...this is going to get loud. Today's news wires are just brimming with stories that the Right Wing media will launch into orbit by sheer force of the ire and volume of the words they'll pack into them.
First off, we have the Terri Schiavo autopsy. The report confirms that, if you should ever need a diagnosis, don't send a videotape to Bill Frist, because he'll be wrong. Schiavo was indeed in a persistent vegetative state. According to the autopsy, all the anti-dignity crowd claims were wrong.
Schiavo died of dehydration, not a heart attack, and could not have ingested food or water fed to her by mouth. She was given no death-hastening agents, as alleged. Her brain was one-half the size it should have been. Among the degenerated areas was her visual cortex, which means there was no way she could have demonstrated visual tracking. Most important is the medical examiner's statement that, "This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons."
In an ideal world, this would put an end to the whole sad state of affairs. But, since this world is glaringly imperfect, my belief is that the firestorm will reignite and our brief respite will be over. The autopsy does not shed any light on the mystery of what led to her collapse and degenerative state. Her husband stated she had an eating disorder; her parents contended that her husband abused her. We'll never know with medical certainty (and how could we, she had years to "heal"). But what we do know is that, with that one level of doubt, the Right will seize on to it like a bulldog with a cat in its jaws. Some will claim that this uncertainty invalidates the whole autopsy (in defiance of all logic), while others will cry "conspiracy!" and yet others will seize on the perceived "blame" of Michael Schiavo.
The other howls will come from two studies released by the Heritage Foundation on the sexual activities of adolescents and teens. Namely, they are attacking the results of an earleir study which found that so-called "virginity pledges" lead to risky sexual behavior and often don't work. Punditos de la dereche will claim that AHA! the new studies show that abstinence-only education works, just as the studies claim to show that abstinence pledges lead to less sexual activity and less risky behavior.
Of course, it's not like the Heritage Foundation doesn't have an ideological interest in this. Heritage is a right-wing think tank with a long and distinguished conservative pedigree. They're not exactly impartial analysts, so the real question is whether or not they took their predilections into account in their methodology.
The methodology is the interesting part. Both new studies used the same data-set (i.e. surveys) as the original study they are meant to rebut. Unfortunately, direct comparison is impossible because the Heritage studies use different methods and statistics to evaluate the data.
The Heritage studies have not been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for evaluation and publication, but several independent experts who have seen the studies are reportedly concerned that the foundation's statistical methodology was "flawed" and the evidence "lacking" to back up their conclusions. These same experts said that the likelihood of the studies withstanding the peer-review process and being published are very poor so long as the studies and their methodology remain in their current form.
Astonishingly, the doctors who conducted the studies used an alpha-level of .10 to establish statistical significance. I was taught in graduate school that anything higher than .05 is unacceptable. At the Heritage Foundation's established alpha-level, there is a 10% chance that their results are in error. 10% is too high. Any researcher would automatically begin with a .05 alpha level, and, if they were really confident, would conduct a test at the .01 level as well. The use of .10 smacks of trying to make the results fit the hypothesis.
But don't expect pundits like O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, or Coulter to know their assholes from their elbows when it comes to research methodology.
Grab some cotton balls and stuff them in your ears, boys and girls, it's going to get mighty shrill.
-Jim
Cross-posted at Los Punditos.