Don't blame the Post - Do blame the Post

Don't blame the Post: I agree with the criticism (two blogs back) of a medical report in the Post, but I don't agree that the Post should be blamed. (As it happens, I had a 25-year career in medical research, and am familiar with the frequent misuse of statistics in the medical literature. I even once wrote an editorial about it.) What we have here is an example of "overlooking hidden causes." What happens is that a correlation is found between two things, like drinking sugar-sweetened beverages and diabetes, and the implicit assumption is that one is the cause of the other.* The finding may be correct as far as it goes, but the point is, there could also be other contributing causes that were overlooked. In this case, people who drink a lot of soda also probably overeat or ingest sugar in other ways, and it would be silly to think that drinking soda is the only factor.

In some cases, the first item may not even be causative, but related only in a coincidental way. As Ambrose Bierce wrote a hundred years ago ("The Devil's Dictionary"):
Effect, n. The second of two phenomena which always occur together in the same order. The first, called a Cause, is said to generate the other -- which is no more sensible than it would be for one who has never seen a dog except in pursuit of a rabbit to declare the rabbit the cause of the dog.

Having said that, I don't think it's up to the Post to do a correction. If the medical profession allows itself to be misled by statistics and issues misleading reports, I don't believe that any newspaper in the country can be expected to do other than print the findings as reported. Sure, in the best of all possible worlds, every newspaper would have a very smart medical expert (smarter than the researchers) who would look for errors in medical reports (and he would find a lot), but is that realistic?

Blame the Post. The blatant errors in Mideast reporting, however, are another story. This is an area where reporters should have expertise and should know better. For example, in the article "Suicide Bombings Kill 18 in Israel" (Sept 1, 2004), the Post quoted only part of the Hamas communique, citing as a motive "retribution for Israel's assassinations of top Hamas leaders in Gaza last spring and the poor treatment of Palestinians in Israeli jails..." They deliberately omitted the continuation of that same communique that affirmed "the military wing’s determination on Jihad until liberation of all national soil." (And for anyone who doesn't understand that "all national soil" includes the state of Israel, please visit the Hamas web site.) The part omitted, of course, changes the entire picture.

Come to think of it, there is a strong analogy between the two errors, even if the blame is different. Here the Post, by concealing the second part of the communique, has overlooked a "hidden cause", or should I say, has hidden a cause, which in this case is obviously the true underlying cause.

The Post also failed to point out that the "poor treatment" of prisoners is a matter of cell phones, glass partitions, and security searches of visitors, and does not involve inhumane treatment. This also, I believe, gives a false picture. And that's what this web site should be about.
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*Ironically, there was an error in Mr. Vardon's blog. The correlation was with diabetes, not obesity, as he stated. Which reminds me of a recent joke:
"I'm hot and sweaty", said the German. "I must have a glass of beer."
"I'm hot and sweaty", said the Frenchman. "I must have a glass of wine."
"I'm hot and sweaty", said the Jew. "I must have diabetes."