The much-awaited arrival of DSM-5 (the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) should ensure that every human being is classed as insane. At this point we might be able to start again and consider what psychiatry is for. Genomics is keen to help in the effort by finding the loci that are associated with all sorts of mental disorders. Enter a huge population based study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health: “Our findings show that specific SNPs are associated with a range of psychiatric disorders of childhood onset or adult onset. In particular, variation in calcium-channel activity genes seems to have pleiotropic effects on psychopathology. These results provide evidence relevant to the goal of moving beyond descriptive syndromes in psychiatry, and towards a nosology informed by disease cause.” Hmm. I think that when authors have to use words like “pleiotropic” and “nosology” there is a high chance that they do not know what they are talking about. So before welcoming the marriage of genomics and psychiatry, let us remember that there is a strong history of madness on both sides.
Richard Lehman, “Richard Lehman’s journal review—22 April 2013”, BMJ Group blogs, 2013-04-22
April 24, 2013
QotD: Welcoming the DSM-V appropriately
April 23, 2013
Seller of fake bomb detectors found guilty of fraud
Back in 2010, I said “There should be a special hell for this scam artist” who mocked up bomb detector kits and sold them for thousands of dollars in Iraq and other areas with a real need for protection against IEDs. It’s taken more than three years, but he’s finally been found guilty:
A Somerset-based businessman has been convicted of three counts of fraud over the sale of bogus bomb detectors after his operation was exposed in a BBC Newsnight investigation in 2010.
This was a scam of global dimensions. James McCormick marketed his fake bomb detectors around the world, selling them in Georgia, Romania, Niger, Thailand, Saudi Arabia and beyond.
But his main market was Iraq, where lives depended on bomb detection and where the bogus devices were, and still are, used at virtually every checkpoint in the capital.
Between 2008 and 2009 alone, more than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in explosions in Baghdad.
How the device was meant to work:
- A small amount of the substance the user wished to detect — such as explosives — was put in a Kilner jar along with a sticker that was intended to absorb the “vapours” of the substance
- The sticker was then placed on a credit-card sized card, which was read by a card reader and inserted into the device
- The user would then hold the device, which had no working electronics, and the swivelling antenna was meant to indicate the location of the sought substance
In other words, a magical dowsing stick that depended on the user to “detect” whatever the device was supposedly seeking. This wasn’t a case of a device that didn’t do what it was designed to do: it was a deliberate fraud with just enough “technological” mumbo-jumbo to appear to be a solution to a real problem:
The court heard that McCormick began his business by buying a batch of novelty “golf ball detectors” from the USA for less than $20 each. In fact they were simply radio aerials, attached by a hinge to a handle. He put the labels of his company, ATSC, on them and sold them as bomb detectors for $5,000 each.
He then made a more advanced-looking version which he was to sell for up to $55,000. The ADE-651 came with cards which he claimed were “programmed” to detect everything from explosives to ivory and even $100 bills. Police say the only genuine part of the kit — and the most expensive — was the carrying case.
To their credit, the police moved to investigate the same day the BBC’s original story broke. Strategy Page explained why the scam had been so easy to sell. Later it was reported that British civil servants and military personnel had been implicated in the fraud.
“I’m beginning to wonder if lesbians are the thirteenth tribe of Israel”
In the New Statesman, Eleanor Margolis ponders the cultural similarities between Jews and lesbians:
You don’t have to be a devoted Woody Allen fan to be aware of the “Jew as hypochondriac” stereotype. Not only is it one of the core themes of Jewish humour, it’s true. I grew up in a household with a medicine cabinet that looked like a branch of Boots. Lesbians are identically health-obsessed. I’ve learned the hard way never to ask a fellow-gay girl about her physical wellbeing. Aside from shagging other women and feasting on organic legumes, we love absolutely nothing more than discussing our ailments. In great, often gory, detail. If a lesbian has a yeast infection or diarrhoea, she will tell you. In fact, the frankest discussions I’ve ever had about my bowel movements have been with my lesbian friends (and my mother. Natch).
[. . .]
So, aside from our shared hypochondria and foodiness, what else suggests that the Book of Lesbians might be missing from the Old Testament? Well, a hobby practiced by many a Jew is discussing, often to the point of argument, “who’s Jewish”. Similarly, we lesbians are keen to identify others like us. “Is she/isn’t she gay” discussions are a regular fixture at lesbian dinner tables and they often get heated. What Jews and lesbians have in common here is a desire to claim people as our own. If there’s someone we want on our team and there’s even the slightest hint that they might be Jewish/lesbian, we will fervently, and often speciously, argue that they are so. For example, there’s a longstanding lesbian obsession with the sexuality of boyish Canadian actress Ellen Page. And when rumours about her having dated Drew Barrymore surfaced a few years ago, we said a collective and triumphant, “Told you so”.
Another thing. In the same way that the more religious of Jewish parents don’t want their children to marry outside the religion, lesbians are often suspicious, dating-wise, of bisexuals. There’s a fair bit of prejudice towards women who aren’t fully-fledged lesbians. Rest assured, bi buddies, I don’t remotely condone this. But to some lesbians, it seems, bi girls are a no-go. What’s more, I’ve seen a certain amount of stigma attached to gay women who, like me, slept with men pre-coming out. A gay girl who has never had sex with a man is known on the scene as a “gold star lesbian”. Read: “kosher lesbian”.
The myth of radicalization
In sp!ked, Frank Furedi examines the recent phenomenon of “nice guys” turning into terrorists:
… homegrown terrorism is viewed as a problem of ‘radicalisation’, where young people are seen as having effectively been warped by some imam or ideology promoter. So within days of the Boston bombers being identified, a local mosque was blamed for radicalising Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Others have looked for alternative sources of radicalisation, such as jihadist courses on YouTube or extremist Islamist websites. The theory of radicalisation is based on the premise that the lure of jihad politicises otherwise disgruntled individuals and transforms them into hardened militants.
Yet it is not clear what exactly constitutes the lure of jihad. Young people who are attracted to jihadist websites rarely adopt a new worldview. In fact, their perspective is very similar to numerous non-Muslim Westerners who visit nihilistic websites and become fascinated by destructive themes and image. Those who visit jihadist sites are choosing a fad rather than a coherent ideological outlook. In this regard, it is worth noting that some radicals arrested for terrorist activities in Europe are neither religious zealots nor political idealists. A study of ‘The Mujahideen Network’, a Swedish internet forum, discovered that its members’ knowledge of Islam was ‘virtually non-existent’ and their ‘fascination with jihad seems to be dictated by their rebellious nature rather than a deep ideological conviction’ (5). In other words, these people seem to have been driven by their estrangement from society rather than being pulled by a vibrant and dynamic alternative.
[. . .]
In fact, there are formidable cultural forces that denigrate the West’s historical achievements and its traditional belief in progress and enlightenment. Some commentators argue that the West, finding it difficult to believe in itself, faces a moral crisis. In such circumstances, is it any wonder that many young people feel deeply estranged from the Western way of life? Fortunately, only a handful opt for the nihilistic course of action taken by the Boston bombers. But the real problem is not to be found in the impressionable minds of youths but in the failure of society to inspire these young people with positive and forward-looking ideals.
Young people are not being seduced by mystical jihadist ideologies; they are being driven away by a society that fails to lead or enthuse or move them. There will, of course, always be a handful of confused and disturbed individuals who opt for acts of violent destruction. But as long as their community believes in itself, the damage they cause will be contained. The experience of the post-9/11 world shows that winning the arguments for an open society is the most effective answer to the threat of terror.
What we know (so far) about the would-be Via bombers
Maclean’s has a summary pulling together files from Nicholas Köhler, Charlie Gillis, Michael Friscolanti and Martin Patriquin on what is known about the two men arrested yesterday in a plot to commit an act of terror on a Canadian passenger train:
One of the men, Raed Jaser, is believed to have grown up in a Palestinian family with Jordanian roots. Court records seem to indicate he went on to a troubled history in Toronto, where authorities arrested him after a months’-long investigation they say ultimately leads back to al-Qaeda elements in Iran.
Although he is not a Canadian citizen, Jaser, 35, appears to have been in Ontario for at least two decades.
In October 1995, a man with the same name and year of birth was criminally charged in Newmarket, Ont., with fraud under $5,000 (the charge was withdrawn a year later). In December 2000, a week after his 24th birthday, Jaser was arrested and charged again, this time with uttering threats. Although court records show he was convicted of that charge, it’s not clear what sentence he received.
[. . .]
Details about the other man police say was involved in the plot, [Chiheb] Esseghaier, a resident of Montreal, are also coming into focus. A highly trained engineer, he had the resumé of an academic poised to go places.
As recently as last month he was publishing research papers.
The March 2013 edition of journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics published a paper on advanced HIV detection by Esseghaier, Mohammed Zourob and a fellow PhD student named Andy Ng.
According to his CV, Esseghaier was born in Tunisia. He received an engineering degree from Institut Tunisia’s National des Sciences Appliquées et de Technologie in 2007, with his masters degree following in 2008. He then moved to Université de Sherbrooke to research “SPR biosensor and gallium arsenide semi-conductor biofunctionnalization.” In November 2010, he joined Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), a graduate institution associated with the Université du Québec.
Independent Scotland would not be in currency union with the UK
In the Guardian, Patrick Wintour and Severin Carrell cover the latest provocative notion coming out of London, directed at the Scottish separatists:
An independent Scotland would be forced to adopt new currency arrangements that would be a “very deep dive into uncharted waters”, George Osborne has warned. The chancellor said an independent Scotland would be unable to operate with a currency linked to sterling, let alone be able to form a currency union with it.
“The best arrangement is if they stay in the UK,” he said.
Osborne said he thought it “unlikely” the rest of UK would agree to a currency union with Scotland, noticeably hardening his rhetoric against Alex Salmond’s proposal.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland, the chancellor said: “Why would it want to risk a currency union? We’ve got a currency union in Europe and it’s called the euro, and look at all the problems that has had trying to co-ordinate the economic policies of different countries.”
Setting out the options, the chancellor said: “I think Scotland could either join the euro, and Alex Salmond is very nervous of saying that, or Scotland can set up its own currency. That is what lots of countries do, but Alex Salmond is again nervous of saying that.
“They can use the pound without our consent, like Panama uses the American dollar, or they can negotiate with the rest of the UK to form a currency zone. But Britain has had poor experience with things like the ERM [exchange rate mechanism], when it has tried to lock or peg its currency together with other currencies. So it is not clear that it would be in the rest of the UK’s interest to enter into a euro-style currency zone with the rest of Scotland.”
April 22, 2013
QotD: The long-term dangers of chronic unemployment
One of the most pernicious aspects of the chronic unemployment rampant during the Great Depression was that it took many people (mostly men) out of the workforce permanently. Many men simply became unsuited for making a living, and this in turn prevented them from forming families or even becoming a part of normal society. The same pattern is appearing now, and it is a cause for grave concern. Chronic unemployment isn’t just a hit to the economy; it attacks the very fabric of society.
The simplistic approach to this problem is to demand that the government create jobs ex nihilo, but this almost never works in practice. Besides being wasteful of tax dollars and of limited use in actually reducing unemployment, these types of programs also tend to cultivate a sense of cynicism in the workers themselves. FDR’s various make-work schemes were a perfect example of this. (The old joke about the WPA was that it stood for “We Piddle Around”.)
Monty, “DOOM: It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop”, Ace of Spades H.Q., 2013-04-22
Torture under the Bush administration
Steve Chapman on the brutal legacy of torture of suspected terrorists during the Bush years:
The autopsy gave a spare account of how the 52-year-old man died. He suffered blunt force injuries on his torso and legs, and abrasions on his left wrist indicated he had been tied or shackled down. One of his neck bones was fractured. Death came “as a result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to strangulation,” and it was ruled a homicide.
It’s too much to hope for justice in this case, though. That’s because the homicide came at the hands of the administration of George W. Bush. The victim was an Iraqi whose demise occurred while he was in American custody. He was one of some 100 people who since 2001 have died while our government was holding them, some of whom were tortured to death.
The advocates of “enhanced interrogation” make it sound simple and effective. An uncooperative terrorist gets waterboarded and quickly agrees to spill vital secrets, or gets weary of being cold and sleep-deprived and divulges plots in time to stop them.
Dick Cheney and Co. never dwell on the captives who were subjected to prolonged and escalating brutality that failed to elicit the desired information — possibly because they didn’t have it. Those who favor this approach don’t mention the inmates who will never talk because they are in their graves.
Some of the tortured survived the ordeal. But living or dead, they have been consistently ignored by the American people, few of whom realize what cruelties have been inflicted in our name.
The victims were ignored again last week when an independent commission issued a report that said, “Perhaps the most important or notable finding of this panel is that it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture.” The report was released Tuesday — as the Boston Marathon bombs were eclipsing all other news.
India’s submarine program hits (even more) delays
Strategy Page reports on the latest set of delays to hit the Indian navy’s submarine building program:
India’s effort to build six submarines (French Scorpenes), under license, has been delayed once again. The problem is mainly poor management. An example of this occurred quite recently with the departure of ten Spanish technical advisors for the Scorpenes. Their contract expired at the end of March and, despite the expiration date being well known Indian bureaucrats were unable to get a new contract in place on time. Similar avoidable delays have occurred several times already and the price has gone up with each delay. Last year it was announced that the first Scorpene sub would not be ready until 2015. The new delays push that to 2017.
Building the subs in India will leave India with thousands of workers and specialists experienced in building modern submarines. All that will be wasted because the defense procurement bureaucrats seem to have learned nothing. These officials already caused numerous delays and cost overruns during negotiations to build these diesel-electric submarines. The bureaucrats mismanaged this deal to the extent that it is now five years behind schedule. But it is even more behind schedule if you count the several years the Indian bureaucrats delayed it even getting started. The delays and mismanagement have so far increased the cost of the $4 billion project by 25 percent (to $834 million per sub).
[. . .]
All this ineffective urgency is in play because India’s submarine fleet is dying of old age and new boats are not going to arrive in time. It’s not like this was a surprise, but the Indian defense procurement bureaucracy has long been noted as slow, sloppy, and stubborn, especially in the face of demands that it speed up. The twisted tale of the tardy submarines is particularly painful.
The plan was to have a dozen new subs in service by the end of the decade. At present, there will be (with a bit of luck) three or four of them in service by then. The procurement bureaucracy is still seeking a supplier for the second batch of six diesel-electric subs. This second six probably won’t even begin arriving by the end of the decade. It’s hard to say, although the defense procurement nabobs speak of “fast tracking” this project, but long-time observers not expecting speed.
There’s some urgency to all this because this year five of India’s 16 diesel-electric subs (10 Kilo and two Foxtrot class Russian built boats and four German Type 209s) were to be retired (some are already semi-retired because of age and infirmity). Because of the Scorpene delays, the Type 209s are being kept in service (but not allowed out to sea much) for several more years. That leaves India with 14 subs. But in the next year or so several of the older Kilos will reach retirement age. Thus, by the time the first Scorpene arrives in 2017, India will only have five or six working subs. India believes it needs at least 18 non-nuclear subs in service to deal with Pakistan and China.
Not news: nearly 90% of all spreadsheets have errors
I’ve said it before, spreadsheets are great organizing tools and provide opportunities for both financial whizzes and ordinary folks to make splashy, expensive errors:
Microsoft Excel makes it easy for anyone to do the kind of number crunching once reserved for accountants and statisticians. But the world’s best-selling spreadsheet software has also contributed to the proliferation of bad math.
Close to 90% of spreadsheet documents contain errors, a 2008 analysis of multiple studies suggests. “Spreadsheets, even after careful development, contain errors in 1% or more of all formula cells,” writes Ray Panko, a professor of IT management at the University of Hawaii and an authority on bad spreadsheet practices. “In large spreadsheets with thousands of formulas, there will be dozens of undetected errors.”
Given that Microsoft says there are close to 1 billion Office users worldwide, “errors in spreadsheets are pandemic,” Panko says.
Such mistakes not only can lead to miscalculations in family budgets and distorted balance sheets at small businesses, but also might result in questionable rationales for global fiscal policy, as indicated by the case of a math error in a Harvard economics study. By failing to include certain spreadsheet cells in its calculations, the study by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff may have overstated the impact that debt burdens have on a nation’s economic growth.
There’s a reason I nominated Microsoft Excel as “The Most Dangerous Software on Earth“.
April 21, 2013
EU banking governance as situational comedy
In the Telegraph, Jeremy Warner pokes a bit of fun at the EU’s self-inflicted media pratfalls over the Cypriot banking “bailout”:
For the last time, I never used the word “template”. Thus said Jeroen Dijsselbloem, President of the Eurogroup, at his IMF press conference on Saturday. This is about whether the troika’s disastrous mishandling of the Cypriot bailout should be used as a model for future banking insolvencies in the eurozone. The row shows no sign of abating. OK, so Mr Dijsselbloem never did use the word “template” in originally welcoming the Cypriot defenestration, but that’s what he meant, forcing him quickly to backtrack when it was pointed out to him that his remarks might prompt a run on banks elsewhere in the eurozone.
But hold on a moment. Wolfgang Schauble, the German finance minister, said on Friday that Cyprus did provide a model in terms of bailing in depositors, so who’s right? Well it is sort of a model, Mr Dijsselbloem said at his IMF press conference, in the sense that common principles would in future be applied to banking resolution, but each case would no doubt be different and have its own defining characteristics. All clear now?
Gary Johnson on legalizing marijuana
Former New Mexico governor and Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson explains why he bucked conventional wisdom and became the first serving governor to call for the legalization of marijuana:
In 1999, as the Republican Governor of New Mexico, I made some waves by becoming the highest ranking elected official in the nation to call for the legalization of marijuana use and to publicly state the obvious: The War on Drugs is an “expensive bust.”
At that time, advocating the legalization of marijuana was considered an outrageous — and ill-advised — position to take. Polls clearly showed the public wasn’t yet ready to accept marijuana legalization, and there was absolutely no conventional political wisdom to support my decision.
So, why did I jump off that political cliff? The answer is simpler than you might think, and it applies even more today than it did more than 20 years ago. As I tried to do with virtually every policy issue the State of New Mexico faced, I looked at our drug laws through the lens of costs versus benefits. And the picture became very clear very quickly.
From the policeman on the street to the courts, prosecutors, and prisons, our legal system was overwhelmed by the task of enforcing a modern-day Prohibition that frankly made no more sense than the one that was repealed almost 80 years ago. Were we safer? Was drug abuse being reduced? Were we benefiting in any measurable way from laws that criminalize personal choices that are certainly no more harmful to society than alcohol use? The answer to all those questions was a pretty resounding “NO.”
Documentary War for the Web includes final interview with Aaron Swartz
CNET‘s Declan McCullagh talks about an upcoming documentary release:
From Aaron Swartz’s struggles with an antihacking law to Hollywood’s lobbying to a raft of surveillance proposals, the Internet and its users’ rights are under attack as never before, according to the creators of a forthcoming documentary film.
The film, titled War for the Web, traces the physical infrastructure of the Internet, from fat underwater cables to living room routers, as a way to explain the story of what’s behind the high-volume politicking over proposals like CISPA, Net neutrality, and the Stop Online Piracy Act.
“People talk about security, people talk about privacy, they talk about regional duopolies like they’re independent issues,” Cameron Brueckner, the film’s director, told CNET yesterday. “What is particularly striking is that these issues aren’t really independent issues…. They’re all interconnected.”
The filmmakers have finished 17 lengthy interviews — including what they say is the last extensive one that Swartz, the Internet activist, gave before committing suicide in January — that have yielded about 24 hours of raw footage. They plan to have a rough cut finished by the end of the year, and have launched a fundraising campaign on Indiegogo that ends May 1. (Here’s a three-minute trailer.)
Swartz, who was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, faced a criminal trial that would have begun this month and the possibility of anywhere from years to over a decade in federal prison for alleged illegal downloads of academic journal articles. He told the filmmakers last year, in an interview that took place after his indictment, that the U.S. government posed a more serious cybersecurity threat than hackers:
They cracked into other countries’ computers. They cracked into military installations. They have basically initiated cyberwar in a way that nobody is talking about because, you know, it’s not some kid in the basement somewhere — It’s President Obama. Because it’s distorted this way, because people talk about these fictional kids in the basement instead of government officials that have really been the problem, it ends up meaning that cybersecurity has been an excuse to do anything…
Now, cybersecurity is important. I think the government should be finding these vulnerabilities and helping to fix them. But they’re doing the opposite of that. They’re finding the vulnerabilities and keeping them secret so they can abuse them. So if we do care about cybersecurity, what we need to do is focus the debate not on these kids in a basement who aren’t doing any damage — but on the powerful people, the people paying lots of money to find these security holes who then are doing damage and refusing to fix them.
