(Transcript at end of post.)

Perhaps this speaks to the kinds of TV shows I watch (I neither confirm or deny that I am in a betting league for The Bachelor), but I am often disturbed by the pharmaceutical commercials that run. Too afraid to read more about the lash-growing product Latisse whose possible side effects include respiratory compromise and blindness, I decided to fact-check the commericals for the anti-depressant Pristiq. Given the extreme side effect warnings that include worsening of high blood pressure and suicidal thoughts, it is important that Pfizer is not just manipulating us into think Pristiq is effective. The manipulations include employment of “common people” and glittering generalities.

The central claim I wanted to investigate was the one that Pristiq was a key in helping treat depression. The Pfizer website claims that according to 8-week studies, 50mg Pristiq yielded “significant improvement” in depression symptoms. On the 17-point Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, patients reported a 52% improvement from the baseline (-12 adjusted score) as opposed to a 43% reported change from using a placebo (-10 adjusted score) [1]. For large n this can be significant improvement over a placebo [2]. Something to watch out for, however, is that this commercial suggests that Pristiq is useful for treating depression of all severities. According to this 2010 Wall Street Journal article about a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that antidepressants seemed to help the severely depressed (improving them as much as 4 points) while having little effect on the mildly depressed over a placebo.

In fact-checking the effectivness of Pristiq, a point of concern was the eight-week period of the study: there is a bit of media buzz about the “poop out” effect (antidepressant tachyphylaxis). According to a 2011 article in the Journal for Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience [4] as well as a Johns Hopkins Health Alert [5], this tends to be observed in selective serontonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) rather than serotonin-norephinerphine inhibitors (SNRIs). According to PubChem, Pristiq’s major active ingredient desvenlafaxine is a selective serotonin and noreprinephrine reuptake inhibitor [6]. Thus Pristiq seems less likely to lose effectiveness and the short trial period should not decrease our confidence in the long-term advantages of Pristiq.

The reported side effects of Pristiq, which include suicidal thoughts and the worsening of high blood pressure, seemed alarming. It seems, however, that these side effects are common to SNRIs [7][8][9][10].

In conclusion, it seems valid to tell TV audiences to talk to their doctor about this drug.

[1] Pfizer description of Pristiq.
[2] E-mail exchange with Adeeti Ullal, Ph.D. candidate at Harvard-MIT.
[3] Effectiveness of Antidepressants Varies Widely, WSJ, January 2010.
[4] Katz, Gergory, MD. Tachyphylaxis/tolerance to antidepressants in treatment of dysthymia: Results of a retrospective naturalistic chart review study. Journal for Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, August 2011.
[5] Johns Hopkins Health Alert: Antidepressant Medication “Poop Out.”
[6] PubChem: Pristiq – Substance Summary.
[7] “Pristiq Prescription Information”. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc. April 2011. Retrieved March 12, 2013.
[8] “Effexor XR Prescription Information”. Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc. November 2011. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
[9] “Cymbalta Prescription Information”. Eli Lilly and Company. September 2011. Retrieved March 13, 2013.
[10] “Savella Prescription Information”. Forest Pharmaceuticals Inc. December 2009. March 13, 2013.

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Commercial transcript
Woman: Depression is a serious medical condition that can take so much out of you. I feel like I have to wind myself up just to get out of bed. And, well, I have to keep winding myself up to deal with the sadness, the loss of interest, the trouble concentrating, the lack of energy.
Male voiceover: If depression is taking so much out of you, ask your doctor about Pristiq. Pristiq is a prescription medicine proven to treat depression. Pristiq is thought to work by affecting the levels of two chemicals in the brain, serontonin and norepinephrin. Tell your doctor right away if your depression worsens or if you have unusual changes of mood, behavior, or thoughts of suicide. Antidepressants can increase suicidal thoughts and behaviors in children, teens, and young adults. Pristiq is not approved for children under 18. Do not take Pristiq with MOAIs. Taking Pristiq with NSED pain relievers, aspirin, or blood thinners may increase bleeding risk. Tell your doctor about all medications, including those for migraine to avoid a potentially life-threatening condition. Pristiq can cause or worsen high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or glaucoma. Tell your doctor if you have heart disease or before you reduce or stop taking Pristiq. Side effects may include nausea, dizziness, and sweating.
Woman: For me, Pristiq is a key in helping to treat my depression.

Felipe Andres Coronel, better known as Immortal Technique, is a popular underground rapper of Afro-Peruvian whose rap lyrics focus on controversial issues such as class imbalance, racial inequality, institutional oppression. Unfortunately, many people consider many of Immortal Technique’s lyrics as conspiracy theories and the antics of a wild man. In response he lucidly argues that his lyrics are simply “the truth”, and the truth is often seen as revolutionary.

In his own words

I give niggaz the truth, cause they pride is indigent

On March 17, 2012, Immortal Technique will take the stage in Boston’s Paradise Rock Club. As a fan of Mr. Coronel’s lyrical prowress and a budding journalist, I will naturally attend the concert and listen to his thoughts on current issues. I find it valuable to perform a cursory factual assessment of his lyrics. To do this, I picked his verses from the song Young Lords from his most recent album, The Martyr:

Enjoy the song on Grooveshark!

I survived the cointelpro assassinations.
AIDS epidemic, Crack era, fractured a nation,
The Interpretation of American Democracy,
Is best exemplified in it's foreign policy dichotomy,
I live a double life of political philosophy,
But revolution follows me, the struggle for equality,
Against the morally bankrupt claiming to be born again,
It's a civil war again like MS-13s origin
Ban ethnic studies claiming our culture will swallow them,
But you can't conquer people and build a country on top of them,
And then feel offended that they breathe the same oxygen,
Your family values lack the wisdom of Solomon,
But Operation Condor and Operation Bootstrap are Polisci 101,
Research for the new jack,
It's hard to reach Communist Utopia tomorrow,
When your hands are in a fuckin glass jar like Che Guevara,
Forget the distorted historical facts you were given,
Slave trade was the capital for capitalism,
Trapped in a prison mentally, dying existentially,
Separated from people you can't see yourself to be,
Then racially integrated into a burning house colony of an empire,
Economically burning out,
Can't win a debate so they sponsor every threat to me,
I wonder if agent 800 is standing next to me!    

Let’s go through the first half.

COINTEL assassinations: COINTELPRO were a series of declassified, covert and illegal projects to remove power from domestic policital organizations, such as the KKK and Black Panthers. The summary report by the Senate acknowledges that “… the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens.” However, the projects were active between 1956 to 1971, and are unlikely to have directly affected Felipe (born 1978).

The Interpretation of American Democracy / Is best exemplified in it’s foreign policy dichotomy: The US government’s foreign policy has often been called a dichotomy – for example, when the government calls to reduce weapons in the Middle East while supplying tanks to countries in the Gulf. Similarly, while the United States is called the “greatest democracy on the planet”, controversies such as the financial institutions’ ties with the Federal Reserve, and the 1%.

Civil war like MS-13s origin: MS-13 is an L.A.-Mexican gang notorious for their excessive cruelty. It originated as a group to protect Salvadoran immigrants, fleeing civil war in their home country, from existing, well establish Mexican gangs in the area, despite both sides being immigant populations living in the same region. Stepping back, we can see that much of the news in the past several months have focused on income disparities and the resulting unrest. Comparing current events to a civil war between a militant government and a guerrilla coalition is certainly an overstatement.

Based on an admittedly small sample set, the relationships that Technique weaves between (factually accurate) historical events to current events and himself are tenuous at best. This is an instance where the individual facts are correct but the contextual information is “pants on fire”.

To perform the fact checking I used a combination of RapGenious (not a very good source), Wikipedia, and old fashioned Google searches.

 “No Need to Panic About Global Warming“, was the headline over an opinion article in the Wall Street Journal by 16 scientists who dismiss fears of widespread damage from climate change.

Many mainstream experts, looking at data like the graph above showing a long-term warming trend, have rejected the Jan. 26 article as a mish-mash of wishful thinking and exaggerations by scientists who are not in touch with the numbers. Others, like Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, have a more extreme view of “truth” and dismiss global warming as a “hoax”.

So where do well-informed scientists who doubt global warming is happening get their data from? This is an attempt to find out.

Wall Street Journal: “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now.”

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the 13 warmest years since records began in the mid-19th century have all occurred in the 15 years since 1997 – making it hard to conclude that warming has stopped. The warmest years were 2010, 2005 and 1998.

The assertion in the WSJ seems to be based on the observation that 1998 was the warmest year and so global warming has stopped. But the logic does not really hold up: temperatures of 1998 were driven up by natural variations — an exceptionally strong El Nino event in the Pacific that can nudge up temperatures worldwide and is a far bigger effect than the year-to-year buildup of greenhouse gases. And mainstream climate scientists say it is unreasonable to assume that temperatures will rise steadily year by year.

Here is one WMO graph of temperatures — sceptics look at the spike in 1998 and say it’s stopped since then. Mainstream scientists look at the longer term upwards trend over decades.

VERDICT ON WSJ STATEMENT: UNTRUE

But there are exaggerations in the mainstream too.

“Our science is solid and it proves unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities,” Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the WMO, said in a written statement about temperatures in 2011.

But his assertion that science proves that warming is due to human activities goes well beyond the findings by the main U.N. authority, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its last report in 2007.

That says that: “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal” (i.e. the world is getting warmer but it might be due to natural variations). It separately says it is at least 90 percent likely that human activities are “the main cause of warming in the past 50 years.” So there’s a small chance that natural variations – solar activity, etc – might be causing most recent warming, i.e. there is no proof.

Wall Street Journal: “Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse.”

VERDICT – NO EVIDENCE, VERY PROBABLY UNTRUE

The article gives no numbers for “dissent” and many mainstream scientists say it is absurd to suggest that there is a conspiracy to cover over a lack of evidence for global warming. Richard Alley, an IPCC author at the University of Pennsylvania, notes that Einstein became famous for exposing shortcomings in Newton’s theory of gravity: i.e. it is every scientist’s dream to show where well-established theories are wrong.

Wall Street Journal article: “Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically. A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls.

Nordhaus told Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog in the New York Times:

“The piece completely misrepresented my work. My work has long taken the view that policies to slow global warming would have net economic benefits, in the trillion of dollars of present value. And the IPCC said that the cost of limiting global warming in the most aggressive scenario it considered, would brake world GDP by less than 3 percent by 2030.

VERDICT – UNTRUE

What’s politics or science? There is a clear Republican-Democrat divide about what is true or false.

“We have seen the politicization of science like we have never seen it before…We saw it with global warming…I for one never bought the hoax,” – Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, February 2012

 “Climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people…This is not fiction, it is science.  Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet,” President Barack Obama, Copenhagen summit, 2009.

For this week’s assignment we had to fact check a statement in the media. I am particularly interested in how science is reported. I decided to search for a health article. One of the latest findings presented in the news has to do with a study that relates the consumption of sweetened beverages with the risk of hear attacks.

The article that caught my attention is What not to eat: Cut out sugary sodas and red meat & reduce heart disease, new studies say. the article emphasizes how bad beverages such as sodas are and refers to the research study finding by stating that “A 12-ounce sugar-sweetened beverage each day increases a man’s risk of heart disease by 20 percent”.

I am always interested to know how researchers would conclude such a specific statement so I tried to check this in the original article. Fortunately, the publication is cited in the article, so that is easy to find. We are pointed to the abstract of the research publication. Although the abstract summarizes the results, the closest statement to the one we are fact checking is: “Participants in the top quartile of sugar-sweetened beverage intake had a 20% higher relative risk of CHD (myocardial infarction) than those in the bottom quartile”. This is not enough to draw the conclusion that one beverage per day increases heart disease risk by 20%, since we don’t know what the top and bottom quartile mean. At this point I decided to check the content of the paper. Again, we are fortunate that the research paper is available for free. The paper states that the lower quartile of people consuming represents people who never consumed sugar sweetened beverages and the top quartile represents people who consumed sugar sweetened beverages 3.7 to 9 times a week with a median of 6.5. This gives us a confirmation of the amount of sugar-sweetened amount of drinks in the statement. However, the most important fact is that never in the paper is causation mentioned, and never is it stated that consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks leads to an increase in heart attacks. The study merely presents a correlation, and it should be clear that correlation does not imply causation. That is nto the case of how the news article presents the results though. A correlation between the amount of sugar-sweetened drinks consumed and heart disease does not mean that consuming these drinks will lead to a higher number of hear attacks.

Furthermore, while skimming through the research article other limitations come up: “We found no evidence to suggest that overall consumption of artificially sweetened beverages was associated with CHD risk or changes in biomarkers, however non-carbonated artificially sweetened beverages were associated with increased risk in an analysis of continuous intake”. This can be a serious limitation of whether artificially-sweetened drinks also increase the risk of hear disease, which is what the study claims.

Other statements in the study are: “Our study has some limitations. First, dietary intakes were measured with some error.
Second, participants in our study may be dissimilar to those living in the general population. For example, intake of sugar-sweetened beverages was much lower in our study (mean = 0.36 servings / day) than in US adults (mean > 1 serving / day).”. These are all limitations that should affect how we think about this study and what its limitations are. These might not make it to the article presented in the news, especially once we try to reduce the study to a couple of lines.

On addition, is it our duty to also look for similar articles that report relations between consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks and hear disease increase? Is the study presented in the article one of many studies on this issue? Does it have findings already suspected by other studies, how is it different and why should we pay attention to this particular study? These are questions that are not approached in the news report and that might affect how we perceive the study. Should this kind of information also go into fact checking? And exactly where should fact checking stop?

Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission is a flagship city redevelopment program that was launched by the Government of India in 2006. The Mission is the largest initiative of Government of India for planned development of Indian cities.

Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had highlighted on the need to increase quality of life in India cities while launching the program “As we build infrastructure we must also improve the quality of living for all those who live in our cities. Our vision of urban development has so far been uni-dimensional. This must change. We have thus far focused more on space and less on people. We need to have an integrated framework, in which spatial development of cities goes hand-in-hand with improvement in the quality of living of ordinary people living there. ”. Kamal Nath , the new Union Cabinet Minister of Urban Development also recently highlighted that the JNNURM Program is focused on  improving the quality of life in our cities.

To corroborate the government’s assertions that the program is intended to increase the quality of life for most of the people in Indian cities, I analysed the program’s investments in the transport sector that intimately affects the quality of life of ­­­the community.

The total number of projects in the transport sector approved by the Government of India and related spending illustrates a focus on flyover & road related projects that aids car users.

Source: JNNURM

Source: JNNURM

Mapping the above  investments alongside current “modes of transport” in Indian Cities shows that even though car users are a minority in Indian Cities, they are arguably the biggest beneficiaries under the JNNURM Program.

Source: Traffic & Transportation Policies and Strategies in Urban Areas in India, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, New Delhi

Principles of urban planning based on dense, walkable, mass transit driven development are critical in ensuring a livable & inclusive city. Experts like Urbanist Enrique Penalosa have often argued that    ” In developing-world cities, most of people don’t have cars, so when you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing equality. A sidewalk is a symbol of equality” .

The Indian Government’s declarations that JNNURM is aimed at increasing the quality of life for most of its people seems like a populist rhetoric given that their actual  investments show a penchant to serving elite needs. 

This week’s assignment invited students to analyse the rhetoric of a public claim and check the facts. The issue I picked was a very popular petition on Change.org (and related media) to encourage the United States Department of Agriculture to stop using a certain kind of beef product in school lunches.

Exploring the issue involved:

• Learning about different kinds of meat processing
• Studying recent history of food safety concerns
• Reading 10-15 articles, and watching several videos
• Reading USDA food certification records
• Learning about the US National School Lunch programme
• Tracing claims through the churn cycle of news media to find to find the original source
• Trying, unsuccessfully, to reach various people in the press as well as the source for a claim
• Figuring out the agenda of various sources, whether trade magazines or activists
• Deciding how deep to go into an issue when fact checking. At a surface level, a lot of claims appear very flimsy. Verifying a claim in the news is especially difficult when something has little evidence to support it. One feels drawn to prove or disprove something that might not be proveable.

Technology Ideas

Checking facts is really hard work. Not a lot of it can be split up or optimised. Here are some thoughts:

• Tools like Churnalism.com can help fact-checkers identify sources. One can imagine a similar version which could track a quote through media to find the earliest case.
• It would be awesome to be able to know the origin or funders of a website when you’re looking at it.
• Part of fact-checking involves doing back-of-the-envelope thought experiments to evaluate the feasibility of a claim. These could be handed off to someone else.
• At Texperts, we employed a large team of expert web researchers with a variety of complementary research competencies. A similar distributed team of workers could be very effective at fact-checking.
• If they are able to attract enough interest, Hypothes.is offers a fascinating model for social annotation of things that people mistrust or want to check

My Article: Is Pink Slime Going to Kill Us All?

Has “pink slime” invaded the American food supply, where it is spreading bacteria and contributing to malnutrition? Does 70% of all American supermarket beef contain this allegedly harmful substance? Or is this just a food scare created by activists who have been irresponsible with the facts?

A recent Change.org petition by children’s food blogger Bettina Elias Siegel has received over two hundred thousand signatures in a week’s time. Bettina is urging the United States Department of Agriculture, who purchase food for the National School Lunch Program, to stop buying meat pcontaining “boneless lean beef trimmings,” primarily produced by the company Beef Products.

In this post, I’m doing three things. Firstly, I’m going to analyse the rhetoric used by “pink slime” campaigners to get mechanically recovered beef off the menu. Secondly, I’m going to look into the context of the issue. Finally, I’m going to investigate Bettina’s claim that 70% of all supermarket beef includes so-called pink slime.

Understanding the Campaign Rhetoric

Looking at the Change.org petition and Bettina’s blog, here are some of the prominent persuasive tactics deployed by the campaign:

• Control the language: “pink slime” is much easier and more interesting to write than “ammonia-treated lean beef trimmings.” It’s also a terrifying notion, one which is very likely to collect a high number of clicks.
• A disgusting photo on the change.org petition features regular ground beef rather than “lean beef trimmings.” It’s the basic ground beef photo on Wikipedia, and it is often reused by “pink slime” activists. The other frequently-used image appears to be of chicken, not beef. Actual photos of “pink slime” look more appealing.
• Obvious bad guy: The “Pink Slime” campaign has a single target: Beef Products Inc.
• Simple change: In addition to convincing supermarkets and fast food companies to give up lean beef trimmings, this petition calls on the USDA to stop purchasing it.
• Appeal to instinctive disgust: The petition goes further than using the language of “slime.” It argues, “it is simply wrong to feed our children…scraps that were, in the past, destined for use in pet food.”
• Please think of the children: It’s easier to convince the USDA to stop purchasing lean beef trimmings than it is to convince them to rate the product as unsafe. Since the USDA does the school lunch program purchasing, it’s perfectly appropriate to ask us to think of the children. It also happens to be an incredibly powerful persuasive tactic.
• The fact they’re hiding from you: Betinna and others often repeat the claim that “70% of the nation’s ground beef” contains pink slime. By citing a number of that size, activists convince us that we, too, should care.

Context

The backstory of this issue can be found a December 2009 New York Times article by investigations reporter Michael Moss which exposed broad lack of testing by the USDA of ammonia-treated meat, a lack of testing which led to cases of e. coli and salmonella in the food supply. Moss’s article, The Burger That Shattered Her Life went on to win a Pulitzer for Explanatory Reporting.

Looking over the USDA’s Advanced Meat Recovery documents, the story of lean beef trimmings has been an ongoing cycle of testing the wrong thing and trying to correct oversights. In the 1990s, Advanced Meat Recovery techniques were developed to reduce the amount of bone included in meat extracted from scraps down to levels safe for human consumption. AMR did this successfully. Then there were concerns around spinal tissue in the scraps, which led to a new set of tests. More recent are concerns around the use of ammonia to increase the alkalinity of the meat, killing bacteria. If the ammonia gets too low or the system stops working, bacteria can get into the food supply, especially where lean beef trimmings are mixed with other meat.

70%: how a speculation becomes fact

Bettina and others point to a report by ABC news that 70% of ground beef in supermarkets contains “pink slime.” It’s a number I have seen repeated frequently by campaigners. Where does this “fact” come from? ABC cites former USDA researcher Gerald Zirnstein, who coined the term “pink slime” in 2002 and opposed USDA approval.

Zirnstein offers no evidence to support his claim, and he’s been gone from the USDA since at least 2004. Nevertheless, Zirnstein’s figure has been quoted in The Huffington Post, Fox News, Mashable, the New York Times, The Daily Beast, Yahoo, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, and CNN.

Zirnstein could not be reached for comment. ABC did not respond to emails or tweets.

The Beef industry has started to push back. Beef Daily, a beef industry blog by Penton Media, has called pink slime a myth. Beef Products Inc has created the website Pink Slime is a Myth, featuring informational blog posts and video interviews which explain the process of making Lean Beef Trimmings. The American Meat Institute, a meat and poultry trade organisation, has created the website Meat MythCrushers, which also features informational videos, resource guides, and information from food industry experts. The American Meat Institute has also posted a Questions and Answers PDF. Meat industry supporters have also tried to rally opposition through the #pinkslimeisamyth hashtag on Twitter, to limited effect.

Unsuccessful back of the envelope calculation: Is pink slime as widespread as critics claim? Whole Foods and Costco do not stock it at all. Organic labeled beef does not include it. Let’s do some math. USDA regulations require that no more than 15% of ground beef contain “pink slime.” The total US beef consumption in 2010 was 26.4 billion pounds. BPI produces 7 million pounds of product a week, for an annual total of 364 million pounds a year. According to the USDA, the US exports 2.3 billion pounds of beef a year. According to an Oklahoma State University brochure….. (at this point, I had to stop because it appears to be impossible to know how much ground beef is sold annually in the US).

Should we be worried?

The real dangers here seem to be e. coli and salmonella, both of which can be killed by properly cooking your food. Although food including lean beef trimmings will be much less tasty and nutritious, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate health risk for adults or children.

More broadly, the inclusion of lean beef trimmings into other meat offers a worrisome potential for contamination, especially if companies continue to enjoy the level of immunity from testing and labeling which the New York Times revealed in 2009.

On March 12, 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney responded to President Barack Obama’s progress report on the Blueprint for Secure Energy Future. Rather than take the White House’s infographics on gas prices as gospel, I checked the data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s historical gas prices to verify Mitt Romney ‘s claim “with gas prices setting new records.” and posted the findings below: