Talk:John Brignell/Mediation

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Guys, I'm ready. The first thing to do is that both of you write a brief statement with your position, OK? Please, discuss the other's statement under the 'discussion' header, so we keep things ordered. --Neigel von Teighen 15:25, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Statement by Engjs 2 Statement by John Quiggin 3 Discussion 3.1 Speed cameras 3.2 Suggestion 3.3 engjs's ad hominem attack 3.4 Let's try with DDT 3.5 Guilt by Association 3.6 Media Bias 3.7 Politics 3.8 Second Hand Smoke 4 "Request for comment" on mediator

[edit] Statement by Engjs

Consider the statement "John Quiggin claims to have a 'a first-class Honours degree in mathematics'. (reference) His web site reveals that he has degrees in arts and economics, not mathematics. (reference) He claims that his degrees are from the Australian National University. According to their web site (reference), they do not offer a degree in mathematics, nor do they offer a mathematics major in arts or economics. They offer a mathematics major in science, but he does not appear to have a science degree."

Each statement in this is correct; I can suppliy you with the references if you wish. The statement is not point of view. It is not original research as it merely consists of references to preexisting information. So I assume that there is no reason that it could not be put on John Quiggin's web page, perhaps under the heading "Questions about Qualifications".

However, there are two implicit lies in this statement. Firstly, it implies that there is something questionable about John Quiggin's qualifications. Secondly, it implies that the issue of John Quiggin's qualifications is a matter of public interest and of sufficient importance that it needs to be aired in a general article about John Quiggin. Neither of these things are true, but neither are suggested directly by the quote. The reliance is placed on the reader's tendancy to make assumptions.

Is it an acceptable action for me to put this on John Quiggin's web site? If I did, would it be because I wanted to inform the public, or because I wanted to smear John Quiggin?

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An ad hominem argument is one that attacks the person making the argument rather than the the argument itself. It has long been known that this is a logical fallacy. You can read about it here. [1] You can attack the credibility of a piece of evidence by showing that the person who produced it had the means and motive to fake it. You can argue over the reasons why a person chooses to adopt a particular stance on an issue. But to disprove an argument you have to atack the argument, not the source. It is perfectly normal for a discreditable source to put forward a creditable argument.

On his blog, Tim Lambert argues that the ad hominem fallacy doesn't apply to views based on the evaluation of evidence [2] and on his blog John Quiggin agrees with him [3]. Whether their argument is valid or not, this shows that they believe that the credibility of a person making an argument affects the truth of that's person's argument, and consequently it is not hard to see that they would believe that undermining an opponent's credibility would be a way to disprove their arguments. Thus, they have a motive for wanting to undermine John Brignell's credibility.

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If you want to undermine someone's credibility, and that person has made available a large amount of accessible opinion and commentary, one method of attack is to search through the material looking for items that you believe call into question the credibility of your opponent. These can be predictions he has made that have proved false, opinions he has expressed that are not generally accepted, opinions based on prevailing evidence that have since been contradicted by new evidence, opinions that are no longer fashionable, mistakes he has made, and so on. For preference, you would target material that is outside his area of expertise, material that is contentious, material in fields where the available evidence is constantly changing, and so on. Then, having chosen your material you set up a page in wikipedia which says "Opponent exists. Heading. Opponent said this. He is wrong because. Heading. Opponent said this. He is wrong because. ..."

The effect of this is twofold. Firstly, by directing attention to your chosen points you create the impression in the reader that these are what define the person. If someone tries to group the criticism under one heading you can break it back up into separate headings and call him a vandal. If the person tries to balance things by adding more headings you can work to remove them on the grounds that they are irrelevant or make the article too long. Inevitably you can balance things so that your criticisms are the major part of the article.

Secondly, you have chosen the battleground and so you can fight from a position of strength. If someone tries to argue the point you can discard his arguments as new research or npov, or better yet by saying that argument on the topic should be placed in the article on the topic and not in the current one. If someone tries to change your "because" you simply revert it and say that the point of controversy should be presented.

An examination of the history of the article on John Brignell shows that this is precisely what is being done.

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The article on John Brignell first appeared in Sourcewatch, and was moved to wikipedia from there. It was created by Aaron Swartz, "a teenage writer, hacker, and activist" and a supporter of Lambert. You can see this by reading his blog [4]. If you examine the first sourcewatch article you can see how this started. [5] The article starts 'According to Tim Lambert, "Brignell is a crank who dismisses the entire field of modern epidemiology as some sort of plot by scientists to scare people."' It then continues with a section headed 'Incidents' which lists three claims: (1) 'Brignell falsely suggested environmentalist pressure to drop DDT led to "2.5million" cases of Malaria. (reference)' (2) 'Brignell claimed a relative risk of 1.5 was not statistically significant. The only evidence he could find to support this claim was a book written by...Brignell! (reference)' (3) 'Brignell claimed the Ozone hole had always been present, without any evidence. (reference)' All three references are to Tim Lambert's Deltoid blog.

Why did Swartz create this article? I would suggest he was a reader of Lambert's Deloid blog who decided that the world had to be warned about the infamous John Brignell. It is also possible that Lambert suggested to him that he should do it. Either way, what he presents is neither fair minded nor particularly accurate. In fact the only statement here that is actually true insofar as it being a claim made by John Brignell is incident (1), and the truth of that claim is disputed.

As you can see, these three incidents are most of the basis of the disputed parts of the current article, so I will address them separately.

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DDT.

John Brignell made some comments about the banning of DDT on his website here [6] under 'Remember this number - 17'. Tim Lambert took issue and referred him to a paper on the matter. He acknowledged the paper, saying that it was "well worth reading", but that it didn't convince him that his main argument was wrong. Lambert then attacked Brignell on his blog for holding a viewpoint that Lambert disagreed with. [7] This section of the article has over time swelled to the point where argument about the merits of banning DDT outweighed all other material in the article, and has since been shrunk to what is now there.

Now, whose viewpoint is right or wrong is irrelevant to the matter in hand. Discussion of the merits or otherwise of DDT belongs on the DDT page. In fact that article is bloated with comment from both sides of the argument, which clearly indicates that it is a topic on which consensus has not been reached. The question is, is this a matter important enough to be one of the main points in a general article about John Brignell? Is he some sort of crusader against the banning of DDT? No he isn't. Has he written an important book on the subject? No he hasn't. Is there any debate in any general forum over Brignell and his views on DDT? No, outside of the blogs of Lambert and his friends there is no such debate.

This is just a minor argument between Tim Lambert and John Brignell, that a small group of Lambert's supporters are trying to make into an issue. There are many people in the world who disagree on this issue; there is no reason to signal Brignell out for special attention. Unless, of course, you want to smear him. In my opinion the item does not belong on this page.

If you examine his work you will see that his discussion about the banning of DDT is really being offered as a support for something that is a strong theme of his, which is that pressure groups regularly use dodgy science to pressure governments into passing worthless legislation. He offers many examples of issues that have produced this effect. A comment about this would be appropriate, but based on a less tendencious issue than DDT.

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The hole in the ozone layer.

What John Brignell said was "Watch out for a new bunch of mysterious figures lurking about Britain's beauty spots at the dead on night. They are not smugglers or clandestine lovers, but fridge dumpers. It is the latest coup by the almighty Greens of the EU. Believe it or not, because of new EU regulations, DEFRA, fresh from its foot and mouth triumph, is asking the British to refrain from buying fridges. It is now illegal to dispose of both the coolant and the insulant in fridges, but in Britain there is no legal way of doing it. All because of a hole in the ozone layer that was probably always there and an unproven theory as to how it was caused." This is the sum total of his comments on the matter, a throwaway line at the end of an item about something else.

Swartz says "Brignell claimed the Ozone hole had always been present, without any evidence". But that is not what he says at all. What he says is that the hole was "probably" always there. The probably indicates that he is acknowledging that he may be wrong, that his reading of the evidence may not agree with that of other people, and indeed that he may be proved wrong in time. Otherwise he would have said "that was not always there."

Given that there is no evidence about the state of ozone in the Antarctic prior to 1956, when measurement began, no theory on the pre-existence of the ozone hole, pro or anti, can be supported in any way. Examination of a plot of the data reveals what looks like part of a sine curve, which might indicate a cyclic process, but there simply isn't enough data to support any position.

After a rewrite by Bob Burton, the item changed into a paraphrase of the above quote, together with the last two lines, with the following added. 'Once more Lambert challenged Brignell's claim and cited Antarctic sceintific data. "It is perfectly clear that the hole was not always there. There is not one scrap of evidence to support Brignell’s claim. Yet even when confronted with the evidence that proves his claim is false he continues to maintain that it is true," Lambert wrote.'

As there is no evidence, this is just another difference of opinion, but one carefully writen to make it appear that Brignell is in the wrong. Again the question arises, is it appropriate to add a section to a general article about Brignell that is really just a diference of opinion between two people? And one clearly based on a throwaway line?

In the latest version of the article, Lambert's group have realised that the claim is unsupportable, and have converted it to a comment on the end of the number watch section. 'Brignell appears to doubt the usual view on ozone depletion: "...hole in the ozone layer that was probably always there and an unproven theory as to how it was caused" [5].' But the original comment had nothing to say on the subject of ozone depletion, only about the preexistence of the Antarctic ozone hole. This statement has again been written to create a false impression in the mind of the reader. It's not even true, because readers of Brignell's books will know that he has had things to say about ozone depletion that would be incompatible with a belief that it hasn't happened.

Is a throwaway line at the end of a paragraph about fridges a major point that needs to be featured in a general article about John Brignell? Or is this just another part of the attempt at smearing him?

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Relative risk.

If you flip a coin the probability of it landing heads is 1/2. If you flip five coins, the probability that there will be at least one head is 31/32. If you flip five coins, pick out the one that you like, then put the other four in your pocket, the probability of getting a head on that one coin will be 31/32, not 1/2. The act of choosing does not eliminate the other coins from the probability calculations, and the probability of getting a head is not the same as if only one coin were tossed. If you don't believe this, try it with some coins.

Statistics is a tool which draws information out of the underlying probability associated with a set of numbers. A statistical test involves gathering a set of numbers and feeding them through some mathematics. Given the number of things looked at, the number found and the number expected, the test tells you how likely you were to find the number of things you found. If the result is too unlikely to have happened by chance, you can say it is significant, meaning it probably didn't. (P<.05) means that "too unlikely" is one chance in twenty or worse.

If you take 25 studies and choose the 5 you like, the act of choosing drives up the probability of getting the result seen in each study. This may in turn invalidate the finding of significance in the chosen studies: a probability of 1/25 may be turned into 1/15 or 1/5 when the choice is made, the first being significant, the others not. When you do statistics it is thus vitally important to keep track of what choices have been made, because each choice affects the underlying probability. We had this drummed into us at university.

In order to be published a study must normally find significance. So publishers are choosing, and in so doing pushing up the underlying probability of the events seen in those studies, and in some cases invalidating the findings of significance. Because no one knows how many studies in a particular area aren't published, no one can judge how many studies are invalidated. John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist with (I assume) a mathematical background, suggests that most studies based on statistics that are published are false.

There are other things that impact on this. For example, if a scientist takes his data and does lots of different statistics on it, then reports only those that support his argument, the act of choosing what statistics to report produces the same effect.

In the old days, scientists did their experiments and then passed their data on to a professional statistician to work out what they had found. The statistician knew all this and took it into account when analysing their data. Nowadays scientists put their data through a computer package and do not realise the errors they are making.

This is one of the major themes that runs through Brignell's books, and indeed is blindingly obvious to anyone who understands statistics. Given that mathematics is not about defending views on theories but rather about mechanically proving or disproving theorums, it's hard to see that anyone claiming a solid mathematical background could see things otherwise. Of course, it's a different matter for someone without a proper foundation in mathematics, and politically driven people often gloss over the truth.

How do you deal with this problem? By ignoring published papers that only just find significance. How do you identify those papers? There are a number of ways, one of which is to look at the relative risk. How rigourous should you be in rejecting papers? This is where the whole thing gets political.

John Brignell wants to apply rigourous standards because he thinks the problem is having a strong influence on the quality of published work. He thinks this because he sees a lot of studies published that offer results that aren't confirmed in succeeding tests (it's a basic principle of science that experimental results have to be repeatable) or that contradict already published studies. But when his standards are applied, a lot of papers that are used to support contentious issues suddenly become worthless. Needless to say, people who have taken political stands on such issues don't like to see the evidence that supports their stand falsified.

Swartz states: "Brignell claimed a relative risk of 1.5 was not statistically significant. The only evidence he could find to support this claim was a book written by...Brignell!" What Brignell said was "A relative risk of 1.5 is not acceptable as significant. Those who have read Sorry, wrong number! might remember that Headline Man obtained a relative risk of 1.63, when there was no underlying effect at all. So even without the major considerations of confounding factors and biases, real science is obliged to reject such small risk increments as insignificant, due to random variation." What he refers to is an experiment where he generated two sets of random numbers each based on the same underlying distribution and compared the first to the second looking for significance. He got a relative risk of 1.63 when there could be no correlation.

You can try this yourself with three six-sided dice. Roll the dice, add the three numbers together, write the total down. Do this 40 times to get two columns of 20 numbers each. For each pair, divide the first into the second and write down the quotient to two decimal places. Each pair is a study, the first number is the size of the control group, the second the intervention group, and the quotient the relative risk. Bearing in mind that the numbers you see are only random noise, would you trust a study that found a relative risk of 1.5? Of course, Brignell didn't use dice, he used the rbinom function from mathcad to generate a distribution similar to one found in a study of the type he is addressing. In general, if you can take a study, pull out it's parameters, feed them through this process, and generate the same level of relative risk from random noise as the study has found, how can you have any faith in that finding?

It is clear that what Brignell is saying is that "real science" rejects such risks, by which he means scientists who have a solid understanding of the mathematics behind the statistics they are using. Brignell has repeatedly suggested that such scientists are now in the minority. Lambert and his collaborators have repeatedly taken this quote out of context by trying to suggest that Brignell is claiming that all scientists or a majority of scientists hold this view.

The expansion of the SourceWatch article saw this claim mutate into the counting the dead section, which filled up with all sorts of nonsense. Tim Lambert offered a straw man argument on the matter, an idealised version of the argument based on the elimination of all randomness. Given that Brignell's criticism was about the likely error due to the randomness of the underlying numbers, Lambert's argument has no bearing on what he said. But Lambert and his cronies won't allow it to be removed.

Someone added a list of relative risks for studies published in "Science", and noted that 'Although the validity of some of these relationships is still controversial, it is clear that "A relative risk of 1.5 is not acceptable as significant," is not true as far as scientific publication is concerned.' Given that Brignell is constantly criticising the publication of studies that offer such relative risks, it's obvious that he agrees. So why is this in the article? Of course, it has since been moved to the article on relative risk.

In an attempt to balance the article I went through John Brignell's website and identified the major themes that he repeatedy refers to, and created a separate subheading for each one. When the article moved to wikipedia, an old version of the article was copied and so I replaced it with the new version. John Quiggin then deleted it all (23:27, 22 January 2006), claiming that it was original research. Except for the section on relative risk that he replaced with this:

'(my explanation of relative risk, and a quote from Brignell's website deleted) The notion of relative risk proposed by Brignell is not generally accepted by statisticians. Most academic journals in epidemiology (as in most other fields) rely on tests of statistical significance and other forms of hypothesis testing. However, the Relative Risk criterion has been promoted enthusiastically by lobbyists for the tobacco industry, particularly [Stephen Milloy].'

"The notion of relative risk proposed by Brignell is not generally accepted by statisticians. Most academic journals in epidemiology (as in most other fields) rely on tests of statistical significance and other forms of hypothesis testing." This suggests tat Brignell wants to replace statistical testing with a criterion based on relative risk. This is just absurd. Nowhere has Brignell ever suggested anything of the sort; the suggestion doesn't even make sense. What he has said is that where studies find significance with a relative risk of only 1.5 the significance is too likely to be illusory, which is a very different thing. The claim "most statisticians" is also inappropriate; Quiggin is not in a position to know what most statisticians think. In any case, it's clear that what he means is most people who use statistics. I can drive a car, and I can change the oil in my car, but that doesn't make me a mechanic. "However, the Relative Risk>2 criterion has been promoted enthusiastically by lobbyists for the tobacco industry" is only present in order to tie Brignell's argument to the tobacco lobby. Why? Because doing so implies that he is being paid by them to con people, or that he is a sucker who has fallen for their propaganda. It's a straight ad hominem attack. As he has said that he has never received any support from the tobacco industry, and as he has been working in the field of industrial instrumentation, which relies heaviliy on statistics, for 40 years, both of these implied claims are false. So why include a statement that implies something that is false?

So we are now presented with two sections each addressing the same thing, Brignell's suggestion that relative risk values less than 2.0 are not acceptable to real science. Why are there two separate sections?

In the Counting the Dead section the following appeared "It should be noted that Brignell does provide a number of supporting statements from recognised authorities." I added a series of quotes from recognised authorities to the Relative Risk section, including many that Brignell refers to, that support his view, together with references. These were deleted along with the above comment, no reason given. You can find the quotes here [8] The above comment has since reappeared in the relative risk section, but not the supporting quotes.

I placed a reference in the Relative Risk section to a paper by John Ioannidis which demonstrates why John Brignell's statement is true. It has been removed with no explanation.

I don't deny that a section on acceptable standards in scientific testing is appropriate for the page. However, why is there such a concerted effort to present his opinion as being wrong? Anything that supports him is systematically cut from the article, anything that paints him as a crank is held onto even when exposed as nonsense. Why? I said that the issue is a political one, and the only reason I can see for this concerted effort is that these people are trying to paint him as a crank for political reasons. Is that appropriate in a wikipedia article?

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Politics.

John Quiggin added the the comment "Numberwatch also contains extensive commentary on general political issues, and is particularly critical of the British Labour Party, against which Brignell reports voting "with dread" in 2005 [4]."

I added the quote from Brignell's website 'Brignell comments "There has been a little gentle criticism that Number Watch shows a political bias by concentrating on the misdemeanours of the Government and not of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. The main answer to that is “What opposition?” Number Watch abhors a vacuum – there is nothing you can write about it; besides which, governments do things and oppositions don’t." [6]'

Needless to say, my addition has since been removed.

Have you ever seen a site devoted to personal comment that is not political? Why then is this worthy of comment? The same can be said of both Tim Lambert's blog and John Quiggin's blog. Why is the statement slanted to make it appear that John Brignell is opposed to the labour party when he himself makes it clear that his commentary is directed at the party in government? Quiggin and Lambert are left wing; could that have anything to do with it?

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Speed Cameras.

I added a section to the page on speed cameras. This is a topic on which Brignell has had a reasonable amount to say, it is one that has been discussed in other web forums besides Tim Lambert's blog, it is the topic on the numer watch site that attracts the most correspondence, so I think it is a more appropriate section to place on the page than anything that Lambert et al have added. However, it is also a topic on which Brignell has been proved right, and on which the British government have backed down. You can find it on this page [9] This section has been removed, and the commentary reduced to "Brignell dislikes speed cameras, and asserts that they are being milked to generate cash" under the Number Watch heading. An item that presents Brignell in a positive light has been morphed into something that presents him in a negative one.

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Secondhand smoke.

The original comment added to the SourceWatch article is "Bob Carroll (author of the Skeptic's Dictionary) initially accepted Brignell's argument against the EPA's finding that second hand smoke caused lung cancer. However, he changed his mind (http://skepdic.com/news/newsletter41.html) when he found that the "scientific principle" (relative risk less than 2) that Brignell used to reject the finding was not recognized by epidemiologists, just tobacco companies."

Bob Carroll is a philosopher who lecturers in logic and critical thinking. He is not a scientist or mathematician, and he has no background in statistics as far as I am able to determine. So his opinion on second hand smoke is that of a layman. It is clear from reading what he says that his opinion is not his own, but rather is based on the acceptance of authority; he chose to accept the opinion of two epidemiologists at John Hopkins university over that of a John Brignell. Thus nobody could claim that Bob Carroll is an expert in the field who is putting forward an opposing opinion. So why was this added?

I would suggest that the reason is that the authors of this article are trying to create the impression that John Brignell is one of a small group of cranks and that there is dissention in the ranks. What other reason could there be?

I have tried to add material to the entry explaining Brignell's reason for holding the view that he does, but this is systematically removed.

The current entry includes the statement "Brignell has criticised the US Environmental Protection Authority finding that second hand smoke caused lung cancer, primarily on the basis of arguments about relative risk, but also because of concerns about the use of a one-tailed test." Brignell has criticised the EPA for (a) writing the guidelines on passive smoking and then doing the scientific testing; (b) using P<.1 after they couldn't find significance with P<.05; (c) ignoring a study that showed a significant decrease in risk (and the many that have shown a non-significant decrease); (d) ignoring about 20 confounding factors; (e) using meta analysis in an area where it is inappropriate; and (f) accepting a relative risk of 1.19 as meaningful. That's not what's currently presented.

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Who likes who.

One of the primary ways to smear a person is to associate them in the reader's mind with something about which the reader has preconceived notions. Inevitably the reader will then assume that the notions apply to the person. For example, claiming that Brignell holds views on statistics that coincide with the tobacco industry will make people assume that either he is in the pay of the tobacco companies or has fallen for their propaganda. He has never received any support from a tobacco company, and he is a retired professor of industrial measurement who has spent 40 years working with statistics, so both of these implications are false.

"Brignell has expressed delight with the feedback from the "encouragement and support I have received from some of the giants of the pro-science movement in the USA -- in no particular order Steven Milloy, Alan Coruba [2] [sic], ... Bob Carroll, Michael Fumento and S. Fred Singer." [3]."

Steven Milloy has been paid by large companies to lobby for them. There are regular claims made that his web site is a front for anti-green lobbyists and that the material presented there is unacceptably biased. There are many pro-green scientists who have accepted money from green groups to present their views, but needless to say that side of things doesn't get emphasised. As a regular reader of Milloy's columns I would certainly exercise caution in accepting everything he says at face value, but not everything he says is wrong. You will find just as much bias in the writing of someone like Tim Lambert, who is also not always wrong. I haven't looked into the others.

Milloy, Coruba, Fumento, and Singer are regular targets of smear campaigns by the green movement and other lobby groups. Smearing is a normal political tactic so this is not surprising. Bob Carroll is there because of his anti-Brignell comment in the Second Hand Smoke section. James Randi was elided because, well, his target is parapsychology, and he is antismoking, so perhaps he doesn't fit properly. The smearing works better without him being named. You'll note that a comment made about Randi to the effect that he would have criticised Brignell has rightly been removed.

Why is this statement here? The intent can only be to try and associate John Brignell with the other regular targets of the green movement, with the intent of implying that the arguments used against them apply equally to him. It's politically motivated. Is wikipedia a forum for politically motivated people to smear their opponents?

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John Quiggin says on the mediation page 'If this makes Brignell look like a crank, my only response is "If the cap fits ..."' I would contend that the people who created this page and who have continually resisted efforts to modify it are doing their best to try and make that cap fit for their own political motives. I would suggest that wikipedia is not a forum for political smear campaigns. And so I would suggest that the only way to make this article fair is to have it rewritten by a third party, one who has an understanding of statistics beyond that of a scientist who did a course on using some package in first year uni, and one who does not hold radical leftwing political views. And I would suggest that John Quiggin, Tim Lambert, and the rest of them be prevented from twisting it back into the political smear that they want it to be.

[edit] Statement by John Quiggin

In my view, the page had serious problems, in that there was a lot of reporting of back and forth debates between Brignell and his critics, which belonged, if anywhere, on the relevant topic pages, DDT and so forth. This is nearly all gone. The exception, on the Lancet study is one where Brignell was, AFAIK, the only person to raise the relative risk argument, and Lambert's reply was on this point. But I'd be happy to cut this bit as well.

As regards good faith, I'd point out that large segments of the article as it now stands were contributed by engjs, and no attempt has been made to suppress this, except to ensure that the length is reasonable. Some got trimmed in a recent edit (not by me), but this edit also cut lots of material contributed by others without regard to the history. As I mentioned on the talk page, I'd favor restoring a short section on speed cameras, if that would help the mediation process.

I did one edit while waiting for mediation, promoting the section on general criticism of science and adding links. I think this improved the article and could not be seen as making it less favorable to Brignell.

Engjs has objected to references to Brignell's links to Steven Milloy, Fumento and others. It's important to note that these references were there well before recent controversy over the fact that these writers took undisclosed payments from corporate interests. The article, created last year, draws on a Sourcewatch article, and the history of that article shows that the relevant quote from Brignell was added in May 2005 by Bob Burton.

It is a fact that Brignell regularly and favorably cites Milloy and vice versa, and the two support each other on the issue of relative risk. More generally, it is clear that Brignell's views on both policy issues and criticism of junk science are very similar to Milloy's. Someone familiar with Milloy who sees a reference to Brignell's views on policy topics, and looks him up on Wikipedia would wish to be aware of this, I think, whether they view Milloy favorably or otherwise. JQ

I just ran across Biographies_of_living_persons#Opinions_of_critics.2C_opponents.2C_and_detractors which might be useful. It's my feeling that the page is currently consistent with the criteria set out here, but I'd be happy to get the views of uninvolved third parties JQ 11:00, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Place your comments here

Hmm, let's wait for Engjs (he has contacted me and said he has't been able to place his statement). --Neigel von Teighen 16:04, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, no real hurry, I guess JQ 02:13, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speed cameras

As I mentioned, I thought the deletion of this section was overzealous, and I agree that Brignell's statistical argument is correct. So I've added it back in, deleting stuff that belongs in general discussion of the topic. I hope this helps. JQ

[edit] Suggestion

The article currently conveys the impression that Brignell's statistical criticisms are directed primarily or exclusively at people using statistics to support causes to which he is politically opposed (broadly speaking environmentalists and the political left). I think this is accurate, but as I read him, engjs thinks it's misleading. Rather than argue it back and forth, I suggest engjs give some examples.

So, for example, the page gives lots of examples of Brignell criticising environmentalists (and their responses) and none of Brignell criticising, say, advocates of nuclear power or opponents of the Kyoto protocol, even though both groups have (like almost everyone) made use of dodgy statistical arguments from time to time. So, an obvious way of restoring balance would be to add references to instances where Brignell has offered statistical criticisms of "his" side. JQ 07:11, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Brignell takes stories from the media and attacks the science and statistics that underlie them. When was the last time you saw a pro-nuclear power story in the media that used science or statistics to support its point? Or an anti-Kyoto story? Or an anti-global warming story? Or a pro-tobacco story? If you rarely see such stories in the media, why would you expect to see them appear on Brignell's web site? Most anti-Kyoto stories that I've seen base their arguments on the economic effects of the treaty, not science or statistics. Brignell isn't an economist. Engjs 09:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we read different media. I've seen plenty of pieces in all the categories you mention; and of course the work of Milloy, Fumento, Singer and so on provides obvious examples. However,there's not much point debating this, given that we are supposed to be engaged in mediation here. I've made a suggestion, and I take it from your response that you don't think it's worth pursuing. Do you have any proposals you'd like to put forward? JQ 11:54, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Media means TV, radio, papers; it doesn't mean web sites put up by individuals, or books. I've never seen anything in the media by any of these people. I read Milloy's column regularly, but through the net, not through the media.

I would suggest removing the sections on DDT, Counting the Dead, EPA and Second Hand Smoke, for the reasons stated above. The section on relative risk can be retitled criticism and the whole section replaced with the single line "Some people have suggested that the standards applied by Brignell are too rigorous." with links to appropriate articles. I would suggest removal from the Number Watch section of all but the first paragraph, for the reasons stated above. If all that is done, I would then suggest the removal of the Speed Cameras and General Criticisms sections, which would leave an article of about the appropriate size.

Milloy's column is published by Fox News, and Fumento's in a range of newspapers (less since the recent controversy). If you think it would be likely to change your mind, I can point you to large numbers of items published in TV, radio and newspapers that use numbers badly in support of views I imagine would be congenial to Brignell. But I honestly don't think evidence on this point would change your mind. JQ 20:10, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

On your main suggestion, it's clearly not acceptable to censor information about the subject that is likely to be of interest to many readers. If you think these controversies are not representative of Brignell's general approach, I've already suggested you could add some brief items about other issues, as you've done with speed cameras. JQ 20:10, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Let's start with the section on DDT. Would you agree that arguments about DDT, about whether it's banning was good or bad, and so on, belong on the DDT page and not here? Would you agree that the question here is, are Brignell's views on the subject important enough that they need to be a general part of an article about him? I would remind you that "We should be careful not to give a dispropotionate voice to detractors, opponents or critics" [10] (Opinions of critics, opponents, and detractors) So it's not a question of censorship, it's a question of relative importance. If this is not a major issue as far as understanding John Brignell is concerned, you either have to balance it with other positive material or delete it. Do you consider it to be a major issue, and if so why? Engjs 00:14, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Let's start with the section on DDT. Would you agree that arguments about DDT, about whether it's banning was good or bad, and so on, belong on the DDT page and not here? Yes, and edits to the page have achieved this.

Would you agree that the question here is, are Brignell's views on the subject important enough that they need to be a general part of an article about him? Yes, and I think it's clear that Brignell's views on environmental issues, like DDT, and the others mentioned in the article are a central theme of Numberwatch, and largely explain both the support and the criticism he has received. If you think other issues are more important, identify them and write about them, as I already suggested. If, as you suggest, references to Brignell's pro-DDT attitudes produce a misleading negative impression of anti-environmentalism, why don't you identify some balancing items. Is he, for example, strongly in favour of tighter controls on industrial pollution, or more rigorous measures to preserve endangered species? If you can't identify any such items, then it's apparent that the article isn't providing an unbalanced picture, just an accurate one which will lead Brignell to be viewed unfavorably by environmentalists and favorably by their opponents. JQ 02:36, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I could go through Brignell's site and draw out a 100 instances where he has expressed an opinion and been right, and that would address the balance, but is it really appropriate to do that? Besides, I've tried that and they only get the same treatment as the item on speed cameras. I gather from what you are saying that you main issue here is that you think Brignell is anti-environment? If that is what you think then might I suggest the following. You delete the item on DDT and create instead an item labelled Criticism. Under that you place an entry that says "Critics suggest that Brignell's web site displays an anti-environmental bias." Then, for balance, add "Supporters suggest that this is due to a pro-environmental bias in the media." That would appear to address your concern without needing to engage on a 'who can come up with the most subheadings' war. Engjs 11:14, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

As long as the article makes Brignell's views on the issues clear, I'm happy to move the criticism to a separate section. So for the DDT section, we could move the reference to Lambert's criticism down the page, and similarly for "counting the dead". As you say, that doesn't preclude you from adding sections on issues where Brignell's views haven't been criticised. JQ 11:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Let's deal with DDT first. I take it we have agreed to remove the DDT section and replace it with a Criticism section with a paragraph on DDT. Could you please do this? If I do it it will be reverted. :-(

"Negative information related to a person's notability should be mentioned if solidly verifiable", "verifiability requires direct evidence from reliable sources" [11], "At the other end of the reliability scale lie personal websites, weblogs (blogs), bulletin boards, and Usenet posts, which are not acceptable as sources." [12] Tim Lambert is a computer scientist, so referencing his blog is a breach of the guidelines. Could you please remove that reference? "rejected by most international agencies involved in malaria control" is a claim; you need to back it with a reliable source or change it to "are claimed to be rejected by". Also, the sentence currently doesn't scan properly; you seem to be saying that DDT is used within the international agencies. Engjs 23:25, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

"I take it we have agreed to remove the DDT section and replace it with a Criticism section with a paragraph on DDT." I think it's fairly clear we have not agreed to remove the DDT section. I'm happy, however, to move the criticism of Brignell's views to a later section.JQ 02:29, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Okay then, will you please address the points made in the above paragraph. Engjs 02:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I've given a cite for the international agencies, and fixed the bad grammar, also added back a cite to Brignell which got lost at some point. On the extract from [13], this concerns notability, not criticism. There is no verifiability issue regarding the fact that criticism has been made, and no requirement that it should come from an authoritative source.

[edit] engjs's ad hominem attack

Since engjs has chosen to make a lengthy ad hominem attack on me (he mentions my name 25 times) I think I should correct the record. Engjs insinuates that I have organised a conspiracy to smear Brignell. This is untrue. Brignell has written things about some of the topics I cover on my blog: DDT, ozone, relative risk. The stuff he wrote was badly wrong, so I explained why with extensive references. Brignell has made no substantive response -- his main response has been to call me names. I haven't told anyone or organised anyone to edit this article. Engjs insinuates that I have no qualifications in Mathematics. This is untrue. I have a 1st Class Honours in Maths as well as a Masters and a PhD in Computer Science. Engjs completely amngels his description of statistical significance, presumably because he relies on Brignell rather than a statistical or ept textbook. Statistical significance is not the same as the size of the effect. If someone reports a relative risk of 1.5, you cannot from this alone determine the statistical significance. For this you need the 95% confidence interval which is usually given along with the point estimate. If the 95% CI does not include 1, then risk is statistically significant.--TimLambert 15:29, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

An ad hominem attack is one that involves claiming that an statement is false because of the source from which it comes. To suggest that you are attempting to smear Brignell is not an ad hominem attack. To suggest that you are an enviro-zealot, and therefore anything you say about Brignell must be a smear would be such an attack, but I have not done that. As I have shown above, the stuff he has written is controversial, in that there are multiple points of view on each issue, as can be seen by reference to the relevant pages in wikipedia. Your claim that it is "badly wrong" is personal opinion, not fact. If someone says something that you don't agree with, that does not entitle you to try and smear them in wikipedia. If Brignell has made no substantive response to you, perhaps it is because he feels you are a zealot who isn't interested in accepting that you may be wrong and therefore not worth arguing with. You claim not to be part of a conspiracy. I'm not in a position to contradict you, but when I find that two or three people are working together here to promote a point of view, and those same people have worked together in other areas to push the same point of view, and those same people regularly quote each other on each others blogs, that to me suggests conspiracy. I have never insinuated that you have no qualifications in mathematics. I did the same degree as you, a B.Math(hons) at Newcastle University. The difference is, when I did it, maths was a faculty in its own right, whereas when you did it it had been reduced to a department of science. Consequently I also know how much of your degree was devoted to statistics. When I did the course the thrust of the teaching was how to derive the equations used in statistical testing. It looks to me as if when you did it the thrust had changed to how to use computer programs to run tests, but I may be doing you a disservice. I know from reading your blog that there was a lengthy period of time between when you did your statistics course and when you started using it.

You have made ad homiem attacks on me, claiming that I hold radical left-wing views and now that I did my Maths degree when Mathematics was not a faculty. Not only are these ad hominem, they are pure fantasies. They are not true and you have no evidence for them.

With regard to statistical significance, it depends on three things: the size of the group you are looking at, the number of items found as opposed to the number of items expected, and the underlying probability distribution. In a statistical test two things will impact on the probability the test returns, the ratio of things found to things expected, which is the relative risk, and the absolute number of things found. As the sort of testing Brignell is criticising is invariably based on Poisson distributions (that is, binomial distributions where p << q or vice versa), for 95% confidence significance depends on finding an excess of things which is greater than twice the square root of the expected category size. If your expected number of cases is 10, you need to find 7 extra cases to get significance, which is a RR of 1.7. If it is 20 you need to find 9 extra cases, which is a RR of 1.45. If it is 30 you need to find 11 extra cases, which is a RR of 1.37. If it is 100, then you need to find 20 extra cases, which is 1.2. Conversely, if you know the RR is 1.55 and you can work out that the expected number of cases is 20, you can calculate that they found an excess of 11 cases, 2 more than were needed for significance. So significance is not something that's independent of relative risk. If you have big category sizes then you can find small relative risks; if not then you can't. Of course, if you are not in a position to know the size of the expected category, then you can't judge how significant the result is, but if you do know, or if you can judge from how the study is presented, then you can.

But this is sidestepping the issue. If you conduct a study with an expected group size of 20 you need to find 29 cases for significance. But the number you will actually find is random. If in separate studies you actually find 12, 16, 21, 24, and 30, only the 30 will test positive for significance, giving a RR of 1.5. But it should be obvious from the results found that there is no real significance; the result is only an artifact of the underlying randomness. You may have found significance, but that does not mean that there's any real significance. You may have found a relative risk of 1.5, but that does not mean that that is the real underlying relative risk. These are only the numbers that randomness threw up on one particular occasion. Given that publication and self-censorship suppress studies that do not find significance, and that peer review and self censorship suppress studies that contradict the generally accepted position, the underlying probability of studies that do get published must be being heavily affected by conditionality, so studies that only just find significance aren't really finding it at all. And that's the point Brignell makes. If you don't understand conditional probability, go back and read your text books.

You could recast all of this in terms of confidence intervals if you wanted. You could say that if in five studies only one produces a confidence interval which does not include 1.0, then there is no real significance. You could point out that conditional probability is acting to broaden the real confidence intervals of published studies. But that's just terminology. And to me, a desire to talk about confidence intervals only suggests that you don't understand how the underlying mathematics works. Engjs 23:38, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

This is completely wrong. If you are concerned about publication bias, the relevant number is the p value. A result that purely by chance reaches a significance level of 5% is likely to have a p value just under 5%. If you were concerned about this and actually understood statistics, you could argue for a more rigourous standard like 1%. Looking at the effect size is wrong. Which do you think is more likely to be the product of publication bias, a RR of 1.5 with p=0.1%, or a RR of 4 with p=4% ? --TimLambert 14:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

What you say about the p value is correct. What I am talking about is the mathematics behind the calculation of the p value. To get a p value of 0.1% with a relative risk of 1.5, you would need to be looking at a survey that found 144 intervention cases and 96 control cases. Assuming that the real relative risk is 1 and real expected value is 120, this would happen by chance in about 1 in every 10 tests. To get a p value of 4% with a relative risk of 4, you would need to be looking at a study that found 7 intervention cases and 1.75 control cases. Assuming the real relative risk is 1 and the real expected value is 4.37, you would again see this happen by chance in about 1 in every 10 tests. In both cases the two values are about 1 standard deviation from the mean. So if the results of 9 in 10 tests are suppressed, either due to publication bias or other factors, both assumptions explain the numbers seen, and neither test really supports the suggestion that there in any real link. Both cases are likely to be artifacts of publication bias. The studies that Brignell criticises usually run to between 10 and 20 expected cases (sometimes less). You can do the math yourself to see what effect publication bias has on those sort of numbers, and what the ratios between control numbers and intervention numbers have to be to account for it. Engjs 23:12, 7 March 2006 (UTC) (edited to correct maths)

This may help you. In a normal distribution, the shape of the curve depends on two parameters, the mean and the standard deviation of the data. In a Poisson distribution, the standard deviation is the square root of the mean, so the shape of the curve only depends on one parameter. The p-value then depends on two parameters, the mean, and the distance from the mean to the found point (the number of excess cases). But these are also the two parameters that the relative risk depends on. As both functions are dependent on the same two variables, they are not independent. If you know one, you know the other. And so looking for a more rigorous p-value means looking for a higher relative risk value. Engjs 11:14, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm back. Please, Engjs and Tim discuss this in other place. This is to discuss abut the Brignell article! --Neigel von Teighen 19:36, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

One of the main bones of contention in this argument is acceptable levels of relative risk. So the discussion is on topic. Engjs 23:12, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Let's try with DDT

Why don't you try to start with the DDT paragraph, Uh? --Neigel von Teighen 19:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've moved the criticism of Brignell from DDT and other sections to a separate section which is about 10 per cent of the total article. I think this is a reasonable balance. JQ 02:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I read through the article you cite and see nothing in it to back your claim that the claims about DDT have been "rejected by most international agencies involved in malaria control". On the basis of that article I would suggest you change "most international agencies" to "at least one international agency", or else provide a reference to another article that backs the claim. If you do that I'm happy to move on to the next point. Engjs 05:30, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've made the reference specific to USAID, the source cited JQ 10:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm satisfied with what's there.

That's a first approach! Well done! --Neigel von Teighen 20:17, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Guilt by Association

"verifiability requires direct evidence from reliable sources regarding the subject of the article specifically. Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association, or other generalizations." [14] This used to link to a section on guilt by association in the verifiability policy section. [15] That section was removed when the policy was rewritten in early February. I cannot find any discussion on why it was removed; if someone can point out such discussion I would be grateful. That section clearly spelt out why guilt by association was not allowed: because "Verifiability requires direct evidence which specifically identifies a person or organization as having engaged in a negative behavior", and because compiling a guilt by association argument breeches the no original research policy. It still seems clear that the guidelines forbid comments that are intended to imply guilt by association in biographic articles of living persons, which this is.

"Brignell has expressed delight with the feedback from the "encouragement and support I have received from some of the giants of the pro-science movement in the USA -- in no particular order Steven Milloy, Alan Coruba [2] [sic], ... Bob Carroll, Michael Fumento and S. Fred Singer." [3]." This statement is clearly intended to imply guilt by association. The named figures are common targets of the environmental movement, and this statement has clearly been put here by pro-environmentalists to score a political point. In particular, Steven Milloy has been accused of having taken money from corporations to promote an anti-environmental point of view, and the implication that Brignell has done the same is not true and therefore cannot be verified. Accordingly, this statement should be removed. Engjs 12:01, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

As noted previously, this material was included well before recent controversies relating to Milloy and Michael Fumento. The statement is one made by Brignell, and is one of many favorable citations from Brignell to Milloy, and vice versa. Milloy has cited Brignell as an authority on relative risk, and it is this fact, more than anything else that makes Brignell a controversial figure. A comparison of Numberwatch and Milloy's Junk Science site shows that the two adopt very similar approaches, as stated in the article.

More generally, in discussion engjs has correctly stated that the named figures are "common targets of the environmental movement" and of course they are strongly supported by opponents of the environmental movement. Brignell is (as he has declared on many occasions) an opponent of the environmental movement, so he has the same set of critics and supporters. The article is giving accurate information about Brignell's position and this should not be censored.

If you feel it would be helpful, I'd be happy to include a disclaimer, along the lines that "Since this article was created, Milloy and Fumento have been accused of having taken money from corporations to promote an anti-environmental point of view. There hs been no suggestion that Brignell has received outside funding for his site and books". JQ 20:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The guidelines specifically say that the key point in guilt by association is the underlying inference. You have to either specifically state what is inferred and back it up with a reliable source, or you can't include the comment. There is nothing to say that there are any extenuating circumstances. Rather, it is made clear that if the reader will make the association then the comment should be removed. This comment does not meet wikipedia's guidelines, and you can't make it do so by dressing it up. You have to remove it. Engjs 21:29, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

We currently have a direct quote from Brignell, leading to the assessment that "Brignell's approach and views are closely consistent with those of Caruba, Fumento, Milloy, and Singer." I'm happy to add additional links of Brignell citing Milloy and the others if you want.

On the general assessment, do you seriously disagree with the assessment that Brignell's approach and views are similar to those of Milloy et al? If you disagree, it's up to you to back it up, by pointing to occasions on which they've disagreed, or at least where Brignell has taken a position that Milloy would probably reject. JQ 21:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not a question of who agrees with who. It's not a question of where the comment came from. As is clearly demonstrated in the verifiability section, it's not a matter of what the truth of the situation is. It's a question of the classification of Brignell with these people and the inference that he shares other characteristics with them besides his opinions. The wikipedia article states that Steven Milloy is a "paid advocate for Phillip Morris, ExxonMobil and other corporations", implying that at least some of the opinions he expresses are those he is paid to express rather than his own. By associating him with Brignell you are implying that the same applies to Brignell. You need to either back that claim up with a reliable source, or remove the comment. Engjs 23:41, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I've added an explicit statement that Brignell is not in receipt of outside funding (more precisely, to preserve verifiability, that no one has suggested this and that his output is self-published). I hope this resolves the problem. JQ 00:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

You don't seem to be getting this. The comment breeches the guidelines and therefore should be removed. It's not a matter of modifying it into something acceptable. The guidelines say that you can't include it in the article, so you have to remove it. Engjs 00:46, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed I'm not getting it. Could you link to and quote the guideline you're talking about, cite exactly the comment to which you object and then explain the nature of the breach you claim, please? JQ 05:43, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I have already done so in the first two paragraphs of this section. Engjs 05:53, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Not clearly enough for me to follow, I'm afraid. You have a couple of excerpts with no clear context, and no clear statement of exactly what you want removed or why. As far as I can see, everything in this section is verified by reference to sources (and, as noted, could be verified further with more links if desired). So, I repeat, could you (1) link to and quote the guideline you're talking about, (2) cite exactly the text you want removed and then (3) explain the nature of the breach you claim, please? JQ 06:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons: "Negative information related to a person's notability should be mentioned if solidly verifiable, e.g. plagiarism by an artist, fraud by a scientist, doping use by a sports person, etc. Remember that verifiability requires direct evidence from reliable sources regarding the subject of the article specifically. Beware of claims that rely on guilt by association, or other generalizations." So any negative information related to a person's notability must not depend on guilt by association. Brignell's notability is partly that he maintains a website on which he debunks false statistics and bad science. Any comments that seek to undermine his authority in this area are negative with respect to his notability. Guilt by association means associating a person with others who the reader will view in a negative light, in the hope that the reader will assume that the negative traits associated with them will also be associated by the reader with the target. So you can't put anything into the article which seeks to undermine Brignell's credibility as a scientist or statistician that relies on guilt by association.

The paragaphs "Brignell has expressed delight..." through "...received any outside funding" are there to associate Brignell in the reader's mind with the people named. There is no other reason for including these paragraphs. These people are regular targets of environmentalists, so anyone with environmental leanings who reads this article is going to infer that what they know about these people also applies to Brignell. As negative information that relates to Brignell's notability, you must either state explicitly the inference and back it up with a reliable source, or delete the information. Engjs 11:32, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

The inference, clearly stated, is that Brignell's views are similar to those of the named persons. You've agreed that this is true and it is amply backed up by the sources and in the article. I don't see what the problem is. The summary of Brignell's views isn't negative like the examples given (plagiarism, fraud and so on). If you agree with the views of Brignell and Milloy, it's positive. The only possible negative inference is that Brignell, like Milloy, is paid by corporate interests, and this is explicitly disclaimed. JQ 12:33, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

On your website you claim that Steven Milloy is a "junk science writer" "who has a track record of bogus work going back at least a decade". You say "this track record doesn’t eliminate the need to demolish Milloy afresh each time he pops up". [16] So by associating Brignell with Milloy you are implying that Brignell is also a junk science writer. This is another negative inference. On your website you say "If this narrative keeps running it’s going to make life a lot more difficult for the network of rightwing thinktanks and lobby groups that have proliferated in the US over the past two decades or so. Apart from the fact that most of them have at least one individual shill or fraud already exposed (AEI with Lott, Hudson with Fumento, Cato with Bandow and Milloy, TCS from top to bottom[1]) it’s going to become increasingly obvious that these guys have done little more than some unauthorised moonlighting. The organisations are engaged in the same kind of shilling, but on a larger scale. It’s hard to see how they can retain any credibility, or how any reputable person can continue work for any of them, unless all of the shills are sacked, and the organisations become a lot more open about their funding." [17] You are claim that Fumento and Milloy are shills who should be sacked, and that no reputable person would work with them. By inference you are implying that Brignell is not reputable. This is another negative inference. Are you going to add disclaimers for each of these inferences? Do I then need to go through Tim Lambert's blog looking for negative things he has said so that you can add even more disclaimers? Or will you admit that the statements need to be removed? Engjs 13:15, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

As stated, the possible inference that Brignell is a paid advocate (shill) is clearly disclaimed - I remind you again that the relevant quote was in the article well before the widespread exposure of Milloy and Fumento as shills. The more general association is accurate. Milloy and Brignell make the same arguments, support the same policy positions and cite each other favorably (as documented). If you like or dislike one, you'll probably have the same view about the other. Your argument would seem to preclude mentioning, say, that Reagan was a political ally of Thatcher on the grounds that many people didn't like Thatcher.

One problem I have in all this is that you seem highly ambivalent about Milloy. You obviously don't want his name in the article, but you don't seem to agree with criticism of him. Could you clarify on this? JQ 19:52, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I read Milloy regularly and accept a lot of what he has to say, but I recognise that he always takes the side of business and so take that into account when I judge his opinions. I believe that evidence he presents is accurate, but I also believe that he doesn't give all the evidence, and I wouldn't expect him to. For instance, in a recent article he suggested that government should not spend money on research into alternative energy forms but should instead leave that to private enterprise, which is nonsense. If I read your work regularly, I would apply the same policy to you in regards to environmental matters as I do to him when he talks about private enterprise. You have attacked him for accepting money from big corporations to fund his work, and suggest that he says should be ignored because of that. I've never seen you attack a scientist for accepting money from green groups or for being a member of a green political party. That's double standards.

You seem to be hung up on truth, saying that if something is true it can go in the article. The verifiability criteria specifically says that this is not the case; it's verifiablility that matters. So even if your claims about Brignell were true that would not give you leave to include them. They are negative information and so you must back them up with references to reliable sources or remove them. And because you are using guilt by association you must back up every possible association that could be made between Milloy and Brignell. You can't do that, which is why guilt by association is not allowed. Engjs 21:55, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not following you. The claims of a close association between Brignell and Milloy are both true and verified by the evidence cited, as well as by simple use of Google

[18] [19]

Why don't you seek advice from someone else as to whether your interpretation of the criteria is generally accepted, and I'll do the same. JQ 23:10, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

It's not the claims of a close association between Brignell and Milloy that are at issue, it's the implied claims of shared ethics and/or moral values and/or reputability and/or whatever else Milloy is notable for. Engjs 01:25, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't think further debate will help us much at this point. Can I repeat my suggestion that you seek advice from someone else as to whether your interpretation of the criteria is generally accepted, and I'll do the same. JQ 06:47, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

May I tell my opinion? The main problem here is if a fact is or not verifiable (the "guilt by association", in this case, am I right?) and the criteria to apply it. If someting is true and notable, WP policy permits to include it in the content (it's obvious). Engjs, I don't understand fully why soething that appears to be notable should not be included. What I do understand and believe is that how those paragraphs are written can lead to confussion and they're somewhat POV. Basically, I would try to clean the whole article and/or put a request to cleanup. Am I missing something? --Neigel von Teighen 19:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I broadly agree with this assessment. I think the section being discussed at present is the one most in need of cleanup, so maybe we could put in a request focusing on that section. JQ 01:52, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps I can make the point with an example. Suppose I were to put on John Quiggin's page the statement "John Quiggin's politics echo in part those of Adolph Hitler, and he supports the reintroduction of a number of policies enacted in Nazi Germany." Now this is both true and verifiable, as the Nazis were a green party, but I don't think John would want it there. The problem is that anyone seeing the name Adolph Hitler is going to make automatic assumptions about John that simply aren't true. Even the addition of a whole series of disclaimers is not going to change that. That is what guilt by association is. The article on verifiability suggested that because the inferences underlying guilt by association are not verifiable, guilt by association cannot be used in wikipedia. Engjs 03:54, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Does Godwin's Law apply to Wikipedia discussions? :-) JQ 06:48, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I acknowledge your point, but you've missed mine. I'm specifically not calling you a nazi, and there's no intent on my part to even imply that you are. I'm using an extreme example to demonstrate a point. I would point out that your first thought was that that was what I was implying, which is exactly what guilt by association is. Engjs 09:02, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I think, as the discussion of Godwin's Law implies, that this is a sign that we're not going to get much further debating the point. I'm willing to go with the approach suggested by our mediator (BTW, Neigel, thanks for your contribution to the process). If you still think there's a case for deleting material that's true, verified by citation and noteworthy, you can always go to arbitration, but I think you'll get the same response. Otherwise, I think cleanup (preferably by someone without a prior POV on the issue) is the way to go.

On the subject of Milloy, I found the following on Number Watch "I disagree with much of what Milloy writes (for example, I dismiss the gun lobbying as a unique American quirk that is a leftover from history) but on the scientific issues raised in the chain of links I believe he is largely correct. I certainly did not find the critique devastating." [20] How do you square that with you claim that his views are the same as Milloy's? Engjs 04:59, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Media Bias

I've added a disclaimer to the Number Watch section, If you have a problem with it, please detail it here and I'll amend it. Engjs 13:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Your editing of the disclaimer rendered it NPOV by implying both that Brignell's critics were in the majority and that he has been criticised in areas where media coverage is not mostly one sided. Engjs 01:08, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I didn't mean to imply that critics were in the majority and the version now reached doesn't say this. The claim that media coverage is one-sided is POV, and I've deleted it. If you want to attribute some words to this effect to Brignell's supporters I have no problem. JQ 01:19, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

To claim that media coverage is one-sided is not POV if that is the case. If you would care to name an issue over which Brignell is criticised for being biased, I will be happy to show that media coverage of that issue is one-sided. If you can't name such an issue, then you should accept that the statement as I phrased it is not POV. Engjs 05:21, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Such a discussion really belongs in Media bias. But if you can show, to the satisfaction of a neutral party such as our mediator, that media coverage of all the issues discussed in the article is biased against Brignell's view (relative to the balance of scientific evidence), I'll be happy to accept it.

Let's start with your own example of speed cameras. Is it the case that no UK newspaper or media outlet ran articles & opinion pieces critical of speed cameras? If some did, can you give quantitative evidence (from NEXIS or some equivalent) to show that pro-camera articles greatly outweighed those on the other side? JQ 05:34, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

This is warping things. Firstly, bias does not mean all articles have the same leaning, but rather most articles have the same leaning, with most meaning enough to give the impression that the other side is wrong. If there are 10 pro articles for every 1 against that is still media bias. Secondly, Brignell attacks science and statistics. Articles that do not quote science or statistics are outside his remit and should be ignored. For example, an article that attacked Kyoto on economic grounds without also attacking the science behind global warming should not be counted. Brignell is not an economist, and could be expected to ignore such an article. Thirdly, Brignell does not quote articles from every media outlet; he is selective. His main two sources are The Times and the BBC news service, but he does quote occasionally from the other major British daily papers, or refer to television stories. It would not be appropriate for example to include articles from "Global Warming is Bollocks Weekly" if there is no indication that Brignell has ever read it. Fourthly, the point I am making is that media bias causes the suppression of one side of the argument in cases where there are actually two sides, giving the impression of bias. If both sides are given air, then of course that means that there is no media bias, but that does not in turn mean that Brignell is biased. The case of speed cameras is a good one, because the truth of what Brignell has said about them has been acknowledged by the British government. But this is beside the point, because a statement that is phrased "In respect to issues where media coverage is mostly one sided..." is excluding that situation from the following comment.

I would suggest you name three issues on which you claim Brignell shows bias. I will for each issue dig out the first 50 articles from the BBC news website that mention that issue and categorise them. Then we will have something to argue from. Engjs 00:22, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I don;t think we're going to get far here. According to you, if the British government agrees with Brignell, that proves he's right, but if they disagree that doesn't prove he's wrong. On ozone, for example, all serious scientists say that Brignell is wrong, so how can there be media bias. Still, if you really want to do this, why don't you start with DDT? JQ 00:47, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

No, if the British government and Brignell both agree, there is no other side, so how can he be biased? If they were to disagree, then you would need to look for other ways to prove bias.

On ozone, Brignell has made exactly three comments. There is nothing in his books on it, they all come from his website. In a section on fridge dumping: "All because of a hole in the ozone layer that was probably always there and an unproven theory as to how it was caused." [21]. In a paragraph on the presence of man made chemicals in Margot Wallström's blood: "Like the hole in the ozone layer, these minuscule traces of complex organic compounds might always have been there, but we could not see them." [22] And in response to a comment from Tim Lambert he (a) denies saying that the hole was not always there, and (b) takes the piss out of Tim's graph. [23] There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Brignell's take on ozone is any different to any other scientist. All he has said is that there is no evidence to support the suggestion that the hole is a new phenomena, and so it is possible that it is a cyclic phenomena. No serious scientist will suggest that a theory or part of a theory unsupported by evidence cannot be subject to doubt; that is the attitude of religion, not of science.

I'll start on DDT tomorrow. Engjs 04:31, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The BBC news website contains 14 articles that mention DDT. These break down as follows.

8 articles assume DDT is a bad thing...

• Birds carry pollution to Arctic (15/7/2005) [24]
• Russian rock band keeps the faith (25/3/2004) [25]
• DDT pregnancy warning (27/6/2003) [26]
• DDT link to premature births (12/7/2001) [27]
• Premature puberty link to DDT (16/5/2001) [28]
• Clever compost clears pollution (16/9/1999) [29]
• Ban DDT says wildlife group (27/1/1999) [30]
• Vultures dying out (14/1/1999) [31]

1 article assumes the fuss over DDT is a beat up...

• First and foremost bureaucrats (15/1/2001) [32]

Five articles address DDT use in the developing world. Of these, two assume DDT is a bad thing...

• DDT and Africa's war on malaria (26/11/2001) [33]
• Fighting malaria with DDT in South Africa (21/9/2005) [34]

and 3 present the issue in either a neutral light or by suggesting that the west has demonised DDT...

• West stands accused over malaria (4/3/2004) [35]
• Environmentalists threaten malaria fight (30/8/2000) [36]
• Battle over anti-malaria chemical (4/3/2004) [37]

So, of 9 articles that don't deal specifically with mosquito spraying in Africa, 8 portray DDT as bad. The 9th is an opinion piece that doesn't talk about the underlying science. That would seem to back up the comment that the media is one sided in its presentation of information on DDT. For the 5 that do deal specifically with mosquito spraying in Africa, the opinions are all over the place, and you could not point to Brignell's as running counter to general opinion. Engjs 23:59, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree at all with your classification. It's obvious that both sides of the debate are getting a good run here. And your suggestion that an article about a Russian rock band is anti-DDT makes no sense. The only reference to the real thing is that DDT is lethal, which one would suppose is a desirable property for a pesticide. Rather than argue this out with me, I suggest that you take your arguments to the Media bias article, where I assume people have no particular views about Brignell. If you can convince them that the media is biased in the way you say, I'm happy to include it. Otherwise, claims about media bias must be attributed to Brignell's supporters, such as yourself.

I classified firstly on the basis of language used. The article on the rock band uses the phase "lethal name like DDT" which indicates an anti-DDT bias on the part of the writer; there is no evidence to suggest that DDT is lethal to humans except in large doses. Without this comment I would have classified it as irrelevant.

You rejected the comment "However, if the media presentation of a particular issue is biased towards one side of that issue, he inevitably appears to be biased towards the other, and consequently attracts criticism from the supporters of that side of the issue." as being NPOV. I have shown that, where media presentation in the issue of DDT is biased towards one side of the issue he appears to be biased towards ther other. So as far as DDT is concerned this statement is NPOV, and you have no reason for removing it other than to try and make the paragraph appear more critical of him. In fact, in trying to characterise his view as being biased you are adding your own POV to the paragraph. And that in the face of a guideline on biographic articles of living people that says you should not do so.

Neigel, John suggested you act as a neutral party in judging this. Now that I have produced evidence to support what I have said he appears to be trying to back away from this. Will you offer your opinion please?

[edit] Politics

You added Numberwatch also contains extensive commentary on general political issues, and is particularly critical of the British Labour Party. I added a quote from John Brignell that explains this position. William M. Connolley removed the quote claiming that he was "rm yet more opinion". Can you offer any reason for why this quote was removed, or for why it should not be put back? Engjs 13:13, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I think WMCs aim was to eliminate the kind of back-and-forth that's been cut from other sections - he cut part of my original sentence as well. I've deleted "and is particularly critical of the British Labour Party" which I hope addresses your concerns. I've also rearranged the section in a way that I think makes more sense.

Please don't rearrange things without agreement. I have been very careful not to modify things arbitrarily while the article is under mediation because I don't want to get back into chop and change wars. Would you please adopt the same attitude.

WMC cut the positive while leaving the negative. That's not a neutral action. He also removed a direct quote on the matter in order to leave a negative generalisation, which clearly runs counter to the guidelines.

Numberwatch also contains extensive commentary on general political issues. I have a problem with the word 'extensive'. How much commentary counts as extensive?

The Feb 06 issue (most recent I think) starts off with two pieces on general politics, and there's another further down. I think most issues have at least one such item. Would you prefer "regular" or "frequent"? JQ 00:32, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The first piece is on global warming, commenting on how the government and media are treating it in Britain. That's hardly general politics, it's just the reiteration of comments he's made many times before. It doesn't deal directly with statistics or numbers, but that's because he has already done so elsewhere. The second piece is on global warming, first drawing attention to an attempt by the conservatives to gag their members, then to a conservative MP (or so I assume) who has written an anti-global warming opinion piece. Political, but certainly on topic, and therefore not a general political issue. "Buffoonery" is certainly political. Ergo, that's one, perhaps one and a half items out of 15. That's not extensive. Even 3 out of 15 is not extensive. I'd suggest occasional. Engjs 04:54, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, let's drop the adjective and just sayNumberwatch also contains commentary on general political issues. as you suggested above

Works for me. Engjs 08:27, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Second Hand Smoke

I've replaced your reporting of what Brignell said about second hand smoke with a direct quote from his book. Not only is this a better source, but it is more accurate. Engjs 12:13, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Reverted. Please don't do this kind of thing any more. You've objected to good faith edits like my last, where I made changes you wanted along with some reorganisation, so don't add this kind of POV slab quotation. If you want, give a link JQ 12:24, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

It's a quote from Brignell's book. It is a verifiable source, what I said is not point of view, and it is not original research, so there is no basis for removing it. There is no reason why the quoted material cannot be point of view; nothing I've found in wikipedia says that, and there are many examples where people quote point of view material; the restriction is on what you write about your subject, not on the subject itself. Conversely, the best way to state what the subject has said about an issue is to quote the subject's work, which is what I have done. You are choosing to present what you say he says instead of what he actually says, and what you say he says is different. You are adding your point of view to the article, and that is a breach of the guidelines. Engjs 14:04, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

The whole point of the process we've gone through thus far is to avoid the kind of back-and-forth argument that made the starting point article so unsatisfactory. Do you really want a long slab of Brignell, followed by counterarguments and so on? As with DDT this material belongs in the articles on passive smoking and relative risk, if anywhere. If you think the brief summary of Brignell's argument given here is unsatisfactory, feel free to propose an amendment. JQ 19:56, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi again. (I'm glad to see you were discussng things civily). John, maybe it's a good idea to quote Brignell. Summaries can be subject to reverts an opinion divergences, specially in a controvesial topic as 2nd hand smoking, but to uote someone's opinion would be fine to me (from the point of view of a casual reader). Obviously, this cannot lead into a list of arguments and counterarguments, as John says. Let's kee things balanced and use resources sparingly. --Neigel von Teighen 23:20, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

It's been a couple of days now with no comment from John, so I'll put the quote back in. Engjs 06:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I've been too busy to do much, but I've added back a brief summary with links to relevant articles, and indented the quote JQ 08:48, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Jumping to the criticism section, the comment about Bob Carroll. Talking about the WHO study, he quotes the study as finding a relative risk of "1.16, with a Confidence Interval (CI) of .93 - 1.44" and then "The 1.16 number is not statistically significant." He continues: "Yes, it is, unless you follow the recommendation of the tobacco industry and Jim Tozzi." As the confidence interval contains 1.0 the result is not significant, so he is dead wrong on this. He is a philosopher, not a scientist or a mathematician [38], and he obviously wouldn't say this if he had any understanding of statistics. One can only conclude that the people who he talked to at John Hopkins university told him this, either because they didn't know or because they were deliberately deceiving him, and that he believed them. Either way, his opinion on the matter hardly constitutes any sort of real criticism. I suggest that either this comment needs to be removed or that it has to be modified so that it doesn't mislead the reader into thinking that it has any real authority. Engjs 11:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

The apparent error isn't part of his criticism of Brignell. I suggest putting in a direct quote from Carroll, as was done above with Brignell, and leaving it at that. Readers can make up their own minds. Again, I want to avoid a whole lot of back and forth, where errors in Brignell's work are pointed out in detail, defences are offered and so on.

The EPA study used a one-tailed test since it is not plausible that cigarette smoke prevents cancer -- the result was significant at the 5% level with a one-tailed test. I also find it very strange that Engjs now argues that now argues that it matters whether 1 is in the confidence interval when earlier he supported Brignell's claim that a risk of 1.5 was not significant, even when the confidence interval did not include 1. --TimLambert 03:42, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Tim, if you find statistical significance, you have either found a link or you have found a type I error. A lot of studies get published where there is no real link but only a type I error. This is a recognised problem brought about because many modern scientists don't understand the way the probability underlying the statistics they use works. Or don't care. So some percentage of published studies are false. How do you pick out the good ones? You look at the position of the 1.0 in relation to the confidence interval. If it is well outside you probably have a good study, if it is only just outside then you probably have a dodgy one. Do you understand this? If you have a low relative risk and a very narrow interval that means that you have a p-value that is very small, meaning that if you increase the confidence level and thus broaden the interval 1.0 will still be outside it. But if you have a low relative risk and the interval goes right up next to the 1.0, then you have a p-value that is only just significant are probably looking at a dodgy study. Hence the two pillars Brignell uses to judge studies as dodgy, the confidence level of 95% combined with a low relative risk.

You claim that "it is not plausible that cigarette smoke prevents cancer", yet studies have found statistically significant evidence that this is the case for passive smoking. When there are studies finding significant results on both sides of the issue, you can't say that it's impossible that it could be happening.

John, my point is that Carroll's opinion is simply not worth putting in because it is clear that in this case he doesn't know what he is talking about, he is only relaying information fed to him by other people. If you do want to include the opinion you need to make this clear. The guidelines clearly say that negative information has to be backed up with reliable sources, and that academics talking outside their fields are not reliable sources, as is the case here. Engjs 04:34, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

The obvious reason "it is not plausible that cigarette smoke prevents cancer" is that we know, from both experimental and epidemiological evidence that smoking causes cancer. Experimental evidence gives the same result for exposure to cigarette smoke in the air. Epidemiological evidence is much harder to come by in this case, because it's so hard to measure differences in exposure. It's surprising, given his stated views that Brignell places so much weight on problems in the epidemiological studies. You would think he would be happy to rely on the experimental results

On rereading, I think Carroll is alluding the one-tailed test point. More generally, I don't think he can be dismissed in the way you would like. Brignell did, after all, call him a giant of the pro-science movement. JQ 03:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

The response curve for most drugs is not linear, but sigmoid. It is reasonable to assume there is a threshold for reaction to tobacco smoke, and it is certainly possible that environmental smoke is not concentrated enough to cross it. Further, tobacco smoke may show hormesis, in which case low doses would be beneficial. So it is plausible that passive smoke prevents cancer. Given that studies have found that passive smoke lowers the chance of lung cancer, it is also possible. So you can't just rule the possibility out because you don't want it to be true.

"The 1.16 number is not statistically significant." followed immediately by "Yes, it is, unless you follow the recommendation of the tobacco industry and Jim Tozzi." To suggest the second statement is not referring to the first is disingenuous. He has moved on from the EPA study to the WHO report. If he were referring to the former he would say something like "But the EPA result is significant." He doesn't, because he is referring to the result quoted in the who report.

The guideline on Biographies of Living Persons says, under "Opinions of critics, opponents, and detractors", that "Many persons that are notable enough to have an article in Wikipedia about them are likely to have detractors, opponents and/or critics. Their views can be presented in a biography providing that these are relevant to their notability, based on reputable sources and in a manner that does not overwhelm the article." The guideline on reliable sources says, under "Beware false authority", "Would you trust a plumber to fill your cavities? Likewise, you should probably not trust someone who has a Ph.D. in plant biology to tell you about quantum mechanics. Just as actors in TV commercials don white lab coats to make viewers think they are serious scientists, people with degrees in one field are not necessarily experts in any other. Watch out for false claims of authority. Try to use sources who have degrees in the field they are discussing. The more reputable ones are affiliated with academic institutions. The most reputable have written textbooks in their field for the undergraduate level or higher: these authors can be expected to have a broad, authoritative grasp of their subject."

Robert Carroll does not have a qualification in statistics or science, only in philosophy. He is not a reputable source on this issue and the guidelines say you can't present his views. You should take the comment out. But I'm happy to see it left there provided you qualify it to show that he is not qualified to offer an opinion. Engjs 06:55, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Engjs, Carroll is relevant because Brignell himself cited him as an authoritative supporter. As regards your opinions on passive smoking, the criticisms you cite above apply to you and to Brignell. You are disputing the conclusions reached by the experts in this field, as in the case of the ozone layer, global warming and so on, and reproducing the statements of tobacco lobbyists like Milloy.

But if you wish to push it, I'm happy to add "Brignell attacks the use of one-tailed tests because he thinks exposure to tobacco smoke may reduce the risk of cancer". JQ 10:03, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

The comment is in breach of the guidelines. If you are not prepared to change it as I suggested then you must remove it. Engjs 11:36, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

This is just a repetition of the claim to which I responded earlier. As noted, Brignell claims Carroll's support and its withdrawal is therefore significant.

The guidelines say you can't put Carroll's opinions in the article, significant or not. He is criticising, and he is not a reputable source. Engjs 21:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Bob Carroll (author of the Skeptic's Dictionary) initially accepted Brignell's argument against the EPA. However, he changed his mind on the basis that the "scientific principle" (relative risk less than 2) that Brignell used to reject the finding was not recognized by epidemiologists or statisticians.

The guideline on verifiability states that "Any edit lacking a source may be removed" and "If the article or information is about a living person, remove the unsourced information immediately. See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons." As I have noted, this comment breaches the BLP guidelines on verifiability in that the source of criticism is not reputable. I am therefore moving the comment here until the matter is sorted out. Engjs 00:48, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Reverted. This isn't unsourced, and the guidelines say nothing about sources with whom some editors disagree. As observed repeatedly, Brignell's own claim of endorsement by Carroll and description of him as a "giant of the pro-science movement" make him notably in this context.

[edit] "Request for comment" on mediator

In an e-mail, Engjs tells me to be unsatisfied with my mediation. And I see good reasons for it: being sincere, I'm not the right mediator for this issue, or at least that's Engjs' and my impression. Should I continue, in your opinion, or do you want to switch me or pass into arbitration? --Neigel von Teighen 21:25, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I've felt for a while that arbitration is probably the way to go. I don't think Engjs actually wants mediation here. He seems to me to claim that the guidelines prohibit, or should prohibit, the inclusion of any information that makes Brignell look bad, and this is really a question for arbitration. Thanks for your efforts, which have had some success despite the basic unsuitability of the dispute for mediation. I think mediation and similar institutions play an important role in Wikipedia and they only work because of your efforts and those of others like you. JQ 21:52, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I will list the article for arbitration. Engjs 04:37, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

OK, case closed. --Neigel von Teighen 23:56, 24 March 2006 (UTC)