Evidence Soup

Give your evidence more impact: Yale's primer on how to disseminate research findings.

It's such a waste when research doesn't reach an audience. Yale University has developed some good resources to help people disseminate their findings. This AIDS research program, the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), has developed guidelines that are now being tailored to other research groups. One of those is CARE: Community Alliance for Research and Engagement, offering a guide for disseminating community-based research. The document Beyond Scientific Publication: Strategies for Disseminating Research Findings presents recommendations that should be useful to lots of other researchers who haven't previously been involved in pubic relations, marketing, or promotion of their findings (22-page pdf).

It's not just about PR, it's an ethical obligation. The document opens by saying "Often a neglected afterthought in busy research schedules, the dissemination of key findings upon project completion is a crucial step in community-based research. In fact, we believe that researchers have an ethical obligation to ensure that research findings are disseminated to research participants, as well as other individuals and institutions in the communities in which we work. In an effort to increase ease and efficiency, this document provides key strategies for dissemination, including practical advice and specific templates you can adapt for your use. Through this strategic dissemination approach, CARE intends to distribute salient findings to affected communities, participant agencies, health departments, researchers, policy makers, and health advocacy groups." Topics include media coverage, press releases, research summaries & briefs, posters, newsletters, community publications, web sites, list-serves, events, and conferences.

Writing tips. I've done *lots* of writing that translated research into plain English. The Yale document offers some good tips to researchers, which is good, although I'm convinced many will need more guidance and hands-on help than this -- often they need a seasoned presenter to help them package up their findings. Recommendations include producing content that is:

• "Responsive: Consider your target audiences when deciding on document type.
• Concise: Make it short and to the point; be sure that information is easy to find.
• Interesting: Sort through all findings, and present just those that are new and/or compelling.
• Highlight key points: Use bulleted lists, with one finding or conclusion per bullet.
• Logical: Make sure the points progress in a logical order.
• Useful: Write clear conclusions and recommendations; if readers know what to do with the information, they will be more likely to apply it."

The document also helps authors categorize and summarize their findings so journalists, physicians, and other audiences know how it applies. All this would be even more valuable with better publishing tools (explicit metadata, etc.), but it's a good start. Here's an example of the provided templates:

The evidence is clear: Cheerleading is not for sissies. But these new findings should have been disseminated more effectively.

LiveScience.com recaps new evidence showing that the most dangerous sport for high school and college females is cheerleading: "Researchers have long known how dangerous cheerleading is, but records were poorly kept until recently. An update to the record-keeping system last year found that between 1982 and 2007, there were 103 fatal, disabling or serious injuries recorded among female high school athletes, with the vast majority (67) occurring in cheerleading. The next most dangerous sports: gymnastics (nine such injuries) and track (seven)."

The National Center for Catastrophic Injury Research at the University of North Carolina has released its 26th annual report (58-page pdf here). For the period fall 1982 - spring 2008, LiveScience says "the numbers tell us:

• High school sports were associated with 152 fatalities, 379 non-fatal injuries and 374 serious injuries. College sports accounted for 22 fatalities, 63 non-fatal injuries and 126 serious injuries.

• Cheerleading accounted for 65.2 percent of high school and 70.5 percent of college catastrophic injuries among all female sports."

A lesson in how *not* to disseminate research findings. I'm grateful to LiveScience for sorting through these stats. The National Center for Catastrophic Injury Research site presents none of this evidence on web pages, which would speed dissemination of their findings and make them available to web search engines. Here's all they say: "In order to view the reports, just click on the report you wish to view on the left sidebar. You will need Adobe Acrobat or Reader to view the reports. This can be downloaded for free at www.adobe.com. The data tables referenced in the reports can be found using the link Data Tables on the left side-bar of the website. The majority of the tables can also be found within the reports as well." Sheesh. They're not doing themselves any favors.

Their information is available only in the formal report. And although the findings are interesting, the reports are particularly difficult to digest. First, there's no Executive Summary to present key results and offer quotable sound bites -- there's not even a table of contents. Instead, the authors begin with an introduction, and then go right into a discussion of data collection methods. They give us lengthy prose discussing the findings for each sport, referring to tables in an appendix (example below). If they want their evidence to have maximum impact, they need to package it much differently.

The 'anti-Malcolm Gladwell' speaks: Lack of verifiable evidence tells us the influencer theory is bogus.

Lots of people have questioned whether there is hard evidence to support the influencer theory described in Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point. I wrote about it here and here. One of the best-known critics is Duncan Watts, who was profiled in Fast Company

Brand Week's Todd Wasserman has a new article, Scientist: Influencer Theory is Bogus, covering an interview with Watts, who "first came to the marketing world's attention in 2003, when a New York Times article positioned the Columbia University professor as the anti-Malcolm Gladwell. While Gladwell's 2000 book The Tipping Point laid out an entertaining theory that fads like Hush Puppy shoes ...spread because of groups of people called influencers, Watts has argued that that model is deeply flawed. Watts, now a research scientist with Yahoo, charges that influencers have been poorly defined and that scientific data show you're just as likely to spread a message or product by targeting a random group of consumers as you would by going after so-called influencers. Mostly, Watts says marketers should be much more scientific in their approach, especially as social media grows in importance."

"Brandweek: What's wrong with the influencer model? Duncan Watts: ...when you scrutinize [the claims] carefully, they turn out to not really be very meaningful. Or to put it another way, everyone thinks they know what an influencer is and everyone thinks they know why they matter, but everybody thinks something different. Is an influencer the hipsters in the East Village or Oprah Winfrey? What makes Oprah influential is very different from what makes the hipster in the East Village influential. And so by failing to differentiate carefully between all these different types of influencers you really undermine the ability of the theory to say anything predictive.... Somebody asked the publisher of the surprise bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves why that book was so successful and he said it was successful because lots of people bought it. ...Hits are highly unpredictable. It's very difficult to even retrospectively go back and show that there are certain kinds of consistent attributes that result in being popular.

"[Brandweek]: So what would your advice be to a marketer trying to learn from things like that? [Watts]: My first advice would be stop fooling yourself.... Marketers have been chasing influencers for a decade and they haven't found them. And the reason is not that influence doesn't matter. It may very well matter.... The reason is that history is a very poor guide to the future.

"...[T]he whole influencer theory is actually more of a rhetorical device than a theory. It's not like people actually have an explicit theory of who is influential and they go out there and they use that theory to decide who to target. It's more that they do whatever they do. They throw parties or they give away free samples or they advertise in particular publications that brand themselves as reaching an influential audience and run some campaign in their normal manner. And if it works, they say, 'We reached the influencers.' ...In that sense, it's just a rhetorical device to help you explain the randomness that you actually experience in the world.... So it's one of these impossible-to-falsify theories because who you identify as an influencer is always after the fact."

Evidence can't save the Mediterranean bluefin tuna.

Despite evidence indicating that fishing quotas should be lowered, "overfishing in the Mediterranean is taking its toll. And the bluefin tuna population is crashing." Recently The World radio program explained what's been happening: "Scientists and environmentalists are warning that over-fishing and poor management have pushed Mediterranean Blue Fin stocks to the brink of collapse."

(Photo courtesy of Oceana.) Gerry Hadden with The World quoted Sergi Tudela, who runs the Fisheries Program for the World Wildlife Fund in Barcelona: "Our estimate is that unless something very strong is done the breathing population will completely disappear in three, four years time. And then fishery gets ecologically extinct." Hadden said "The WWF and other environmental groups say the main problem is that there are simply too many boats throughout the Mediterranean. Maria Jose Cornax, a marine scientist with the ocean’s advocacy group Oceana, said 'At the current levels of exploitation that we have and taking also into account the illegal fishing, we have amounts of around 61,000 tons caught each year from this stock when scientists are recommending a maximum amount of 15,000 tons. So it’s four times the amount recommended by scientists.' The scientists ...work for the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas or ICCAT. The group is comprised of dozens of countries that fish and consume tuna from Europe to Asia. Each year it sets limits on tuna catches. This year it ignored its own researchers...."

Blame it on Europe? People in Japan are enthusiastic consumers of bluefin tuna, driving price levels up to $25US per pound. But Japanese officials apparently recognize the seriousness of the situation: Sergi Tudela of WWF says" ...at the latest ICCAT meeting it was the Europeans who pushed for higher catches, sidelining the science. And they succeeded against the advice of US, Canada, Norway, and even Japan. I have to say that last year Japan was rightly aligned in terms of conservation of the species."

Sigh.

Despite the evidence, hail cannons keep blasting away. We've got more to add to the hail cannon canon.

Update: Several really nice hail cannon photos are available at NewtonFabrication.com.

I've written about hail cannons several times before. Some claim they prevent hail from damaging food crops and other property, but others aren't convinced. According to Eggers Hail Cannons, a vendor, "Hail cannons ignite a charge of acetylene gas in a specially designed blast chamber releasing an explosive pressure wave creating a cavitation effect which disrupts the formation process of the hail stone embryo." Among others, USA Today has covered them. (Photo from HailCannon.com.)

Today Boing Boing picked up on a good post by Nacken, who said "This weekend we went to the [Piedmont] Roero wine area and after a loooong lunch we sat with friends outside and looked fearfully at the looming, darker growing clouds. When suddenly we heard a loud boom in the distance. Followed by more booms closer by … and within minutes it sounded like we were in the middle of a WW1 battlefield....Totally baffled about what was going on, the locals explained to us that this is the noise of air cannons, which shoot hot, compressed air against the clouds in order to prevent hail." Nacken includes a video, recommended for those who want to hear the sound of the cannons.

Is this an example of the triumph of hope over evidence? The Wikipedia page on hail cannons reviews the scientific evidence (not favorably, I might add): "There is very little empirical evidence in favor of the effectiveness of these devices. A 2006 review by Jon Wieringa and Iwan Holleman in the journal Meteorologische Zeitschrift summarized a variety of negative and inconclusive scientific measurements, concluding that "the use of cannons or explosive rockets is waste of money and effort. From a theoretical perspective there is reason to doubt that hail cannons are effective. For example, thunder is a much more powerful sonic wave, and is usually found in the same storm that generates hail, yet doesn't seem to disturb the growth of hailstones." You can see the research for yourself in If cannons cannot fight hail, what else? [17-page pdf here]. Here's how the authors explain it in their abstract: "Hail suppression is an uncertain meteorological subject in premature agricultural servitude. Commonly known is the method of seeding menacing cumulonimbus clouds with silver iodide by means of rockets or aircraft flares. Less discussed but widely practised alternatives are also reviewed here, in particular the useless but still quite popular practice to attempt destroying hailstones with explosives or with sound blasts from so-called hail cannons."

Those who don't know the history of hail cannons are condemned to repeat it. A 1981 Bulletin American Meteorological Society article, History Repeated: The Forgotten Hail Cannons of Europe, reminded readers that this attempt at weather modification had been tried at the turn of the century... as in 1900, the turn of the *20th* century [8-page pdf here]. But it "went unnoticed by the 'pioneers' of 1950-1970."

Wherever hail cannons go, cranky neighbors can't be far behind. Unwelcome noise has become a key component of the hail cannon experience. Fox News has reported on disagreements in Vermont over hail cannon noise: "Scientists snicker at such devices. But farmers swear by 'em. As for the neighbors, they just swear." In 2004, WLBT reported that a Jackson, Mississippi Nissan automobile dealership was using hail cannons to protect the cars on its sales lot. "The sound at ground zero is about 120 decibels, or about the same as a tornado warning siren. Workers are installing fences around two of the machines in the 140-acre parking lot at Nissan and filling the fences with hay in an effort to reduce the sound level."

Emerging trend? Anti-bird cannons. Absurd Intellectual is wondering if hail cannons work on crows. And other flavors of cannons are also causing controversy: In some areas, people are using propane cannons to keep birds away from berry crops -- which has prompted creation of the anti-anti-bird-cannon site called Ban the Cannons.

New financial regulation agency is supposed to consider evidence of human behavior.

Again, it's not just the evidence that matters, but how it's presented. In the weekend Wall Street Journal, Jason Zweig presents insightful analysis about science and evidence as it applies to regulating financial institutions (behind paywall). In About Time: Regulation Based on Human Nature, Zweig says "A key component of President Obama's financial-reform package is its proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which would apply findings from the science of human behavior to ensure 'transparency, simplicity, fairness, and access' for borrowers, savers and other financial consumers.... In my view, a behavioral approach is decades overdue. Financial regulations always have been written mainly by lawyers and legislators -- then promptly shot full of holes by promoters who understand how real human beings think and behave.

"Lawyers think that the mere disclosure of risks and conflicts of interest provides the information that investors or consumers need. That is a fantasy. Faced with 47 pages' worth of 'Risk Factors,' investors come away with a warm glow of safety; risks that seem hard to understand appear unlikely to happen, and people who provide you with lots of detail seem likely to be honest. To inform anyone, information has to be accessible." Amen to that.

Zweig is a big fan of the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. "The central idea in 'Nudge' is what Profs. Thaler and Sunstein call 'choice architecture' -- the context, format and framing of how decisions are presented to consumers. You will eat more nuts from a big bowl than from a small bowl. You will choose surgery if you are told it offers a 90% chance of survival; you will reject it if you are told there is a 10% chance it will kill you. The same people who would skip investing in a 401(k) if they had to 'opt in' to the plan will participate if they have to 'opt out' in order to skip it."

Thaler and Sunstein elaborate in an interview on amazon.com, "Amazon.com: What do you mean by 'nudge' and why do people sometimes need to be nudged? Thaler and Sunstein: By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front. We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gentling nudging them in directions that will make their lives better.

"Amazon.com: What are some of the situations where nudges can make a difference? Thaler and Sunstein: Well, to name just a few: better investments for everyone, more savings for retirement, less obesity, more charitable giving, a cleaner planet, and an improved educational system. We could easily make people both wealthier and healthier by devising friendlier choice environments, or architectures.

"Amazon.com: Can you describe a nudge that is now being used successfully? Thaler and Sunstein: One example is the Save More Tomorrow program. Firms offer employees who are not saving very much the option of joining a program in which their saving rates are automatically increased whenever the employee gets a raise. This plan has more than tripled saving rates in some firms, and is now offered by thousands of employers.

"Amazon.com: What is 'choice architecture' and how does it affect the average person's daily life? Thaler and Sunstein: ...The architecture includes rules deciding what happens if you do nothing; what's said and what isn't said; what you see and what you don't. Doctors, employers, credit card companies, banks, and even parents are choice architects. We show that by carefully designing the choice architecture, we can make dramatic improvements in the decisions people make, without forcing anyone to do anything. For example, we can help people save more and invest better in their retirement plans, make better choices when picking a mortgage, save on their utility bills, and improve the environment simultaneously." 

In his WSJ piece, Zweig may be a bit overenthusiastic in saying that the Obama "proposal is an outgrowth of 'Nudge'". It's not as if the coverage is all about "choice architecture" -- see Factbox or FindLaw, for example. However, Sunstein has been nominated to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, a role sometimes described as "the regulation czar." In reading the coverage of the proposal for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, But the debate over how to regulate financial institutions ain't over yet; it's complicated and stakeholders will fight hard to protect their turf. The one thing I know for sure is that we desperately need to use evidence more creatively, transparently, and comprehensively. For that, I am grateful to folks like Thaler and Sunstein.

More evidence that torture doesn't always lead to the truth.

Since 9/11, it's been extremely difficult to gather evidence on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of recent torture tactics. For the record, I'm a big fan of 24. But tonight there's new evidence that things still don't work the same way in real life as on TV. The LA Times says "Accused Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA even after undergoing punishing bouts of interrogation, according to documents made public Monday.

"His claim will probably intensify the debate over the George W. Bush administration's use of harsh techniques to gain information from terrorism suspects....'I make up stories,' Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA that concerned the location of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.... Monday's disclosure, representing a rare allegation by a detainee that he lied while subjected to harsh practices, also could raise new questions about whether the techniques worked. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, said the statements raised questions about the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation program. 'It underscores the unreliability of statements obtained by torture,' said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.

But the CIA took issue with the description of the techniques as methods of torture that were not useful. 'The CIA plainly has a very different take on its past interrogation practices -- what they were and what they weren't -- and on the need to protect properly classified national security information,' said Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman. "

Obama isn't exactly the poster child for transparency, either. ACLU's Ben Wizner, part of the National Security Project, appeared tonight (Monday) on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show. He showed statements that had previously been released by the Bush Administration, consisting of a page with the entire text blacked out -- um, "redacted" -- and then showed the same page as released by the Obama administration, with just a few words made visible (un-redacted?). Wizner said it made him feel like the Obama team was just saying "keep the change". According to the Public Record, "'The documents released today provide further evidence of brutal torture and abuse in the CIA's interrogation program and demonstrate beyond doubt that this information has been suppressed solely to avoid embarrassment and growing demands for accountability,' said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project and lead attorney on the FOIA lawsuit. 'There is no legitimate basis for the Obama administration's continued refusal to disclose allegations of detainee abuse, and we will return to court to seek the full release of these documents.'"

BEAR model produces evidence that aggressive acceleration of clean energy assures faster, sustained economic growth.

A recent report, Energy Pathways for the California Economy, evaluates California's energy demand and supply horizons and predicts the economic impact of alternative energy sources. Based on results from the Berkeley Energy and Resources (BEAR) model, the researchers conclude that clean energy will grow the economy significantly faster than traditional sources will. The authors are David Roland-Holst and Fredrich Kahrl (Berkeley), whose work was funded by Next 10, a group "focused on innovation and the intersection between the economy, environment, and quality of life issues". You can download the 8-page executive summary here (pdf), see the press release here, or get the full report here (107-page pdf).

Clearly a lot of effort went into this report. But I wish the evidence had been presented more concisely and clearly, so people could get a quicker grasp of what evidence was used, and what assumptions were made to arrive at these predictions. Overall, the work is fairly transparent, and lots of charts are provided -- it's just not presented as nicely as it might be. For instance, the authors could give us tables and graphics summarizing key factors influencing the findings: What variables are they watching, in a nutshell? How does their model work, in plain English?

Top findings. The executive summary includes these conclusions:

• "From electricity to transportation, projecting status quo demand and supply horizons portends ever greater reliance on out-of-state fuel sources, and therefore greater exposure to fuel price volatility.
• "Five alternative forecasting scenarios show that the faster and farther California can improve household and enterprise energy efficiency, while accelerating deployment of renewable energy resources, the faster the state economy will grow and create jobs. The most ambitious scenario (50 percent renewable energy; 1.5 percent annual efficiency increases) produces the largest number of additional jobs and income – generating half a million new FTE jobs with over $100 billion in cumulative payrolls over 40 years.
• "Overall, from electricity to transportation, greater reliance on fuel imports means California will become even more vulnerable to external price and supply shocks. The carbon fuel supply is among the very least employment intensive economic activities, even before considering how these expenditures leak outside the state and national economies to foreign energy sources.
  Energy efficiency saves money and stimulates the economy through expenditure shifting, away from import-dependent carbon fuels and toward employment intensive in-state goods and services. Comparing the employment content of output across over a hundred different economic activities reveals this expenditure shifting can have a dramatic net effect on job creation. The disparity between job growth from a dollar spent on fossil fuels and one spent on services is so great that a logarithmic scale is needed to display it. Simply put, a dollar saved on traditional energy is a dollar earned by 10-100 times as many new workers."

It's a bear. The BEAR model is "a constellation of research tools designed to elucidate economy-environment linkages in California." The authors describe the four generic components of the model and explain how they interact. "BEAR is being developed in four areas and implemented over two time horizons. Components: 1. Core GE model. 2. Technology module. 3. Emissions Policy Analysis. 4. Transportation services/demand. (page 81)"

The equations of the model are documented elsewhere, so the authors discuss only the structural components. "Technically, a CGE model is a system of simultaneous equations that simulate price-directed interactions between firms and households in commodity and factor markets. The role of government, capital markets, and other trading partners are also specified, with varying degrees of detail and passivity, to close the model and account for economywide resource allocation, production, and income determination. The role of markets is to mediate exchange, usually with a flexible system of prices, the most important endogenous variables in a typical CGE model. As in a real market economy, commodity and factor price changes induce changes in the level and composition of supply and demand, production and income, and the remaining endogenous variables in the system.... The resulting calibrated general equilibrium model is then used to simulate the economy-wide (and regional) effects of alternative policies or external events. The distinguishing feature of a general equilibrium model, applied or theoretical, is its closed-form specification of all activities in the economic system under study. This can be contrasted with more traditional partial equilibrium analysis, where linkages to other domestic markets and agents are deliberately excluded from consideration. "

"A large and growing body of evidence suggests that indirect effects (e.g., upstream and downstream production linkages) arising from policy changes are not only substantial, but may in some cases even outweigh direct effects. Only a model that consistently specifies economywide interactions can fully assess the implications of economic policies or business strategies. In a multi-country model like the one used in this study, indirect effects include the trade linkages between countries and regions which themselves can have policy implications. The model we use for this work has been constructed according to generally accepted specification standards, implemented in the GAMS programming language, and calibrated to the new California SAM [Social Accounting Matrix] estimated for the year 2003. The result is a single economy model calibrated over the fifteen-year time path from 2005 to 2020. (page 78)"

Obama budget cuts target the Even Start educational program, citing lack of supporting evidence. But some of the evidence says it works.

President Obama has asked officials to cut budgets for programs that can't produce evidence showing they're effective. Alas, it's not so easy inside the Beltway: Even the most illogical things have constituencies. When I was studying for my doctorate in Policy Analysis, we read *entire books* evaluating well-known failures to end useless programs -- one of them was about a failed attempted to eliminate the U.S. Cavalry in modern-day America.

On this year's hit list is an educational program called Even Start: A very well-intentioned program that seems to have been designed carefully, with success indicators clearly identified. But some say it doesn't make enough difference to justify its cost -- the Bush administration also tried to eliminate it, without success.

In discussions over the 2010 U.S. budget, Even Start has been a target for cuts. Here's an excerpt from a conference call including someone named "Senior Administration Official" (no kidding):

"And then finally as another example of a program that the administration supports the goals of but that the evidence suggests is not working very well -- Even Start.  Even Start is a early education -- early childhood education program -- and obviously the President and the administration feel very strongly that early childhood education done in a high-quality way is crucially important and have provided additional funds both through the Recovery Act and in the budget that we will be releasing tomorrow for early childhood education. However, a variety of studies of Even Start have suggested that that program does not work well. The most recent evaluation, for example, found out of 41 outcomes that were measured between families in the program and families that were not, that there was only a difference in outcomes on 38 out of -- I'm sorry, there was no difference on 38 out of the 41 outcomes. So we are proposing that Even Start be eliminated even while we are investing in other programs that do work, including Early Head Start and Head Start."

But wait: The evidence-based handbook says Even Start might work.The 2006 Evidence-Based Practices and Programs for Early Childhood Care and Education reports conflicting findings: A 1996 study showed some promising results, but findings were weaker in 2003. From page 72:

Trying to measure outcomes, not intentions. Back to the White House conference call: "We're trying to cut back on the things that don't work, invest more in the things that do.  And I just gave you five examples of things that we think do not work and that are part of this overall effort to reduce spending and achieve budgetary savings of $17 billion in 2010 alone.... Q: A couple of questions for both of you. You mentioned first Even Start. That is a program that President Bush targeted and got a lot of pushback from Democrats, a lot of pushback from liberal advocacy groups who said that that assessment that you're citing was flawed and the program obviously still is alive. A), why do you think you're going to have more success this year than President Bush had in the past?

"...With regard to Even Start more broadly, I guess maybe the more important point is the more broad point about achieving success.  Clearly a key thing is congressional support for these changes.  None of this is going to be easy and no one ever pretended that it would be.  But we are trying to do the right thing here and I think the context has significantly changed.  I will again say, for example, Speaker Pelosi has tasked her committee chairs with reporting back on ways to save money by the beginning of June.  So the effort to look for efficiencies is not just the administration, it's working in concert with the Congress. And I'd be happy to have a longer discussion about the evidence on that particular program, but I think the evidence is unfortunately clear that this specific early childhood education program does not work very well, which is why we're proposing to eliminate it.  But there are other early childhood education programs that do, which is why the Recovery Act included $5 billion for Head Start, Early Head Start, and related programs.  And the budget that we're releasing tomorrow will provide additional funds for those kinds of evidence-based activities.

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Can I just add, just to piggyback on my colleague's last point, Jonathan, that we're interested in measuring programs by their outcomes, not by their intentions. There are a lot of programs that are implemented with the best of intentions; not all of them are effective. And we can't afford to carry programs that are ineffective. The President's commitment to early childhood education is well known and I think reflected in the commitments that my colleague cited.  But what we're not going to do is we're not going to hold back in terms of eliminating programs simply because of their intentions.  And yes, as he said, there will be some struggles here.  There are very few programs in the federal budget that don't have a constituency and someone who's willing to stand up for them in Congress; we understand that.  But there's an overriding national need here and we intend to meet that responsibility."

It will be interesting to see what happens. Can evidence outweigh emotion?

Think kids these days are taking more responsibility for the environment? The evidence might surprise you.

Despite recent hype, new evidence suggests that youth may not be taking more responsibility for the environment than in earlier generations. The research findings appear in the journal Environment and Behavior. In Examining Trends in Adolescent Environmental Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors Across Three Decades, the authors conclude "Since the Environmental Movement began, adolescents’ views have been largely ignored in studies of public opinion. The article presents a descriptive analysis of trends in the environmental attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of high school seniors from 1976 to 2005 using data from the Monitoring the Future study. Across a range of indicators, environmental concerns of adolescents show increases during the early 1990s and declines across the remainder of the three decades. Declining trends in reports of personal responsibility for the environment, conservation behaviors, and the belief that resources are scarce are particularly noteworthy. Across all years, findings reveal that youth tended to assign responsibility for the environment to the government and consumers rather than accepting personal responsibility. Recent declines in environmental concerns for this nationally representative sample of youth signal the need for a renewed focus on young people’s views and call for better environmental education and governmental leadership."

Aren't we all consumers? I love it when people refer to "consumers" as a separate group, as if we're not all consuming stuff every day.

So much for Al Gore's movie. Miller-McCune recapped the research in 'Generation Green' Environmentally Oblivious: "Young people, in the popular imagination, are more environmentally conscious than the rest of us. But a new analysis of 30 years worth of data suggests that if we're waiting for a child to lead us out of the wilderness of environmental degradation, we may be waiting a long time.  Except for a brief blip in the early 1990s, high school seniors expressed decreasing levels of concern about environmental issues between 1976 and 2005, and were less willing to engage in earth-friendly behaviors such as conserving energy.... 'Clearly, the average high school student across the past three decades has not viewed himself or herself as the first line of defense in protecting the environment,' the scholars conclude. They add that the high school seniors surveyed 'tended to see government, and people in general, as more responsible for environmental problems than they themselves felt.'”