Evidence Soup

Evidence-based policing Hall of Fame: Call for nominations.

Excellent. There's an Evidence-Based Policing Hall of Fame, recognizing "innovative law enforcement practitioners who have been central to the implementation of a high quality research program in their affiliated agency, highlighting individual excellence in both using and conducting policing research". The project is sponsored by the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University (Fairfax, VA, USA - @cebcp on Twitter).

They've issued a call for nominations for the Hall of Fame. They're looking for people who:

• Are central to the implementation of a documented, rigorous scientific evaluation in their affiliated agency in which a police intervention, tactic, strategy, or deployment was tested for effectiveness.
• Demonstrate a record of incorporating evidence-based practices in their agency. For example, strategies with characteristics of interventions falling within the 'realms of effectiveness' of the Evidence-Based Policing Matrix.

Nominees must have police practitioner experience, either sworn or civilian.

Why do we frown on health guidelines that are based on expert knowledge? Sometimes that's the current, best evidence.

Is a medical guideline useless if it's not based on randomized, controlled trials? How much is expert knowledge (or opinion) worth? I'm asking myself these questions after reading Analysis of Overall Level of Evidence Behind Infectious Diseases Society of America Practice Guidelines, a new article in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Findings revealed that more than half of the associated recommendations are based on Level III evidence (expert opinion).

The question of how to weigh recommendations is relevant not only to healthcare professionals, but also to people in business, government, and the non-profit sector. I learned about these new findings via Gary Schwitzer's excellent Health News Review, which asked "New questions about medicine's 'best practice' guidelines: evidence or opinion?" (on Twitter: @HealthNewsRevu).

What's the fuss about? According to the abstract, the study analyzed 41 Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) guidelines encompassing 4,218 individual recommendations. This analysis considered both the strength of recommendation (Levels A through C) and overall quality of evidence (Levels I through III). The researchers concluded that: "More than half of the current recommendations of the IDSA are based on level III evidence only. Until more data from well-designed controlled clinical trials become available, physicians should remain cautious when using current guidelines as the sole source guiding patient care decisions." (Ahem. Shouldn't they "remain cautious" even when recommendations are based on "better" evidence? Otherwise aren't they at risk of practicing cookie-cutter medicine?)

Sometimes expert knowledge *is* the current, best evidence. The basis of evidence-based management is making decisions based on current, best evidence: Randomized, controlled experiments are great. But they're not always available -- or in many fields, even possible. We can't disregard other forms of evidence: We're much better off systematically weighing the fuzzier evidence than we are disregarding everything that doesn't fit the narrow definition of 'Level I' evidence.

Here's a recap of the study findings:

• Quality of evidence. 14% of the recommendations were based on Level I evidence, 31% on Level II, and 55% on level III.
• Strength of recommendation. The investigators explain that among the Level A (strong) recommendations, 23% were based on Level I evidence (1 randomized controlled trial), while 37% were based on expert opinion only (Level III).

Maybe not apples & oranges, but different varieties of apples. The guideline story was widely covered in the medical media, including Fierce Health and Reuters. Reuters oversimplified the situation, saying "more than half the recommendations relied solely on expert opinion or anecdotal evidence." Okay, but that's what 'Level C' is for: To indicate a relatively weak recommendation. And since when is expert opinion not valuable?

Buyer beware. Here's what the Infectious Diseases Society says about its practice guidelines: They "are systematically developed statements to assist practitioners and patients in making decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances [Institute of Medicine Committee to Advise the Public Health Service on Clinical Practice Guidelines, 1990]. Attributes of good guidelines include validity, reliability, reproducibility, clinical applicability, clinical flexibility, clarity, multidisciplinary process, review of evidence, and documentation. It is important to realize that guidelines cannot always account for individual variation among patients. They are not intended to supplant physician judgment with respect to particular patients or special clinical situations. IDSA considers adherence to the guidelines... to be voluntary, with the ultimate determination regarding their application to be made by the physician in the light of each patient’s individual circumstances."

 

Power Balance admits there's no evidence to support their claims about the bracelets (in Australia, anyway).

As reported on Gizmodo and other media outlets, the Power Balance folks have admitted there's no scientific evidence to support their claims that the hologram bracelets improve strength, balance, and flexibility. I wrote about these things last year in How do those Power Balance bracelets work? I think it's because of the 20-Hz difference between a genius and an ascending colon. and later in Again with the Power Balance bracelets.

In Australia, the Power Balance company has published an admission in the media and is offering refunds. Their statement says "In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility. We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct."

Is there a pattern of evidence that helps predict terrorist attacks?

The Physics of Terror, a new article by Miller McCune, talks about developing a statistical view of global terrorism. The evidence suggests that 'little' terrorism does tell us something about 'big' terrorism - at odds with the conventional viewpoint (they're @MillerMcCune on Twitter).

Michael Haederle writes "After studying four decades of terrorism, Aaron Clauset thinks he’s found mathematical patterns that can help governments prevent and prepare for major terror attacks. The U.S. government seems to agree." The article quotes Clauset - a researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico - saying "there are patterns in the way terrorists’ campaigns progress and the frequency and severity of the attacks.... This gives you hope that terrorism is understandable from a scientific perspective.”

Statistically connections. Haederly acknowledges that this evidence won't predict specific attacks. But he believes it could help government agencies set priorities and allocate resources. Here's what Clauset has discovered in the evidence: "[T]errorism can be described by what mathematicians call a power law. Unlike the familiar bell curve..., a power law distribution produces a wide range of highly dissimilar events.

"Using this power law relationship - called 'scale invariance' - the risk of a large attack can be estimated by studying the frequency of small attacks. 'The conventional viewpoint has been there is ‘little terrorism’ and ‘big terrorism,’ and little terrorism doesn’t tell you anything about big terrorism,' Clauset explains. 'The power law says that’s not true.'”

What does the evidence say about the 2008 U.S. economic stimulus plan? Depends who you ask.

Alan Greenspan often struggled to explain his decision-making process. There's so much complexity in a modern economy that it's difficult for experts to grasp, much less explain, all the evidence - and God help the rest of us.

Dueling PhDs? Economics is one of the those fields where there's so much data that a clever person can find bits of evidence to support most any point of view. I'm not saying there's no concrete evidence, or that there are no meaningful patterns waiting to be discovered. But to the non-expert, it's often tough to know what (or who) to believe: What we see are pieces and parts of the evidence.

The post mortems on the 2008 U.S. economic stimulus plan are no exception. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal featured an editorial claiming the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) was ineffective. In The Obama Stimulus Impact? Zero, John Cogan and John Taylor of the Hoover Institution say the "economic data rolling in confirm that recent temporary, targeted stimulus programs have not worked, and that their enactment was a triumph of Keynesian wishful-thinking over practical experience. In September 2009, we reported on this page empirical research showing that the temporary tax rebates and transfer payments in the Bush and Obama administration's stimulus programs were ineffective. Here we consider new data on the impact of increases in government purchases, which were heralded as a major stimulating factor in the Obama package."

But wait. Other researchers offer findings showing that the stimulus helped end the recession. But making things even more complicated, some of that research looked at the entire government policy response to our economic downturn, including bank bailouts - not just ARRA spending. Economists Mark Zandi and Alan Blinder (from Moody's Analytics and Princeton Univ.) have published such findings, including the paper How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End [download the pdf here].

Getting things out in the open. Zandi and Taylor (both cited above) have debated the stimulus question in the media. Here's a link to a discussion on the PBS News Hour: Did Stimulus Funding Help or Hurt U.S. Economy in the Long Run?

You win some, and you lose some. In October, Daniel J. Wilson of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco published a working paper concluding, among other things, that "The estimated jobs multiplier for total nonfarm employment is large and statistically significant for ARRA spending... but falls considerably and is statistically insignificant beyond March. The implied number of jobs created or saved by the spending is about 2.0 million as of March, but drops to near zero as of August." His findings appear in Fiscal Spending Jobs Multipliers: Evidence from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [download the pdf here].

 

Interview Wednesday: Denise Rousseau, enthusiastic champion of evidence-based management (and university professor).

Today we talk with Denise Rousseau, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and self-described inter-galactic champion of evidence-based management. She's active in the Academy of Management and is one of the organizers behind Evidencebased-Management.com. (I've written before about Denise's efforts: In 2007, I discussed her article Is There Such a Thing as Evidence-Based Management? [get the pdf here] and later, about meetups of the Evidence-based Management Collaborative.)

The Five Questions.
#1. What got you interested in evidence?
After 30 years of research and teaching MBAs, I came to realize how little our own MBAs really understood about management research findings, and even worse, how seldom they used research findings in their decision making. Well, that is not quite right, my finance colleagues have students and alums who use financial research findings, ditto for my operations research colleagues. It is management students (HR, strategy, organizational behavior) who didn't know and don't use research findings.

Then, horror of horrors, as Academy of Management president, I started getting emails from AOM members who were less academic research-oriented, complaining about how our journals were no help in their teaching or consulting. My first reaction was to feel bad for them, since AOM wasn't being useful to them in terms of professional updating. And then I stopped and thought about it further. In my own teaching, I periodically have to update and alter what I teach, because new findings make the old obsolete. Why weren't other people feeling the same need? Then it hit me: What if our educators and consultants aren't using the evidence in their work? Inquiry led me to the realization that both in the classroom and professional practice, lots of people with doctorates in fields related to management were ignoring current evidence, or acting on hunches and impressions that bore no connection to the huge, rich evidence base we have in social science and management. (Long answer, but that's how I got started.)

What types of evidence do you work with most often (medical, business research, statistics, social science, etc.)?
Business and social science research, quantitative, qualitative, meta-analyses, etc. Depends on what the issue or the problem requires.

What is your involvement with evidence: applying it, advocating its use, researching/developing it, synthesizing/explaining/translating it, communicating it?
I try to do all of the above. Applying in my own life as I teach from an evidence-based perspective, consult and advise based on evidence from science as well as facts of the organizational setting itself. Research is still my great love, but if it is seldom used, even the most wonderful research has less value than it would otherwise.

I now do more work trying to integrate different literatures - to understand what the core findings are, and am writing more translation pieces. The latter is the absolute hardest, as writing for colleagues is more of an in-group language, and plain English is not my forte....but I am working on it!

Where do you go looking for evidence, and what types of sources do you prefer? (formally published stuff such as journals, or something less formalized?)
I am a big library-search engine data base user - sometimes I think I’m a reference librarian at heart. Once I start searching a) I always find useful things related to the question I am pursuing, and b) come across fascinating other things I want to know about in the process (this is a huge distraction sometimes, otherwise a very fulfilling discovery)! So I like ABI/Inform best, along with psychological research databases.

#2. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10= ‘It’s crystal clear.’ and 1=’We have no idea why things are happening.’, how would you describe the overall “state of the evidence” in your primary field?
I am trained as an industrial psychologist, and I think in what we have studied for the most part we are "8".
The field is cumulative, and we know a lot about a) motivation, b) selection, c) performance (especially individual), and d) employment relationships, including the psychological contract.

Which of these situations is most common in your field?
a) Much of the evidence we need doesn’t yet exist.
b) People don't know about the evidence that is available.
c) People don't understand the evidence well enough to apply it.
d) People don’t follow the evidence because it's not the expectation.

"B". People just don't know - and for the most part, academics don't teach behavioral evidence to management students. Instead we use cases, pop theory, and give them little opportunity to practice applying research findings.

#3. Imagine a world where people can get the evidence they need, and exchange it easily and transparently. What barriers do you believe are preventing that world from becoming a reality?
Access is a huge problem, complicated by journals and proprietary data bases seeking to profit by restricting access. In my ideal world, not only would a literate college-educated person know about using evidence in their professional work, but they also would have been trained in accessing it while in University so that upon graduation they could stay updated (and their University would give them electronic library privileges as alums, so they could easily do this).

Alums would form communities of practice to help each other keep up-to-date, and more attention would be given to professional and exec updating on what the science says as pertains to professional practice. It would be a normal part of developing expertise over the course of a career. Now we are producing too many confident amateurs who don't know what they don't know, and they have the degree to prove it.

Where do you see technology making things better?
Accessibility, improved searching strategies, relational databases, update alerts when new content in an area is put on the web.

#4. How do you prefer to share evidence with people, and explain it to them? Do you have a systematic way of doing it, or is there a format that you follow?
In all honesty, I follow the template of Julia Child's approach to mastering the art of French cooking: State the general principle (what is sauce?), the forms it comes in (Hollandaise, Bernaise...), and what should you watch for when you make it and what to do if a problem turns up. Julia was a master behaviorist, I am convinced.

So in terms of evidence, I’ve found that focusing on core principles, simple statement of what the finding is (set specific goals to improve performance). Then discuss conditions of use (procedural knowledge, like how many goals can be set at one time, 5 or fewer, per cognitive limits on attention) and contingencies (What if it doesn't work? Well, the effect of goals depends on the people have accepted them. Did you set goals in a way that is legitimate and credible to the people involved?).

What mistakes do you see people making when they explain evidence?
Too much backstory (the five theories that came before this one, the theoretical controversies that remain) - and not enough about what's in it for the end user.

#5. What do you want your legacy to be?
I’d like to be remembered for helping managers and people in organizations make better, more thoughtful, more ethical decisions.

What makes you hopeful?
I have more and more students and alums who just assume that evidence is what a good manager incorporates into his or her thinking and actions. Like, if you aren't using evidence, can you really be a responsible decision maker/professional?

Thanks, Denise.

____________________________

Chime in. Would you like to be interviewed, or do you have someone to recommend? Drop me a note at tracy AT evidencesoup DOT com.

Restoring evidence-based sanity: Finally, a rally sign we can all get behind.

I saw several amusing signs* in the coverage of last week's Restoring Sanity rally, but this one's the winner. All together, everybody!

What do we want?
Evidence-based change!
When do we want it?
After peer review!

Thanks to Ashley Welde, Director of Evidence-Based Communications at Burson-Marsteller, for this. She saw it in Restoring Sanity, One Journal Article at a Time on The Monkey Cage (a blog inspired by H. L. Mencken: "Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage."). They spotted the sign on Inside Higher Ed.

*Other signs I liked:

• "I can see Reason from my house."
• "Correctly spelled slogan."
• "Soylent green is people!"
• "I will respect your opinion as soon as you stop making sh*t up!"
• "I want more tortillas when I order fajitas at a restaurant."

 

 

Interview Wednesday with Terri Griffith (management professor at Santa Clara University).

For today's Interview Wednesday, we talk with Terri Griffith, a Professor of Management in the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. I've known Terri for several years, and admire how she strives to maintain high standards for evidence-based decision-making, while also staying realistic (as she says below, we can confidently explain about 67% of the things we study). She writes a blog called Technology and Organizations; you can follow her on Twitter @terrigriffith.

The Five Questions.
#1. What got you interested in evidence?
"My interest in the hard sciences carried over to my career in the social sciences. I give a great deal of credit to the faculty at UC Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon for helping me see the power of methods and good measurement. It probably also helps that I do most of my work in science, engineering, & software companies. They expect to make decisions with evidence - though most of the time I think they are surprised that I agree."

What types of evidence do you work with most often (medical, business research, statistics, social science, etc.)?
"Social science and business research."

What is your involvement with evidence: applying it, advocating its use, researching/developing it, synthesizing/explaining/translating it, communicating it?
"All of the above. In my teaching I try and instill an understanding for the value of evidence and some basic around how to collect it. I’ll admit it’s one of the toughest issues to convey in a general management class - but it’s also an opportunity to demonstrate how different business courses give you different approaches for collecting and evaluating evidence.

"My colleagues and I do research based on social science techniques. The underlying effort and care is sometimes a surprise to our enterprise collaborators. I recall a pharma company being taken aback that we needed contact with hundreds of teams to effectively answer a particular question. Yes, it would have been a lot of work, but so was the resulting value and quality of the answer. Unfortunately the project wasn’t being driven at a high enough level for the project to go through. I have high hopes that a culture of evidence is growing. Companies like Google and Yahoo! are doing a lot to demonstrate the value of large scale studies before making a decision. I especially love Marissa Mayer’s (Google) 'Data is Apolitical.'

"...and my colleagues and I often have to develop custom assessment tools before beginning a new project. Right now we’re working on an assessment tool for Systems Savvy."

Where do you go looking for evidence, and what types of sources do you prefer? (formally published stuff such as journals, or something less formalized?)
"Top tier peer-reviewed journals tend to be my first stop. I’m typically looking for something very specific and am likely to know the people involved and their approach to the work. I love thinking about how I used to do that in 1980 and how I do it now (a combination of Google Scholar and our University library’s resources). Gartner and Forrester are also excellent resources for demonstrating a trend or business perceptions around a topic. They have access to sources that most academics can’t parallel."

#2. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 10=‘It’s crystal clear.’ and 1=’We have no idea why things are happening.’, how would you describe the overall “state of the evidence” in your primary field?
"5 -- As I tell my students, I can give them great confidence about 67% of behavior."

Which of these situations is most common in your field?
a) Much of the evidence we need doesn’t yet exist.
b) People don't know about the evidence that is available.
c) People don't understand the available evidence well enough to apply it successfully.
d) People don’t follow the evidence because “evidence-based” is not the expectation.

"Answering in terms of how practitioners would apply my research:
a) Much of the evidence we need doesn’t yet exist. Again, hoping that we are developing a 'culture of evidence' in organizations. I look forward to the day when it is common for organizations to approach the business school to answer burning questions. This will require a combination of my colleagues and I being able to move more quickly and there being greater value placed on the answers we find.

"also d) People don’t follow the evidence because 'evidence-based' is not the expectation. Social science research methods and results are not well known. The translation from a statistical finding to a dollar amount is often not direct and unexpected."

#3. Imagine a world where people can get the evidence they need, and exchange it easily and transparently. What barriers do you believe are preventing that world from becoming a reality?
"Combination of the above. If we just take the case of academic research and think about the underlying data, we see that compatibility and standards are a big issue.  The National Science Foundation is working on this one both in terms of how they make researchers deal with data transparency and in their funding of repositories and systems for sharing in the research process and data. Barriers are coming down, just not quickly."

Where do you see technology making things better?
"I'm hoping for a 'semantic web' of data. Something where variable names wouldn’t have to be identical for data to be matched. Google is trying to help: Google Fusion Tables."

#4. How do you prefer to share evidence with people, and explain it to them? Do you have a systematic way of doing it, or is there a format that you follow?
"Depends on the audience, and for other academics, it depends on the setting. Formal presentation, looks a lot like a journal article in terms of the flow. That’s the language that people are expecting. If it’s a shorter event, then it begins to look more like a public presentation. There I go with the story and then drill down where proof is needed. Love what Decker Communication calls 'human scale.' One example had to do with the cost of a bottle of water versus tap. They present the number in terms of how many years you could drink a bottle of tap water a day before you would hit the cost of a single bottle of brand-name water."

What mistakes do you see people making when they explain evidence?
"How about the mistakes I make...? I assume my business students have the same implicit understanding of modeling that I do. I’ll start drawing a box and arrow diagram and talking about the statistical significance, and then I realize I’ve lost most of them. I think I get excited about the idea and switch into a language that researchers take years to develop. No reason to expect the audience to speak that language."

#5. What do you want your legacy to be?
"I’d like to be remembered for making systems savvy a valued organizational skill. Systems savvy is the ability to weave technology tools, organizational practices, and human capabilities together for consistently powerful organizational performance. I see systems savvy as being important on the same scale as goal setting. Most managers have a reasonable knowledge of goal setting. We have a strong base of evidence around goal setting’s value, and why it works, and how to teach it. I hope to be involved in taking systems savvy to the same place. The result would hopefully be a vast improvement in organizational performance and similar reduction in human frustration."

#6. What question do you wish we'd asked?
Terri: "When should evidence-based thinking be introduced in education?"
"In kindergarten. From math classes to current events, evidence-based thinking should be a foundation."

Chime in. Would you like to be interviewed, or do you have someone to recommend? Drop me a note at tracy AT evidencesoup DOT com.

Holy Bisphenol A, Batman! Is this stuff safe or not? Some stakeholders are guilty of evidence abuse.

It's a Mad World. With apologies to Tears for Fears: I think it's kinda funny, I think it's kinda sad, how the words we use to argue are the best we'll ever have. Public discourse about the plastic additive BPA keeps getting uglier. The misstatements, lack of transparency, and overuse of explanation points!!! are disturbing.

There's a difference between limiting BPA levels in food products and outright banning it from laptops, DVDs, and cash register receipts (yes, i said cash register receipts). But you wouldn't always know that based on what people are saying. And different agencies are taking conflicting positions on BPA: Also not helpful.

No wonder we're confused. The American Chemistry Council released a statement deploring recent actions in Canada, saying "Just days after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) once again confirmed that BPA is safe for use in food-contact items, Environment Canada's announcement is contrary to the weight of worldwide scientific evidence, unwarranted and will unnecessarily confuse and alarm the public. This puts Environment Canada at odds with the recent conclusions of EFSA, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, all of which have concluded that BPA is safe in contact with food. The decision also appears to contradict the very recent opinion of Health Canada, which stated in August that 'the current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and infants.'"

Scientific publications on BPA are, not surprisingly, full of geek speak. But the European Food Safety Authority published a press release that mere mortals can understand, saying:

"Following a detailed and comprehensive review of recent scientific literature and studies on the toxicity of bisphenol A at low doses, scientists on the EFSA CEF Panel conclude they could not identify any new evidence which would lead them to revise the current Tolerable Daily Intake [TDI] for BPA of 0.05 mg/kg body weight.... The Panel also state that the data currently available do not provide convincing evidence of neurobehavioural toxicity of BPA."

We need a straightforward synthesis. I'd love to see a table, and some graphics, recapping the evidence on BPA (with links and references) and summarizing the whole debate. Can't find one (please let me know if you run across something like that... can you hear me, Evidence Chart?) Also, a consumer-friendly poster or "issue card" would be helpful next time someone from the Sierra Club or Heritage Foundation or whatever knocked on my door during dinner.

It's not all bad. I've seen reasonable discussions of BPA risk in the New Scientist. On Twitter, Joanne Manaster (@sciencegoddess) and Roger Highfield, the New Scientist editor, mentioned the recent article Bisphenol A is everywhere – is it safe? which claims that "Mounting evidence against a chemical we are exposed to daily is being ignored. What more do regulators need?" The two epidemiologist authors believe EFSA's recent action is "seemingly discounting much recent science", saying "Now new evidence has been published linking the chemical to possible health effects as an expert group of 38 researchers from around the world studying BPA issued a 'consensus statement' in the journal Reproductive Toxicology based on more than 700 studies." Though I'd appreciate the article more if it summarized relevant evidence in an easy-to-read graphic, and provided links/references.

But some is atrocious. Naively, some groups are breathlessly calling for policymakers to "ban BPA in all consumer products" and asking people to sign petitions to that effect - without presenting any evidence whatsoever. They seem unaware of the concept of acceptable (non-zero) limits, don't seem to understand the difference between a plastic food container and a DVD, and seem to ignore the benefits of BPA.

Effective use of social media. Refreshingly, the Hands Off My Plastic Stuff! initiative raises awareness, provides specifics, and references important evidence. Of course, they're on FaceBook and Twitter. They provide useful information with a light touch.

"BPA is metabolized very quickly, it has little time to circulate in our bodies and cause any effects. Moreover, those who label BPA endocrine disruptor, should take a second look at soya, which contains far higher amounts of estrogens."

And from Facebook: "There's a bunch of people who say we need to ban the plastic thing called BPA in all consumer products – all of them! – because they think it’s bad. Well I’ve got news for you. I may like the DVD Dumb and Dumber, but I don’t plan on scarfing it down any time soon. Nor do I plan on spending a lot of time licking my laptop. These people are extremists who want to ban plastic which means they’ll either wind up taking away some of my favorite stuff or making it a lot more expensive. I'm talking about stuff like CDs, Blu Ray players, ski goggles, soccer shin guards, laptops, car parts, coffee makers...."

Confronting the media's love for pseudoscience. Robert Goldberg recently wrote a column, Pseudoscience activists, trial lawyers use media to muddy debates, in the San Francisco Examiner, saying:

“Recently, EWG [Environmental Working Group] reported that BPA-containing receipts were a threat to consumers. Its researchers tested store receipts in a handful of D.C.-area stores and then, upon finding traces of BPA, announced that these receipts were dangerous to all who dare go grocery shopping. This 'study' did not even examine if BPA was absorbed into the body. That didn't stop EWG, or the media, from warning people around the world to stop taking receipts.

"Outlets ranging from Los Angeles Times to ABC to NPR's 'Science Friday' have dutifully taken stories that went viral on the Web and portrayed BPA as the biological equivalent of global warming.... [But] a recent scientific review of BPA by the European Food Safety Authority concluded there was no reason to ban BPA. The decision was highly anticipated by the scientific and regulatory community, and has large implications for European health and environmental policy. Yet, the EFSA decision received no coverage from the mainstream American media.

"BPA makes plastic more heat-resistant and transparent, and less prone to shatter. It has made medical devices safer, reduced the incidence of food-borne diseases such as botulism, and cuts down the amount of energy needed to ship thousands of products. Yet these benefits are rarely discussed.”

Challenging legislation. There's a sloppy art to presenting evidence that convinces people to sign petitions. There's a petition supporting a U.S. food safety bill, arguing that "The reason that botulism has been virtually eliminated in America is because we have perfected canning techniques using bisphenol A (BPA), which keeps food safe to eat over time. The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed bipartisan food safety legislation in July 2009. The effort was led by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), a champion of food safety on Capitol Hill. More than a full year later, the Senate still hasn't acted on this legislation. So what's the hold up? Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is trying to put a ban of BPA in the bill. But BPA is what keeps us safe from botulism!"

More on the media. Jeff Stier (JeffaStier), who until recently was with the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), mentioned the article By Reporting Bad Science As Fact, Biased Media Help Create Panics by the Hoover Institution's Henry Miller (thankfully, Dr. Miller and the Hoover Institution refrain from using lots of !!!).

"In the heated debate over the use and effects of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used in food packaging and hard plastic containers, Americans are being exposed to a largely phony war. BPA is a ubiquitous industrial chemical that for more than 50 years has been an important raw material in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics used in consumer products including beverage containers, infant feeding bottles, plastic dinnerware and plastic storage containers. BPA is also used in the lining of cans of food to prevent spoilage that can lead to bacterial contamination and the risk of botulism.

Numerous regulatory agencies in the U.S. and abroad have concluded repeatedly that BPA is safe as used and has not been shown to cause health problems in adults, children, or unborn babies. They regard the very few studies suggesting possible health concerns over BPA to be inconclusive and any such concerns to be overshadowed by the risk of replacing BPA with unproven, untested — or even more dangerous — alternatives. This is 'comparative risk assessment' in the real world."

Whew! I'm worn out.

Evidence shows genetically modified and conventional crops are good for each other: The corn is as high as an elephant's eye.

Recently published research demonstrates substantial benefits from genetically modified corn. Eryn Brown wrote about this in the LA Times story Genetically modified corn helps protect non-engineered cousins: "Planting genetically modified, pest-resistant corn can provide a halo effect — offering protection from insects to nearby corn plants that have not been engineered to kill bugs".

And the GM corn benefits from conventional crops. The modified crop is called Bt corn because it's been engineered with the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to resist the European corn borer. Rather than replace entire crops with the Bt variety, scientists theorized that planting some non-Bt corn would provide "refuges" for the pest, preventing it from developing Bt resistance. This appears to have worked: Both crop types are benefiting. (At least until Mother Nature gets creative and designs another pest.)

These findings appear in the Science article Areawide Suppression of European Corn Borer with Bt Maize Reaps Savings to Non-Bt Maize Growers, by Hutchison et al. From the abstract: "Using statistical analysis of per capita growth rate estimates, we found that areawide suppression of the... corn borer is associated with Bt maize use. Cumulative benefits over 14 years are an estimated $3.2 billion for maize growers in Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, with more than $2.4 billion of this total accruing to non-Bt maize growers."

You say 3%, I say cold, crazy cash. Scientists don't always keep the big picture in mind. According to the LA Times story, "Margaret Mellon, director of the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, which advises a cautious approach to genetically modified crops, wondered whether the savings attributed to Bt corn was enough to merit fanfare. By her estimates, the savings ran to only about 3% of the total value of the corn crop .... 'The benefits are real, but they're modest,' she said." Modest? Some of us don't think 3% of billions of dollars is modest.

And while we're talking about maize, here's an excellent poster by Jim Wark showing a wonderful corn maze here in Denver.

Actionable - and profitable - evidence? "This is the 'first time economists have estimated the benefits of Bt corn for non-Bt crops', according to study coauthor Paul Mitchell. Proving how well Bt corn works may, paradoxically, encourage farmers to plant less, not more, of the genetically modified crop in the future, in hopes that they could reap the benefits of Bt protection without having to pay for as many of the more expensive seeds."

The researchers conclude that "These results affirm theoretical predictions of pest population suppression and highlight economic incentives for growers to maintain non-Bt maize refugia for sustainable insect resistance management."