Charlton's farewell

Elsevier's behaviour in sacking Bruce Charlton as editor of Medical Hypotheses has been reprehensible. Here's his farewell address at his blog:

Did I know that the Duesberg paper would be controversial?

Yes. I knew that Duesberg was being kept out of the mainstream scientific literature, and that breaching this conspiracy would annoy those who had succeeded in excluding him for so long.

When I published the Duesberg article, I envisaged it meeting one of two possible fates.

In the first scenario, the paper would be shunned or simply ignored - dropped down the memory hole. This is what has usually happened in the past when a famous scientist published ideas that their colleagues regarded as misguided or crazy. Linus Pauling (1901-94) was a Nobel prizewinner and one of the most important chemists in history. Yet his views on the medical benefits of vitamin C were regarded as wrong. He was allowed to publish them, but (rightly or wrongly) they were generally ignored in mainstream science.

In the other scenario, Duesberg's paper would attract robust criticism and (apparent) refutation. This happened with Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), a Fellow of the Royal Society whose work on the "steady state" theory of the Universe made him one of the most important cosmologists of the late 20th century. But his views on the origins of life on Earth and the Archaeopteryx fossil were generally regarded as eccentric. Hoyle's ideas were published, attracted much criticism, and were (probably) refuted.

So I expected that Duesberg's paper either would be ignored or would trigger letters and other papers countering the ideas and evidence presented. Medical Hypotheses would have published these counter-arguments, then provided space for Duesberg to respond to the criticisms and later allowed critics to reply to Duesberg's defence. That is, after all, how real science is supposed to work.

What I did not expect was that editors and scientists would be bypassed altogether, and that the matter would be settled by the senior managers of a multinational publishing corporation in consultation with pressure-group activists. Certainly, that would never have happened 25 years ago, when I began research in science.

Charlton's farewell lists a few of the times where controversial papers published in Med Hypotheses have gone on to prove highly influential.

It's a real shame that diversity across journals can't be maintained. Medical Hypotheses is one of the very few journals that is editorially reviewed rather than peer reviewed. It would be a mistake if the majority of journals were run this way, but it's rather important that a few out there are, provided the editor has a suitably contrarian turn.

Let's hope that Charlton eventually begins a new journal to take its place.

Peak load pricing: Rugby World Cup edition

The New Zealand Minister for the Rugby World Cup (yes, such a portfolio exists) apparently reckons that tourists to New Zealand during the Rugby World Cup would prefer that there be no available accommodation than that it be available at high price. From today's National Business Review:

Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully has written to the Hotel Association asking it to persuade its members not to risk damaging New Zealand's tourism reputation by over-charging for accommodation during the rugby World Cup.

The event is still well over a year away but there have been reports of accommodation providers in Auckland ramping prices up several hundred percent above usual rates and adding long minimum-stay provisions.

The CEO of Rugby World Cup is more sensible:

Rugby World Cup chief executive Martin Snedden said last month that prices being charged in what would be a peak time were generally reasonable, and organisers were confident that the free market would lead to those overcharging having to reduce their prices or face the prospect of empty beds during the tournament.

We ought, of course, note that some package deals of tickets plus accommodation will see premium prices not because of hotel overcharging but rather because tickets for some events will be at below market clearing prices: the package deals provide a mechanism allowing markets to clear via prices rather than queuing. I'm with Snedden, though. All that's achieved by hotel operators charging less than the market can bear is that some visitors will be unable to find accommodation.

Roger Kerr: Alcohol report fatally flawed

Kerr's comment in today's Otago Daily Times (not online as yet, as best I'm aware) is scathing:

A fundamental government requirement for policy decisions on regulation is a competent regulatory impact statement (RIS). The Treasury, now the lead agency on regulation, met the Law Commission on its review and outlined the Government's regulatory analysis requirements. The commission's July 2009 Issues Paper stated that an RIS would indeed be included in the final report.

We now find that the Law Commission and teh Minister of Justice have agreed that this report will not contain such a statement but one will be prepared by the Ministry of Justice for any Bill that the Minister of Justice introduces.

Lacking an RIS, the report fails to establish that its proposals are in the public interest.

Of course, if the RIS had been outsourced to Marsden Jacob, I'm not sure it much would have helped in establishing whether the proposals actually would have been in the public interest. As we saw in the case of the tobacco excise tax increase, even an RIS that Treasury describes as "not commensurate with the significance of the proposals" wouldn't much stop the government from implementing proposals.

ODT readers looking for my critique of the Marsden Jacob report, noted in Roger Kerr's piece, should look here and here.

Kerr makes a few other rather nice points:

• Raising the alcohol purchase age to 20 would align New Zealand with only 11 other countries; 81 others have a minimum of 18 while 12 others, including Belgium, Germany, Norway and Spain, set the age at 16. 17 countries have no drinking age at all.
• "the proposals to ultimately ban all alcohol advertising rely heavily on one anti-alcohol source, and omit its crucial finding that there is a lack of conclusive evidence from the studies of restrictions of alcohol advertising."
• Paraphrasing a great line from economist Edward Stringham, Kerr writes "Raising excise taxes on everyone to curb abuse by a minority would be like raising petrol tax to prevent some motorists from speeding." I love this analogy.

Walking while drunk [updated]

It would be interesting to know how such a survey here would fare. Judging by the letters page at The Press, I'd expect to be rather depressed. Writes Adelaide NOW:

ADELAIDE NOW readers are overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of pedestrians being breath-tested, as suggested by an University of Adelaide study.

At 1pm, 82 per cent of 963 poll votes rejected the idea, with a mere 18 per cent supporting it.

While many commenters simply cried "nanny state", some had valid arguments against pedestrian breath-testing.

Yeti of Dulwich spoke for many readers who were tired of being kept on a tight leash.

"What next? Personal government chaperones every time we want to have a drink? As horrendous as pedestrian road deaths are, just as abhorrent is government intervention into every part of our lives," he wrote.

...

The readers were reacting to a study which found random breath testing of pedestrians would be the most effective way to stop them being killed and maimed on the roads.

The University of Adelaide study found the public could support a blood alcohol limit of 0.15 when near roads and vehicles if it saved some of approximately 10 drink-walking pedestrians who die each year on SA roads.

Researchers studied ways of stopping the problem, which would all be "limited" in their success except for enforcement of a blood alcohol level in people walking near traffic.

Commissioned by the Motor Accident Commission, the research was published in this month's Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine.

Study author and Centre for Automotive Safety Research senior research fellow Paul Hutchinson said the measure would be very controversial to implement but public opinion was already turning against displays of public drunkenness and a blood alcohol limit of 0.15 could be accepted.

"Public opinion does change over time and people don't like drunks rolling about the streets and 0.15 is an alcohol content that most people would not reach, certainly in public," he said.

"As one public health advocate put it, we have a blood alcohol limit for driving, why not for people walking next to traffic. People already have the power to take into protective custody drunk people who are a danger to their or others' safety."

The healthists will not be satisfied until alcohol is only available under prescription and doctor's supervision. I'm not joking. We asymptote towards their ideal point with every compromise between the status quo and their latest proposal.

HT: Luke Malpass

Update: Egads! Duncan points out in comments that there's even a campaign for sidewalk pedestrian breathalizers with a 0.08 limit. Presumably that's setting the stage for the reduction in the limit should 0.15 ever be adopted.

Again, I wasn't kidding: the healthists are dead serious in considering alcohol to be on par with Class B drugs and will not be happy until it is regulated as such.

Youth unemployment

The March Household Labour Force Survey is out, so time to update the prior results on youth unemployment. Recall that, back in February, I put up this little graph showing the residuals from a very very simple regression:

youth unemployment rate = constant + b1 * adult unemployment rate + residual

The residual tells us how far out any particular observation is from the trend line. So, if something weird starts happening to the youth unemployment rate RELATIVE to the adult rate, it'll show up in the residual of the regression. The data series goes back to 1986 and so includes a fair few prior recessions. Here's the updated series (noting of course that all points move a bit with the additional observation, attenuating results).

Again, the regression residual really starts spiking up at December quarter 2008. In all prior recessions, the residual never went past 2.7: in recessions, the youth unemployment rate gets hit harder than the adult rate. But, the adult unemployment rate this time round hasn't come close to touching what it had hit in the early 1990s, so we're not getting oddities solely due to a worse recession than usual. The residual spiked at 9.8 in December quarter 09; it's now at 8.5. If we take the prior period's maximum as being the biggest possible effect of a normal recession, then we have excess youth unemployment of 5.8 percentage points. As there were 161,600 workers in the 15-19 age bracket, we have about 9400 young workers currently unemployed who would have been employed had the pre-2008 relationship continued. In December quarter, that figure was about 12,000.

I still say the best first cut explanation is the elimination of the differential youth minimum wage. It's encouraging that more kids are finding work and that the residual is dropping (as we'd expect in the recovery). But excess youth unemployment due to high minimum wages has negative effects on lifetime earnings. I expect that few of those adversely affected will figure out that they ought to pin the blame on Labour for eliminating the youth minimum wage and on National for voting down Sir Roger Douglas's attempt to fix things.

Again, this is just a very simple regression. But it's a shame that National didn't at least ask Treasury (best I'm aware) to do something a bit more substantive rather than just asking the pollsters.

Gilbert and Sullivan on the Politics of Alcohol Taxes

Eric below quotes Colin Espiner on the politics of alcohol and cigarette taxes.

Espiner's explanation for increasing the latter but not the former is that they couldn't do them both together, without creating an outcry, and they didn't want to do the tobbacco tax in the budget. But that still doesn't answer why raise one tax and not the other.

I can think of two explanations:

1. Machiavellian politics: National are unlikely to scare their voters away from National to Labour with nanny-state policies, but they might to ACT. Voters at the National-ACT margin are likely to drink alcohol but not to smoke. At the same time, however, the cigarette tax might shift voters from the Maori party to Labour. Given the overhang, such a shift would likely reduce the number of Maori MPs but not increase the number of Labour MPs, a situation that might suit National.

2. Gilbert and Sullivan politics: When you can't find the analogy you are looking for in Shakespeare, WS Gilbert is a good place to look. There is a wonderful chorus of the jury in Trial by Jury in which the jury respond to the defendants explanation for his wayward behaviour:

Oh, I was like that when a lad!
A shocking young scamp of a rover,
I behav'd like a regular cad,
But that sort of thing is all over.
I'm now a respectable chap
And shine with a virtue resplendent;
And therefore I haven't a scrap
Of sympathy with the defendant!

Some of the tut-tutting of our youth drinking culture that has accompanied the Law Commission report seems to have a touch of this hypocricy. Could it be that the reason that that has been a restraint on our politicians? Most of them probably have never smoked, but do have episodes of excess alcohol consumption in their past.

National nannies

Writes Colin Espiner:

Now, on a straight medical argument I accept it's a no-brainer. Smoking is highly likely to kill you. As is drinking too much, or eating loads of saturated fat. Raising the price of fags will lead to a drop in smoking rates, and probably a fall in the number of people who become a burden on the health system.

But it's a finely balanced issue. There's a tipping point, if you will, around how much the public will tolerate of We Know What's Best For You politics. Labour sure found that out.

Yet the irony is that National is imposing policies Labour wouldn't have dared to do, for fear of being labelled social engineers.

From bans on cellphones in cars to crackdowns on young drivers, raising the driving age to floating raising the drinking age and lowering the drink-drive limit, and now whacking up baccy tax, there's absolutely no question National has its sleeves rolled up and is getting stuck right in to social issues.

I could add that none of this stuff was flagged by National before the last election.

How voters respond is crucial. Will they see this as common-sense, middle-of-the-road politics? Or more interfering in their lives? Given that such a belief - however fairly or unfairly held - was one of the principal reasons Labour lost in 2008, National should take care.

What was even more surprising about the tobacco price rise was how it came out of the blue, without any previous kite-flying. Given the Maori Party's fervent wish to progress this, one can only wonder whether John Key finally gave in to its demands and offered it the increase as a policy concession.

The problem is, it's awfully inconsistent. Why refuse to implement Sir Geoffrey Palmer's suggestion of a 50 per cent increase in excise tax on alcohol just one day previously? It's arguable alcohol causes more harm in this society than tobacco does, and is certainly responsible for more crime.

The answer, of course, is politics. National couldn't raise alcohol and tobacco taxes on successive days. And it didn't want to wait for the Budget to whack up baccy tax - which is the normal way of doing it - because it doesn't want its Budget known as the Baccy Budget.

John Key can wear looking inconsistent. What he needs to be more careful about wearing is a nanny's apron strings. (emphasis added)

I rather like the comment by Tony:

tony #7 09:50 am May 04 2010

National have booted out the Nanny State...and replaced it with the Step Father State...he can pretend he cares as long as its all going well at work and he hasn't been drinking