The U.S. Census Is Wrong on Purpose

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by David Friedman: “This is a story about data manipulation. But it begins in a small Nebraska town called Monowi that has only one resident, 90 year old Elsie Eiler.

The sign says “Monowi 1,” from Google Street View.

There used to be more people in Monowi. But little by little, the other residents of Monowi left or died. That’s what happened to Elsie’s own family — her children grew up and moved out and her husband passed away in 2004, leaving her as the sole resident. Now she votes for herself for Mayor, and pays herself taxes. Her husband Rudy’s old book collection became the town library, with Elsie as librarian.

But despite what you might imagine, Elsie is far from lonely. She runs a tavern that’s been in her family for 50 years, and has plenty of regulars from the town next door who come by every day to dine and chat.

I first read about Elsie more than 10 years ago. At the time, it wasn’t as well known a story but Elsie has since gotten a lot of coverage and become a bit of a minor celebrity. Now and then I still come across a new article, including a lovely photo essay in the New York Times and a short video on the BBC Travel site.

A Google search reveals many, many similar articles that all tell more or less the same story.

But then suddenly in 2021, there was a new wrinkle: According to the just-published 2020 U.S. Census data, Monowi now had 2 residents, doubling its population.

This came as a surprise to Elsie, who told a local newspaper, “Then someone’s been hiding from me, and there’s nowhere to live but my house.”

It turns out that nobody new had actually moved to Monowi without Elsie realizing. And the census bureau didn’t make a mistake. They intentionally changed the census data, adding one resident.

Why would they do that? Well, it turns out the census bureau sometimes moves residents around on paper in order to protect people’s privacy.

Full census data is only made available 72 years after the census takes place, in accordance with the creatively-named “72 year rule.” Until then, it is only available as aggregated data with individual identifiers removed. Still, if the population of a town is small enough, and census data for that town indicates, for example, that there is just one 90 year old woman and she lives alone, someone could conceivably figure out who that individual is.

So the census bureau sometimes moves people around to create noise in the data that makes that sort of identification a little bit harder…(More)”.

Defending democracy: The threat to the public sphere from social media

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book Review by Mark Hannam: “Habermas is a blockhead. It is simply impossible to tell what kind of damage he is still going to cause in the future”, wrote Karl Popper in 1969. The following year he added: “Most of what he says seems to me trivial; the rest seems to me mistaken”. Five decades later these Popperian conjectures have been roundly refuted. Now in his mid-nineties, Jürgen Habermas is one of the pre-eminent philosophers and public intellectuals of our time. In Germany his generation enjoyed the mercy of being born too late. In 2004, in a speech given on receipt of the Kyoto prize in arts and philosophy, he observed that “we did not have to answer for choosing the wrong side and for political errors and their dire consequences”. He came to maturity in a society that he judged complacent and insufficiently distanced from its recent past. This experience sets the context for his academic work and political interventions.

Polity has recently published two new books by Habermas, both translated by Ciaran Cronin, providing English readers access to the latest iterations of his distinctive themes and methods. He defends a capacious concept of human reason, a collaborative learning process that operates through discussions in which participants appeal only to the force of the better argument. Different kinds of discussion – about scientific facts, moral norms or aesthetic judgements – employ different standards of justification, so what counts as a valid reason depends on context, but all progress, regardless of the field, relies on our conversations following the path along which reason leads us. Habermas’s principal claim is that human reason, appropriately deployed, retains its liberating potential for the species.

His first book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), traced the emergence in the eighteenth century of the public sphere. This was a functionally distinct social space, located between the privacy of civil society and the formal offices of the modern state, where citizens could engage in processes of democratic deliberation. Habermas drew attention to a range of contemporary phenomena, including the organization of opinion by political parties and the development of mass media funded by advertising, that have disrupted the possibility of widespread, well-informed political debate. Modern democracy, he argued, was increasingly characterized by the technocratic organization of interests, rather than by the open discussion of principles and values…(More)”.

Are Evidence-Based Medicine and Public Health Incompatible?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Michael Schulson: “It’s a familiar pandemic story: In September 2020, Angela McLean and John Edmunds found themselves sitting in the same Zoom meeting, listening to a discussion they didn’t like.

At some point during the meeting, McLean — professor of mathematical biology at the Oxford University, dame commander of the Order of the British Empire, fellow of the Royal Society of London, and then-chief scientific adviser to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense — sent Edmunds a message on WhatsApp.

“Who is this fuckwitt?” she asked.

The message was evidently referring to Carl Heneghan, director of the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford. He was on Zoom that day, along with McLean and Edmunds and two other experts, to advise the British prime minister on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Their disagreement — recently made public as part of a British government inquiry into the Covid-19 response — is one small chapter in a long-running clash between two schools of thought within the world of health care.

McLean and Edmunds are experts in infectious disease modeling; they build elaborate simulations of pandemics, which they use to predict how infections will spread and how best to slow them down. Often, during the Covid-19 pandemic, such models were used alongside other forms of evidence to urge more restrictions to slow the spread of the disease. Heneghan, meanwhile, is a prominent figure in the world of evidence-based medicine, or EBM. The movement aims to help doctors draw on the best available evidence when making decisions and advising patients. Over the past 30 years, EBM has transformed the practice of medicine worldwide.

Whether it can transform the practice of public health — which focuses not on individuals, but on keeping the broader community healthy — is a thornier question…(More)”.

Digitalisation and citizen engagement: comparing participatory budgeting in Rome and Barcelona

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book chapter by Giorgia Mattei, Valentina Santolamazza and Martina Manzo: “The digitalisation of participatory budgeting (PB) is an increasing phenomenon in that digital tools could help achieve greater citizen engagement. However, comparing two similar cases – i.e. Rome and Barcelona – some differences appear during the integration of digital tools into the PB processes. The present study describes how digital tools have positively influenced PB throughout different phases, making communication more transparent, involving a wider audience, empowering people and, consequently, making citizens’ engagement more effective. Nevertheless, the research dwells on the different elements adopted to overcome the digitalisation limits and shows various approaches and results…(More)”.

Air Canada chatbot promised a discount. Now the airline has to pay it

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kyle Melnick: “After his grandmother died in Ontario a few years ago, British Columbia resident Jake Moffatt visited Air Canada’s website to book a flight for the funeral. He received assistance from a chatbot, which told him the airline offered reduced rates for passengers booking last-minute travel due to tragedies.

Moffatt bought a nearly $600 ticket for a next-day flight after the chatbot said he would get some of his money back under the airline’s bereavement policy as long as he applied within 90 days, according to a recent civil-resolutions tribunal decision.

But when Moffatt later attempted to receive the discount, he learned that the chatbot had been wrong. Air Canada only awarded bereavement fees if the request had been submitted before a flight. The airline later argued the chatbot wasa separate legal entity “responsible for its own actions,” the decision said.

Moffatt filed a claim with the Canadian tribunal, which ruled Wednesday that Air Canada owed Moffatt more than $600 in damages and tribunal fees after failing to provide “reasonable care.”

As companies have added artificial intelligence-powered chatbots to their websites in hopes of providing faster service, the Air Canada dispute sheds light on issues associated with the growing technology and how courts could approach questions of accountability. The Canadian tribunal in this case came down on the side of the customer, ruling that Air Canada did not ensure its chatbot was accurate…(More)”

Community views on the secondary use of general practice data: Findings from a mixed-methods study

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Annette J. Braunack-Mayer et al: “General practice data, particularly when combined with hospital and other health service data through data linkage, are increasingly being used for quality assurance, evaluation, health service planning and research.Using general practice data is particularly important in countries where general practitioners (GPs) are the first and principal source of health care for most people.

Although there is broad public support for the secondary use of health data, there are good reasons to question whether this support extends to general practice settings. GP–patient relationships may be very personal and longstanding and the general practice health record can capture a large amount of information about patients. There is also the potential for multiple angles on patients’ lives: GPs often care for, or at least record information about, more than one generation of a family. These factors combine to amplify patients’ and GPs’ concerns about sharing patient data….

Adams et al. have developed a model of social licence, specifically in the context of sharing administrative data for health research, based on an analysis of the social licence literature and founded on two principal elements: trust and legitimacy.In this model, trust is founded on research enterprises being perceived as reliable and responsive, including in relation to privacy and security of information, and having regard to the community’s interests and well-being.

Transparency and accountability measures may be used to demonstrate trustworthiness and, as a consequence, to generate trust. Transparency involves a level of openness about the way data are handled and used as well as about the nature and outcomes of the research. Adams et al. note that lack of transparency can undermine trust. They also note that the quality of public engagement is important and that simply providing information is not sufficient. While this is one element of transparency, other elements such as accountability and collaboration are also part of the trusting, reflexive relationship necessary to establish and support social licence.

The second principal element, legitimacy, is founded on research enterprises conforming to the legal, cultural and social norms of society and, again, acting in the best interests of the community. In diverse communities with a range of views and interests, it is necessary to develop a broad consensus on what amounts to the common good through deliberative and collaborative processes.

Social licence cannot be assumed. It must be built through public discussion and engagement to avoid undermining the relationship of trust with health care providers and confidence in the confidentiality of health information…(More)”

Influencers: Looking beyond the consensus of the crowd.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Wilfred M. McClay: “Those of us who take a loving interest in words—their etymological forebears, their many layers of meaning, their often-surprising histories—have a tendency to resist change. Not that we think playfulness should be proscribed—such pedantry would be a cure worse than any disease. It’s just that we are also drawn, like doting parents, into wanting to protect the language, and thus become suspicious of mysterious strangers, of the introduction of new words, and of new meanings for familiar ones.

When we find words being used in a novel way, our countenances tend to stiffen. What’s going on here? Is this a euphemism? Is there a hidden agenda here?

But there are times when the older language seems inadequate, and in fact may mislead us into thinking that the world has not changed. New signifiers may sometimes be necessary, in order to describe new things.

Such is unquestionably the case of the new/old word influencer. At first glance, it looks harmless and insignificant, a lazy and imprecise way of designating someone as influential. But the word’s use as a noun is the key to what is different and new about it. And much as I dislike the word, and dislike the phenomenon it describes, necessity seems to have dictated that such a word be created…(More)”.

Categories We Live By

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Gregory L. Murphy: “The minute we are born—sometimes even before—we are categorized. From there, classifications dog our every step: to school, work, the doctor’s office, and even the grave. Despite the vast diversity and individuality in every life, we seek patterns, organization, and control. In Categories We Live By, Gregory L. Murphy considers the categories we create to manage life’s sprawling diversity. Analyzing everything from bureaucracy’s innumerable categorizations to the minutiae of language, this book reveals how these categories are imposed on us and how that imposition affects our everyday lives.

Categories We Live By explores categorization in two parts. In part one, Murphy introduces the groundwork of categories—how they are created by experts, imperfectly captured by language, and employed by rules. Part two provides a number of case studies. Ranging from trivial categories such as parking regulations and peanut butter to critical issues such as race and mortality, Murphy demonstrates how this need to classify pervades everything. Finally, this comprehensive analysis demonstrates ways that we can cope with categorical disagreements and make categories more useful to our society…(More)”.

Data, Privacy Laws and Firm Production: Evidence from the GDPR

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mert Demirer, Diego J. Jiménez Hernández, Dean Li & Sida Peng: “By regulating how firms collect, store, and use data, privacy laws may change the role of data in production and alter firm demand for information technology inputs. We study how firms respond to privacy laws in the context of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by using seven years of data from a large global cloud-computing provider. Our difference-in-difference estimates indicate that, in response to the GDPR, EU firms decreased data storage by 26% and data processing by 15% relative to comparable US firms, becoming less “data-intensive.” To estimate the costs of the GDPR for firms, we propose and estimate a production function where data and computation serve as inputs to the production of “information.” We find that data and computation are strong complements in production and that firm responses are consistent with the GDPR, representing a 20% increase in the cost of data on average. Variation in the firm-level effects of the GDPR and industry-level exposure to data, however, drives significant heterogeneity in our estimates of the impact of the GDPR on production costs…(More)”

To Design Cities Right, We Need to Focus on People

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Tim Keane: “Our work in the U.S. to make better neighborhoods, towns and cities is a hapless and obdurate mess. If you’ve attended a planning meeting anywhere, you have probably witnessed the miserable process in action—unrestrainedly selfish fighting about false choices and seemingly inane procedures. Rather than designing places for people, we see cities as a collection of mechanical problems with technical and legal solutions. We distract ourselves with the latest rebranded ideas about places—smart growth, resilient cities, complete streets, just cities, 15-minute cities, happy cities—rather than getting down to the actual work of designing the physical place. This lacks a fundamental vision. And it’s not succeeding.

Our flawed approach to city planning started a century ago. The first modern city plan was produced for Cincinnati in 1925 by the Technical Advisory Corporation, founded in 1913 by George Burdett Ford and E.P. Goodrich in New York City. New York adopted the country’s first comprehensive zoning ordinance in 1916, an effort Ford led. Not coincidentally, the advent of zoning, and then comprehensive planning, corresponded directly with the great migration of six million Black people from the South to Northern, Midwestern and Western cities. New city planning practices were a technical means to discriminate and exclude.

This first comprehensive plan also ushered in another type of dehumanization: city planning by formula. To justify widening downtown streets by cutting into sidewalks, engineers used a calculation that reflected the cost to operate an automobile in a congested area—including the cost of a human life, because crashes killed people. Engineers also calculated the value of a sidewalk through a formula based on how many people the elevators in adjoining buildings could deliver at peak times. In the end, Cincinnati’s planners recommended widening the streets for cars, which were becoming more common, by shrinking sidewalks. City planning became an engineering equation, and one focused on separating people and spreading the city out to the maximum extent possible…(More)”.