We All Do Surveillance

Just one week after posting on the trial of Bradley Manning, the big news is Edward Snowden's leaking of a domestic surveillance program to Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian Newspaper.  Naturally jaws are dropped in Congress and in the public.  Personally I am not surprised that we are tracked in this modern world where almost all of us are electronically connected.  I have written many posts on how web statistics are compiled on us by sites like Google and Facebook and used for marketing purposes (see related posts below).  I've also done PodCamp presentations on it as can be seen in the reproduced Google Analytics output at the bottom for May 12-Jun 12 2013. 

Susan Landau in the clip above explains how metadata from domestic surveillance can reveal real patterns about ones life.  Looking at friends Facebook pages is similar to collecting metadata.  One can learn a lot by simply observing.  Whenever the old Soviet Union had parades with large missiles, the US military brass and intelligence would be there to learn what they could about their military hardware.  The technology has changed since then. 

Is there potential for abuse just as there was in the old Soviet Union?  You bet.  We are all observing each other to learn info.  The government says it's doing it to stop terrorist attacks but it did not stop the Boston Marathon bombings or other mass shootings in the US with higher death tolls.  The Christmas underwear and Times Square bombers were thwarted by perceptive onlookers.  Some surveillance is needed.  What Snowden, Manning, and Assange are doing is giving those who are doing is giving the surveillance class at the NSA a taste of their own medicine.  The need for privacy is understandable.  The unchecked need for data and metadata on those around us is what is dangerous.  As a researcher I abide by limits all the time on privacy and I must be on guard against invasions into mine as by blog is trolled from all over the world.  My advice to those who are concerned about privacy on Facebook and other social media is if you don't want the public to see it don't post it. 

There are ways to investigate social issues including terroism without invading privacy.  The founding fathers created the constitution to protect our rights and also mandated the US Census taken every 10 years since 1790.  It is now a valuable source of information about the US population. 

Google Analytics Output

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Unique Visitors

284

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4.90

Avg. Visit Duration

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Bounce Rate

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Bradley Manning and Wikileaks

This week the trial of Private First Class Bradley Manning begins for leaking information to the website Wikileaks.  I have seldom spoken of Wikileaks or it's founder Julian Assange on this blog because other topics have motivated me and because Assange being ensconced at the Ecuadorian embassy to hide from being extradited to Sweden for questioning on a rape allegation which may or may not be trumped up is not something on which I can comment.  I don't think Wikileaks is about Assange anymore than Democracy Now! is about Amy Goodman or this blog is about me.    I have no way of knowing if the allegation about Assange is true but I believe it is a distraction from the purpose that the site he founded serves.

Manning on the other hand has made the meaningful sacrifice for what he believes in just as Daniel Ellsberg (featured in the video above) did in the early 1970's when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press.  Ellsberg faced trial and dirty tricks by the Nixon Administration and was lucky to be acquitted.  Manning may not be so lucky.  He has already plead guilty to one of the charges where he could face 20 years in prison.  This suggests a greater sacrifice that Assange is willing to make.  It may be better in the long run for Assange to face the music.

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'Tis the Season for Women in Racing and the Military

Memorial Day has many traditions, picnics, parades, fireworks, and the like to remember our war dead.  One of the most prominent traditions since 1909 is the Indianapolis 500.  Much was made of the fact that Tony Kanaan finally won the race after years of trying.  Less noted was that after Danica Patrick left the Indy series for NASCAR there were four women racers (all international) out of 33.  Two of them finished, 15th and 17th, out of 20 cars that completed all 200 laps.

Danica Patrick did race on Memorial Day however in the Coca Cola 600 race in the NASCAR series which was won by Kevin Harvick.  Patrick was the only woman racer in the predominately white male field and finished 29th after her boyfriend bumper her into a wreck in lap 311.  She finished 385 out of 400 laps.  The chart below shows she lost about 10 places after the crash.  Her best finish was 8th in the Daytona 500 this year. 

Also at this time of year is horse racing's triple crown, The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness, and The Belmont Stakes.  The Derby winner Orb finished fourth in the Preakness meaning there will be no triple crown winner for another year since 1978.  In that race there was a rare female jockey,  Rosie Napravnik finished third or showing in horse racing terminology being the first woman to do so in any triple crown race.  She will ride a different horse in the Belmont on June 8.



 
As these sports become more inclusive and more mechanized, the talent pool becomes larger to choose from leveling the playing field.  In 1947 when the color line was breached in Major League Baseball, the talent level was raised there and it is very unlikely that the 0.400 batting average level will ever be eclipsed and Roger Maris' and Hank Aaron's home run records were only eclipsed by Barry Bonds with the help of drugs.  The women horse and auto racers don't need to use drugs because they're not doing the bulk of the work.  They're, just like the male racers, just telling the cars and horses where to go.  Women in team and individual sports where they cannot compete against the men still struggle for more attention.  The Olympics are now the best showcase for women's other sports.

Just as sports has become more mechanized, the military has and women have played a more prominent role with the costs becoming more evident as well though not necessarily equally distributed.  Before stepping down, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta lifted restrictions on women in combat. Congressional hearings are being held to ensure that they are treated fairly.
 

**Update**

The Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh is having screenings of the film Band of Sisters from May 31-June 6 and one of the Invisible War (trailer seen above) at the FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE 4836 Ellsworth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213  on Monday, June 3 at 5:30.
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An In Depth Look at a Mindfulness and Stress Study

My former classmate at the University of Hartford, Tonya Jacobs, had an article described in the Huffington Post titled Mindfulness Meditation Could Lower Levels Of Cortisol, The Stress Hormone.  It described her study which originally appeared in the Journal of Health Psychology.  It talks about how a study was conducted of those who participated in a three month meditation retreat where it says mindfulness was measured along with cortisol levels in saliva as a measure of stress.  If found that cortisol (a hormone that strongly indicates stress) levels were decreased from the beginning of the retreat to the end as mindfulness increased.  They warned that there was no control group.

From past experience I know that the news media often leaves out important details of a study and can be bad at interpreting the results of the studies.  I thought I would take a look Jacobs et al. (2013) original article which has a lot more detail to allow one to replicate the study.  In the methods sections they state that there was a treatment group of 30 for those who participated in the retreat and a control group of 30 who were wait listed for the retreat using stratified random sampling to control for any potential confounding variables such as BMI (Body Mass Index which is weight divided by height squared and is a crude measure of obesity), handedness and IQ.  The wait listed group did receive the mindfulness intervention after the treatment group.  

The authors do not discuss if there is a difference between the wait list and non waitlist groups in cortisol or mindfulness levels especially during the time where the wait list group was not receiving the intervention.  This may not have been feasible during the study as the individuals were probably scattered all over the US and measurements of cortisol and mindfulness could not be taken without great cost.  Participants were paid during the retreat.  Three participants had incomplete data and were excluded from the data analysis.  

The results showed no overall effect of cortisol decrease from pre to post measurements but did significantly decrease for BMI.  Mindfulness significantly increased between the pre and post.  The pre and post cortisol levels were significantly negatively correlated with mindfulness as measured by a 37 item questionnaire which was previously validated.  Negatively correlated means that as mindfulness increases cortisol levels decrease.  This effect was still significant after adjusting for age and BMI.

The authors acknowledge that this study is correlational and does not establish a cause and effect relationship between meditation, mindfulness, and stress.  The article in the Huffington Post seems to suggest the same thing by stating that there is no control group.  Because of the difficulty in doing this type of research, the need for more of theses types of studies is established.  Experimental studies with a well defined control and treatment group with all other confounding variables are adjusted for are ideal for establishing cause and effect relationships.  The ideal of research is seldom met.  When the situation is less than ideal, converging validation with many different methods is needed to accomplish the same cause-effect relationship.  


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Controversy over the New Psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual

Since 1952, the American Psychiatric Association has published the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM for short) which has spelled out the criteria for diagnosing all of the known psychiatric disorders.  It has undergone four editions and two revisions with the fifth one due out this year.  In the past there were controversies such as whether or not homosexuality should be included in the manual and it was dropped from the DSM in the 1970s.  New changes are made to the manual as new information is brought to light and cultural views of what is and what is not a disorder change.

This year the fifth edition of the DSM proposes changes to 13 current diagnoses.  The most controversial of these is Asperger's Syndrome which is being eliminated as a separate diagnosis and is being placed under the  Autism spectrum of disorders.  Unlike the gay community in the 1970s, has deletion been met with resistance by those who have been previously diagnosed with Aspergers.  Other changes have been made to dyslexia, ADHD and other diagnoses.  At least 10 new diagnoses are included in the DSM such as post-traumatic embitterment disorder, skin picking disorder, and compulsive hoarding (maybe the American Psychiatric Association all watches TLC). 

Previously the DSM has been accepted as the Bible of psychiatric diagnosis but, right before the DSM-V comes out the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) has announced that it will not use it as a standard for diagnosis in their research.  This means that they will not be funding studies that use the DSM-V as a diagnostic criteria.   The reason given by the NIMH is that “Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure."  This suggests a desire for exactness which the behavioral sciences have lacked relative to the physical sciences sometime termed physics envy. 

There have been advances in neuroscience and genetics which shed light on many of these disorders and made many pharmacological treatments possible but the main reliance for diagnosis is still on behavioral symptoms.  The NIMH is creating a Research Domain Criteria for Diagnoses (RDoC) based on biological criteria which it believes are more objective.  The behavioral symptoms are often subject to interpretation and often still not enough is known about the brain and genetics to differentiate between pathologies.  Consider the figure at left.  Is this a rabbit with its head held high or a duck?  This image is subject to interpretation just as all behaviors and incomplete scientific data are.  Science is fundamentally a human endeavor where politics often plays a role.  
  

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How Do You Use and Consume Math?

People often assume that because I am a statistician I am a whiz at high math.  The graph above from a survey by Northeastern University seems to explain why.  The vast majority of Americans do not use any math above fractions (an estimated 78% or 1-22% which is the opposite of the any more advanced category on the graph above).  The graph below shows what type of job uses what type of math with upper blue collar like upper level trades and mechanics using each type except statistics which is upper white collar.

Although an estimated 78% of Americans do not use advanced math on a daily basis, 100% depend on them, often without question, to make decisions everyday.  Below is an example on The Colbert Report of how this blind faith can go seriously wrong.

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Here is an interview with Stephen Colbert by the UMASS grad student who exposed their error in an Excel spreadsheet.  One can learn a lot by simply doing a little digging.  Some say it is not necessary to teach advanced math to our school students if they are not going to use it in their work but the critical thinking skills that are gained can come in handy if we choose to use them in other areas.

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Mathematics above calculus is a different world altogether as can be seen in the BBC documentary from 1984 A Mathematical Mystery Tour which describes how the philosopher Bertrand Russell needed 362 pages to prove that 1+1=2.  I added an online poll to survey users of this blog on their background and comfort level in math.  The polling will be open until May 26.

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New Census Population Clock and Guardian Terrorism Data Graphs.

The census bureau has made it's online US and World population clock available for embedding on other websites.  Above you can see the estimate of the US population (over 315 million) based on the 2010 census, estimates of birth, death and immigration rates.  If you click on the World Population tab you can see the estimate of the world population (over 7 billion) based on the current world wide birth and death rates.  Below you can see Gapminder statistician Hans Rosling give a TED talk on how he forecasts the world population will stabilize at around 10 billion by 2050.

The Guardian Newspaper of London has a data page with lots of valuable graphics of data.  Below is one of terrorist attacks in the lower 48 US states since 1970 until 2011.  Larger circles indicate more deaths.  Below is an embedded interactive graph showing how the total number of attacks has decreased since 1970 while the number of fatalities with the exception of spikes in 1005 and 2001 has remained relatively steady over the same period.

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