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“They, and others like them, have for decades resisted Indonesian government policies that pressured the forest-bound indigenous groups to abandon their old customs, accept a government-approved religion and move to government villages. That shift, along with the inevitable lure the modern world has for their children, has led to major disjunction between generations of Mentawai.”
Part I:
“We tend to think of medicine as a science, but for most of human history it has been scientific-ish at best. In the first episode of a three-part series, we look at the grotesque mistakes produced by centuries of trial-and-error, and ask whether the new era of evidence-based medicine is the solution.”
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-part-1-story-98-6/
Part II:
“How do so many ineffective and even dangerous drugs make it to market? One reason is that clinical trials are often run on “dream patients” who aren’t representative of a larger population. On the other hand, sometimes the only thing worse than being excluded from a drug trial is being included.”
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-part-2-drug-trials-and-tribulations/
Part III:
“By some estimates, medical error is the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. How can that be? And what’s to be done? Our third and final episode in this series offers some encouraging answers.”
http://freakonomics.com/podcast/bad-medicine-part-3-death-diagnosis/
As people have become more concerned for the welfare of farm animals, new farm practices and terms have become increasingly familiar because of consumer demand. Free range, grass fed, cage free, cruelty free, in addition to organic among many other terms dot the food landscape. What do these terms all mean? More importantly, do these terms give us a sense of humane, more ethical treatment that is not true?
What happens if practices that we think are better for the animals are actually worse? Is there an ethical way to consume animals or animal products? If so, how do we determine it? Below are a few articles about the topic of cage free eggs.
Eggs That Clear the Cages, but Maybe Not the Conscience
“Aviary-raised hens had less foot damage but dirtier feathers. One of the main causes of death among hens, hypocalcemia, or low blood calcium levels, was most prevalent in aviaries.
“Conditions for workers and the environment were also worse. Ammonia concentrations, dust levels and particulate matter emissions were higher in aviaries than in conventional battery-cage systems.”
The Insanely Complicated Logistics of Cage-Free Eggs for All
“As it turns out, going cage-free requires much more planning, money, and logistical engineering than the seemingly simple notion of setting some hens free would suggest. Ironically, this massive supply chain overhaul stems from consumer demand to return to the egg-producing practices of our pre-industrial past, but without undoing all the positive benefits of scale, affordability, and safety that were achieved through industrialization. It actually took farmers a really long time to figure out how to put the bird in the cage—and it’s going to take a while to figure out how to get it back out.”
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-insanely-complicated-logistics-of-cage-free-eggs-for-all/
Are Cage-Free Eggs All They’re Cracked Up to Be?
“Giving hens the simple ability to move around prevents many of the worst health problems associated with battery cages, Shapiro says, by strengthening brittle bones and allowing them to act on their natural instincts to roost and forage.
“But in these large, industrial aviaries, the birds “don’t typically go outside,” says Shapiro. And letting a flock of birds roam within a closed, confined aviary presents its own concerns. A three-year study produced by a consortium of egg providers, academics, and advocacy groups found that aviaries had nearly twice the death rate of caged systems. Most of the difference had to do with aggression between the birds and outbreaks of cannibalism.”
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2016/02/corporations-are-going-cage-free-whats-next-hens
Massachusetts Voters Could Have Egg on Their Faces
“But laws also must also ensure that livestock operations can continue to operate. Imposing needless, costly, counterproductive, and unconstitutional burdens on our nation’s livestock farmers will harm consumers, farmers, and animals alike.”
http://reason.com/archives/2016/07/23/massachusetts-voters-could-have-egg-on-t
When considering the ethics of hunting and wearing animal skins, how do we balance our society’s ethics with the traditional practices of indegenous communities that rely on hunting and wearing animal skins? This issue connects to both ethics and indigenous knowledge systems and is an interesting case to examine how we can balance the ethics of different communities and whether we can come up with a defensible way to find balance.
“But an amendment to the Marine Mammal Act of 1972 exempted “Indians, Aleut, and Eskimos (who dwell on the coast of the North Pacific Ocean) from the moratorium on taking provided that taking was conducted for the sake of subsistence or for the purpose of creating and selling authentic native articles of handicraft and clothing.””
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/fashion/sea-otter-fur-hunting-alaska-fashion-debate.html
There are some interesting debates raging within the sports community about the ways in which statistics can help us understand athletic performance and the value of different players to a team. These statistics also are used to evaluate what are effective strategies and which are not.
Though some of the debate is about whether we should or should not rely on these statistical models, there are some interesting differences among those models themselves. Each model relies on different assumptions and maps the reality of the game differently. Sometimes, as in the case discussed in the article below, different models give us wildly different answers about a player’s value. Which is correct? What does this case tell us about the ability and limits of using math to understand reality? Is it possible to resolve this debate?
http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/18114272/miller-going-war-mystery-robbie-ray
How does the quote below apply to this case?
“A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.”
“Now we know that many other industries have learned from Big Tobacco’s playbook. Physicians hired by the National Football League have questioned the evidence that concussions can cause brain disease, and soda sellers have financed research to deny that sugar causes obesity. And climate deniers have conducted a kind of scavenger hunt for oddities that appear to challenge the overwhelming consensus of climate scientists.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/climate-change-in-trumps-age-of-ignorance.html
Book about medical reaseach, common fallacies and problems, and what makes good science when it comes to medicine. Worth reading just for the introduction.
“Medicine shouldn’t be about authority, and the most important question anyone can ask on any claim is simple: ‘how do you know?’ This book is about the answer to that question. There has been a huge shift in the way that people who work in medicine relate to patients. In the distant past, ‘communications skills training’, such as it was, consisted of how not to tell your patient they were dying of cancer. Today we teach students – and this is a direct quote from the hand-outs – how to ‘work collaboratively with the patient towards an optimum health outcome’. Today, if they wish, at medicine’s best, patients are involved in discussing and choosing their own treatments. For this to happen, it’s vital that everyone understands how we know if a treatment works, how we know if it has harms, and how we weigh benefits against harms to determine the risk. Sadly doctors can fall short on this, as much as anybody else. Even more sadly, there is a vast army out there, queuing up to mislead us”
http://www.testingtreatments.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/TT_2ndEd_English_17oct2011.pdf
“We are trying to teach children that stories are usually an unreliable basis for assessing the effect of treatments,” Nsangi explained, adding that stories amount to anecdotal evidence. The kids are also learning to watch out for the perverting effects of conflicts of interest, and to recognize that all treatments carry both harms and benefits and that large, dramatic effects from a treatment are really, really rare.
https://www.vox.com/2016/10/6/13079754/teaching-critical-thinking-schools-health-claims
What is the purpose of learning history? How can different nations use their history to accomplish different goals? What are the consequences of telling history in a one sided way, self promoting way?
This article helps us contrast the distinct views Great Britain and Germany have taken toward viewing their own histories. Is one superior to the other? How would we measure success in this regard? Should countries use history to promote patriotism?
“Neil MacGregor, the former director of the British Museum, has bemoaned Britain’s narrow view of its own history, calling it “dangerous and regrettable” for focusing almost exclusively on the “sunny side”.”
“Speaking before the Berlin opening of his highly popular exhibition Germany – Memories of a Nation, MacGregor expressed his admiration for Germany’s rigorous appraisal of its history which he said could not be more different to that of Britain.
“In Britain we use our history in order to comfort us to make us feel stronger, to remind ourselves that we were always, always deep down, good people,” he said. “Maybe we mention a little bit of slave trade here and there, a few wars here and there, but the chapters we insist on are the sunny ones,” he said.”
“He said Germans had given expression to their the worst chapter of their history in extensive memorials and Mahnmale (‘monuments to national shame’). “It’s telling that in English we don’t even have a word like ‘Mahnmal’,” he said. “The term is just too alien to us.””
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