Marion Nestle is a bona fide public expert on nutrition with an earned doctorate in molecular biology no less.  She’s also an academic in good standing.  She writes this review of a JAMA study in the Atlantic magazine:

The latest issue of JAMA has a paper on a “portfolio” of dietary means to reduce blood cholesterol levels.  The paper is likely to get lots of press because it concludes that consuming the “portfolio”–a combination of plant sterols, soy protein, viscous fibers, and nuts–does a better job of lowering LDL-cholesterol (the “bad” kind) than does dietary advice to reduce saturated fat.  The paper is unusually difficult to read. I interpret the study in part as a drug trial.

If you follow the link (pdf) Nestle provides, you can read this unusually difficult drug trial for yourself.  The paper reports the outcomes from a randomized controlled trial where volunteers were assigned into one of three diet advice programs, followed for 6 months, then measured on a wide variety of indicators, but most particularly on LDL cholesterol.  The main finding was that dietary recommendations to eat plant sterols, nuts, and soy proteins led to healthier LDL scores at a Small Windowpane effect size.  Thus, making a change to one’s diet makes changes in LDL scores.  That diet affects LDL is not news; the news here is that plant sterols, nuts, and soy proteins accomplish this and at about the same effect size as taking a pill.  Some people have high LDL, but react badly to medication; some just don’t like pills, but want to lower LDL.  Here’s a pill-free method that appears to work in the short term about as well as the pill.

The more interesting element of this rather commonplace event is Nestle’s description of the research as “unusually difficult” and as a “kind of drug trial.”  If you are in good standing in the peer review literature there’s no way this report is Unusually Difficult or even Usually Difficult.  The researchers do an excellent job describing both the methods and the results and I feel pretty confident that workers in this area could replicate this study without much difficulty.  It’s all there.  It actually over-reports by the usual JAMA standards, making it both easier to replicate, but also more detailed.  Certainly, there’s a lot of stuff in there, but each piece is quite simple and straightforward.

And a “kind of drug trial?”  Why would anyone, but most particularly a nutritionist with a doctorate in molecular biology call a food study a drug trial?  There’s a huge scientific and legal difference between a Food and a Drug and to see them as similar is to note they are both 4 letter words.  The active ingredient in this drug trial was dietary advice – what an expert told a volunteer participant to eat.   Even the JAMA editors and reviewers saw this as a communication intervention for dietary change.

We can understand why Nestle might see this paper as an unusually difficult drug study when we note that she notes,

One look at the Abstract and I immediately suspected that this study must have been sponsored by a maker of plant sterol margarines.  Bingo!

Another way to say, Bingo, is Ding-Dong!  Either term denotes the process.  Automatic.  Thoughtless.  When a for-profit group funds the science, you get a food study that is actually an unusually difficult kinda drug trial.  Those lying liars at Big Food bought a team of scientists, then bought the reviewers and editors at JAMA, and snuck this unusually difficult, kinda drug trial in the peer review literature.  Those biased, greedy, but effective bastards.  (As we’ve studied before on “ghostwriting” scientific reports.)

You see the problem here.  JAMA is a peer review research journal that for all its flaws is one of the stronger examples of this form of scientific communication.  The scientific community has decided that full disclosure from authors is the best way to handle scientific and ethical challenges.  The scientific community does not automatically Ding-Dong and exclude research submissions because of these concerns.  Disclosure of bias, real or potential, is how science proceeds.

But, not the NonProfit Science of Nestle.  She spots the raccoon in the Abstract.  Thank goodness, we have NonProfit science to save us.  Real scientists who don’t have financial incentives that bias their work . . . like writing for the Atlantic magazine.  Nestle doesn’t get paid through those ads on her Atlantic page?  And, writing in the Atlantic doesn’t have any other benefits, does it?

And because my book on calories is coming out next March, I must point out that the study groups reported losing small amounts of weight, which means they must also have reduced their calorie intake. Weight loss alone should help with blood cholesterol.

Hey, scientists, if you want the Truth, don’t read those biased peer review reports with Full Disclosure in JAMA, just wait until March for Nestle’s pop press book!  You read about it in the Atlantic magazine!  With all that advertising and self promotion.  That affects no one’s judgment!

And, yes, as her last quote carefully observes, the research did report that all three groups ate less and lost weight.  But only the diet advice for sterols, soy, and nuts led to weight loss and the lower LDL.  I guess that’s what makes this report unusually difficult.  When the lying liars who are Big Food lackeys say only one group lost weight and lowered LDL, that’s not what it really means.  You can see that if you are reading the lines between the lines and not the lines themselves.

Nonprofit science.  No bias.  Bingo!

I ironically noted a HuffingtonPost story on Stupid Rick Perry and surmised that HP had just elected Perry by questioning his intelligence in much the same way major media sources mocked George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.  The Stupid Merit Badge awarded by the New York Times appears to generate votes for the Dunce in the Corner.  Strategery, right?

Now, big media is taking another large step towards electing Any Republican with a variety of stories from a variety of outlets all focused on the same theme:  All Republicans are religious nuts.  Consider this summary of recent stories from a conservative writer.

For example, the Daily Beast/Newsweek recently published an article titled “A Christian Plot for Domination?” claiming that Perry and Bachmann are “deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism” known as Dominionism. A widely discussed article in the Texas Observer claimed that Dominionists — a “little-known movement of radical Christians” — are readying an “army of God” to “commandeer civilian government,” with Perry the “vessel” for their ambitions. Finally, the New Yorker published a long article claiming that Bachmann believes “Christians, and Christians alone, are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.”

When national journalists start questioning the religion of Republican candidates, they may as well stuff the ballot box.  Strategery yet again?

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere.

If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.

Of course, they would never admit it and I cannot find their digital fingerprints in my webstat logs, but how else do you explain it?  I noted recently that Elite Media might have elected Rick Perry as the next President with the Huffington Post’s smug story about Perry’s poor college grades as revealed through an anonymous “close friend” of Perry’s.  This is exactly what Perry wants from those smartypants progressives and I predicted that the New York Times would leap into the fray, attempting to go one better on those upstarts at HuffPost.  Isn’t that what smart people do?

Not, apparently, if they are checking the Persuasion Blog.  Take this from the NYT and Frank Bruni:

IT’S a foolish question, asking how smart a politician is.   It’s too vague. It ignores all the different wrinkles of intelligence and ways to measure it, along with the debatable link between brain power as it’s typically defined and skilled governance in terms of actual results. It’s a vessel for prejudices, a stand-in for grievances.

Jeepers, NYT zigs on the zag!  Take that HuffPost!  The NYT retains its Nuanced Cool Table seat!  Except that Bruni goes onto this.

Meet Rick Perry. At Texas A&M University, his grades were so poor he was on academic probation. He flunked advanced organic chemistry, which, in his defense, sounds eminently flunkable. He got a C in animal breeding, which doesn’t. For a “principles of economics” course, he attained a glittering D, as The Huffington Post detailed. You won’t be hearing him mention that much amid all his talk about Texas jobs creation.

While Bruni decries other people’s foolishness about Rick Perry’s stupidity, he then repeats the observation in detail.  In so doing, Bruni misses the main persuasion point.  The Left wears blinders with the Stupid Republican meme.  Bruni adds nuance, but does nothing to kill the Bias that kills progressives in elections with dumb guys from Texas.

Expect a Nuance Within A Nuance from HuffPost or fellow traveler, but always keeping Stupid Republicans in their arguments.

With friends like this, Barack Obama could join Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter on the scales of Biggest Losers.  And, as always, remember the Rules.

It’s about the Other Guy, Stupid.

All Bad Persuasion Is Sincere, Smartly Sincere!

If You Can’t Succeed, Don’t Try.

Persuasion Is Strategic or It Is Not.

I received a list email from Dr. Alan Kraut, Executive Director of the American Psychological Society.  APS, which attracts mainly research oriented psychologists, makes clear its desire for government funding for their psychological science.  And, of course, given our perilous economic times, the primary funding agencies of psychologists are facing the budget ax along with other scientific disciplines.  You are not surprised that APS doesn’t like this idea and in the contents of that email they quote from the New York Times columnist, David Brooks, and his favorable view of psychological research and its need for budget support.  The APS email also gratefully acknowledges the petitions and letters of support from other scientific associations.  One suspects that those other associations are likewise sending emails to members about the budget crisis and noting a letter of support from APS and Dr. Kraut, but that’s not my Main Point.  Let’s look at David Brooks and his column.

Brooks notes the compelling advantage of psychological research:

When you renew your driver’s license, you have a chance to enroll in an organ donation program. In countries like Germany and the U.S., you have to check a box if you want to opt in. Roughly 14 percent of people do. But behavioral scientists have discovered that how you set the defaults is really important. So in other countries, like Poland or France, you have to check a box if you want to opt out. In these countries, more than 90 percent of people participate.  This is a gigantic behavior difference cued by one tiny and costless change in procedure.

Really.  Save Federal Funding of Psych Research because of the organ donor default option research?

I’ve noted before the Brooks Effect which occurs when smart people read research reports – their eyes glaze over the review of lit and methods and results section and focus only on the glowing pronouncement in the discussion section.  Mr. Brooks, and unfortunately Dr. Kraut at APS, demonstrate the Brooks Effect again.  Their eyes move and read, but the mind doesn’t think about what those eyes see and read.

Choice effects are as old as dirt and Aesop’s fables, and precede Federal Grant programs by generations of unfunded workers.  Hey, read Aristotle and Plato, and the Sophists, then tell me that both the Golden Boys of Academe and their enemies the Sophists didn’t understand choice anchoring effects.  We knew this before major Government funding programs like NSF or NIH existed.  This old knowledge is apparently only more recently working its way into the elite corps and core of behavior researchers – economists, nowadays – who receive Nobel prizes for reading a dead psychologist’s old research and translating into Observational Tooth Fairy calculus with assumptions.  Yet Brooks and Kraut want to trumpet this as a Strong Argument for Continued Funding as if an NSF scientist discovered Low WATT choice or, more generally, how to make the weaker argument seem the stronger.

Furthermore, while setting default choices to different anchors has different effects, those different effects come not simply with a change in the rate of check-off, but also with a change in the relationship between citizens and their government.  Setting the default to We’ve Got Your Body and you’ve got to check Here to keep the Government literally off your back, not to mention your liver, kidney, or gizzard indicates a Government that has People.  Contrast that anchor with the American default of I Own My Body and you’ve got to check Here to give it away which means the People have a Government.  Brooks and Kraut elide that distinction.

And, as important as are checklists and choice anchors, organ donation and theory of Government for Continued Funding, even I, as a member of APS and APA, find it incredibly Weak.  I’m a geeky academic from way back who also served as a government administrator in an Agency that ran these Funding Programs.  I’ll shout it from any rooftop that in my experience, I cannot see any compelling evidence of specific Funded findings that made a difference in Government:  Nudge anyone?  Brooks’ own observation with choice anchors on organ donation proves the point:  American Governments do not typically assume they own your body and force you to check off otherwise; Government’s own action thus ignores or refutes the Truth of Funded Research that Mr. Brooks cites.

Of course, Brooks describes more excellence from psychological research than just checklist games.  He notes the current work of folks breaking exciting, new, and unexplored ground on the public policy implications of, hold on, scarcity.  Really.  Scarcity.  Who knew that when people are tight on money or time or ability or motivation or any psychological resource they behave differently!  Huzzah, NSF!

Get serious.  You want better research that makes a contribution to public life?  Cut funding by 25% right now.

As numerous posts in the Persuasion Blog demonstrate, much currently funded research in all areas, not just psychology, is just plain lousy.  It proverbially puts lipstick on a pig then tries to get more funding to fit a gown and slippers on the sow.  Reduce funding levels and make those Study Sections considerably more competitive and focused about who does science and who sits at the Cool Table reading the New York Times and hoping for a call from a Charlie Rose booker.

A few days ago I relayed the news report on a possible CIA project that used free vaccinations to acquire DNA evidence about Osama bin Laden.  Following its policy, the CIA does not confirm or deny the report, but people who read these tea leaves suggest that the CIA’s behavior indicates they probably did indeed run the vaccine program and also probably generated useful intelligence from it.  Some outside commentators are worrying over the values effect of this, whether it was a Good Thing or a Bad Thing and how that values angle might play out in other initiatives in the future.  You can read illustrations of this articulation here (it’s bad!) and here (it’s bad, but!)

I raise this line of discussion to underline my contention that there are no values in persuasion, just change.  Persuasion as an activity and by definition is only about changing the Other Guy who is free to choose.  There is no Right Way or Ethical Way with persuasion.  You either change the Other Guy or you don’t.  You don’t talk about the ethical use of hammers in building a house; you just want a well-built house that can handle all the Huffing and Puffing that goes on in life.  If you get a bad house, you don’t blame the hammers, you blame the builder.

I appreciate the values implication that persuasion carries and in the larger scheme of life.  But, persuasion itself is only about the act and not about values.

In the specific case of Osama bin Laden, the CIA was legally tasked with finding him and conditionally sanctioned to kill him.  This free vaccine persuasion box and play should be understood for its effect and not its values.  Did it catch bin Laden?  We had the ethics discussion when we decided to catch or kill bin Laden.  Any action that is specifically illegal will not be tolerated, but what is not forbidden is permitted.  To raise ethics after the fact is the hallmark of a lazy thinker, an unresponsible actor, and a persuasion ravin’.