Researchers hoist with own petard?

In a recent post I took note of the publication of new research purported to support the notion that partisans reject information that contradicts strongly held beliefs more readily than do non-partisans.  I've identified and read the study by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler.

The verdict?  Read on.

One of the instantly striking aspects of the study, titled "When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions," was the redefinition of "misperception" employed by the authors:

(W)e define misperceptions as cases in which people’s beliefs about factual matters are not supported by clear evidence and expert opinion—a definition that includes both false and unsubstantiated beliefs about the world.

That definition occurs in a section devoted to the case for redefining the term for purposes of the study (pp. 304,305).  I suggest to the researchers that a term redefined to reflect that "factual matters that are the subject of contemporary political debate are rarely as black and white as standard political knowledge questions" will result in an increased ambiguity in the finished results where the redefined term occurs.  In particular, if news reports seize on the term "misperception" without mentioning the spin placed on the term by Nyhan et al., the news report will end up producing or reinforcing an unsubstantiated belief in the reader.  Which we might call a "misperception" regardless of whether it contradicts the expert opinions of Nyhan and Reifler.  Clear evidence, after all, constitutes a requirement according to their definition.

The study provides fairly clear evidence that Nyhan and Reifler were "hoist by their own petard."

PolitiFact's incredibly thin credibility

Sure, PolitiFact occasionally delivers some good information. But an abundance of problems keep PolitiFact from obtaining substantial credibility among conservatives, and liberal/progressive confidence in PolitiFact is on the wane for a variety of reasons.

One just can't ignore the evidence repeatedly. Things are amiss at PolitiFact. How can a fact checker make errors like the one we're about to examine? It just doesn't make any sense.

Yesterday's item on a Rick Santorum claim contained a reference to Lou Dobbs. Here's what it looked like at first:

A reader noticed that the reference to Lou Dobbs was dated and posted a message to PolitiFact's Facebook page. Dobbs works for Fox Business Network these days. Before long "PolitiFact" (often Angie Drobnic Holan) responded:


For those of us who follow PolitiFact closely enough to know its policy statements, the above message served as an indication that a correction notice might now accompany the story.  After all, the Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter clearly states:

When we find we've made a mistake, we correct the mistake.

• In the case of a factual error, an editor's note will be added and labeled "CORRECTION" explaining how the article has been changed.
• In the case of clarifications or updates, an editor's note will be added and labeled "UPDATE" explaining how the article has been changed.
• If the mistake is significant, we will reconvene the three-editor panel. If there is a new ruling, we will rewrite the item and put the correction at the top indicating how it's been changed.

As of this writing no editor's note appears with the original story.  There is no admission of error and no notice that a correction was made after the item was published.

Is it a small thing?  I suppose so, in a way.  I often fix typographical errors without giving readers a correction notice.  However, I am committed to always providing a notice of any change that significantly affects the information in the post.  A misspelled name qualifies.  And certainly if I misidentified Lou Dobbs' employer I'd attach a correction notice.

But here's the thing:  I don't even have an expressed corrections policy.  I do corrections of fact because it's the right thing to do even though the transparency hurts sometimes.  It does serve as a fine motivation for reporting accurately on the first try.

The solution to PolitiFact's problem is very simple.  If the corrections policy calls for a correction notice via an editor's note upon finding a mistake then post one.

Otherwise change the policy so that it describes the actual practice.

Perhaps those who run PolitiFact have made the determination that adding a correction notice every time serves to undermine its credibility.

But the failure to follow a statement of principles isn't acceptable for a fact checking operation.  Is it?  By rights, the failure to follow principles deals the harder blow to PolitiFact's credibility.


Mar. 1, 2012:  Fox Business Network, not Fox Business Channel, as I initially put it.  No, I didn't make the mistake to make a point.

Does science suggest that fighting smears is futile?

A news story I picked up through Michelle Malkin's Hot Air has piqued my interest, given the amount of time I spend trying to sort through media disinformation for the truth.

The story, by Shankar Vedantam, concerned experiments conducted by political scientist John Bullock and other experiments by political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler. The experiments, according to Vedantam and the researchers, suggested that a smear successfully affected perception even after the smear was debunked. Further, the research by Nyhan and Reifler supposedly suggested that conservatives were more prone to accept a smear despite having access to information that falsified it.

But there are problems with this type of research, as I shall demonstrate.

I will deal with the experiments in the order Vedantam presents them.


Roberts and NARAL

The first concerned a smear of current Supreme Court Justice John Roberts produced by NARAL.

clipped from www.factcheck.org

NARAL Pro-Choice America TV Ad:
"Speaking Out"

Announcer: Seven years ago, a bomb destroyed a women's health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama.

(On screen: Footage of bombed clinic)

(Tex on screen: New Woman/All Women Health Clinic; January 28, 1998)

Emily Lyons: When a bomb ripped through my clinic, I almost lost my life.

Announcer: Supreme Court nominee John Roberts filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber.

(On screen: Footage of Roberts; image of April 11, 1991 brief from Bray v. Alexandria)

(Text on screen: Roberts filed court brief supporting clinic protesters)

Emily Lyons: I'm determined to stop this violence so I'm speaking out.

Announcer: Call your Senators. Tell them to oppose John Roberts. America can't afford a Justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans.

Picking up with Shankar's story:

Bullock then showed volunteers a refutation of the ad by abortion-rights supporters. He also told the volunteers that the advocacy group had withdrawn the ad. Although 56 percent of Democrats had originally disapproved of Roberts before hearing the misinformation, 80 percent of Democrats disapproved of the Supreme Court nominee afterward. Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval of Roberts dropped only to 72 percent.

On the face of it, this looks bad. The data appear to suggest that 16 percent of the Democrats in the study allowed a plainly refuted smear to color their opinions. But how solid is that conclusion?

I suggest that the conclusion only follows if the ad provides no damaging information that is not thoroughly and unambiguously countered by the refutation. That is a tall order, and one that seems well outside the reach of Bullock's experiment. Shankar's version of the experiment fails to do it justice:

Near the end of the experiment, treatment-group subjects received this information:

Recall the ad transcript you read about earlier in this survey. The ad was strongly criticized by many people, some of whom were prominent supporters of abortion rights.
Walter Dellinger, an ally of the group that aired the ad and an important attorney in the Clinton administration, called the ad “unfair and unwarranted.” He added that “It is unfair to suggest that John Roberts, in advancing a somewhat narrow interpretation of [the anti-discrimination law], was supporting ‘violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber’—as unfair as it would be to suggest that the six Justices who were part of the majority in Bray joined a decision supporting violent fringe groups.”
Arlen Specter, a Republican senator and supporter of abortion rights, called the ad “blatantly untrue and unfair.”
Stung by these criticisms and many others, NARAL Pro-Choice America withdrew the ad from television.

(Bullock, "The Enduring Importance of False Political Beliefs," p. 39)

The supposed refutation itself contains information that might influence the test subjects to change their opinion of Roberts for the worse, given that he supported a "narrow" interpretation of an anti-discrimination law. That is aside from other obvious factors, such as a general familiarity with NARAL, which might influence test subjects to think that even if the ad was false, the organization would not have aired it if Roberts presented no worries for a pro-choice voter.

This phase of the experiment does not significantly support the notion that a refuted smear continues to affect attitudes.


Guantanamo, Koran, Toilet

The second smear involved the false reports of Guantanamo guards flushing a copy of the Koran down the toilet.

Volunteers were shown a Newsweek report that suggested a Koran had been flushed down a toilet, followed by a retraction by the magazine. Where 56 percent of Democrats had disapproved of detainee treatment before they were misinformed about the Koran incident, 78 percent disapproved afterward. Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval dropped back only to 68 percent -- showing that misinformation continued to affect the attitudes of Democrats even after they knew the information was false.

The construction of this experiment was more complicated than the other, and it seems that Shankar misinterpreted the results. No baseline attitude toward detainee treatment occurred prior to exposure to the texts used in the experiment. The 56 percent of Democrats who disapproved of detainee treatment were part of a control group who read an account of detainee mistreatment with the Koran-flushing episode excised. The 78 percent figure Shankar presents as disapproval in the (Democratic portion of the) control group appears to be a figure actually related to approval for congressional hearings on detainee treatment. I located no pre-refutation figure for the treatment group, which leads me to believe that the control group was intended to provide the baseline (contrary to the picture painted by Shankar). The refutation would have been meaningless and irrelevant to the control group, since Newsweek would be retracting a part of the story they had not read.

Apart from Shankar's difficulty in reporting the experiment, did it support Bullock's thesis? Since 68 percent of the treatment group disapproved detainee treatment even after the refutation compared to 56 percent in the control group, perhaps so. The key variable is the text of the Newsweek retraction, which was not included in Bullock's paper.

If the retraction was similar to the following, however, there is good reason to doubt:

Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur’an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them “not credible.” Our original source later said he couldn’t be certain about reading of the alleged Qur’an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.
(Outside the Beltway, quoting from Mark Whitaker's "From the Editor's Desk")

A "retraction" like that above tends to feed into the level of trust one feels for the media source as opposed to the government source, which provides a natural and potentially reasonable alternate explanation for the belief perseverance effect Bullock was exploring.

Hussein and WMD

The next example in Shankar's story comes from Nyhan and Reiffler.

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

I don't imagine it was an easy matter to find volunteers willing to read the Duelfer report (not the work of mere minutes).

While the future size and direction of the Iraq Survey Group are currently under review, the requirement remains to collect further information related to threats posed by residual elements ofthe former Regime’s WMD programs. There will also be new information from individuals and sources, which will come to light. Moreover, certain defined questions remain unanswered. For example, we cannot express a firm view on the possibility that WMD elements were relocated out of Iraq prior to the war. Reports of such actions exist, but we have not yet been able to investigate this possibility thoroughly.

It should be obvious merely from the above excerpt (and there are many similar caveats in the report) that the Duelfer report did not unequivocally refute the notion that Iraq possessed WMD. Indeed, though the report emphasized the lack of solid evidence supporting the notion, it also emphasized the devious intent of the Hussein regime along with some of its success in deceiving the West.

At this point it is proper to ask: Why was the Duelfer report chosen as a refutation of the notion that Iraq had WMD during the lead-up to the invasion in 2003? Were the authors of the study victims of the phenomenon under investigation?

From Shankar again:

Bullock, Nyhan and Reifler are all Democrats.

So, if the findings suggested by Bullock, Nyhan and Reifler are legitimate then we have additional reason to regard their judgment of a proper refutation with suspicion.

The apparent solution is found in the combination of Shankar's misleading report and researcher bias. Nyhan and Reifler evidently did not use the Duelfer report as the refutation but a New York Times distillation of the Duelfer report. From the appendix:

Study 1 (WMD): News text
Wilkes-Barre, PA, October 7, 2004 (AP) -- President Bush delivered a hard-hitting speech here today that made his strategy for the remainder of the campaign crystal clear: a rousing, no-retreat defense of the Iraq war.

Bush maintained Wednesday that the war in Iraq was the right thing to do and that Iraq stood out as a place where terrorists might get weapons of mass destruction.

“There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks, and in the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take,” Bush said.

[Correction]
While Bush was making campaign stops in Pennsylvania, the Central Intelligence Agency released a report that concludes that Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, nor was any program to produce them under way at the time. The report, authored by Charles Duelfer, who advises the director of central intelligence on Iraqi weapons, says Saddam made a decision sometime in the 1990s to destroy known stockpiles of chemical weapons. Duelfer also said that inspectors destroyed the nuclear program sometime after 1991.

Something in the minds of Nyhan and Reifler is able to overlook the ambiguities in the Times' attempt to quash the notion that Hussein had WMD.

The question asked by the researchers hardly even has anything to do with the refutation:

Study 1 (WMD): Dependent variable
Immediately before the U.S. invasion, Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction program, the ability to produce these weapons, and large stockpiles of WMD, but Saddam Hussein was able to hide or destroy these weapons right before U.S. forces arrived.
-Strongly disagree [1]
-Somewhat disagree [2]
-Neither agree nor disagree [3]
-Somewhat agree [4]
-Strongly agree [5]

Duh, if Hussein hid the weapons in Syria (for example) then "Saddam Hussein did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, nor was any program to produce them under way at the time." The refutation needs to match the assertion in question or else the results mean little.
Note: The study included two different versions of the question, and the second, though still problematic, is less flawed than the one discussed above. Indeed, the researchers found strikingly different results with the second version, as I discovered after making my assessment of the material in the appendix:

Model 1 indicates that the WMD correction again fails to reduce overall misperceptions. However, we again add an interaction between the correction and ideology in Model 2 and find a statistically significant result. This time, however, the interaction term is negative – the opposite of the result from Study 1.

So when conservatives read a refutation that actually addresses the issue, the response does not reflect any increase in the supposedly false belief. My take, not necessarily that of the researchers, though they do touch on the possibility.

We should note the irony in Shankar offering the Duelfer report as a refutation of what turns out in the reseach paper to be an implication that it is known that Hussein did not hide WMD (for example) in Syria.


Tax Cuts Increase Revenue

Shankar's presentation of the next case, offered again by Nyhan and Reifler, borders on the bizarre:

A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

It is no easy feat reconciling the above account with the details of the experiment:

[New York Times/FoxNews.com]
August 6, 2005
President George W. Bush urged Congress to make permanent the tax cuts enacted during his first term and draft legislation to bolster the Social Security program, after the lawmakers return from their August break.

“The tax relief stimulated economic vitality and growth and it has helped increase revenues to the Treasury,” Bush said in his weekly radio address. “The increased revenues and our spending restraint have led to good progress in reducing the federal deficit.”

The expanding economy is helping reduce the amount of money the U.S. government plans to borrow from July through September, the Treasury Department said on Wednesday. The government will borrow a net $59 billion in the current quarter, $44 billion less than it originally predicted, as a surge in tax revenue cut the forecast for the federal budget deficit.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget last month forecast a $333 billion budget gap for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, down from a record $412 billion last year.

[Correction]
However, even with the recent increases, revenues in 2005 will remain well below previous projections from the Congressional Budget Office. The major tax cut of 2001 and further cuts in each of the last three years were followed by an unprecedented three-year decline in nominal tax revenues, from $2 trillion in 2000 to $1.8 trillion in 2003.
Last year, revenues rebounded slightly to $1.9 trillion. But at 16.3 percent of the gross domestic product, last year’s revenue total, measured against the size of the economy, was the lowest level since 1959.

The main problem should be immediately apparent upon reading the question posed to the test subjects:

President Bush’s tax cuts have increased government revenue.
-Strongly disagree [1]
-Somewhat disagree [2]
-Neither agree nor disagree [3]
-Somewhat agree [4]
-Strongly agree [5]

See the disconnect? Bush claims that his tax cuts "helped" increase government revenue. The test subjects are apparently supposed to conclude from that statement that the tax cuts increased revenue. The question alters the cause and effect relationship suggested by the president's words. That should account for the low number who agreed without reading the "correction." As the researchers noted, the subjects were probably more likely to think deeply about the issue after the correction, in part because the correction doesn't really address what Bush said in the first place. I've dealt with this tax issue at Bad Blogs' Blood, by the way.

Once conservatives start thinking about whether or not a tax cut increases revenue, they are likely to consider that a robust economy brings in more revenue than a weaker economy, all other things being equal. A tax policy that strengthens the economy is thus obviously increasing revenue, though the issue is complicated by the fact that higher tax rates also produce more revenue with everything else (including the strength of the economy) being equal. When both the tax rate and the strength of the economy vary, the comparison proves difficult. That simply spells trouble for researchers who provide an oversimplified picture to test subjects and subsequently try to draw conclusions from their findings.


Conclusion

Ideological bias makes it difficult for political scientists to construct valuable experiments.

Shankar's concluding paragraph had me wearing a wry smile:

Reifler questioned attempts to debunk rumors and misinformation on the campaign trail, especially among conservatives: "Sarah Palin says she was against the Bridge to Nowhere," he said, referring to the pork-barrel project Palin once supported before she reversed herself. "Sending those corrections to committed Republicans is not going to be effective, and they in fact may come to believe even more strongly that she was always against the Bridge to Nowhere."

At the risk of making you believe all the more that conservatives believe that Palin "always" opposed the Bridge to Nowhere, Mr. Reifler, check this out.

Grading PolitiFact: Obama and shifting "domestic discretionary spending"

To assess the truth for a numbers claim, the biggest factor is the underlying message. 
--Bill Adair

While wearing out the above quotation from PolitiFact's Bill Adair, I've been looking for statements from Democrats constituting number claims.  Without strenuous effort I've found a number such claims concerning Republicans where the importance of the biggest factor seems to approach nil.  And with just a bit more searching a comparable example from a Democrat turned up.

The issue:

The fact checkers:

Robert Farley:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor


Analysis:

As a numbers claim this on is a bit more similar to Sarah Palin's statement about U.S. military spending as a percentage of GDP than to some others I've focused on recently.

On with the fact check:

Happy anniversary St. Petersburg Times' flub!

The St. Petersburg Times' double-barreled mistake in reporting Charlie Crist's share of public campaign financing dollars has (nearly) reached its one-year anniversary!

Hip-hip-HURRAH!  Hip-hip-HURRAH!!

Sometimes I didn't think the blunder would last this long.  After all, I informed the Times of its error back on June 14 of last year:

PolitiFact's Ucci correction/update

PolitiFact published another flub recently, putting to virtual print an incorrect dollar figure as part of a story about bank security.

This flub helps illustrate the way PolitiFact exercises its corrections policy when its editors feel something must be done.

Here's the policy:

When we find we've made a mistake, we correct the mistake.

• In the case of a factual error, an editor's note will be added and labeled "CORRECTION" explaining how the article has been changed.
• In the case of clarifications or updates, an editor's note will be added and labeled "UPDATE" explaining how the article has been changed.
• If the mistake is significant, we will reconvene the three-editor panel. If there is a new ruling, we will rewrite the item and put the correction at the top indicating how it's been changed.

Here is the result of the policy:

Update: The initial version of this item incorrectly reported the amount of money stolen in the 2010 robbery outside a bank. It was $12,542.

Getting the number wrong probably seems like a "factual error" to most of us.  Apparently at PolitiFact a "factual error" is something a bit worse than publishing the wrong figure.  Maybe the original version of the story was only off by a dollar or two?  The "Update" shows the amount stolen "was" $12,542.  "Was" in actuality or "was" in the original version?  Let's check the figure in the updated version:

On the morning of Sept. 20, 2010,  a 49-year-old service station manager brought a deposit bag with $12,542 to a Citizen Bank branch in Woonsocket. A man in a ski mask confronted him outside the bank and demanded the money.

The $12,542 figure "was" the correct figure, then.  And PolitiFact's clarification does a perfect job of keeping you from knowing how PolitiFact had it wrong--unless you do a bit of digging and locate a cached version of the original story.  In which case it reads like this:

On the morning of Sept. 20, 2010,  a 49-year-old service station manager brought a deposit bag with $1,242 to a Citizen Bank branch in Woonsocket. A man in a ski mask confronted him outside the bank and demanded the money.

Publishing a figure off by a factor of (approximately) 10 is apparently not a "factual error."  Most likely the error was bumped into "clarification" territory because it appears to have resulted from a typographical error (omitting the "5").

The clarification was notably lacking in transparency, however, when it comes to that.

Grading PolitiFact: Mike Pence and the Ryan plan for Medicare

This review takes on PolitiFact's second attempt to rate Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) for a statement on ABC's "This Week."  Those curious about PolitiFact's first attempt can find a few details here.

The issue:

On the full page at PolitiFact, a "Barely True" graphic occurs just below the clipped material

The fact checkers:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  writer, researcher
Martha Hamilton:  editor

Analysis:

It's worth touching on the correction notice that now heads the story:

Correction: This item was originally published at about noon on April 13, 2011, based on ABC's transcript of "This Week With Christiane Amanpour." Shortly afterward, Pence's press office notified us that the transcript text was wrong -- leaving out the words "kind of."  Listening to the exchange on video, we confirmed the error in our original ruling. As a result, we are republishing this item at about 6 p.m. on April 13 with the correct quote from Pence and have upgraded the ruling from False to Barely True.

Isn't it basic that a verbal statement should be verified audibly?  It is a fact-checking failure to rely on a flawed transcript.  At least the correction has PolitiFact shouldering slightly more responsibility than their earlier place-holding announcement (via FaceBook):  "removed Mike Pence item because he was misquoted in This Week transcript."  Taking Responsibility version: "removed Mike Pence item because we relied on a flawed transcript for the fact check item."  But that's water under the bridge.  On to the more immediate problem:

"House Republicans under Paul Ryan's leadership have offered a vision to put America back on a pathway toward a balanced budget," Pence said. "It deals with issues in entitlements. It reduces the national debt. For Americans 55 or older, we're not proposing a single change in Medicare... What we want to do for Americans under the age of 55 is make sure they can participate in the same kind of health plan that members of Congress do."

Pence’s final claim about Medicare drew a response from Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who was also on the show.

"That is not accurate," Van Hollen said. "Members of Congress have what is called a fair-share deal. We do not bear the entire risk of increased costs. They are asking seniors to bear risks (that) they are not asking themselves."

In the first paragraph featuring the quotation from Pence we have the claim we see in the headline as well as the source of the paraphrase--the things PolitiFact has already communicated as "Barely True."  The shift to Van Hollen introduces a second claim that appears to occupy PolitiFact's subsequent focus during the fact check process.  The second claim:

Pence replied, "Members of Congress have the same premium support system, Chris knows that."

We decided to see who was right by fact-checking Pence’s statement that future Medicare beneficiaries will be able to "participate in the same kind of health plan that members of Congress do."

As is so often the case, PolitiFact takes its first step with the wrong foot.

Van Hollen claims Pence's statement is inaccurate.  And he also claims--apparently in justification of his initial claim--that Congress does not bear the entire cost of premium hikes.  Van Hollen's reply to Pence is a bit of a red herring.  There is a difference between an insurance plan and an insurance benefit as provided by an employer.  Van Hollen tries to contradict Pence by conflating the two.  PolitiFact plays it Van Hollen's way. But in reality we have two claims from Pence, first that the next Medicare generation will be able to purchase plans like those Congress chooses, and second that the payment system for those plans is like that of Congress.

Writer Angie Drobnic Holan spends a number of paragraphs accurately describing the basics of Ryan's plan and stays in fair territory with the initial comparison:

Now let’s look at how whether proposal looks like what members of Congress can buy.

• How the plan is like what members of Congress get. We contacted Pence’s office to ask about how the Ryan proposal is like what members of Congress get, and they pointed us to the fact that Medicare plans from private insurers will be required to comply with a benefits standard set by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as do plans that cover members of Congress.

We should also note that seniors would be able to compare different plans and select from different insurance options, as members of Congress do. The government would pay part of premiums, as it does for members of Congress.

The similarity makes Pence look correct, though Drobnic displays a Van Hollenish tendency to lump the method of payment in with the plan itself.  Then comes the foul:

• How the plan is not like what members of Congress get. First, the plans would be created specifically for Medicare beneficiaries on newly created Medicare health insurance exchanges. (Exchanges are virtual marketplaces where people can shop for insurance.)

Second, as Van Hollen pointed out, members of Congress are protected somewhat when health insurance companies raise their rates, through a formula he mentioned known as "Fair Share." Generally speaking, the government pays for 75 percent of the average of the health insurance plans it offers. If the overall plans increase in price, the government still pays 75 percent.

1)  PolitiFact's first point is irrelevant.  Creating something new does not automatically make it substantially dissimilar to the model. 

2)  The second point requires a supporting argument.  PolitiFact's supporting argument will not stand, as we shall see.

PolitiFact:

Federal support for premiums in Ryan’s plan, though, would not keep pace with medical inflation. Premium support instead would be pegged to the consumer price index, which historically lags health care costs.

This paragraph from PolitiFact is unusual coming from a journalist.  Why?  Because journalists tend not to make key statements of fact on their own.  They nearly always, by design, refer such statements to a trusted authority so that the reader doesn't have to place trust directly in the journalist.  Fortunately, PolitiFact provides lists of sources in company with each of its fact checks.

Time (blog by Kate Pickert):

The subsidies would increase at a rate indexed to inflation, which is growing much more slowly than health care costs.

 So Van Hollen is right!  But wait!

Fortune:

The 2012 budget replaces the voucher concept with "premium support payments" -- once again, modeled on the federal employees system -- that the government would pay directly to the insurance plan the enrollee chooses.

So Pence is right!  Or close, anyway.  But wait!

The Congressional Budget Office (see p. 8):

People who become eligible for Medicare in 2023 and subsequent years would receive a payment that was larger than $8,000 by an amount that reflected the increase in the consumer price index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) and the age of the enrollee. The premium support payments would increase in each year after initial eligibility by an amount that reflected both the increase in the CPI-U and the fact that enrollees in Medicare tend to be less healthy and require more costly health care as they age. (For example, projected net federal spending per capita for all people age 65 and older in traditional Medicare would be about $15,000 in 2022, CBO estimates, in comparison with about $8,000 for 65-year-olds.)

If the CBO is right then the others are wrong, but Pence is probably the closest.

How did Drobnic conclude that Time was correct?  Perhaps her fourth source, from the "Wonk Room" of the dependably liberal Think Progress swayed her to discount the CBO:

Ryan is constraining the rate of growth in Medicare by offering seniors a defined contribution, regardless of the rate of growth in health care costs. The federal government’s contribution in the FEHBP program, by contrast, reflects actual increases in premium levels. As the Office of Personnel Management describes it, the FEHBP formula “is known as the ‘Fair Share’ formula because it will maintain a consistent level of Government contributions, as a percentage of total program costs, regardless of which health plan enrollees elect.” The difference is that Ryan’s proposal provides seniors with a set amount of money that, in order to reach the kind of savings he’s advertising, would have to depreciates every successive year — even as health care costs increase.

Whatever the process, the story suffers for lack of an explanation.

Speaking of suffering, we have more rationalization from PolitiFact:

Our final point on how the plans differ may seem obvious to some, but we feel it’s important to mention: Members of Congress receive employer-based insurance. By definition, that means they receive a salary to help pay for their insurance. The base pay for members of Congress is currently $174,000.

Medicare beneficiaries, on the other hand, tend to make a lot less money, because most of them are retired. The median income for Medicare beneficiaries was $20,644 in 2010. And only 5 percent had incomes exceeding $82,695, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

This is just silly.  Pence said the new Medicare generation could buy insurance like that available to Congress, not that the insurance would be purchased by the government in whole or in part.  Van Hollen's red herring is to Angie Drobnic Holan as flowers are to Ferdinand the bull.

Hoodwinked by Van Hollen and mysteriously concluding that Ryan's premium supports are "pegged to the consumer price index," Drobnic's conclusion is predictable:

We should emphasize that Ryan’s Medicare proposal is only a broad outline right now, and there are many unanswered questions about it. But what we do know about it strikes us as fundamentally different from the kind of employer-provided health insurance that members of Congress receive. At a minimum, the premium supports will not keep pace with the historic record of rapidly increasing health care costs. Additionally, seniors make significantly less income than members of Congress and will likely not have the same options to buy more expensive plans. And, finally, they will not (have) the same protection against rising costs that "Fair Share" provides members of Congress. We rate Pence’s statement Barely True.

The conclusion is based squarely on two parts red herring and one part dubious assumption about the nature of Ryan's premium supports.  Importantly, the issue of premium supports is only relevant with respect to Pence's claim that "Congress has the same premium support system"--not at all the claim blaring in the PolitiFact headline.


The grades:

Angie Drobnic Holan:  F
Martha Hamilton:  F

PolitiFact's readers deserve to know how and with what level of confidence PolitiFact determined that Ryan's premium support system is pegged to the consumer price index.  The burden of proof is on the person making the claim.  Or so I've heard.

Afters:

I had intended to contrast a pair of epigraphs at the beginning of this item, one consisting of PolitiFact's self-statement of nonpartisanship and the second consisting of PolitiFact's burden of proof criterion ("People who make factual claims are accountable for their words and should be able to provide evidence to back them up").  But I ran into a problem because I can no longer find a statement of PolitiFact's non-partisanship on pages such as "About PolitiFact" (with the exception of PolitiFact Texas).  If the line has been scrubbed perhaps we can score one for truth in advertising.


April 15, 2011:  Rewrote point #1 after it was mysteriously eaten by Blogger's dog.   RIP the lovingly crafted baseball analogy.

A reconsideration

I've put myself on record repeatedly defending PolitiFact staffers from the charge of intentional bias in their work.

I've said that I consider intentional bias unlikely for a number of reasons.  But there's one persistent evidence that makes me question my stance in defending PolitiFact writers and editors on that point.

They don't seem interested in fixing obvious mistakes.

Take the recent example of a "Obameter" rating from President Obama.  The "Obameter" supposedly rates whether the president keeps his campaign promises.  In an earlier entry I documented how PolitiFact far over credited President Obama in delivering on this promise:

"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will establish a 10 percent federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to require that 10 percent of electricity consumed in the U.S. is derived from clean, sustainable energy sources, like solar, wind and geothermal by 2012."

No change at all was made to the Renewable Portfolio Standard, yet PolitiFact rated the promise as kept because the energy industry happened to exceed 10 percent usage of the energy sources listed in the president's promise.

This is an unambiguous error and continues to stand in need of correction.  I had visits from St. Petersburg Times computers immediately following the publication of my criticism, so it is overpoweringly likely that PolitiFact staffers are aware of the criticism.  Yet the story has received no correction.

How do I continue to defend PolitiFact staffers as to their moral integrity when they refuse to fix such an obvious error?

The best I can do in defending their morality is to assume that they do not perceive the need for the correction.  Yet that makes them appear unfit to engage in fact checking in the first place.

I don't like where this is going.

Grading PolitiFact (Florida): Gerard Robinson and the FCAT (Updated x2)

Context matters -- We examine the claim in the full context, the comments made before and after it, the question that prompted it, and the point the person was trying to make.
--Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter

The issue:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

Readers should already find themselves wondering whether "FCAT tests" represents the time spent taking the test itself or the time spent preparing for the test.  PolitiFact uses ambiguous wording.  Yet why would we expect the test itself to take more than 1 percent of a year's instructional time?


The fact checkers:

Amy Sherman:  writer, researcher
Angie Drobnic Holan:  editor

Analysis:

Put bluntly, this item isn't fact checking.  It is a disservice to Gerard Robinson and PolitiFact's readers.

PolitiFact:

Reflecting a backlash against testing, more than a dozen individual school boards in the state, including Broward and Palm Beach, have passed a resolution against the FCAT. The Florida School Boards Association passed its own version of a resolution criticizing the FCAT in June.

Robinson penned a June 15 response, which included these comments: "The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year. It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."

If PolitiFact follows AP style for quotations, the above represents a breach of style guidelines.  Here's how the quotation would look according to AP style:

"The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. 

. . . These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year.

. . . It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."

PolitiFact:

There are a few interesting claims in Robinson’s statement, but the one that caught our eye was that tiny figure: The FCAT accounts for "less than 1 percent of instructional time." Heck, we wonder if lunch or recess could add up to more than 1 percent. So we decided to research whether Robinson’s 1 percent claim was correct.

PolitiFact reports that Robinson's office backed up his claim with numbers showing that the amount of time spent taking the test amounts to .26 to .90 of the state-mandated minimum of 900 hours of instructional time.

So Robinson's claim was true?  PolitiFact doesn't see it that way:

But Robinson used the phrase "instructional time" in his claim, which could fairly be interpreted to mean classroom time spent preparing for the test.

Yes, Robinson used the phrase "instructional time" in his claim, but it isn't fair to interpret it to mean classroom time spent preparing for the test.

"Instructional time" has a particular meaning in education.  It means the time students spending doing learning activities under a teacher's direction. 

Robinson addressed three specific points with his press release.  The FCAT program is allegedly too expensive, dominates the curriculum and hinders student success.

Robinson addresses the first point by framing FCAT expense in terms of its percentage of state and local investment in the schools.  He deals with the second point in the next paragraph:

Florida's Next Generation Sunshine State Standards are the foundation for what we expect our students to learn. Subjects covered by Florida standards include English language arts, math, science, social studies, physical and health education, world languages, and fine arts along with other content areas specific to colleges and careers. Contrary to the claim of the FSBA resolution, the FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. In fact, at the middle school level, student enrollment in courses such as dance, drama, and world languages has increased more than student enrollment in the subject areas assessed on the FCAT. At the high school level, enrollment in dance, world languages and the humanities has outpaced the growth in student enrollment.

PolitiFact ignores this context and tries to make it look like Robinson is saying that the schools spend very little time trying to prepare students for the FCAT.  The above paragraph from Robinson unequivocally puts the lie to the journalists' frame.  He addressed the issue by saying that the test measures things that students ought to spend much of their time learning.

Obviously, then, Robinson was not trying to say that students spend less than 1 percent of their instructional time preparing for the FCAT.  That would argue against his preceding paragraph. 

PolitiFact just ignored the context.

In fact, Robinson's 1 percent figure is more accurate the more time students spend preparing for the FCAT, if one insists on suggesting that he used "instructional time" to refer to test preparation.  For review (bold emphasis added):  "These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year."  If students spend as little as half of their instructional time on the FCAT then the estimate for time spent on the assessments rises to a range between .52 and 1.8 percent--still in the neighborhood of 1 percent if we willfully ignore Robinson's clear explanation.

PolitiFact appears to conflate the "assessments" with the "instructional time" somehow.  As one is used as a percentage of the other, that path leads to a spectacularly failed fact check.

PolitiFact devotes considerable space to quotations complaining about the FCAT, but none of it addresses Robinson's claim.  We can skip on to the wondrous conclusion consisting of four short paragraphs plus a "False" rating.

One:

Robinson said that the FCAT tests "account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year." This was a prepared statement, based on research done by his staff, in response to FCAT critics who say that schools devote too much time to the tests.

Right, but Robinson addressed the critics' point in his preceding paragraph.

Two:

Readers could assume that by "instructional time" Robinson was including regular lesson time in the classroom preparing for the FCAT. He wasn’t. His office says that referred to the number of minutes taking the test out of the total minutes of instruction per year. But he didn’t provide that explanation in his statement.

Robinson may have assumed that those reading his statement have the ability to read.  PolitiFact doesn't explain why people would be seriously misled if they believed taking the FCAT test constituted less than 1 percent of the preparation time.  The smaller the percentage the greater the preparation time by proportion.

It is doubtful PolitiFact could make a coherent case that Robinson was minimizing the preparation time for the test, assuming it would even make the attempt.

Three:

In reality, there is no clear way to quantify how much time teachers spend preparing students for the test. Some teachers say they spend practically all their time on the FCAT.

If all of the teachers spend all of their time on the FCAT then Robinson's statement is perfectly accurate and students spend less than 1 percent of their instructional time taking the assessment.  There's nothing here to use against Robinson's accuracy or veracity.

Four:

Robinson’s goal was to deflect criticism that too much time is spent "teaching to the test." He is suggesting that the FCAT eats up only a smidgen of a school year. But for students, parents and teachers who spend months preparing for those tests, Robinson’s words are misleading.

PolitiFact completely missed Robinson's point by ignoring the context.  The fact check doesn't make a lick of sense.  Robinson's words are misleading if one ignores context, grammar, syntax and logic.


The grades:

Amy Sherman:  F
Angie Drobnic Holan:  F

This case perhaps makes up PolitiFact's penultimate train-wreck to date.  PolitiFact owes Robinson an apology and a front page correction notice.


Update Aug. 1, 2012:

 Gerard Robinson responds to PolitiFact Florida:

In this article, PolitiFact agreed that evidence provided to them by the Department of Education verified the accuracy of my statement when taken in this context.  However, PolitiFact claims my statement was made to deflect criticism that too much time is spent “teaching to the test.”  If this were true, I would agree with PolitiFact’s conclusion.  However, since PolitiFact misrepresents the context of my statement, I rate their finding as False.

Update 2, August 3, 2012:

A Band-Aid for the severed head:  PolitiFact modifies the quotation with the insertion of two ellipses--and no correction notice (at least as of now).

Robinson penned a June 15 response, which included these comments: "The FCAT neither drives the curriculum nor narrows the educational experience of Florida students. ... These assessments average two to three per student per school year and account for less than 1 percent of the instructional time provided during the year. ... It is worth noting that local school boards require students to take many more assessments than those required by the state."

The correction is not quite compliant with AP style by my reading, as the AP Stylebook's example shows a line of space between the sentences prior to the insertion of the ellipse when one pulls sentences from different paragraphs..

That's a minor point, of course.  The story remains incoherent.  The head is still severed and the body is bleeding out through the neck.

Probing PolitiFact's mostly useless corrections policy (Updated x3)

More often than I mention it here, I send messages to PolitiFact staffers alerting them to problems in their stories.  Typically I receive no reply and nothing is done about content errors.  But they're pretty good about fixing spelling errors if I happen to mention one of those.

In relation to a PolitiFact story involving conservative pundit Laura Ingraham--one I reviewed very recently--I sent the following message:

Dear Misters Adair and Jacobson,

The story on Laura Ingraham published on May 16 contains a substantial hole and a likely error.

The hole comes from the story's failure to provide context or background material sufficient to judge the context of Ingraham's statement.  In other words, there is absolutely nothing in the quotation of Ingraham that would indicate she was talking about RomneyCare's popularity in Massachusetts.  As such the presentation of the story conflicts with PolitiFact's aim of providing readers the tools to determine whether to agree with the "Truth-O-Meter" rating or not.

The goal is to help readers judge for themselves whether they agree with the ruling.
--Bill Adair

If you at PolitiFact are serious about that goal, it is incumbent on you to provide sufficient context for the reader to judge whether or not you have taken the statement from Ingraham out of context.

If you cannot provide material from the original conversation that shows that the context is what you claimed, then you should strongly consider that you have made an error.  The "Principles of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter" describes what you would do if an error occurred.

Sincerely,
Bryan White
http://subloviate.blogspot.com/

As always, any reply not accompanied by "off the record" or the like is subject to publication.  Thanks for you (sic) time.

I sent the message to editor Bill Adair as well as to writer/researcher Louis Jacobson, as per the recommendations in the "Principles" document.

Now we wait to see what happens.

Hat tip to Jeff Dyberg for correctly noting that "one" is supposed to have an "e" at the end.  Correction accomplished. 

Update: 

As of May 19, 2011 at 3:00 p.m. the Ingraham story had not changed and I have received no communications from either Adair or Jacobson in reply to my message.  Though, as in the past, the message appeared to generate visits from the St. Petersburg Times and from a frequent visitor in the Washington D.C. area (where Adair is based).  So much for the principles of PolitiFact?  Stay tuned.


Update 2:

As of May 21, 2011 at 4:00 p.m. the Ingraham story had not changed and I have received no communications from either Adair or Jacobson in reply to my message.  The story continues to lack any internal evidence that PolitiFact interpreted Ingraham's words according to the context in which she stated them.  This reinforces the impression that either PolitiFact cares little for its stated principle of helping readers determine the facts based on the evidence rather than via PolitiFact's decisions, or else PolitiFact cares more about the damage to its reputation as a result of admitting significant error.


Update 3:

An examination of the O'Reilly Factor transcript bears out my suspicion that it contained nothing to indicate Ingraham was talking about RomneyCare's popularity in Massachusetts.

Now we're left to wonder why Jacobson and Adair, knowing all along that the transcript contains nothing supporting their assumption, decline to issue a clarification or correction.

Bucs top Titans, move to 4-2

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers bounced back from last week's whupping from the Colts to slip past the visiting Tennessee Titans by a score of 13-10.

Quarterback Jeff Garcia was again the key for the Bucs.

Garcia threw for over 200 yards without an interception, and hooked up with receiver Joey Galloway for a 69-yard TD pass to give the Bucs a 10-3 lead in the third quarter.

Titans quarterback Kerry Collins led his team to the tying score late in the fourth quarter in an amazing drive that featured two potential turnovers by the Titans--none of which ended up going Tampa Bay's way (correction: the amazing drive led to no score, and featured three potential turnovers. The touchdown drive had an end zone interception by Ronde Barber overturned via replay).

In one case, Ronde Barber made an apparent interception of Collins in the end zone, only to have the interception nullified on replay. Barber's hand appeared to touch out of bounds before he made a second touch inbounds.

On the other play, Collins was wrapped up by Kevin Carter and threw the ball down behind him--an apparent lateral. Tennessee recovered, but about 30 yards behind the line of scrimmage. The officials ruled Collins "in the grasp" of the defender, saving the quarterback from a potentially game-altering mistake.

The Bucs responded by driving for the go-ahead field goal, with a drive starting with just over a minute to play. The key play was a third-down reception by Ike Hilliard resulting in a first down at the Tampa Bay 48 yard line. After two more completions the Bucs sent out Matt Bryant for a 33-yard field goal that proved to be the game-winner.

Offense:
I predicted before the game that the Bucs would not win unless they rushed for over 50 yards. I was happy to be wrong. Tennessee stuffed the running game, allowing only 30 yards on the ground.

Garcia's passing was the difference in the game, along with the fact that he ended his sixth start with the customary zero interceptions.

Tight End Alex Smith had his ankle rolled up late in the game and was carted off.

Defense:
The defense did just enough to win the game. The defensive line racked up three sacks with one coming on a run out of bounds by Vince Young. Young strained his quad on the play and did not return. Rookie defensive end Gaines Adams (correction: Jovan Haye was closest and it doesn't seem that any sack was credited. Adams received credit for a sack earlier when Young ran into Lendale White and fell. Adams touched Young down to get credit for the sack) was credited with his first sack of the season (and his career) on that play.

Rookie safety Tanard Jackson continued his stellar play, making a crushing hit on Lendale White as White attempted to dart through the line. Jackson put a monster hit on the Colts' Dallas Clark last week.

Jovan Haye, a defensive tackle elevated from the practice squad late last season, registered 10 tackles and a sack--impressive numbers for an interior lineman. Haye has 3 sacks for the season to lead the Bucs.

Special Teams:
Tampa Bay's special teams returned to form after a couple of breakdowns last week. The Titans' return game was held in check. Mark Jones was unable to break any long returns, however. Josh Bidwell did a great job punting, averaging 44 yards on six kicks.


The Bucs are in good shape in the NFC South at this stage of the season, since a 7-9 record may well earn the division title this year. The injuries tend to temper the optimism, however.


*****

"We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand" (Updated x2)

I've tried to make something of a cottage industry of correcting the record when people get quotations wrong, or where quotations simply have not been verified sufficiently to warrant their use. The quotation in the headline is widely attributed to James Watt. The ultimate source of the quotation was Austin Miles, who wrote that Watt said it an some point on a PTL Club broadcast (Update: actually it was a different quotation that Miles claimed from the PTL Club--this one I think Hellena Handbasket pegged as a Miles paraphrase).

We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.
-- James Watt, (attributed: source unknown)
(positiveatheism.org)

Source unknown? No big deal! We'll use it anyway.

James Watt is quoted as having said, “We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”
(Sunshine Cathedral-MCC)

Well, yeah, Watt is quoted as having said that. I suppose phrasing it that way gets the author off the hook for perpetuating a falsehood, if it happens that Miles' recollections were in error.

"We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand." - James Watt
(The Quote Page at Mawek.com)

This is my favorite part: "This page is maintained by Marco van den Broek Last update: 18 January 1996." Some wouldn't call that "maintained."

In the meantime money is being wasted on books and movies ("Left Behind"), there's fear-mongering, and justification for trashing the environment because Jesus will be returning soon ("We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.” - James Watt, Former (US) Secretary of Interior, Washington Post, May 24, 1981).
(Kickin' the Darkness)

Interesting that atheists and my fellow Christians are among the most eager to dump on Watt, each falling short of their responsibility to verify the information they're spreading (I made a comment to this blog, asking for a correction).

JAMES WATT, former Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan, was famous for the following statements – “I don’t know how many future generations we can count on until the Lord returns.”

“We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”

“After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back”

We Christians live in hope. But this is NOT the hope we live in. Such views negate the creation, rather than cherish what God has given us. It reminds me of a child that destroys a toy it has been given in hopes it will be replaced with a better one.

(christiansforthemountains.org)

Two out of three of the quotations are bogus. Not a very good percentage.

James Watt (Secretary of the Interior)

"We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand."*

(adultthought.ucsd.edu)

Note the asterisk. It leads to a blurb a long way off at the bottom of the page: "*Statement made on live national television." I doubt it, but I'd like to know more. They couldn't have used as a source the Web site I noted here, I hope. I sent a message to these folks, also. I may stick with this group. They're getting published on a .edu site under the auspices of (if I'm not mistaken) the University of California San Diego. Probably a state school that receives government funding ... and they don't appear to practice religious neutrality. I wonder how principled is their stand on church/state separation?

That's one page worth of Google hits, and I think that's all for now.


Update: Got my asterisks mixed up on the Adultthought entry. The asterisk led to the identification of Watt rather than to a claim that the words were spoken on live national television (though coincidentally I've seen that claim made about dubious quotations of Watt).

Update 2: The "Kickin' the Darkness" blog did the next best thing to adding a correction to the bad data. They rewrote the blog post to omit it.


*****

Grading PolitiFact: Obama right about tire inflation and tune-ups? Part 2

Give me a break!

Michael Goldfarb of the McCain campaign contacted PolitiFact and challenged one of their key numbers. PolitiFact updated their entry. And the rating stayed the same. The PolitiFact folks think Obama is right that inflating our tires and tuning our cars will save all the oil McCain wants to obtain by drilling.

Goldfarb may have done more than challenge just one of PolitiFact's numbers, actually, but it's hard to tell so long as the link to Goldfarb's letter leads to a "The page you requested is currently unavailable" message.

Did PolitiFact get it right this time after the appalling ineptitude manifest in the first attempt?

Update: After we published this item, McCain spokesman Michael Goldfarb called to dispute it, citing a Government Accountability Office letter of Feb. 9, 2007 that says tire inflation wastes 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline instead of the 2.8 billion estimate we used.

The letter says: "The Department of Energy’s designated economist on this issue indicated that, of the 130 billion gallons of fuel that the Transportation Research Board estimated were used in passenger cars and light trucks in 2005, about 1.2 billion gallons were wasted as a result of driving on under-inflated tires."

That estimate falls just under the estimated 1.4 billion gallons a year from increased offshore drilling.

Not to mention the fact that it is less than half the estimate PolitiFact used the first time around. And don't you love the way the 14% shortfall (200 million gallons a year) is "just under"?

But that doesn't persuade us to change our ruling, for three reasons.

This has got to be good.

First, 1.2 billion gallons in possible savings from proper tire inflation is still in the ballpark of the 1.4 billion gallons from drilling. Given that all of these numbers are estimates, it's hard to say the difference between these two numbers constitutes a falsehood.

If it is "in the ballpark" then Obama is justified in saying that it's more [Correction: Obama did not say "more" though PolitiFact did paraphrase him that way--Obama's statements were "just as much" and equivalents]? Who are they kidding? If you don't know then don't rate it as "True." Doing otherwise is lying. This is the logic gullible readers are expected to apply:

If what A said could be true then what A said cannot be called a falsehood.
Therefore, what A said is True.

Would PolitiFact stick with their judgment based on that reason alone? Who knows?

Second, it would take years of work to start producing 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline from oil pumped offshore -- the Energy Information Administration estimate contemplates production beginning in 2017. And the oil reserves would not be bottomless. Conceivably, the savings from tire-pressure correction could begin immediately and last indefinitely, thus easily overcoming the marginal difference in the estimates provided by the McCain campaign.

This is priceless. Even if offshore drilling produced an infinite amount of oil, Obama's statement could still be true via the automotive equivalent of Hilbert's Hotel. An infinite amount of tire inflation savings could definitely save an infinite amount of gasoline, according to infinite set theory.

This rationale is hogwash.

First, Obama did not specify offshore drilling. That qualification came from the PolitiFact author in an apparent attempt to capture Obama's underlying argument--as I've noted previously. It is nothing less than silly to suppose that Obama's underlying argument was an appeal to infinite set theory, thus the reference to the offshore oil reserves not being "bottomless" is a patently ridiculous justification. Even the identification of Obama's underlying argument as a comparison between annual saving and annual production is a stretch and that argument is not supported by the data under any fair evaluation. "Could be" isn't enough where the possibility is supported by assumptions. Obama's statement cannot be fairly rated "True" based on so much supposition.

And finally, none of this takes into account the impact of tune-ups, which Obama mentioned as part of his claim. If Department of Energy estimates of 4 percent mileage improvement for better-tuned cars are true, that alone would push the total savings above the estimated drilling yield.

Let's review that Department of Energy estimate.

Fixing a car that is noticeably out of tune or has failed an emissions test can improve its gas mileage by an average of 4 percent, though results vary based on the kind of repair and how well it is done.

It looks to me like PolitiFact is punting while insisting that their "True" rating is correct. We received no analysis from PolitiFact regarding the annual gasoline savings from tuneups based on the Department of Energy estimate. It is all too easy to imagine that the media professionals at PolitiFact took the total amount of fuel burned in motor vehicles and took four percent of that
total as the savings that make Obama ultimately "True."

But that is not what the Department of Energy estimate suggests. The entry specifically refers to "a car that is noticeably out of tune or has failed an emissions test." Without any attempt to quantify the number of cars that meet those criteria, the PolitiFact entry looks more like a stubborn refusal to admit error rather than a careful reconsideration of the issue.

Aug 8 2008: Corrected an incorrect paraphase

Mrs. Scott Beauchamp? Update: Hypothesis confirmed (Updated x3)

Various blogs have made the connection between Scott Thomas Beauchamp and Elspeth Reeve--the latter an employee of The New Republic.

Reeve is from Atlanta.

Reeve, BJ '05, earned degrees in magazine journalism and political science. From Atlanta, Ga., she received a certificate of merit for her article, "Behind the Bars." The article, which was printed in Vox, was part of a four-article series and examined the criminal justice system in the United States. Vox is an award-winning weekly city magazine that appears in the Missourian.

Upon graduation, Reeve interned at Time magazine and now works for the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C.

(Missouri School of Journalism)

And that helped put some context to some of Beauchamp's Myspace comments:

clipped from profile.myspace.com a real spicy braudra Apr 3 2007 11:04A what i wouldn't give for a long walk/talk around chimney springs. i love you i miss you

Where's Chimney Springs?

Southwest of Atlanta.

Chimney Springs was the fastest growing community in Atlanta from 1976 through the early 1980's.
(Chimney Springs Homeowners Association)

It seems that Beauchamp married Reeve earlier than they had planned (in Germany?). Braudra dropped a number of additional clues, by the way, indicating intimacy with Beauchamp.

Mar 23 2007 2:51P

too much space between.

how is life unfolding?

i miss you and i want to know everything.

TNR offices compared to Germany?

Mar 13 2007 10:57A

i miss you.

There are a few interesting comments from ARSB in various MySpace locations.

Anyhoo, the connection between Reeve and Beauchamp does appear to explain TNR's choice of Scott Thomas as their intrepid war correspondent.
Now let's see if his stories check out or not.

Update: Oh, and I'd bet $20 that the quotation used by "a real spicy braudra"

"stuffing her shadow in her mouth as she goes"

was written by Scott Beauchamp.

Update: Confirmation, via Howard Kurtz (hat tip to Dean Barnett posting at HughHewitt.townhall.com):

The magazine's editor, Franklin Foer, disclosed in an interview that Beauchamp is married to a New Republic staffer, and that is "part of the reason why we found him to be a credible writer." Foer also said Beauchamp "has put himself in significant jeopardy" and "lost his lifeline to the rest of the world" because military officials have taken away his laptop, cellphone and e-mail privileges.

(the Washington Post)

Update II, Correction: Whether because of a faulty map or a temporary inability to properly read a map, Chimney Springs is northwestern suburb of Atlanta rather than to the city's southwest as I had earlier reported.

Update III: Correction: Though the reasoning that led to the conclusion that "a real spicy braudra" was Elspeth Reeve was reasonable, it seems safe to conclude that it was wrong. That MySpace identity appears to belong to a different friend of Scott Beauchamp who, like E. Reeve, was from Atlanta and living in the Northeastern United States.

New York Times taking sweet time with "napalm girl" correction

Via W. Joseph Cambell's Media Myth Alert (hat tip to Power Line):

The New York Times has ignored written requests by two senior former Associated Press journalists seeking the correction of an unambiguous error published in a Times obituary three months ago.

I can relate, after pointing out a good number of significant problems with PolitiFact stories that have resulted in neither written response nor an appropriate change to the story in question.

Campbell:

In an obituary published in May about Horst Faas — an award-winning AP photographer and editor who helped make sure Ut’s photograph moved across the agency’s wires — the Times described the image as “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes: a group of terror-stricken children fleeing the scene, a girl in the middle of the group screaming and naked, her clothes incinerated by burning napalm.”

But as I pointed out in an email sent to the Times soon after the obituary was published, the aircraft that dropped the napalm wasn’t American; it was South Vietnamese.

Visit the Media Myth Alert for all the details.  It's well worth reading, from the additional facts on the case through the Times' ridiculous excuse for not making any change.