Margaret Wente: Even if they come from the same place, the cute guy’s numbers are better than the Feminists’

Question: Why are statistics from the same organization (the U.S. Bureau of Justice) “the best there are” when Steven Pinker uses them, but “ridiculous” when used by the American Association of University Women?

A few things to add to this.

Of course, the question requires knowing that the figures are from the same body – something Wente doesn’t disclose when she again condemns the AAUW for “cooked up” stats.

Ethical? Professional? (“It is dishonest to base an editorial on half –truth”, says the code of conduct of the Ontario Press Council. “The Press Council supports free expression of opinion that purports to be based on statistics but believes that readers have the right to know where the statistics come from.”)

Maybe Margaret just likes guys better. In an interview on TVO’s “The Agenda”, Wente says she’s a ‘huge fan’ of Steven Pinker (who she also calls Stephen Harper). “First of all, he looks cute” (agreed - definitely cuter than Harper).

One other attribution question, highlighted by the TVO segment: In the Globe, Wente doesn’t clearly attribute an observation about a magazine ad found in Peter Singer’s NYT review of Pinker’s book. Instead, she presents it in a way that leaves readers wondering whether it’s her own observation about changing mores (like examples about a local team logo which follow).

Singer, NYT: “The final trend Pinker discusses is the ‘rights revolution’…. domestic violence was tolerated to such a degree that a 1950s ad could show a husband with his wife over his knees, spanking her for failing to buy the right brand of coffee”.

Wente: “It’s easy to forget how dramatically attitudes toward rape and wife abuse have changed. As recently as the 1950s, light-hearted magazine ads depicted husbands spanking their wives for buying the wrong kind of coffee. Police treated rape as a joke, too, and the victim and her reputation were routinely put on trial. The great rights revolutions that gathered steam in the second half of the 20th century put an end to all that”.

In the TVO clip, her seeming ownership is more pronounced. Paikin begins by asking Wente if any of the trends Pinker describes “have occurred to her” “before knowing about the book”.

They ramble on about Wente’s views. At about the 6 minute mark, with no reference to either men, Wente offers the same advertisement as one of her own examples of changing mores, saying, “within my lifetime…here’s how far attitudes have changed…within my lifetime, you could run a humorous magazine ad…(she goes on to describe the ad, and continue with “within my lifetime” examples).

Conclusion? I’m no expert, but it seems odd not to mention the source. But it also seems in keeping with the history of recent attribution errors.

Wente, the ‘Occupy’ protests, and a “John”

What kind of research did Margaret Wente do for this article? And is “John” really a “face” of the Occupy Movement?

Wente provides three “faces” of the protests, with a quote for each. First we meet Laurel O’Gorman from Laurentian U, at Occupy Toronto. Then Wente reproduces a quote from a Boston.com article to introduce us to Sarvenaz Asasy. But “John” is the most puzzling “face” of the Occupy protests.

Wente writes: “Then there’s John, who’s pursuing a degree in environmental law. He wants to work at a non-profit. After he graduated from university, he struggled to find work. ‘I had to go a full year between college and law school without a job. I lived at home with my parents to make ends meet.’ He thinks a law degree will help, but these days, I’m not so sure”.

She’s “not so sure” – sounds like she’s ruminating over the conversation she’s just had with the guy.

But there’s no evidence “John” has anything to do with the Occupy movement.

Who is “John”? John is one of those cardboard characters political parties put forward to flog policies. His existence appears to originate on an online Obama 2012 election page about student loans, from whence he was perhaps picked up by a blogger who is in turn picked up by blogger Kenneth Anderson, who Wente quotes and paraphrases in her article. Anderson at least identifies “John”, providing a link to the guy who links to the Obama site), but since Margaret doesn’t bother, you can meet “John” and his quote right here.

In none of these online incarnations is “John” connected to the Occupy Protests, so it’s hard to see why he should be one of three representative faces she provides. It seems that as a responsible journalist, if you’re going to crib a representative “face” for your argument, you should acknowledge that someone else invented him first in a different story. It’s apparently too much to ask that Wente leave the confines of her high priced condo to talk to a few actual ‘Occupy’ protesters.

Wente provides a lengthy quote from Anderson, and additional ideas from his article. She’d apparently also like us to believe that she has (independently) read Christopher Lasch (who died before many of the Occupiers were born) and that she’s offering an original insight about Lasch’s views in relation to the Occupy movement. But this observation also appears in Anderson’s article. And the words Wente attributes to Lasch - “They are what the social critic Christopher Lasch called the ‘new class’ of ‘therapeutic cops in the new bureaucracy’” also seem to be misidentified. They actually appear in a September 22, 1995 article by the same Kenneth Anderson in the Times Literary Supplement. The words “therapeutic cops in the new bureaucracy” are used by Anderson to describe his own interpretation of the late Lasch’s work.

Update: The following Editor's Note now appears at the bottom of the online version of Wente's column:

Editor's note: Clarifications: John, who’s pursuing a degree in environmental law, is not part of the Occupy movement.

The following sentence is a paraphrase, not a direct quote: They are what the social critic Christopher Lasch called the “new class” of “therapeutic cops in the new bureaucracy.”

Helpful, but does this fully address the attribution aspect?

Lawrence Solomon – more fact-challenged than Pamela Geller?

Pamela Geller runs “Atlas Shrugs” - a website which claimed simultaneously, that Obama is the illegitimate son of Malcom X and a non-citizen born in Kenya. It’s also rabidly anti-Muslim.

On Friday, in The Globe and Mail, climate change ‘skeptic’ Lawrence Solomon published claims about Egypt that make Atlas Shrugs seem like responsible journalism. Here’s what he wrote:

“…March; that’s when a national referendum passed constitutional amendments that effectively stripped Christians of political rights while strengthening sharia laws involving amputations, stonings and crucifixions”.

Egypt’s new constitutional amendments do not deal with, mention, or “strengthen” “amputations, stonings and crucifixions”. The following BBC summary of the provisions is similar to other reports:

“Under the proposed amendments to the constitution, the future president would only be allowed to serve two four-year terms, instead of unlimited six-year periods. He or she would also be obliged to appoint a deputy....Other amendments would make it easier for individuals to qualify to run as a presidential candidate and re-instate judicial supervision for elections. It would also be more difficult for any leader to maintain the state of emergency.”

A more complete list appears on wikipedia. None of the articles make reference to, or could possibly be construed as “strengthening”, “amputations, stoning and crucifixion’.

Article 75: A candidate would be ineligible if he or she had dual nationality

Article 76: Easing the requirements for being a presidential candidate.

Article 77: Limiting the terms a president can serve to two consecutive terms.

Article 88: The juridical system is responsible for monitoring the election process.

Article 93: would give the highest appeal court the power to rule on challenges to disputed parliamentary races, whereas before only the parliament could decide.

Article 139: The president must appoint a vice-president within 60 days of the start of the term

Article 148: would impose new restrictions on the president declaring a state of emergency, including requiring the approval of a parliamentary majority, and says it cannot exceed six months unless it is extended through a referendum.

(Article 179): would be canceled. The article allows the president to use military courts for "terror" cases even for civilians.

(Article 189): Require the newly elected parliament to write a new constitution within 60 days.

***

Solomon appears to have gathered quotes, figures and other material from an online article by the “Assyrian International News Agency”, a Christian Syriac group. Extremist sites like JihadWatch and Atlas Shrugs had carried, or linked to, the same material. But Solomon appears to exaggerate, embroider or mis-interpret one sentence in the AINA piece, in which mention of the amendments is simply followed by a reference to what the writer believes is the “intention” of “Salafist” elements in Egypt. The piece does not say that such provisions are contained in the constitutional amendments:

“The EUHRO report noted that Coptic emigration escalated since March 19, 2011, after the constitutional amendments in Egypt and the escalation in Salafist attacks on Copts and their intention to implement Hudud laws (Sharia based punishments, which include capital punishment by sword/crucifixion, stoning, amputation and flogging).”

In this post, Atlas Shrugs presents a more balanced. factual version than the Globe:

“Nearly 93,000 Coptic Christians have left Egypt since 19 March, a report by an Egypt-based Coptic NGO has said…

…Gabriel attributed the Coptic emigration to hardline Salafi groups seeking to apply Islamic law, deny Copts senior government posts, and reduce incoming tourism. He also blamed attacks on Coptic churches and the government's failure to bring attackers to justice.”

Concerns expressed about extremist elements, who some view as wanting to eventually implement some form of sharia, are a far cry from “amputations, stonings and crucifixions” being enshrined or “strengthened” within Egypt’s recent constitutional amendments.

It’s a sad day when Atlas Shrugs looks like better journalism than the Globe and Mail.

And unless Solomon can provide the relevant text of a constitutional amendment that does what he claims it does, the Globe should offer an apology and retraction.

Margaret Wente: self-control and quotation marks

Margaret Wente’s column on willpower shows she could stand to exercise a bit more self-control with quotation marks.

Quotes and other material from the introduction to Baumeister/Tierney’s book, “Willpower” figure prominently in her piece, but Wente seems to blur the line between the authors’ observations and her own, and again uses what seem to be migrating quotation marks. The overlapping sections Wente leaves out of quotes (part identical wording, part paraphrase) are highlighted in bold caps.

Wente: Most social scientists look for the causes of social failure outside the individual: deprivation, oppression, discrimination and so on. “Searching for external factors is often more comfortable for everyone,” the authors write, “particularly for the many academics who worry that they risk the politically incorrect sin of ‘blaming the victim’ by suggesting that people’s problems might arise from causes inside themselves.” Social problems can also seem easier to fix than character defects – despite the overwhelming evidence that they aren’t.

Baumeister/Tierney Introduction, available here : Most social scientists look for causes of misbehavior outside the individual: poverty, relative deprivation, oppression, or other failures of the environment or the economic and political systems. Searching for external factors is often more comfortable for everyone, particularly for the many academics who worry that they risk the politically incorrect sin of “blaming the victim” by suggesting that people’s problems might arise from causes inside themselves. Social problems can also seem easier than character defects to fix, at least to the social scientists proposing new policies and programs to deal with them.

Wente: “Self-regulation failure is the major social pathology of our time,” concluded a team of researchers quoted in the book. This failure contributes not only to obesity, but to high divorce rates, domestic violence, crime, addiction and a host of other social problems.

Baumeister/Tierney: “Self-regulation failure is the major social pathology of our time,” they concluded, pointing to the accumulating evidence of its contribution to high divorce rates, domestic violence, crime, and a host of other problems.

Wente also describes the “marshmallow experiment” cited in the introduction. “Remember the marshmallow test?” she asks, without mentioning the authors’ use of it. Observations about the Victorian era also appear the introduction, but Wente makes no mention of the authors’ comparison

Wente borrows headline, omits facts, in criticism of McGuinty electric car plan

Margaret Wente slams Dalton McGuinty’s electric car initiative with this California example: “Costco… has pulled the plug on its electric car-charging stations…because nobody uses them”. Given the similarity to an article titled “Costco pulls the plug on electric vehicle charging stations”, it’s odd that Wente withholds the relevant facts – that Costco’s 1990s era chargers are useless and outdated, and that companies like McDonald's are installing modern chargers to service booming sales of current electric cars. (As Green Car Reports writes: “Be on the lookout for silly, misleading articles that claim electric-car demand is ebbing, that plug-ins are a failure in the marketplace… it's simply not true.”)

According to the Daily Mail, “Costco chargers around Los Angeles stopped working years ago”. Built for the famously scrapped GM EVs, “Costco outlets are outdated by current standards” and would need major upgrades to power the Leaf, Volt, or Prius. But Wente doesn’t tell us this.

More relevant than one obsolete Costco example are the new McDonald’s and Macy’s stations - compatible with new electrics. And Time Magazine writes that Walgreens, IKEA, and convenience store chains will do the same. Mr. McGuinty is following the lead of companies with good business records. But again, Wente won’t tell us this.

We expect regular eco-trashing and McGuinty-bashing from Ms. Wente, but there is an election going on in Ontario, and it behooves the Globe and Mail to provide readers with facts relevant to his policies. In addition, Wente’s suggestion that Costco’s decision indicates lack of demand for current Nissan, Toyota and GM electric products is misleading and should be clarified.

Margaret Wente and the “elites”

Here's Margaret Wente writing a puff piece about billionaire Peter Munk:

Wente: “’I arrived in this place not speaking the language, not knowing a dog,’ he says. He was 18 – an alien, a foreigner, a Jew in a funny-looking suit. In Europe, people were living in the ruins, like rats”. 



Hmnn, that’s a quite a contrast from this bio in the Globe by Andy Hoffman, in April 2008:



“He was born Nov. 8, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary to a Jewish family rich with real-estate holdings...” 



(The article informs us that Munk’s family spent much of that fortune to escape to Switzerland where life wasn’t so bad).

But 
“young Peter failed to gain admission to a top university and in 1948 it was decided that he would be sent to Toronto for his education, and live with his aunt and uncle...Peter and his friends met to consider his fate in a Zurich café. He didn't want to leave Switzerland. ‘In Zurich it was gorgeous. There were bars and we could drive down to the casino and see the dancing girls. It was a cultured, civilized place,’ he recalls.”



So Munk may ‘not have known a dog’ in Toronto, but he did know his relatives. And while Wente wants us to think the poor man was scurrying around the ruins with rats, he was apparently living the high life in Zurich’s bars and casinos.

Attribution Correction?

After bringing this to the attention of Globe editors, the following notice appeared in today’s print version, (June 3, Page A2). Now, why not the rest?

The words “Americans…are fighting and dying, while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them” in the Focus section of March 12 should have been attributed to Dexter Filkins in the New York Times.