onset of AIDS was detected in a man last week, New York health officials said Friday.
While the extent of the spread of the disease is unknown, officials said the situation was alarming.
"We consider this a major potential problem," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The department issued an alert to all hospitals and doctors in the city to be on the lookout for the new strain.
The HIV strain was resistant to three of four of the classes of drugs used to attempt to treat the patient. Equally troubling: this new strain went from infection to AIDS in 2 to 10 months. Previously, AIDS typically took ten years to develop.
Yeah, it's such a brilliant idea to prevent school students from learning about evolution. This is "just a theory" that can give you a live demonstration by killing you.
Update: Given that this is only a single case, many AIDS researchers advise caution about public alarms:
But not everyone agreed. Dr. Robert C. Gallo, a co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, was very skeptical of yesterday's announcement.
"My guess is that this is much ado about nothing," he said. "Though it's prudent to follow it, I don't think it's necessary to issue a warning or alert the press."
Dr. Gallo said that it was well known that some patients progressed from initial infection to AIDS very rapidly, but that it was usually because they were highly susceptible, not because the virus was virulent. He said that this case, in which the virus is drug-resistant and the progression rapid, was rare but not necessarily alarming.
Dr. John P. Moore, an AIDS researcher at Cornell University's Medical School, agreed.
"If there was a cluster of these, that would be different," he said. "But I wouldn't get bent out of shape about what is literally an anecdotal case right now."
Let's wait and see. Hopefully this is just a fluke. I suspect some researchers called widespread attention to this case because they felt that it provided a good opportunity to again emphasise the importance of safe sex. Undoubtedly, some people need to be reminded.
2:23:14 AM
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CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan has been forced to resign.
Jordan said he was quitting to avoid CNN being "unfairly tarnished" by the controversy.
During a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum last month, Jordan said he believed that several journalists who were killed by coalition forces in Iraq had been targeted.
He quickly backed off the remarks, explaining that he meant to distinguish between journalists killed because they were in the wrong place where a bomb fell, for example, and those killed because they were shot at by American forces who mistook them for the enemy.
"I never meant to imply U.S. forces acted with ill intent when U.S. forces accidentally killed journalists, and I apologize to anyone who thought I said or believed otherwise," Jordan said in a memo to fellow staff members at CNN.
But the damage had been done, compounded by the fact that no transcript of his actual remarks has turned up. There was an online petition calling on CNN to find a transcript, and fire Jordan if he said the military had intentionally killed journalists.
Remember the outrage over Jordan's remarks has been entirely blog-driven phenomenon. The mainstream media (MSM) were all too eager to cover it up.
2:09:21 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.03.2005; 01:30:14.
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