Hodges's thesis is that one's argument for any issue is undermined to the extent that that argument is based on false data or falsely presented data and that too many advocates, in their enthusiasm for their cause, seize on exciting or startling statistics which on subsequent investigation turn our to be false or misleading. I couldn't agree more with his argument. We too often make arguments based on enthusiasms and feelings rather than on the facts. If the data are not there or are not reliable, then it becomes clear that the argument is one of belief and faith and not of demonstrable fact. That clarity has value.
This relates to reading because we have so little clarity as to the true nature of the challenges we face. We have many enthused reading advocates who seize on the thinnest of straws to make arguments that fly in the face of reality and thereby undermine addressing the real issues. In our report, Growing a Reading Culture, we have attempted to bring some clarity regarding what are the real facts about reading and what parents can do to create an effective reading environment.
Glenn Hodges illuminates a series of statistically fallacious fads and frenzies from the past thirty years ranging from the 1980's paranoia about kidnapping to the 1990's alarms about banned books in schools (an alarmism that persists to this day independent of the actual numbers). It is not that that these aren't serious issues requiring vigilance, but if we are not to lose all focus, we must accurately understand the relative prevalence of the issue.
Of particular note is Hodges's comment, now so prescient, of some of the early global alarmism. Despite being written thirteen years ago, the revelations from the East Anglia University Climate group and the errors riddling the IPCC report now look almost inevitable given Hodges's description of the dynamics of the debate.
Crusaders who withhold the whole truth, mislead, lead exaggerate often unwittingly strengthen their opposition and weaken their own cause, especially when they're claiming the moral high ground. No one seems more prone to this than environmentalists, and it's on the biggest and most contentious issues that the problem is most pronounced. The worst-case scenarios for global warming and overpopulation, for instance, foretell changes so catastrophic that most other concerns would be rendered virtually moot. Some people, looking at those high stakes, throw caution to the wind and use everything in their arsenal, no matter how loosely tethered to scientific data, to get people's attention and force action.
On a 99-degree day in June 1988, as the nation sweltered through the latest hot, dry summer in a decade of record high-temperature years, climatologist James Hansen appeared before Congress and proclaimed that he was 99 percent certain the earth was in the midst of man-induced global warming. "It's time to stop waffling so much and say that the greenhouse effect is here and is affecting our climate now," Hansen told reporters that day. Newspapers had a field day, and Hansen's colleagues had conniptions. After all, concern over global warming was barely a decade in the making, and 10 years of high temperatures do not a climate change make. "The variability of climate from decade to decade is monstrous," oceanographer Tim Barnett told Science in 1989. "To say that we've seen the greenhouse signal is ridiculous "
Most climatologists believed there just wasn't enough data to make a conclusive judgment. Only a decade earlier, after 30 years of relatively cool temperatures, climatologists feared we might be entering a new ice age. Though there was certainly reason to believe in 1988 that global warming was a real possibility, even a probability - atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, had increased 25 percent since the 19th century - there was no way of knowing yet whether the higher temperatures of the '80s were a trend or a statistical blip.
Even Stephen Schneider, a Stanford climatologist who has been at the forefront of the push for action against global warming, thought Hansen made a mistake by overstating the case. While Hansen's assertions got the attention of the public and Congress, "there was a risk of severe credibility loss for climatology if nature rolled a cold, wet summer or two soon, and this was quite possible," Schneider wrote in his 1990 book, Global Warming. Meanwhile, the '90s have seen some record-hot years (notably 1990,1991 and 1995), but it's also had some cooler ones. 1992 and 1993 were cooled by sunlight-reflecting particles from the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, and 1996 is looking to go down as a relatively cool year too. None of this is inconsistent with global warming models, but in bringing scrutiny to individual years instead of a longer-term pattern, Hansen risked confusing the public over the issue; he also "gave ammunition to his detractors," as Schneider wrote, a take that is shared by many, including MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel.
In another section, Hodges tackles the issue of how efforts to suppress books is represented in the press. This continues to be an issue of huge misconception (as highlighted in this blog post from last year, Burying the Lede).
Every fall People for the American Way releases a report called "Attacks on the Freedom to Learn," which purports to highlight the growing problem of censorship in America's public schools. In tandem with the American Library Association's "Banned Books Week," PFAW is the source of scores of news stories on how closed-minded parents and religious zealots are targeting our best literature - Of Mice and Men, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, The Catcher in the Rye - for elimination from public school libraries and reading lists. PFAW's press release this fall exclaimed that "Public education weathered a recordbreaking 475 attacks on curricula, library and textbooks, student expression, and other components of public education in the 1995-96 school year."
But what PFAW classifies as an incident of "attempted censorship" is a single complaint, usually from a parent, who in many cases thinks a certain book is inappropriate for his or her child's age group. Most of the books PFAW describes as threatened have had no more than a half-dozen complaints nationwide, and it's not necessarily the classics that are drawing the most ire.
In the 1994-1995 school year, according to PFAW's 1995 report, the two most frequently challenged books in US. schools were Alvin Schwam's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Scary and More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which include tales like "Wonderful Sausage," about a butcher who gets such culinary raves for his ground-up wife that he embarks on a town-wide sausage-making rampage, collecting children and, for good measure, "their kittens and puppies." But the report's 30-page introduction, which winds up being the main source for news stories, makes no mention of Schwartzs books. Meanwhile, Of Mice and Men and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings get four mentions each. It's a classic bait-and-switch. When you think of censorship, you don't imagine a university professor complaining that his first-grader is too young to read stories about murder and dismemberment.
Distorting the debate over what is or isn't suitable reading material for children certainly has its repercussions repercussions, but the most tangible consequence is probably extra checks from direct mail solicitations (PFAW's annual "censorship" report is a fundraising centerpiece). When social science research uses the same tactics, however, the consequences can be much more serious.
So - interesting article, interesting how prescient some of Hodges's comments are and interesting that, for all that Alvin Schwartz's stories (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and Scary Stories 3) might have drawn a few harsh complaints, they have stood the test of time well and are frequently mentioned as favorite books among young boys today.
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