Amazing Factoids

A 2001 survey of U.S. American adults says that 14% of men and 34% of women believe that the sun goes around the earth and not v.v.; and that 34% of men and 58% of women do not know that it takes one year for the earth to go around the sun. Is this reliable? It was done for the National Science Foundation, so one hopes so. The method was random-digit dialing by telephone, which sounds good. But the response rate was only 39% with the highly educated overrepresented. See footnote 1 for this. It is not stated whether any corrections to the data were done to compensate. The wordings were: "Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth?" "How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year?"
Actual quote: "We want to increase the value of academic excellence people are paying for," said Neil Theobald, vice chancellor for budget and administration at Indiana University, concerning the new $1000 fee for undergraduates. (See Indiana Daily Student, p. 1, Sep. 4, 2002, also at https://idsnews.com.)
On 12 Aug. 2005, there were many stories about the haze in Malaysia. Since 1997, the actual air quality figures have been a state secret for fear of keeping away tourists.
There have been many stories about bird flu recently. In The Washington Post on 20 Oct. 2005 in an article entitled "Indonesia Neglected Bird Flu Until Too Late, Experts Say", we read that "In an interview with The Washington Post this spring, Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, Indonesia's national director of animal health, first disclosed that officials had known chickens were dying from bird flu since the middle of 2003 but kept this secret until last year because of lobbying by the poultry industry. ... the owners of major poultry companies, who have personal ties to senior Agriculture Ministry officials, insisted that any containment efforts be done secretly, Naipospos recalled. These eight farming conglomerates, which handle 60 percent of the country's poultry, feared that publicity would harm sales of chicken and eggs."
A recent survey of US adults found that 42% believe that "living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time". The question was asked after questions on religious belief. The wording was "Some people think that humans and other living things [have evolved over time]. Others think that humans and other living things [have existed in their present form since the beginning of time]. Which of these comes closest to your view?", with the two possibilities in brackets given in each order to half the respondents. The margin of error was 2.5% and the polling was done in July 2005.
Scott Hensley and Barbara Martinez of the Wall Street Journal reported on 15 July 2005 that "In 2004, 237,000 meetings and talks sponsored by pharmaceutical companies featured doctors as speakers, compared with 134,000 meetings led by company sales representatives, according to market researcher Verispan LLC of Yardley, Pa." Also, "[t]he industry [has] nearly 100,000 salespeople in the U.S."
U.S. military trainers at Guantánamo Bay based an entire interrogation class in December 2002 on a chart from a 1957 article entitled "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War". The trainers did not disclose their source and may not have known it. See The New York Times, 2 July 2008. For more information on how these techniques came to be used by the CIA without knowing their origin, see The New York Times, 22 April 2009.
"Determining how often, if ever, blood supplied by the Red Cross has been responsible for serious health problems is difficult. F.D.A. documents rarely spell out the consequences of the failures they catalogue, a reflection, to some degree, of the agency's concern about alarming the public. But often they simply do not know. 'Patients who get blood transfusions tend to be pretty sick,' Dr. Healy said. 'If they spike a fever post-transfusion, no one is likely to suspect that the blood caused it.'" See The New York Times, 17 July 2008.
On 31 July 2008, a prominent New York Times columnist wrote, "My hunch is that in a century or two, our descendants will look back on our factory farms with uncomprehending revulsion. But in the meantime, I love a good burger. ... To this day, when tucking into a pork chop, I always feel as if it is my intellectual equal."
When Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahama Islands, the native Arawak people came to greet him and his sailors. Columbus wrote (somewhat contradictorily): "They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned .... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features .... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane .... They would make fine servants .... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." This is quoted at the beginning of Howard Zinn's book, A People's History of the United States, but I don't know the source or the translator of Columbus' log.
At the top of the page of a UN report, it says "The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity. Livestock's contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large. The impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency." What amazes me is that the UN wrote this. It does not amaze me that it is pretty much ignored. Recently, however, to my surprise, Sweden has begun to pay attention: see The New York Times, To Cut Global Warming, Swedes Study Their Plates, 23 Oct. 2009. For a more recent estimate of greenhouse gases attributable to livestock (at least 51%---a rather amazing figure), see Livestock and Climate Change by the Worldwatch Institute, written by Goodland and Anhang. Who are they? "Robert Goodland retired as lead environmental adviser at the World Bank Group after serving there for 23 years. In 2008 he was awarded the first Coolidge Memorial Medal by the IUCN for outstanding contributions to environmental conservation. Jeff Anhang is a research officer and environmental specialist at the World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation, which provides private-sector financing and advice in developing countries." It is also amazing that this latter study was cited by Bill Gates. A 2014 peer-reviewed article comes to similar conclusions. A more recent UN report estimates "14.5 percent of all anthropogenic GHG emissions" are due to livestock.
Fresh water will soon run out in the country of Yemen. It turns out that "[a]t least two-thirds of Yemen's water consumption" is for growing khat, a mild narcotic. In addition, the population growth rate is 4.5% a year and "[t]he government subsidizes the exploitation of water for khat and other agriculture". "The country's first water minister was removed a couple of years ago from his post for trying to outlaw wildcatters drilling for water wherever they pleased." See The Los Angeles Times, 3 August 2008. More on the sad history is at The New York Times, 1 Nov. 2009, where one of the causes of the problem is identified as "cheap foreign grain" in the 1960s.
"The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, in his first public comments since the presentation of the evidence against Dr. Ivins on Wednesday, said Friday that he was proud of the inquiry [about the anthrax mailings]. 'I do not apologize for any aspect of the investigation,' he told reporters. It is erroneous, he added, 'to say there were mistakes.'" See The New York Times, 10 Aug. 2008.
It turns out that manufacturers of seeds that produce genetically modified crops require purchasers to agree not to perform any research on those seeds without prior permission. For example, according to The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2009, "The growers' agreement from Syngenta not only prohibits research in general but specifically says a seed buyer cannot compare Syngenta's product with any rival crop." Such problems led 26 corn-insect specialists to complain to the EPA that "no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions". At the same time, some believe that genetically modified crop production has actually caused an increase in pesticide use (see also the UCS report, "Failure to Yield"). In 2008, 96% of Indiana's soybeans were genetically modified. Most genetically-modified soybeans are resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as Roundup by Monsanto. If a farmer uses Monsanto's seeds, he is required to use Monsanto's glyphosate, not a generic version of it (see p. 14 of Behind the Bean by the Cornucopia Institute). For an update on the spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds, see U.S. Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds in The New York Times, 4 May 2010.
The EPA and the Ad Council created an "award winning public service announcement (PSA), `I Feel Like a Fish With No Water.'" (EPA) They covered the country with billboards, print ads, and radio and TV ads. You can see a print version at noattacks.org and the video at youtube.com or noattacks.org. Other formats are available at noattaccks.org under the menu "Media Center". The PSA had some success: "What does an asthma attack feel like? After doing a lot research and finding explanation after explanation I finally heard the perfect description. Asthma feels like a fish out of water. Now use your imagination a little and you'll be able to identify with both the terror and physical pain associated with asthma attacks." (Owen Walcher) Amazingly, according to the creators, "No fish were harmed during the making of this public service announcement. Fish handlers were present at all times during the shoot to manage the care and well being of the fish on hand." I wonder what they had for dinner.
"The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing to keep secret from travelers its vast records on where and how often commercial planes are damaged by hitting flying birds. The government agency argued that some carriers and airports would stop reporting incidents for fear the public would misinterpret the data and hold it against them. The reporting is voluntary because the FAA rejected a National Transportation Safety Board recommendation 10 years ago to make it mandatory." This is from an AP story of 27 March 2009. A few weeks later, they changed their mind.
In May 2008, JAMA published a study in which the authors failed to disclose all conflicts of financial interest. When an outsider, Dr. Leo, told JAMA about it, he heard nothing for 5 months, whereupon he published a letter about it (as well as about other statistical problems with the study and its media coverage) online at the British Medical Journal. This upset JAMA greatly, who called Leo to inform him "that, if his actions represented his apparent lack of confidence in and regard for JAMA, he certainly should not plan to submit future manuscripts or letters for publication." JAMA even "felt an obligation to notify the dean of his institution about our concerns of how Leo's actions were potentially damaging to JAMA's reputation." According to this dean, the JAMA editor said "she would 'ruin the reputation of our medical school' if he didn't force Dr. Leo to retract the BMJ letter and stop talking to the media."
For a time, JAMA required future whistle blowers "not [to] reveal this information to third parties or the media while the investigation is under way", but they mollified this in response to criticism and removed all traces of their original editorial, some of which can still be found here. For Leo's story, see the WSJ or Leo's later article. JAMA maintains that it "did not threaten Leo or anyone at the school."
"Having a family had been an elusive goal for Jeff and Kerry Mastera, a blur of more than two years, dozens of doctor visits and four tries with a procedure called intrauterine insemination, all failures. In one year, the Masteras spent 23 percent of their income on fertility treatments.
"The couple had nearly given up, but last year they decided to try once more, this time through in-vitro fertilization. Pregnancy quickly followed, as did the Mastera boys, who arrived at the Swedish Medical Center in Denver on Feb. 16 at 3 pounds, 1 ounce apiece. Kept alive in a neonatal intensive care unit, Max remained in the hospital 43 days; Wes came home in 51.
"By the time it was over, medical bills for the boys exceeded $1.2 million.
"Eight months later, the extraordinary effort seems worth it to the Masteras, who live in Aurora, Colo."
The Masteras are a middle-class family. This story is from The New York Times, 11 Oct. 2009.
The US "intercepted phone calls of Al Haramain, a now-defunct Islamic charity in Oregon, and of two lawyers representing it in 2004." The charity sued, but the US said that "the charity's lawsuit should be dismissed without a ruling on the merits because allowing it to go forward could reveal state secrets." The charity knew of the illegal surveillance because "the government inadvertently disclosed a classified document that made clear that the charity had been subjected to surveillance without warrants.
"Although the plaintiffs in the Haramain case were not allowed to use the document to prove that they had standing, Mr. Eisenberg and six other lawyers working on the case were able to use public information ... to prove it had been wiretapped." The judge ruled in favor of the charity. See The New York Times, 1 April 2010.
On the other hand, on 8 Sep. 2010, "A federal appeals court ... ruled that former prisoners of the C.I.A. could not sue over their alleged torture in overseas prisons because such a lawsuit might expose secret government information." The plaintiffs had sued "Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a Boeing subsidiary" for "arranging flights for the Central Intelligence Agency to transfer prisoners to other countries for imprisonment and interrogation." See The New York Times, 9 Sep. 2010 for this. The judges cited precedent going back to an 1876 Supreme Court case, Totten v. United States, "where the estate of a Civil War spy sued the United States for breaching an alleged agreement to compensate the spy for his wartime espionage services. ... [T]he Court held that the action was barred because it was premised on the existence of a 'contract for secret services with the government,' which was 'a fact not to be disclosed'." See this for the ruling.
People "harvest" a lot of shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico. In order to avoid catching and drowning a lot of sea turtles (critically endangered in part because of this industry), the federal government passed laws requiring nets to have devices that allow turtles to escape. "The devices are so contentious that Louisiana law has long forbidden its wildlife and fisheries agents to enforce federal regulations on the devices," according to The New York Times, 15 July 2010. "By contrast, Mississippi officials strengthened turtle protections by decreasing the allowable tow time for skimmers, posting observers on boats, and sending out pamphlets on turtle resuscitation."
In 2009, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll in the US asking adults, "Do you believe in astrology, or that the position of the stars and planets can affect people's lives?" The percent of Republicans who answered yes was 14, of Independents was 26, and of Democrats was 31. The margin of error was not reported for these subgroups of the sample, but seems to be around 4%.
As the U.S. government prepares for shutting down, The New York Times reports on 6 April 2011: "The chairman of the Committee on House Administration, Representative Dan Lungren, Republican of California, sent detailed guidance on Tuesday to all House members and offices on what they could and could not do during a government shutdown.
"A sample letter he provided warned: `Working in any way during a period of furlough, even as a volunteer, is grounds for disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment. To avoid violating this prohibition, we strongly recommend that you turn your BlackBerries off for the duration of the furlough.'"
The American Society of Hypertension, Inc. (ASH) does not want to disclose the financial ties its board members have to industry. If you want to find out, you must be a current member of the Society and a request is subject to these rules: "(a) a representation in writing is made that any such requests are in good faith and not made for a purpose which is in the interest of a business or object other than the business or object of the Society, or for any purpose to harm the Society or the person(s) whose disclosure(s) are requested, and (b) submission of a signed confidentiality statement". The disclosure form (the object of such a request) asks the respondent to agree or disagree with various statements, such as "Activity content, including presentation of therapeutic options, will be well balanced, evidence-based and unbiased" and "The recommendations that I provide involving clinical medicine will be based on evidence that is accepted within the profession of medicine as adequate justification for their indications and contraindications in the care of patients."
"I never dreamed that my discovery four decades ago would lead to such a profit-driven public health disaster." So wrote the discoverer of prostate-specific antigen (basis of the P.S.A. test).
Marion Nestle, the editor of The Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition and Health (1998), wrote in her book Food Politics that "My first day on the job, I was given the rules: No matter what the research indicated, the report could not recommend `eat less meat' as a way to reduce intake of saturated fat, nor could it suggest restrictions on intake of any other category of food. In the industry-friendly climate of the Reagan administration, the producers of foods that might be affected by such advice would complain to their beneficiaries in Congress, and the report would never be published."
"At least 15 drug and medical-device companies have paid $6.5 billion since 2008 to settle accusations of marketing fraud or kickbacks. However, none of the more than 75 doctors named as participants were sanctioned, despite allegations of fraud or of conduct that put patients at risk", according to Pro Publica, 16 Sep. 2011.
It is hard to shock me now with accounts of misdeeds among doctors, pharmaceutical companies, or medical journals, but the tales of Peter Wilmshurst have so many shocking aspects that I won't even summarize them here. Fortunately, he won an award for his efforts. See also this article for even more sordid details, and this account of being sued.
On 13 Jan. 2012, the Republican National Committee (RNC) passed some resolutions. One commends Israel, stating, e.g., "Israel has been granted her lands under and through the oldest recorded deed as reported in the Old Testament, a tome of scripture held sacred and reverenced by Jew and Christian, alike, as the acts and words of God" and "God has never rescinded his grant of said lands". Another resolution "exposed" United Nations Agenda 21, a non-binding plan for "sustainable development" signed by Pres. George H.W. Bush in 1992. Now, the RNC says that it is "a comprehensive plan of extreme environmentalism, social engineering, and global political control" which "views the American way of life of private property ownership, single family homes, private car ownership and individual travel choices, and privately owned farms; all as destructive to the environment".
On 2 Oct. 2011, France required that all school meals be based on animal products. It defined the protein component of a meal as one based on meat, fish, eggs, offal, or cheese ("plat principal à base de viandes, poissons, oeufs, abats ou fromages"), requiring a certain number of meals to be based on meat or fish. Apparently this is to support French agriculture against the likes of Paul McCartney, who called for one day a week without meat.
The following 3 paragraphs come from the 29 Oct. 2012 New York Times:
"It's about sustainability, and I've been a vegetarian for three years, but I'm excited to eat Bill and Lou," said Lisa Wilson, a senior. "I eat meat when I know where it comes from."
Andrew Kohler, a senior, took a course in which he learned how to drive the oxen team.
"They start listening to you, and they become your friend," Mr. Kohler said. "I feel honored to eat them."
"State and federal authorities decided against indicting HSBC in a money-laundering case over concerns that criminal charges could jeopardize one of the world's largest banks and ultimately destabilize the global financial system." For details, see the 10 Dec. 2012 New York Times.
Dairy farmers are compelled to pay for federal advertising of milk and milk products. This fee is known as the "dairy checkoff". As the dairy checkoff organization says, the purpose is to "drive increased sales of and demand for dairy products and ingredients." Among the ways they do this is to work "to unite the industry in communicating about dairy-related topics that may affect consumer confidence in U.S. dairy: animal care, environmental stewardship, innovation, food safety, value to the community, and health and wellness." In order to "protect and promote the image of dairy products, producers and the industry[, ...] [t]hey also develop and deploy crisis communications planning, including regional crisis drills that engage many sectors of the dairy industry." Some independent farmers objected to the fee, but they lost their lawsuit. There are many other checkoffs; the one for beef is being contested.
"A single cigarette butt in a liter of water containing minnows is toxic enough to kill half of the fish within 96 hours, a standard toxicity test", according to a summary in the New York Times on 9 April 2013 concerning cigarette-butt litter.
"A Malaysian court ruled on [14 Oct. 2013] that non-Muslims may not use the word `Allah' to refer to God", reported the New York Times.
"Only the United States and Gabon allow biomedical experiments on [chimpanzees], and the United States is working to phase them out." See the 3 Dec. 2013 New York Times.
In 2014, a teacher named Keith Allison posted on Facebook the following: "... these are crates to house baby dairy cows who are separated from their mothers usually within a day of birth. As someone who grew up feeling parental love and support and now as a parent who gives parental love and support, I reject the claim that separating babies from loving mothers to raise them isolated in boxes can ever be considered humane. --Keith
"The cruelty of separation, loneliness, and infant slaughter lingers inside each glass of cow's milk. Your voice can help change the system. You don't have to support this. Plant-based milks are everywhere and are delicious."
As a consequence, the Superintendent, Robinson, of the local school district told Keith Allison that the county "had a large number of dairy farmers, and that teachers needed to be careful not to offend the local agricultural industry. Defendant Robinson instructed Allison that he was free to believe whatever he wished, but that if he wished to continue to engage in vegan advocacy outside of work, he should reconsider being a teacher." (This quote is from the lawsuit, which was settled.)
In April 2015, I received email solicitations from the presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Scott Walker. Cruz's email had a picture of him with a gun over his shoulder, included twice, boasting that "in 2013 -- after Barack Obama and Harry Reid pledged to pass gun control in the U.S. Senate -- I fought back, ready to shut down the Senate to stop any legislation undermining the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms."
Walker's email began, "Let's talk about guns.
"Along with riding my Harley, hunting is one of my favorite things.
"... Gun owners don't just love hunting, shooting, and collecting. We love freedom."
The email ended, "Never in my life have I backed down from a fight and I never will. ..."
The American Association for the Advancement of Science, whose main journal is Science, "has a team of about 40 people who work to drive traffic to articles in its publications through the social media", according to The New York Times of 1 June 2015.
"He ... [was] drawn shortly after his arrival in the United States by reports from other refugees about good jobs killing chickens", according to The New York Times of 2 Nov. 2017.
In a discussion of a gender-pay gap in the UK, The New York Times (13 May 2018) thought that the following parenthetical information would be useful to its readers: "a median pay gap of 17.4 percent, meaning that women earned around 83 pounds for every 100 pounds earned by men (100 pounds is about $140)."
The US Senate has a building named after Richard B. Russell, Jr., who tried to prevent passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As quoted by The New York Times (28 August 2018), he said, "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our states." He also wrote, "As one who was born and reared in the atmosphere of the Old South with six generations of my forebears now resting beneath Southern soil, I am willing to go as far and make as great a sacrifice to preserve and insure white supremacy in the social, economic and political life of our state as any man who lives within her borders."
The highest number of citations of scientific articles are often of papers that were first rejected. A study was done for papers submitted to three leading medical journals; one of their figures is shown at the right. As it happens, my own experience resembles this: currently (2018), my papers that were rejected by the first journal I submitted to include those with the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th, 8th and 14th most citations. In fact, my 5th-most cited paper (and most when divided by number of years since publication) was rejected so many times that rejection eventually became part of the paper itself. (Moreover, my rejected papers are almost exclusively among my most cited ones.)
Russia "decriminalized some forms of domestic violence in 2017", which was in the news when two women were acquitted on appeal of killing their husbands. According to The New York Times (9 September 2018), Yelena Mizulina, the lawmaker who led the effort for decriminalization, said that "A man beating his wife is less offensive than when a man is humiliated." The paper also paraphrased her saying that "it was 'mandatory' for a woman to respect her husband as the 'authority' in the marriage."
The NYT explained the change in law: "Whereas abusers had previously faced up to two years in jail, under the new statute they risked only 15 days, or a maximum fine of about $440, or 60 to 120 hours of community service. That was for any act against a spouse or child that causes bruising or bleeding but not a broken bone, as long as it did not happen more than once a year."
One of the women acquitted was Galina Katorova. In her trial, "corroborating testimony unexpectedly came from her mother-in-law, who was seeking financial compensation for her son's death. Of course her son beat his wife, she testified, but Ms. Katorova deserved it because she was excessively jealous of his contacts with other women after he had at least one affair."
Every year, about 7-8% of high school students in the US attempt suicide: see this or this.
In 2015, about 32% of Americans believed "animals should be given the same rights as people" and 26% were "very concerned" about the way animals raised for food are treated. See this Gallup poll.
In June 2015, North Carolina passed a short law, only slightly longer than its title, which was "AN ACT TO PROVIDE THAT STATE WILDLIFE LAWS DO NOT APPLY TO OPOSSUMS BETWEEN THE DATES OF DECEMBER 29 AND JANUARY 2." See the full text and the background.
American adults were asked in May 1999 and in April 2010 how likely they thought it was that Jesus Christ would return to earth in the next 40 years. The answers were about the same both times: about 22% said "definitely will", 20% said "probably will", 28% said "probably not", 17% said "definitely not", and 13% did not know or did not answer. The sampling method was random-digit dialing with weights. The margin of error is reported to be 4.5%.
Some journals send reviewers a certificate for having done their service, as I discovered myself.
The National Republican Congressional Committee solicits donations by credit card to elect Republicans to the House of Representatives. Clicking on the "donate" link leads (on 8 April 2021) to a page that has boxes prechecked for extra donations, including one for monthly donations that contains the warning at the right if you uncheck it. I learned of this from a NYT article, G.O.P. Group Warns of "Defector" List if Donors Uncheck Recurring Box.
It seems that the NYT finds no paradox in the following: "Mr. Dubé said Ms. Echaquan, one of seven siblings, was a devoted mother who liked to make moose meat stew for their family and adored nature and fishing. She was so enamored of animals, he said, that he avoided hunting in her presence."
"The cost of raising hogs in North Carolina was about half as expensive as raising them in China". I was pretty surprised at this, but the explanation turns out to be that China has greater environmental safeguards.
The New York Times (29 Nov. 2022) writes the following as if it is plain, accepted fact: "Some were in professions, like retail or politics, that compelled them to lie."
A surprising practice is discussed in Vox (5 Aug. 2023): ``Employees can be seen removing the intestines of dead, disease-infected piglets and mixing them with piglet feces in a blender—a mixture to be fed to the adult breeding pigs—causing one worker to gag. The practice, called `feedback,' is common in the pork business (or `controlled oral exposure' in industry jargon). The slurry of pig poop and parts is often fed to new female breeding pigs who've yet to give birth to help them adapt to the germs of the farm, and to pregnant pigs to help them pass down immunity from disease to their babies, through their milk.'' Industry sources are linked in the Vox article.

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