confirmation bias

The Global Warming Debate Is The World Series of Confirmation Bias

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Confirmation bias is the dastardly human thought tendency that makes objectivity virtually impossible, and fair analysis nearly so. It is the human instinct to view external facts and events in such a way that they confirm preexisting beliefs, or, if they challenge these beliefs, to find reasons to distrust the facts or explain them away.

A line in a Washington Post book review caused me to realize that nothing  exemplifies confirmation bias at work better than the global warming controversy. It was a review by Post business editor Alan Sipress of “Spillover,”  a new book about how pandemics spread. He wrote:

“This year, a mild winter and an unusually hot summer — which look suspiciously like results of man-made climate change — yielded a bumper crop of virus-carrying mosquitoes. The result is an unprecedented outbreak that has sickened people in almost every state.”

Wait a minute: why does the past year’s mild winter and unusually hot summer “look suspiciously like results of man-made climate change”? Were there never mild winters with scorching summers before scientists developed climate change models? And why do those two factors, when paired, “look suspiciously” like man-made climate change? What about the winter and summer of 2012 screamed “man-made”? Continue reading →

Unethical Mindsets: “You Can’t Be A Feminist If You’re Anti-Abortion”

/ Jack Marshall / 78 Comments

Oxymoron?

I don’t know how I ended up on the Bea Magazine site, but I did, and I made the mistake of reading an article and a comment thread on the topic of whether feminists can be “pro-life,” or anti-abortion, if you aren’t a fan of euphemisms. As I expected, but not as I hoped, the consensus was that indeed, opposing abortion requires one’s ejection from the feminist tent, at least in the view of this particular cadre of feminists.

“Brillliant Nora Ephron,” the post by Diane notes, wrote that “You can’t call yourself a feminist if you don’t believe in the right to abortion.”  Well, Nora wasn’t so brilliant that day, because this is classic backward reasoning. It is framing reality by using ideology, the crystallization of confirmation bias into its most dangerous, poisonous and historically destructive form. It embraces the statement, “my mind’s made up, don’t confuse me with facts.” Indeed, it requires that facts be seen, filtered and interpreted through a pre-existing template that requires and then dictates a given result. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: ABC’s Brian Ross

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

Now that I think about it, nobody gets shot in Pixar movies. I wonder if movies about violence vigilantes need to be regulated…

He just couldn’t help himself. Learning of the horrible Batman theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, ABC reporter Brian Ross got on the air and reported a possible “tea party link” with the killer, James Holmes, and if you don’t think this sent a thrill up his leg, I have some gold mine shares to sell you. Anything to smear conservatives: why was he looking at tea party web pages, any more than PETA sites, or Parcheesi fan sites? Because, you see, the tea parties are violent—don’t you remember? They inspired that guy to shoot Gaby Giffords! Where else would you expect to find a madman killer?

It was fantasy, of course, and Ross and ABC duly apologized, but never mind: it worked. Confirmation bias is a sure thing. I was in a Food Court at LAX today, and heard someone at the table next to me eating similar unidentifiable swill say, “Did you hear? One of those tea party guys shot all those people!” I finally got to my room in Sun Valley (it was easier to get to Mongolia than Sun Valley) to check what she was talking about. So you see, Brian? Mission accomplished!

Others are politicizing the Aurora shooting in only slightly less outrageous ways, mostly with the sadly predictable rush of anti-gun advocates to point to the slaughter and say, “See? Guns bad.” Then comes the related cognitive dissonance trick, linking gun rights to automatic weapons to madmen and criminals using such weapons to the tragic deaths resulting from said use, hence Republicans and conservatives are really allied with killers and murderers, which gives us some insight into their true character.

I’m sure Brian Ross approves.

_______________________________________

Facts: Huffington Post

Graphic: Shout Omaha

“You Didn’t Build That” Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”

With those words, President Barack Obama handed the Romney campaign a rich and evocative phrase more ripe for political exploitation than even his Republican opponent’s juiciest gaffes, like…

  • “I like being able to fire people “
  • “I’m not concerned about the very poor “
  • “Corporations are people”

Since every one of these quotes were misrepresented by both pundits and Democrats, taken out of context and unfairly characterized, it’s hard to blame Republicans for jumping on President Obama’s provocative rhetoric, and using it for all it’s worth…which, I suspect, if you want to paint the President as a socialist who wants to punish success and give the fruits of  risk-taking and hard work to the slack and unsuccessful, is a lot.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto:

“The president’s remark was a direct attack on the principle of individual responsibility, the foundation of American freedom. If “you didn’t build that,” then you have no moral claim to it, and those with political power are morally justified in taking it away and using it to buy more political power. “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” Obama said in another candid moment, in 2008.”

And here’s Mitt, making the most of it: Continue reading →

Making Mitt Seem Stupid: A Confirmation Bias Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Tina Fey, Sarah Palin…who cares who said what? Palin’s stupid, right?

Many progressives and liberals (this therefore includes the majority of journalists)  are so sure that conservatives are stupid that they allow confirmation bias to make them act stupidly and unethically. Either that, or some of them just choose to lie their heads off and pretend people don’t notice.

I first realized this a while back when the ABC website posted a feature called  “I Can’t Believe He Said That!” or something in that vein, featuring verbal gaffes by politicians. Well, actually it featured verbal gaffes by 19 Republicans and one Democrat (Joe Biden, of course.) Oddly, President Obama’s goof about the “57 states” wasn’t there, because, as we all know, he’s brilliant and his gaffes don’t count. Well, actually, the list was 18 Republicans, one Democrat, and Tina Fey. Yes, the celebrated Saturday Night Live Sarah Palin impressionist was represented with her “I can see Russia from my house!” line…except that it was attributed to Sarah Palin. Similarly, I have quizzed people about who first used the non-word “strategery.” Sure enough, about half in my unscientific poll, almost exclusively Democrats, thought it was President Bush, and not the real quote-master, SNL Bush satirist and comedian Will Farrell when he was playing Bush.

This was brought back to mind recently when “Doonesbury’s” Gary Trudeau  mocked Mitt Romney for making this spectacularly fatuous, Dan Quayle-like declaration in a stump speech,

“I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in.”  Continue reading →

More Respect For The President, Please.

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Now if Redd Foxx were President, that would be different…

I thought the lack of respect his political opponents showed to Bill Clinton was shocking, and dangerous. I thought the escalation in this respect deficit Democrats displayed in their treatment of President Bush was worse. And I think the disrespect shown to President Obama by Republicans and partisan media critics is worse yet. In all three cases, the unjustified lack of respect resulted and is resulting in absurd distortions and accusations. A case in point:

The conservative blogosphere is convincing itself that President Obama made….a blowjob joke. Here is the “smoking gun”, from a fundraising event hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, attended by many gays:

“I want to thank my wonderful friend who accepts a little bit of teasing about Michelle beating her in pushups — (laughter) — but I think she claims Michelle didn’t go all the way down. (Laughter.) That’s what I heard. I just want to set the record straight — Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well. (Laughter.) So she shouldn’t feel bad. She’s an extraordinary talent and she’s just a dear, dear friend — Ellen DeGeneres. Give Ellen a big round of applause…”

The usually rational Ann Althouse polls her readers on the question of whether Obama was being intentionally suggestive, and an amazing 42% voted that he was.

Obama was not making a blowjob joke. Presidents do not make blowjob jokes in public, no matter what the audience is. Cultured men with manners and common sense do not make blowjob jokes in public, and President Obama is certainly that. I cannot think of any President who would be so careless as to utter a crude joke of that sort before an audience. LBJ comes the closest…maybe Lincoln? But never. Never. It would be disrespectful of the office, and a major, pointless political gaffe.

People are willing, indeed eager, to believe such things of President Obama because they refuse to accord him the basic respect any occupant of the Oval Office deserves, and needs. They need to get a grip. This isn’t healthy for the nation, and Obama’s critics look like fools when they show such abysmal regard for the country’s elected leader, and dirty-minded fools at that.

________________________________________

Source: Ann Althouse

Graphic: Biography

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Dear News Media: Please Stop Spinning…It’s Unethical. Also Embarrassing.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

[I’m on the road in Syracuse, and posting to the site has become slow and challenging thanks to losing half the letters on my keyboard, including a, s, and c. The problem has required me to compose by copying words from other sources and pasting them into sentences—you know, like ransom notes cut from newspaper headlines?—or using the online keyboard, which is like writing in alphabet soup. This means that I may have to add some fixes when I get home tonight, and that I will be about five topics behind. Thanks for your patience.]

The coverage of the Wisconsin recall was not a good sign for those of us hoping that the news media might choose to reform its ethics and objectivity standards in time to serve the public properly during the 2012 campaign season. Remember when Fox was the only network openly cheerleading for particular candidates, political figures and parties? MSNBC soon topped it in that regard to a nauseating extent, and now all of the networks, and much of the print media, are following the trend.

It makes no sense in the case of the recall. Why should journalists have a position to push in Wisconsin politics? Why are they taking the sides if public unions? The phenomenon has to be market driven, or, in the alternative, the result of widespread stupidity. Yes, I suspect the latter. Continue reading →

Anything Goes: Campaign by Rumor and Slander in the Wisconsin Recall

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Wait…who’s “Dan”?

Combining  confirmation bias, whereby any uncomplimentary rumor about one’s enemy is assumed to be true, with “ends justify the means” political warfare philosophy, can banish all fairness and honesty from political campaigns. Spreading slanderous falsehoods about candidates for office is as old as the United States, but the internet and social networking sites, along with the increasingly irresponsible news media, allow the unethical tactic to be more effective, and sinister, than ever.

Now, fearing that the vengeance of the public unions, as orchestrated by the Democratic Party, is going to fall short in tomorrow’s recall election in Wisconsin, the foes of Governor Scott Walker grabbed a manufactured smear about Walker fathering a love child 24 years ago, and have made every effort to make it viral. An anti-Walker website called the Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op [“a group of citizen journalists who began covering the Wisconsin Uprising in February, 2011. We came from different walks of life, different professional backgrounds and different parts of the state to document the dismantling of democratic process and tradition taking place in our state under the right wing onslaught of the Scott Walker regime”] recounted a second-hand story by an anti-Walker  classmate of the governor, who purported to have inside knowledge about his efforts to cover-up his impregnation of her roommate while he was running for class president (yes, this is another school days smear, like the Romney prep school episode. If you can’t beat ’em as adults, beat ’em as kids. That seems to be the current philosophy in both political camps. Phew!). Continue reading →

New Passengers on the Roger Clemens Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Hey Andy! Listen to that guy behind you…you won’t believe what he’s saying about you!

First, an Ethics Train Wreck recap, before we get to yesterday’s developments:

The Roger Clemens ethics train wreck officially started rumbling down the tracks in 2008, when Major League Baseball’s Mitchell Report, itself something of a train wreck to begin with, revealed that Roger Clemens’ trainer, a rather shady character named Brian McNamee,  had told the investigative commission that he had injected the pitching great with banned performance-enhancing drugs, or PED’s. In rapid succession there was ethics carnage everywhere. Clemens, under the pretense of inquiring about the health of his former trainer’s child, who was gravely ill, tried to get the trainer to admit he was lying. Congress, absurdly, called a special hearing on the matter. Clemens visited select Congressional offices beforehand, which tainted the objectivity of questioning. The Congressional committee, rather than seeking to illuminate the Clemens dispute or the status of PED’s in baseball, instead decided to take sides, with Republicans defending Clemens (a Bush-supporting Texan) and the Democrats seeking his scalp—facts had nothing to do with it. Clemens, meanwhile, made several dubious statements, and showed his class by telling the world that his wife, not he, was the PED-user in the family. A few months before, Clemens prevailed upon his friend Mike Wallace, then in his late 80’s and semi-retired, to tarnish his reputation as a tough and objective truth-seeker by tossing soft-ball questions to Clemens on CBS, so the pitcher could deny his drug use to a famously skeptical interviewer who was, in fact, thoroughly conflicted. Continue reading →

It’s You, Keith.

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

The news that The Angry Man of the Self-Righteous Left, Keith Olbermann, was fired by Al Gore’s Current TV was hardly news at all, since most of us had entered a pool on when Olbermann would get jettisoned from his latest gig. The predictable episode does have an ethics lesson for all of us, however, that involves the virtues of accountability, humility, honesty and contrition.

Olbermann, true to form, attacked his former employers and blamed them for his exit, writing  via Twitter…

“…I’d like to apologize to my viewers and my staff for the failure of Current TV. Editorially, Countdown had never been better. But for more than a year I have been imploring Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to resolve our issues internally, while I’ve been not publicizing my complaints, and keeping the show alive for the sake of its loyal viewers and even more loyal staff. Nevertheless, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, instead of abiding by their promises and obligations and investing in a quality news program, finally thought it was more economical to try to get out of my contract. It goes almost without saying that the claims against me in Current’s statement are untrue and will be proved so in the legal actions I will be filing against them presently. To understand Mr. Hyatt’s “values of respect, openness, collegiality and loyalty,” I encourage you to read of a previous occasion Mr. Hyatt found himself in court for having unjustly fired an employee. That employee’s name was Clarence B. Cain. In due course, the truth of the ethics of Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt will come out. For now, it is important only to again acknowledge that joining them was a sincere and well-intentioned gesture on my part, but in retrospect a foolish one. That lack of judgment is mine and mine alone, and I apologize again for it.”

This, of course, is not really an apology. It’s not an apology when your message is, “I’m sorry my employers are unethical slobs who didn’t appreciate the excellent job I was doing.

Keith Olbermann has either been fired or quit under acrimonious circumstances in engagements with, count them, five broadcast organizations: ESPN, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and now Current TV. This, despite being obviously talented and often getting excellent ratings. Olbermann is a smart guy, and yet even now, his reaction seems to be, “Why, oh, why, do people keep treating me so badly?”

It’s you, Keith! Continue reading →