The Trace

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “The Trace is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit newsroom dedicated to shining a light on America’s gun violence crisis….

Every year in our country, a firearm is used in nearly 500,000 crimes, resulting in the deaths and injuries of more than 110,000 people. Shootings devastate families and communities and drain billions of dollars from local, state, and federal governments. Meanwhile, the problem of gun violence has been compounded by another: the shortage of knowledge about the issue…

Data and records are shielded from public view—or don’t exist. Gun-lobby backed restrictions on federal gun violence research deprive policymakers and public health experts of potentially life-saving facts. Other laws limit the information that law enforcement agencies can share on illegal guns and curb litigation that could allow scrutiny of industry practices….

We make the problem clear. In partnership with Slate, we built an eye-opening, interactive map plotting the locations of nearly 40,000 incidents of gun violence nationwide. The feature received millions of pageviews and generated extensive local coverage and social media conversation. “So many shootings and deaths, so close to my home,” wrote one reader. “And I hadn’t even heard about most of them.”…(More)”.

Thinking About the Commons

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Carol M. Rose at the International Journal of the Commons: “This article, originally a speech in the conference, Leçons de Droit Comparé sur les Communs, Sciences-Po, Paris, explores current developments in theoretical thinking about the commons. It keys off contemporary reconsiderations of Garret Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” and Elinor Ostrom’s response to Hardin in Governing the Commons and later work.

Ostrom was among the best-known critics of Hardin’s idea of a “tragedy,” but Ostrom’s own work has also raised some questions in more recent commons literature. One key question is the very uncertain relationship between community-based resource control and democratic rights. A second key question revolves around the understanding of commons on the one hand as limited common regimes, central to Ostrom’s work, or as open access, as espoused by more recent advocates of widespread access to information and communications networks….(More)”.

Americans’ views about privacy, surveillance and data-sharing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Research Center: “In key ways, today’s digitally networked society runs on quid pro quos: People exchange details about themselves and their activities for services and products on the web or apps. Many are willing to accept the deals they are offered in return for sharing insight about their purchases, behaviors and social lives. At times, their personal information is collected by government on the grounds that there are benefits to public safety and security.

A majority of Americans are concerned about this collection and use of their data, according to a new report from Pew Research Center….

Americans vary in their attitudes toward data-sharing in the pursuit of public good. Though many Americans don’t think they benefit much from the collection of their data, and they find that the potential risks of this practice outweigh the benefits, there are some scenarios in which the public is more likely to accept the idea of data-sharing. In line with findings in a 2015 Center survey showing that some Americans are comfortable with trade-offs in sharing data, about half of U.S. adults (49%) say it is acceptable for the government to collect data about all Americans in order to assess potential terrorist threats. That compares with 31% who feel it is unacceptable to collect data about all Americans for that purpose. By contrast, just one-quarter say it is acceptable for smart speaker makers to share users’ audio recordings with law enforcement to help with criminal investigations, versus 49% who find that unacceptable….(More)”.

Seeing Transparency More Clearly

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by David Pozen: “In recent years, transparency has been proposed as the solution to, and the cause of, a remarkable range of public problems. The proliferation of seemingly contradictory claims about transparency becomes less puzzling, this essay argues, when one appreciates that transparency is not, in itself, a coherent normative ideal. Nor does it have a straightforward instrumental relationship to any primary goals of governance. To gain greater purchase on how transparency policies operate, scholars must therefore move beyond abstract assumptions and drill down into the specific legal, institutional, historical, political, and cultural contexts in which these policies are crafted and implemented. The field of transparency studies, in other words, is due for a “sociological turn.”…(More)”.

Experts and the Will of the People

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Harry Collins, Robert  Evans, Darrin Durant and Martin Weinel: “The rise of populism in the West has led to attacks on the legitimacy of scientific expertise in political decision making. This book explores the differences between populism and pluralist democracy and their relationship with science. Pluralist democracy is characterised by respect for minority choices and a system of checks and balances that prevents power being concentrated in one group, while populism treats minorities as traitorous so as to concentrate power in the government. The book argues that scientific expertise – and science more generally — should be understood as one of the checks and balances in pluralist democracies. It defends science as ‘craftwork with integrity’ and shows how its crucial role in democratic societies can be rethought and that it must be publicly explained. This book will be of value to scholars and practitioners working across STS as well as to anyone interested in decoding the populist agenda against science….(More)”.

Politics is for Power, Not Consumption

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eitan Hersh at the Boston Review: “…What I’m doing I call political hobbyism, a catchall phrase for consuming and participating in politics by obsessive news-following and online “slacktivism,” by feeling the need to offer a hot take for each daily political flare-up, by emoting and arguing and debating, almost all of this from behind screens or with earphones on. I am in good company: these behaviors represent how most “politically engaged” Americans spend their time on politics.

In 2018, I asked a representative sample of Americans to estimate about how much time they spend on any kind of political-related activity in a typical day. A third of Americans say they spend two hours or more each day on politics. Of these people, four out of five say that not one minute of that time is spent on any kind of real political work. It is all TV news and podcasts and radio shows and social media and cheering and booing and complaining to friends and family.

Political hobbyists tend to be older than the general public, though they are found in all age groups. They are disproportionately college educated, male, and white. In the current climate, they are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans or independents. Not only are they different from the general public, they also have a different profile from people who engage actively in political organizations. For example, of the people who spend two hours a day on politics but no time on volunteering, 56 percent are men. But of those who spend that much time on politics, with at least some of it spent volunteering, 66 percent are women.

Those who volunteer, such as the group in Westmoreland County that is out convincing neighbors to vote and to advocate, have something to show for their commitment to their political values. As for the rest of us, all we have is a sinking feeling of helplessness in the face of overwhelming challenge.

As a political scientist, I study the ways that ordinary people participate in politics. The political behavior of ordinary people is hard to understand. We don’t often reflect deeply on why we engage in politics. However, when we step back and investigate our political lives, we can paint a general picture of what motivates us. Summing up the time we spend on politics, it would be hard to describe our behavior as seeking to influence our communities or country. Most of us are engaging to satisfy our own emotional needs and intellectual curiosities. That’s political hobbyism….(More)”.

Study says ‘specific’ weather forecasts can’t be made more than 10 days in advance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matthew Cappucci at the Washington Post: “Imagine someone telling you the weather forecast for New Year’s Day today, two months in advance, with exact temperature bounds and rainfall to a hundredth of an inch. Sounds too good to be true, yes?

A new study in Science says it’s simply not possible. But just how far can we take a day-by-day forecast?

The practical limit to daily forecasting

“A skillful forecast lead time of midlatitude instantaneous weather is around 10 days, which serves as the practical predictability limit,” according to a study published in April in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.

Those limits aren’t likely to change much anytime soon. Even if scientists had the data they needed and a more perfect understanding of all forecasting’s complexities, skillful forecasts could extend out to about 14 or 15 days only, the 2019 study found, because of the chaotic nature of the atmosphere.

“Two weeks is about right. It’s as close to be the ultimate limit as we can demonstrate,” the study’s lead author told Science Magazine.

The American Meteorological Society agrees. Their statement on the limits of prediction, in place since 2015, states that “presently, forecasts of daily or specific weather conditions do not exhibit useful skill beyond eight days, meaning that their accuracy is low.”


Although the American Meteorological Society strongly advises against issuing specific forecasts beyond eight days, popular weather vendor AccuWeather has, for years, churned out detailed predictions many days further into the future. It initiated 45-day forecasts in 2013, which it extended to 90 days in 2016 — and has been heavily criticized for it….(More)”.

76 things you can do to boost civic engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Rebecca Winthrop and Meg Heubeck at Brookings: “It isn’t too complicated. Civic engagement is the glue that holds self-government together. Yet civic participation and engagement has been on the decline for several decades. Therefore, each and every one of us must be as active and involved in our community and country as possible. Self-government is hard work and requires effort. Action is essential to maintaining the foundations of our democracy, no matter which political party happens to be in power.

To be a truly involved citizen, we must reconnect with our founding documents. We must learn and practice the skills of civic participation beginning with voting and moving onto legislating, speaking out, and building coalitions to solve problems on the local, state, and federal levels.

While by no means comprehensive, the “Democracy 76” list below provides specific and practical actions that we all can take to be an involved citizen. The list is broken into five actions that are essential components for engagement. It is expressly free from politics and partisanship and should be undertaken by all Americans—regardless of political perspectives or affiliation….this list has contributed to the call to action of the newly launched Purple Project for Democracy, which has as its central mission to create a more active, engaged American citizenry, ultimately strengthening the very foundations of our democratic form of government. This is certainly something the founding fathers would support….(Full List)”.

Government at a Glance 2019

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Government at a Glance provides reliable, internationally comparative data on government activities and their results in OECD countries. Where possible, it also reports data for Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and South Africa. In many public governance areas, it is the only available source of data. It includes input, process, output and outcome indicators as well as contextual information for each country.

The 2019 edition includes input indicators on public finance and employment; while processes include data on institutions, budgeting practices and procedures, human resources management, regulatory government, public procurement and digital government and open data. Outcomes cover core government results (e.g. trust, inequality reduction) and indicators on access, responsiveness, quality and citizen satisfaction for the education, health and justice sectors.

Governance indicators are especially useful for monitoring and benchmarking governments’ progress in their public sector reforms.Each indicator in the publication is presented in a user-friendly format, consisting of graphs and/or charts illustrating variations across countries and over time, brief descriptive analyses highlighting the major findings conveyed by the data, and a methodological section on the definition of the indicator and any limitations in data comparability….(More)”.

Google’s ‘Project Nightingale’ Gathers Personal Health Data on Millions of Americans

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Rob Copeland at Wall Street Journal: “Google is engaged with one of the U.S.’s largest health-care systems on a project to collect and crunch the detailed personal-health information of millions of people across 21 states.

The initiative, code-named “Project Nightingale,” appears to be the biggest effort yet by a Silicon Valley giant to gain a toehold in the health-care industry through the handling of patients’ medical data. Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc.  and Microsoft Corp. are also aggressively pushing into health care, though they haven’t yet struck deals of this scope.

Google began Project Nightingale in secret last year with St. Louis-based Ascension, a Catholic chain of 2,600 hospitals, doctors’ offices and other facilities, with the data sharing accelerating since summer, according to internal documents.

The data involved in the initiative encompasses lab results, doctor diagnoses and hospitalization records, among other categories, and amounts to a complete health history, including patient names and dates of birth….

Neither patients nor doctors have been notified. At least 150 Google employees already have access to much of the data on tens of millions of patients, according to a person familiar with the matter and the documents.

In a news release issued after The Wall Street Journal reported on Project Nightingale on Monday, the companies said the initiative is compliant with federal health law and includes robust protections for patient data….(More)”.