S03.E11: Scientific Research and Journalism

[Athena]

The show is off this following Sunday May 1st, but will be back May 8th. Check the Youtube channel for web specials.

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Segments: 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, 2016 Philippine general election and candidate Rodrigo Duterte, 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea, scientific research and science journalism

 

[dusang]

I just saw my first headline about John's "scientific studies" piece and it appears that the painful irony here will be the misleading headlines indicating that he "debunked science" as opposed to the actual point that he took shoddy journalism to task.

My only complaint about the scientific studies piece is that the title card for it should have, as the forum title here does, included a reference to journalism.

[Hanahope]

The Philippines need their own John Oliver.

The so-called scientific studies is one reason I generally don't even watch TV news anymore.  Its all sensationalistic bullshit designed to get viewers.  They might as well advertise their news programs:  "Tonight, this one weird trick will help you (lose weight) (cure cancer) (look young forever) (win the Olympics).

[TimetoShine]

Really enjoyed this one but it definitely highlights why I don't watch tv news any more. I have enough stress lol. Don't need to hear more about whatay or may not hurt me. 

It also emphasizes why I don't read sites like Gawker any longer. Too much emphasis on click bait. 

Edited May 9, 2016 by corinne

[Lion]

1 hour ago, dusang said:

I just saw my first headline about John's "scientific studies" piece and it appears that the painful irony here will be the misleading headlines indicating that he "debunked science" as opposed to the actual point that he took shoddy journalism to task.

YES!  I had a head-desk moment reading through the headlines this morning and seeing that journalists totally missed the point.

My spouse and I are both frequently involved in having studies published.  We are in very different fields, one science, one social science.  But we still experience the same annoyance and fury of having the media latch on to a study, completely misread it and then misinform their audience about what it means.  I've wondered whether it's a deliberate attempt to devalue science so the looneys can try to better sell their creationism, climate-warming-is-a-myth bullshit.  

4 minutes ago, corinne said:

Really enjoyed this one but it definitely highlights why I don't watch tv news any more. I have enough stress lol. Don't need to hear more about whatay or may not hurt me. 

I think it would be a great comedic exercise to read or listen to these news items, and then source the study they cited so as to see what terribly awful reading skills they have.  My spouse, children and I enjoy this as a dinner table activity.  

[iMonrey]

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I just saw my first headline about John's "scientific studies" piece and it appears that the painful irony here will be the misleading headlines indicating that he "debunked science" as opposed to the actual point that he took shoddy journalism to task.

Agreed. As soon as the main story began I started to cringe a little because the danger is that people will take this story and run with the narrative that John Oliver "proved" science isn't real, and therefore climate change is a hoax. I kind of wish he hadn't even gone here because beyond his audience I'm not sure everyone can appreciate the distinction he was trying to make between actual science and junk science.

[morgankobi]

I was really expecting Masi Oka (Hiro from Heroes) to show up in a possible parody report or ad, as is often at the end of the last segment, since he is actually one of the kids on that Time cover John briefly showed.

 

 

[fastiller]

5 hours ago, Hanahope said:

The Philippines need their own John Oliver.

The so-called scientific studies is one reason I generally don't even watch TV news anymore.  Its all sensationalistic bullshit designed to get viewers.  They might as well advertise their news programs:  "Tonight, this one weird trick will help you (lose weight) (cure cancer) (look young forever) (win the Olympics).

Now I'm hoping they'll do an "And Now This..." mini-segment on all the ways that things in your kitchen are trying to kill you.

[Sharpie66]

Masi Oka wasn't there, but B.D. Wong was! I knew him as soon as he showed up in the TODD Talks video--he's a great actor, and he was hilarious in that video.

[attica]

BD Wong doing the Todd Talk! And Peter Grosz (a writer on TCR)!

[ganesh]

And H. Jon Benjamin!

People just don't know how science works and actual journalism is currently in the toilet. Combine the both and this is what you get. Having the actual peer reviewed papers behind paywalls isn't helping either, but that's a different discussion. 

[mjc570]

Maybe it's me, but I thought that was a wasted episode, except for the Philippines guy.  There was nothing new about N. Korea, and I thought all the science stuff was so obvious that it didn't even need to be said.  Yes, science is complex, but as a practical matter, what are we going to do about it, other than read science coverage with a grain of salt?    I thought that  focusing on the Today show bit (Al Roker?) was a cheap shot, that "chose your own study" was obviously a joke, or a comment on how people can be overwhelmed by the study publicity avalanche.  

On the other hand, the TODD talks was great.  DId it show what TODD stands for?

Edited May 10, 2016 by mjc570
because under and over are not the same

[cattykit]

6 minutes ago, mjc570 said:

Maybe it's me, but I thought that was a wasted episode, except for the Philippines guy.  There was nothing new about N. Korea, and I thought all the science stuff was so obvious that it didn't even need to be said.  Yes, science is complex, but as a practical matter, what are we going to do about it, other than read science coverage with a grain of salt?    I thought that  focusing on the Today show bit (Al Roker?) was a cheap shot, that "chose your own study" was obviously a joke, or a comment on how people can be underwhelmed by the study publicity avalanche.  

On the other hand, the TODD talks was great.  DId it show what TODD stands for?

I agree about Al Roker.  I don't watch Today, but that clip seemed to me like he was being facetious.  And really almost on John's point, because so many scientific study results are bastardized by the media to the point where you really do pick and choose what studies to believe based on what you want to believe.  The findings are reported without context by "journalists" who lack any understanding of what they're reporting, and so often that the public has become jaded and dismissive.  I miss the days when the networks had actual "science correspondents" who understood science and could speak to it intelligently.

The TODD talks looked like every PBS show they run during Pledge Week, and about as meaningful.

[ganesh]

I didn't think he was being facetious at all. I thought it underscored that these people are not science literate nor journalists.

28 minutes ago, cattykit said:

I miss the days when the networks had actual "science correspondents" who understood science and could speak to it intelligently.

PBS NewsHour actually does. 

[peeayebee]

I thought it was an interesting story. I didn't realize it was so important -- necessary -- for scientists to publish. I also wouldn't think that press releases were used, but of course they would be. These reports have to be publicized. So not only are reporters to blame for promoting inaccurate stories, but the PR people are blameworthy as well for creating jazzed up, sexed up press releases. 

I too thought Roker must have been being facetious. I mean, he couldn't seriously be saying we should only follow stuff that we like.

Was that a real NY Post cover? -- The Dentist Will Semen You Now

Oh, and my dog loves my hugs.

[mojoween]

But the problem is that it can't be denied that some people took Al seriously.

Dammit.  I was all set to apply for the job to make sure John got in his eight hugs a day requirement.

[ganesh]

1 hour ago, peeayebee said:

I thought it was an interesting story. I didn't realize it was so important -- necessary -- for scientists to publish.

It's peer reviewed publications that count. Any funded grant will require at least one per year. Which isn't that much. Fortunately, my field doesn't have super sexy journals, so you're never rejected out of hand. 

So the news is even worse because the first question from any study should be: Is this peer reviewed and where?

[Victor the Crab]

6 hours ago, iMonrey said:

Agreed. As soon as the main story began I started to cringe a little because the danger is that people will take this story and run with the narrative that John Oliver "proved" science isn't real, and therefore climate change is a hoax. I kind of wish he hadn't even gone here because beyond his audience I'm not sure everyone can appreciate the distinction he was trying to make between actual science and junk science.

Ollie did try to make that point later on in his piece. But I imagine that if someone did try to do that for their own selfish purposes, he would smack them down like a fly.

[Irlandesa]

11 hours ago, dusang said:

I just saw my first headline about John's "scientific studies" piece and it appears that the painful irony here will be the misleading headlines indicating that he "debunked science" as opposed to the actual point that he took shoddy journalism to task.

My only complaint about the scientific studies piece is that the title card for it should have, as the forum title here does, included a reference to journalism.

It was probably 80/20.  It really attacked journalism but it also touched on some of the problems with science and science publishing.  Researchers and academics are often required to publish.  But there is a bias in academic publishing towards a positive result.  So if you do research and come up with ambivalent or negative results, it makes it that much harder to get published.  And that leads to things like p-hacking in order to get that publishable result.  And, as mentioned, replicability is an issue.  So there are issues with science even good, honest science.

5 hours ago, mjc570 said:

 I thought all the science stuff was so obvious that it didn't even need to be said. 

On the other hand, the TODD talks was great.  DId it show what TODD stands for?

All I have to do is read Facebook to know that people need to hear about this stuff.  People make so many decisions based on one study they know very little about.  In fact, the whole anti-vax movement kicked into another gear when they not discredited Wakefield study came out even though it went against what most of the other research indicated.

They did say what TODD was--Trends, Observations and Dangerous Drivel.

5 hours ago, ganesh said:

People just don't know how science works and actual journalism is currently in the toilet. Combine the both and this is what you get. Having the actual peer reviewed papers behind paywalls isn't helping either, but that's a different discussion. 

Oh that's a whole other discussion.  It's not as simple as being peer reviewed either.  As I mentioned above, there are issues with even the good peer reviewed journals.  Then there are the predatory publishers who call  themselves "peer reviewed" but may not be and whose revenue structure is based on the authors of articles paying to get published in the "academic" journals. The scary thing about these is that their revenue structure often lends themselves to being open access almost immediately.

As for Al's statement.  I too thought it was a joke but one borne out of frustration.  It can be really difficult to know which science to trust because, unless it's something you do often, it can be difficult to critique a study, especially when no one gives a proper citation where to go to read the full article. I was glad John pointed it out.  But I also liked his point at the end that people get so overwhelmed with the differing opinons reported that people often reject things for which there actually has been a lot of studies.

Anyway, this subject hits me where I live as I work with this on a daily basis.  (Not as a researcher but in an evidence-based health sciences environment.) 

[ganesh]

22 minutes ago, Irlandesa said:

Researchers and academics are often required to publish. 

Often? It's part of the job. They ask you in every interview how many publications you expect to put out per year. I don't do anything important enough that the peer reviewed journals are predatory though. Typically, they just piss and moan over whether they like the graphs enough. I'll take it. 

[Irlandesa]

1 hour ago, ganesh said:

Often? It's part of the job. They ask you in every interview how many publications you expect to put out per year. I don't do anything important enough that the peer reviewed journals are predatory though. Typically, they just piss and moan over whether they like the graphs enough. I'll take it. 

Scholarship is part of the job but I know of universities and colleges out there exploring different forms of scholarship so it's not so publishing-focused. But you're right, it's mostly publishing. And when I say predatory, it's not about the importance of what you put out.  They don't care how important what you put out it is.  When I say predatory, I'm describing the journals who go after academics because they know they have to publish and they're willing to publish an academic's article in exchange for the author/academic paying a handsome sum allowing them to claim to administration that they're publishing in a peer reviewed title. 

[sacrebleu]

Having worked in TV journalism and in PR for a health organization-- I agreed with John's piece, but, the situation is more nuanced then he laid out. 

It's a chicken and egg scenario, you won't get press for your study unless it's got a hook for journalists-- but then the risk is the press grabs on to the hook, and ignores the science. (and in PR you have to demonstrate that you can get press)

Also, try being a writer/producer who gets one minute to tell a story-- and be able to include all those details (the limits of the sample size, the funders' possible bias). Say you're a writer who managed to create a compelling script-- that includes all the details-- then the producer hacks away at the script during the live broadcast-- because the weather guy ran over his allotted time  (or there is breaking news to fit in) and they've got to hit the commercial break at a certain time-- so they can be back on the air by the bottom of the hour. People really don't know what a juggling act producing a live news show is. 

John works in a format that allows him to do a 15 minute piece-- and that's great-- but the morning show viewer will typically watch for 15 minutes max, and if you don't give them weather and traffic and a few headlines in that time-- they'll turn the damn channel to someone who will. (if he was going to take journalism to task-- go after a magazine show-- that has the luxury of more time-- morning shows are an easy target-- their format kind of requires that they skim the surface)

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Edited May 10, 2016 by sacrebleu

[zxy556575]

Thanks for providing more insight, @sacrebleu.

Broadcast journalists' deliberate use of clickbait headlines for ratings is one thing, but I place the most blame on the professional journals/associations for issuing those winkingly provocative press releases in the first place.

[tenativelyyours]

I was a bit underwhelmed and I think in part because it focused on the "people being stupid" aspect over the "why someone is encouraging people to be stupid in the first place".  I find the insight provided above to be fascinating and a bit more illuminating as to why this is a problem more than the show provided.  Maybe it was simply too much of a remove with having a week off and so much happening I wanted to see covered.  And maybe it was that I didn't feel the episode cast a harsh and needed light on a situation I was embarrassingly unaware of as with Puerto Rico.  It just didn't resonate with me for some reason.  Though I did like the bit with TODD talks.  Still on a basic level it had the kind of approach that is similar to mocking the person who sues for getting burnt on his order of hot coffee.  

[ganesh]

I don't think it focused on people being stupid. I thought JO was ripping into the media for poor reporting (and the press releases) and not actually putting in some work first.

[DeLurker]

Did they ever say what Kim Jong-un's new title actually was?

[dcalley]

2 hours ago, DeLurker said:

Did they ever say what Kim Jong-un's new title actually was?

I don't believe so.

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Mr. Kim was described as Workers’ Party chairman in television footage of the event shown late Monday. He was previously first secretary, which had been the highest position in the party. --WSJ

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His predecessors keep their posthumous titles. Kim Jong Il remains ‘‘eternal general secretary’’ and Kim Il Sung is still ‘‘eternal president.’’ --Boston Globe

 

I liked when John said picking and choosing the parts you like is for religion, not science.

[peeayebee]

I thought of the show when I saw this today.

[Athena]

NPR's Planet Money did a podcast on scientific studies called The Experiment Experiment which did make scientists duplicate certain studies and found most of them did not get the same results as the first study. Many of them were the results of statistical flukes. Similarly, lots of studies have negative results, but they do not get published or receive any published or public attention. At work also is human selection bias which causes certain results to published in one over the other.

I like the satire against TED talks to because I've never been able to really get into that speaker series.

[fastiller]

And then there's this (also from NPR): Why A Journalist Scammed The Media Into Spreading Bad Chocolate Science. 

Interesting that both stories were from NPR, a broadcast outlet that generally takes the time to dig into a story, instead of giving only the headlines version of it.

[Uncle Benzene]

Mmmmmmmmm.... chocolate science.

[OneWhoLurks]

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Oliver lists a number of important and irritating ways in which some media sources contribute to mass confusion around real science, which sometimes leads to tragic dismissal of scientific fact that can harm people’s health and wellbeing. But the problem is much deeper than media “sensationalism.” The problem, we believe, actually lies at the heart of the ways in which the scientific process inherently contradicts the ingrained ways of thinking that exist in every human brain. Perhaps it is not only the media that’s causing confusion and false scientific beliefs among perfectly well-educated and reasonable Americans. So what is going on here?

The fundamental problem with any individual’s ability to understand and accept science is two-fold: (1) that science proceeds by disproving rather than proving and (2) that science generally refuses to assert causality with any degree of absolute certainty. These two features of the scientific method are fundamentally antithetical to the way in which the human brain instinctively processes information and formulates conclusions.

 

Your brain on the scientific method

[OneWhoLurks]

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Just a few weeks ago, in one of his provocative and hilarious critiques of American culture, John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, turned his discerning eye to scientific research. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth the watch.

[...]

So what to do about it? It’s easy to diagnose the problem and ferret out its root causes. But the solution is much more complicated.

First, it’s naïve to hope universities will relax their publishing requirements or teaching loads. Universities need cash and research and publication brings in grant dollars, name recognition, and large donations. Teaching brings in tuition dollars. And in the end, this is, the job we signed up to do. But some of the best journals could begin to acknowledge the importance of replication studies as well as those rigorous studies that find no significant results. After all, if we fully expect to find an effect and don’t, isn’t that interesting and “significant”? Encouraging research partnerships might also relieve some of workload issues as well as the interdepartmental competition that often feeds the beast.

Furthermore, it’s time we got transparent. My colleagues and I are advocates of opening up the scientific process — pre-registering hypotheses, research questions, study design and actual surveys, and sharing data on open platforms. That doesn’t preclude deviation from the original course of inquiry, but it documents changes so results are verifiable and replicable.

 

How and Why Scientists Fudge Results, and What We Can Do About It

[OneWhoLurks]

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(CNN)The Philippines' controversial president-elect has picked a new fight.

Speaking at a press conference to unveil his new cabinet Tuesday, Rodrigo Duterte said journalists killed on the job in the Philippines were often corrupt.

"Just because you're a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you're a son of a bitch," Duterte said. "Freedom of expression cannot help you if you have done something wrong," he added.

 

Duterte says killing of corrupt Philippines journalists justified

[peeayebee]

Wow. He really is their version of Trump.

[dusang]

Do you think John has a world map hanging in his office with giant "X"s marked over all the countries he can no longer visit?

[OneWhoLurks]

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The city of Norfolk, Virginia has a heroin epidemic. The mayor takes decisive action to solve the problem—by sending death squads to murder the city’s entire addict population over the course of a single night. The following year this same mayor defeats Hillary Clinton by a thirty-point landslide to become America’s next president. In his acceptance speech he promises to kill all of the country’s addicts on his first day in office.

This outlandish scenario—the stuff of nightmares—just became very real for the people of the Philippines. The island nation recently elected Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte to the presidency, embracing Duterte’s harsh stances on crime and his extravagant personality; his supporters celebrate him as ‘The Punisher,’ reveling in his willingness to use lethal violence against enemies big and small. As mayor Duterte recruited paramilitary death squads to kill everyone involved in Davao City’s drug underworld, from the richest drug czars and smugglers right down to homeless addicts, relapsed users and street children. According to a 2009 report from independent watchdog group Human Rights Watch, the Duterte regime compiled extensive lists of individuals targeted for killing, lists that numbered in the thousands. In many cases these lists were created in direct collaboration with the city police and the local bureaucracy, who provided names from census records and other official documents. The report describes a reign of terror in Davao City; armed men appear, often in broad daylight, to execute their targets at point-blank range before immediately disappearing. The youngest victims were no older than 14.

[...]

It is in part because of this unrepentant brutality that Duterte’s rise to power has been widely covered in the Western press. The American fascination with Duterte began with a 2002 Time Magazine article titled “The Punisher,” a piece that mixed hard reporting on the Davao City death squads with a profile of Duterte himself. Duterte is as renowned in the Philippines for his maverick personality as he is for his murders. In a predominantly Catholic nation where social conservatism is deeply imbedded in the political culture, Duterte has declared himself an atheist—actually a ‘Deist’—and is a supporter of same-sex marriage and the legalization of prostitution. Duterte has also made headlines for revealing himself to be a survivor of sexual abuse experienced during his time at a Jesuit school, a deeply taboo subject in the Philippines. If this were not enough of a system shock, Duterte openly discusses his own marital infidelity, and, though a puritanical enforcer of alcohol and smoking bans, has a penchant for patrolling the streets of Davao City on one of his several vintage motorcycles, often wielding a semiautomatic shotgun in his hand. In the lead-up to the election the Western press has reported extensively on some of Duterte’s most controversial comments, including his recent joke about the rape of an Australian missionary. Some commentators—including comedian John Oliver—have labeled him ‘The Trump of the East.’ While certainly evocative, this nickname doesn’t capture the true horror of Duterte’s impending reign. Duterte is much more than a racist buffoon—he is a murderer. Now he is on the threshold of having absolute dominion over a country of 100 million.

Why would anyone vote for Duterte? What is the allure of his promises of blood? The answer is tragically simple: desperation. For its entire modern history, the Philippines has been plagued by staggering poverty, episodic outbreaks of violence and intractable corruption. After securing independence in 1946 from the United States—which ruled its “Little Brown Brother” with an iron fist—the Philippines established an American-style republic. The new government seemed to be working decently for its first decade. But the struggling democracy experienced severe economic setbacks and robust communist and Islamist insurgencies, both of which enabled the rise of authoritarian ex-generals, culminating in the 1965 accession of Ferdinand Marcos to the presidency. Marcos’ eighteen-year rule—eleven years of which were under martial law—was an unmitigated disaster for the Philippines. The regime was as kleptocratic as it was brutal, with the Marcos family stealing billions of dollars from the public and stashing the loot in offshore accounts. The 1983 People’s Power Revolution brought an end to the Marcos dynasty—but subsequent administrations did nothing to stem the corruption and violence that had turned the Philippines, once a promising new republic, into the embarrassment of Southeast Asia. Even as its neighbors—Taiwan, Vietnam and Indonesia—have experienced remarkable economic and social development, very little has changed in the Philippines. Thirty years of stagnation, coupled with recalcitrant Islamist and communist insurgencies in the provinces, has brought the Philippine people to the boiling point.

Thus the appeal of Duterte. During Duterte’s two decades as mayor, Davao City went from a crime-ridden backwater to a prosperous international tourist destination. Davao City’s status as an economic miracle is indisputable; through numerous infrastructure projects, literacy efforts, and public health campaigns, Duterte’s administration pursued an unprecedented social agenda—a standout both domestically and abroad. With Davao City as the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, Duterte has offered the voters of the Philippines a choice: the violent status quo or prosperous order—but at a bloody, bloody price.

 

“You Won’t Be Killed if You Don’t Do Anything Wrong”: The Philippines on the Eve of Duterte’s Presidency

[OneWhoLurks]

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This week, I’m in Oxford, England, to speak at Evidence Live, an annual evidence-based medicine conference. If you’re asking, "Isn’t all medicine evidence based?" The answer is, actually, no.

It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the idea started to gain a foothold. Back then, a group of doctors began to organize themselves to solve a problem: how to use the latest research to make decisions at the bedside of their patients.

Doctors were too often using single or cherry-picked studies, or what they learned in medical school or from their mentors, to inform their decisions about their patients’ best care, rather than looking at the totality of the best-available evidence.

[...]

Systematic reviews brought empirical heft to medicine. They didn’t turn doctors into cold, evidence-based automatons, but rather helped them more easily access and make sense of a wider selection of data. The reviews often corrected misconceptions about important health issues that had crept into medical practice, like the advice that it was ideal to put newborn babies to sleep on their stomachs — a practice that actually increased babies’ risk of death.

Systematic reviews, and the methods behind them, also began to inform official medical guidance from influential groups like the World Health Organization and the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and tools doctors use today, like UpToDate.

[...]

Over here in the media, we are still largely in the 1990s when it comes to thinking about using research evidence — despite the fact that medical journalism influences human health as much as policy or even medicine.

Instead of trying to translate what the best-available research evidence tells us about how to live, we report on the latest studies out of context, with little focus on how they were designed, whether they were unduly conflicted by study funders, and whether they agree or disagree with the rest of the research.

 

Health journalism has a serious evidence problem. Here’s a plan to save it.

[OneWhoLurks]

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In the same vein as John Oliver’s recent takedown of “scientific” studies, statisticians analyzed data from bridge tournaments to see if Trump’s march to the White House has “irrationally changed the behavior” of elite players.

They compared hands played in 1999 and 2015 at one of bridge’s premier events, the Vanderbilt Knockout Tournament. Although the 2015 tournament was played before Trump announced his candidacy, the chattering class expected him to. That “makes our results conservative,” Andrew Gelman of Columbia University and Jonathan Falk of NERA Economic Consulting write, “and we would expect even stronger effects as his path to the nomination gained strength.”

[...]

The researchers adhered to good scientific practice by starting with a hypothesis — namely, that the idea of a President Trump would make bridge players (whom they believe to lean Democratic, or why would a liberal super PAC be called American Bridge?) unconsciously try harder to win their no trump bids. The bidders would unconsciously focus and strategize more intently, and their opponents would also be so unconsciously “deranged” at the possibility of a no trump bid failing that they don’t put up much of a fight.

Data supported that hypothesis. In the 1999 Vanderbilt tournament, 12.60 percent of hands were successful no trump bids; in 2015, 19.97 percent were. There was an even greater increase in the percent of no trump bids that succeeded: 48.50 percent in 1999 and 69.32 percent in 2015.

[...]

The possibility of what Gelman and Falk found occurring by chance (known as the p value — and yes, we know that’s not the precise definition, but please hold your irate emails) is 0.0492. Most research journals require study findings to have a p value below 0.05, so the association between Trump’s political rise and a higher rate of success for no trump games easily ducked under that bar.

The Trump effect on bridge resonates with one player. “My defense against no-trump bids is distracted because I’m worrying that my hand is too small,” said Al Lewis, a Boston-based healthcare entrepreneur and cofounder of Quizzify.

The purpose of the paper, Gelman said, was to call attention to studies “that report dramatic and silly claims based on statistically significant p-values.” Among his favorites: that obesity is contagious and that scores of everyday foods either increase or decrease the risk of cancer. Such claims go up in smoke with better research.

 

Trump’s success ‘deranges’ bridge players, shedding light on biomedical studies

[OneWhoLurks]

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When the image of Jennelyn Olaires weeping as she cradled the body of her slain husband went viral in the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte called it melodramatic.

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Photographers surrounded her behind a police cordon as she held his body. A piece of cardboard was left next to his corpse with the word "pusher" written on it.

Dozens of similar killings have taken place almost daily in the Philippines, but with drugs and crime so deep-rooted, there is barely any public outrage.

Some 316 suspected drug dealers were killed from July 1-27, 195 of which were vigilante killings, according to police. Human rights groups estimate the body count to be at least double the official number.

 

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Olaires will bury her husband on Sunday. She concedes he was a drug user but says it is impossible he was a dealer because they were too poor and could barely pay for their next meal.

Siaron made money by riding a pedicab - a bicycle with a sidecar - and did odd jobs.

He even voted for Duterte in the May 9 election.

 

The dark side of Duterte's deadly but popular drugs war

[OneWhoLurks]

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MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte publicly linked more than 150 judges, mayors, lawmakers, police and military personnel to illegal drugs Sunday, ordering them to surrender for investigation as he ratcheted up his bloody war against what he calls a "pandemic."

Duterte promptly relieved members of the military and police he named from their current posts and ordered government security personnel to be withdrawn from politicians he identified in a nationally televised speech. He also ordered gun licenses of those named revoked.

"All military and police who are attached to these people, I'm giving you 24 hours to report to your mother unit or I will whack you. I'll dismiss you from the service," Duterte said in the speech at a military camp in southern Davao city.

 

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Duterte's latest salvo ups the ante in his war on drugs, which has already left more than 400 suspected dealers and pushers dead and more than 4,400 arrested in more than a month since he took office. Nearly 600,000 people have surrendered to authorities, hoping to avoid getting killed.

The crackdown has been one of the biggest and bloodiest in the Philippines' recent history and has alarmed human rights groups and the dominant Roman Catholic Church. But Duterte has dismissed their concerns and has openly threatened to kill crime suspects, assuring law enforcers that he would defend them if they face lawsuits while battling criminality.

 

Philippine leader links 150 judges, politicians to drugs