The ABC News Fail diary provoked me into posting a long comment which I was urged to turn into a diary. So, here it is. Health Care Reform is hanging in the balance at the moment, and several health issues in the news are becoming part of the battle.
The G.O.P. - Conservative mindset is rooted in authoritarianism, and authoritarianism is not based on rational thinking. The whole purpose of authoritarian movements is to STOP people from thinking and do what their leaders tell them to do. America has been getting a steady dose of it from them for years, and it's taking its toll on critical thinking skills. The whole aim of people like Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter, et. al. is to get people to stop thinking and instead let their emotions rule (to make them easier to rule.)
So....
Right now a huge chunk of the population has been conditioned - deliberately - to pretty much get science news wrong. What most of them are looking for is not the facts, it's for someone they trust to tell them what it means, an authority figure. When authorities make changes in accepted wisdom - sometimes apparently contradicting themselves - it tends to generate fear and anger for two reasons. 1) the kind of people who are looking for certainty in life are freaked out when things they thought they knew change. 2) Authority figures who change what they've been telling followers weaken their own authority in the eyes of those followers who are seeking stability and certainty.
(For a far more detailed exposition on authoritarianism, go to Orcinus and scroll down till you find links to the excellent series by Sara Robinson in the left margin. Cracks In The Wall and Tunnels And Bridges are two classics.)
That's why science can be a real problem for Authoritarian leaders and followers. It has this troubling habit of letting new facts overturn old 'truths' Everyone knew there were no such things as black swans for example, until they turned up in Australia. When new data is uncovered that contradicts some theory or evidence-based belief, assuming that data can be tested and verified, then the theory has to change to incorporate the new data. If it doesn't, it's no longer based on evidence; it's based on belief. (For an example of this in the non-science world, look at the entire run up to the Iraq invasion and the 'evidence' used to justify it.)
The pap smear study and the mammography study are examples of evidence-based medicine. NPR has the story on how it works, and why the reports are getting the reception they are. The researchers didn't set out to overturn everything we knew. They looked at the best data they could get relating to those issues, and simply asked if whether what we think we are doing is the most effective course of action in terms of what we want to do AND is actually supported by the data. The answer they got was no.
Blaming Obama and Health Care Reform is a convenient way for people confused by the news to channel their emotional responses in a direction they can understand. Authoritarian followers like to have enemies to explain why the world doesn't work the way they want it to, and to excuse their own mistakes. Authoritarian leaders like to have enemies to keep their followers in line by giving them targets to fear and hate. Using the reactions generated by these studies for political ends is neither surprising nor new - see the Iraq reference above.
You can see a similar process at work with the Swine Flu Vaccine. The narratives now shaping up are that the government screwed it up - and you can take both paranoid theories as different sides of the same coin.
- The vaccine doesn't work because the government can't get anything right. It's a plot to make the vaccine companies rich, panic everyone into letting the government take over health care, etc. etc. There's no convincing answer people paranoid enough to believe this in the first place will accept.
- There's not enough vaccine because the government can't get anything right. Again, paranoia.
The facts are different. To the best of my knowledge, the vaccine does work for most people if given in time and if they don't have other problems that negate it. Supplies are tight because of the way things work in the real world; conspiracies and incompetence are not needed to explain the problems being encountered.
• The government took proper action in recognizing the threat of the virus - which was not appreciated until decisions had been made about the regular seasonal flu vaccine. If they had known ahead of time, the swine flu strain would have been incorporated into the regular vaccine instead of having to be developed separately.
• Government predictions of how quickly supplies would be available and in what quantities were based on experience with other flu vaccines in the past and what manufacturers were telling them. But...
• The swine flu strain did not cooperate. It did not grow as quickly as other flu strains had, and the yields that were produced were smaller than anticipated.
• This was NOT something that could be known ahead of time. The production schedules were based on the best available information going in to production - but the real world turned out to be different. Stuff happens, and it doesn't always require a conspiracy or incompetence.
• There were also problems with some of the vaccine manufacturers. Some of them were simply unable to produce vaccine safely because of break downs, contamination problems, etc. This further crimped the supply.
It's a failure, but neither deliberate, callous, or incompetent. Contrast this with the Bush government 'response' to Hurricane Katrina to understand the difference. Bush was fully briefed before Katrina came ashore. It had been known for years that New Orleans was a disaster waiting to happen. All kinds of resources were available before and after the hurricane came through - and they were either not used or were used badly.
And it doesn't matter. People who want to believe the Obama government screwed up the Swine Flu will believe it regardless of the facts. People who gain political advantage from that belief will spread it. People too lazy to understand or dig up the actual facts of the matter will go with the flow.
Read my sig line for my closing thoughts on this:
"No special skill, no standard attitude, no technology, and no organization - no matter how valuable - can safely replace thought itself."