Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Using Economics to Help the World’s Poor
Using Economics to Help the World’s Poor
By DAVID LEONHARDT
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo — both professors at M.I.T. — have helped changed the practice of economics. Mr. Banerjee and Ms. Duflo have pushed anti-poverty programs in developing countries to become more serious about evaluating whether they are actually improving people’s lives.
I wrote about their work in a 2008 column. The New Yorker profiled Ms. Duflo last year. Ms. Duflo won the John Bates Clark Medal, which goes to the top economist under 40, in 2010. Mr. Banerjee appeared on National Public Radio this week, and a portion of a speech he gave to the Asian Development Bank is available on YouTube.
My conversation with the two — about their new book, “Poor Economics,” which covers education, health, governance and other topics — follows.
Q. You write about the strong evidence of the importance of education: the big income gains after Indonesia went on a school-building spree; the income gains and mortality reduction after Taiwan made school mandatory; the declines in teenage pregnancy among more educated girls in Malawi and Kenya, to name just a few examples. But there are definitely still education skeptics, some of whom point out that Africa has become far more educated over the past generation without become far richer. How do you respond to the point that more education doesn’t always lead to much faster economic growth?
Mr. Banerjee: It is not clear that the skeptics have always thought carefully about the alternative: what would have happened had Africa not invested in education. Would things have been even worse? I don’t know the answer, but that is the reason why these comparisons are inherently difficult to interpret. When you compare individuals, rather than countries, you find that education improves both income and the quality of life.
However, let us for the sake of the argument assume that education actually did not promote growth in Africa. I think that there a number of historical reasons why delivering quality education was particularly a challenge in Africa: First, the colonial powers were particularly niggardly in investing in African education, so the African nations were suddenly had to run a whole education system despite the fact that they had very few people who were ready to teach, especially at post-primary levels. On the other hand they could not very well tell the newly liberated citizens that their educational aspirations had to go on hold. So the countries opted to expand education without really being in a position to do so.
Second, just as luck would have it, some of the countries that decided to invest the most in education, like Angola, Mozambique, Senegal and Sudan, ended up in long-drawn civil conflicts. I don’t think education is the reason they had these conflicts — it was more that they just did not know what was coming to them after colonialism.
Last, but by no means least, as we argue in the book, the colonial model of education, which was intended to educate a small elite in the ways of the colonist, was adopted wholesale by the post-colonial states, despite the fact that they were now aiming for mass education of a population of first generation literates. No wonder the kids did not learn very much from being in school.
Q. Yes, you argue that the research shows all children — including ill-prepared ones — can learn and that even modest differences in outcomes — say, finishing fifth grade instead of second grade — have positive effects. But obviously many, many schools, from Mumbai to Lagos to Houston, do a bad job of educating poor children. What distinguishes the schools that get impressive (and rigorously evaluated) results?
Ms. Duflo: That’s indeed a vexing puzzle: experiences in the developing countries (the very successful remedial education programs run by Pratham, in India, for example) but also in the U.S. (the “no excuses” charter schools in Boston, or schools in the Harlem Child Zone in New York City) suggest that it is possible, perhaps even not that difficult, to significantly improve the quality of education. Yet most schools completely fail their students: why is that? It would be too easy to blame a lackadaisical public school system, but even the private schools that are attended by many poor kids around the world could do much better. In the U.S., not all charter schools deliver quality education.
Our sense is that what is going on is that schools have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that teaching fundamental skills to everyone should be their prime objective. In Kenya, India or Ghana, teachers still try to teach an absurdly demanding curriculum to a very diverse set of pupils, many of whom are first-generation literates and get little or no help at home. Covering the entire curriculum is the priority, even though the majority of children may be lost by the end of the first week.
Why aren’t parents revolting, one might wonder. Why are they not demanding that their children be taught at the appropriate level, instead of sitting through day after day of teaching that mean nothing to them? In part this is because they do not know how badly schools are doing: they are not in a position to evaluate what their children are learning, and no one tells them that they are not. In part it is because they have bought into the elite bias that plagues the entire system: parents often seem to believe that education is worth it only if the child can reach the highest level.
Making sure that schools deliver may be in part a matter of defining what “deliver” means: not preparing the top of the class for some difficult public exam while ignoring the rest, but ensuring that every child learns core skills, and learns them well.
Q. Let’s broaden the discussion from education. If you each could have a few minutes with the new leaders of South Sudan — the world’s newest country and a very poor one — and they asked you how they could best improve the lives of their citizens, what would you tell them?
Ms. Duflo: In just a few minutes, we could not cover very detailed ground. So we’ll have to focus on the basics. First of all, I would try to convince them that a key priority would be to invest enough money and talent in running good quality social services for the poor, including free access to good schools, preventive medical care, and hospitals. This may not seem like rocket science: but these are basic human priorities, and these are also domains where some things are known about what may work.
Second, I think I would try to convince them to run anti-poverty policy in a more intelligent way than what we see in most countries. In particular, I may try to encourage them not to listen too much to the elevator pitches of all the other experts, and stake their entire policy course on the basis of those… Of course they’ll have to start somewhere, and there is a body of knowledge available to choose policies that are likely to work. But they will still have a lot more to learn about the best ways to achieve their objectives. So I would like to advise them to always keep some margin to experiment, in order to find the best programs to reach those goals.
Mr. Banerjee: Since they will no doubt want more specific suggestions, here are two policies that I think every poor country should implement. A small universal cash grant to everyone over 12, based on biometric identification. This guarantees that no one has to face the humiliation of being totally indigent, and from our evidence, makes people more productive as well. Making it universal is important, so that they do not attempt to identify the poor (which is very difficult to do effectively in poor countries).
Second, a free universal health insurance policy that covers catastrophic health events, which allows people to go to private or public hospitals. Catastrophic health shocks do enormous damage to families both economically and otherwise, and are easy to insure, because nobody gets them on purpose. On the other hand, insurance policies that only treat certain catastrophic illnesses are hard to comprehend, especially of you are illiterate and unused to the legalistic nature of exclusions etc. Therefore people do not value them as much as they should which makes it hard for markets to supply them. This is an obvious thing for governments to take on.
Obituary-Datuk Dr. Zainal Aznam Yusof
It is no exaggeration to state that when Dr Zainal Aznam spoke the country did sit up and listen especially regarding his thought provoking suggestion to set up an Equal Opportunity Commission in Malaysia. This was an unpopular suggestion among certain quarters but Dr Zainal had come to this conclusion as a result of his deep involvement in the process of economic policy making over the last few decades. In one of his last conversations with me he reflected on his struggles in life and how his career path was decided by him and by actions he took to further his career. He was a self made man.
Dr Zainal Aznam had an illustrious career in the public service having worked in the Economic Planning Unit, Bank Negara, the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research (MIER) and the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS). In both MIER and ISIS, it was observed by many that he was nearly at the top but not quite at the top. He explained it as being “not Malay enough.” He explained to me that in his later days his progressive liberal views were at odds with the dominant mode of thinking among those who wielded the power in the country. He was shocked that the New Economic Model (NEM) that he helped to craft had to be presented to the politically powerful to obtain their views and approval. He felt that the National Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) that he was a member of did not have to be subject to a process of bargaining with political parties.
Dr Zainal Aznam was not only an influential member of the National Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) that was formed in 2009 to craft the NEM but was also a key member of the National Economic Action Council (NEAC) that was formed in 1997 to get the economy out of the devastating 1997 East Asian financial crisis, when the economy contracted by more than 6.8%. He stayed up late nights working on the National Economic Recovery Action Plan and monitored the economy towards recovery and sustainable economic growth. However, despite his stellar performance, decorative and honorary titles and high positions eluded him as there were many that were not willing to venture beyond narrow sectarian interests or see the advantage of aligning nationalism with globalization.
Dr. Zainal Aznam was merit oriented. When I first saw him he was my senior in Victoria Institution (VI), which admitted students based on their examination results. Dr. Zainal always had time to discuss intellectual topics and did help without being asked. He looked out for opportunities for others without seeking any gain or what we call “rent” in return. He went on to graduate with a D.Phil in Economics from Oxford University and was appointed a Fullbright Fellow at Harvard University in recognition of his scholarly activities.
In 2002 he co-edited a book on “Managing Economic Growth Amid Ethnic Diversity,” which was published by Harvard University. This book reflected more than two decades of research and writing. More recently in February 2011, Dr. Zainal Aznam presented what was perhaps his last intellectual enterprise in the form of “International Trade, Horizontal Inequalities and Political Stability: Malaysia,” to the University of Oxford. Dr. Zainal had earlier shown his concern on getting Malaysia out of the Middle Income Trap when he co-authored the Malaysian study on getting out of the Middle Income Trap for the World Commission on Growth and Development, chaired by Nobel Laureate Michael Spence.
Dr. Zainal Aznam was not only known to Nobel Laureates and professors from Oxbridge and the Ivy League but also by ordinary laymen who heard him on countless occasions chairing TV talk shows on the annual budget. Dr. Zainal Aznam was even generous with his time as he was Deputy President of the Malaysian Economic Association and a member of numerous committees dealing with higher education. We used to have long and lively discussions on the undesirability of commercializing education. It was the close personal attention that tutors probably gave him in Oxford that made him many cuts above the rest. There was no doubt that he was a towering intellectual amongst us. I would have liked to see him as a Vice Chancellor as he would have been a role model.
Malaysia has lost an intellectual and a friend. We will have to wait for a while for another Dr. Zainal to appear. On one occasion when I ran into him at 8 at night he told me that he was going to the movies with his wife. A friend then remarked, “He is still romantic at this age.” On another occasion when I caught him reading AK Sen’s seminal work, “The Idea of Justice,” at Borders he told me that he was waiting for his wife. On yet another occasion at IKEA he suddenly left because as he recalled later that he saw from the corner of his eyes that his daughter needed his attention and help. Dr. Zainal was a devoted husband and caring father. He passed away on 30 April 2011. He left behind his wife Datuk Kaziah Abdul Kadir and children Irwan Shahrizal, 33, Shazalina, 30, and Juliana, 23.
The writer, G.Sivalingam is with the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) in Singapore
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
Elite South Korean University Rattled by Suicides - NYT
MEMO FROM SOUTH KOREA
Elite South Korean University Rattled by Suicides
Yonhap, Via Associated Press
Students at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
mourning fellow students who had committed suicide.
Academic pressures can be ferocious at the university, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, known as Kaist, and anxious school psychologists have expanded their counseling services since the suicides. The school president also rescinded a controversial policy that humiliated many students by charging them extra tuition if their grades dipped.
After the last of the student deaths, on April 7, the Kaist student council issued an impassioned statement that said “a purple gust of wind” had blown through campus.
“Day after day we are cornered into an unrelenting competition that smothers and suffocates us,” the council said. “We couldn’t even spare 30 minutes for our troubled classmates because of all our homework.
“We no longer have the ability to laugh freely.”
Young people in South Korea are a chronically unhappy group. A recent survey found them to be — for the third year in a row — the unhappiest subset among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Education Ministry in Seoul said 146 students committed suicide last year, including 53 in junior high and 3 in elementary school.
Psychologists at the university said very few students had sought counseling in recent days because of the time crunch brought on by finals. Ironically, during this period of maximum stress, therapists were handling only a handful of cases, mostly for anxiety.
“Remember that the students here are still very young and they haven’t had much experience with unpredictable situations,” said Kim Mi-hee, a staff psychologist at the campus counseling center, who estimated that about 10 percent of Kaist students had come to the center for help. “To deal with problems they tend to lock into rumination mode.
“But they’re so smart and so bright, they actually cope with stress pretty well. They have great capabilities of insight, so once they do get treatment, it can go pretty fast.”
But there is still no full-time psychiatrist on call, and Kaist professors receive no training on how to spot overstressed or depressed students. Even the entryway to the counseling suite can feel somewhat less than welcoming. Recent visitors found the front door partially blocked by a dead tree in a broken ceramic planter.
South Korea as a whole ranks first among O.E.C.D. nations in suicide and is routinely among the leaders in developed nations. Subway stations in Seoul have barriers to prevent people from jumping in front of arriving trains, and eight bridges in the capital have installed closed-circuit suicide-watch cameras.
Suicides of singers, models, beloved actors, athletes, millionaire heiresses and other prominent figures have become almost routine in South Korea. A former president, Roh Moo-hyun, threw himself off a cliff in 2009 after losing face with his countrymen.
But the suicides of the four Kaist undergraduates — three jumped to their deaths and a 19-year-old freshman overdosed on pills — have stunned the nation in a profound and poignant way. (The professor, a biologist who was reportedly being audited for the misuse of research funds, hanged himself on April 10.)
The competition for a place in a leading university begins in middle school for most South Korean students. More than 80 percent of Korean young people go to college, and parents here spend more money per child on extra classes and outside tutoring — including military-style “cram schools” — than any other country in the O.E.C.D.
The pressure builds to a single day in November, when a national college entrance exam is held. Some mothers pray at churches or temples throughout the day as their children take the test, which is given only once a year and lasts nine hours. The South Korean Air Force even adjusts its flight schedule so as not to disturb the test takers.
The ultimate goal for most students is acceptance at one of the so-called SKY schools — Seoul National, Korea or Yonsei universities. In South Korea’s status-conscious society, a degree from a SKY school is nearly a guarantee of a big career and lifelong prosperity. Pedigree is everything.
But Kaist is different. The university pays no regard to the national exam and instead recruits almost all of its students from among the elite seniors at special science-oriented high schools. Kaist admits only about 1,000 freshmen each year. A personal interview, high school grades and recommendations from principals count the most.
Kaist students are academically gifted, to be sure, but they are also seen as the future leaders of Korea’s vaunted technology-driven economy. In a sense, once they gain entrance to Kaist, the students become national treasures. As a result, many feel a huge (and sometimes crushing) burden to live up to the country’s expectations. The statement by the Kaist student leaders even referred to Kaist students as “the future luminaries of Korea’s sciences.”
The pressures can become too much for some students, especially those who have always been academic superstars but suddenly find themselves struggling to excel against much stiffer competition. “They’ve always been No. 1 in high school, but once they get to Kaist maybe they’re No. 40, or No. 400, and they realize they can’t possibly keep up,” said Oh Kyung-ja, a Harvard-trained professor of clinical psychology at Yonsei University. “The competition can be cruel.”
Suh Nam-pyo, a renowned mechanical engineer who taught for many years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became president of Kaist in 2006. He soon instituted a series of changes aimed at modeling Kaist after M.I.T. and other world-class science and research universities.
He mandated, for example, that all courses would be taught in English. That move led to campus-wide consternation because not all students and faculty members were fully fluent in English.
Mr. Suh also engineered a system that required students to pay extra tuition for each hundredth of a point that their grade point average fell below 3.0 (based on a 4.3-point system). All students pay a token fee each semester, Kaist administrators said, but otherwise their tuition is free, financed by government scholarships.
Under the so-called punitive tuition program, a bad semester could cost a student’s family thousands of dollars.
The program, which was applauded at first, has since led to deep humiliation and anxiety among many students. Those who struggled and lost their full rides suddenly saw themselves as losers. Some critics, calling it ruthless, even blamed the program for the recent suicides.
Mr. Suh, faced with withering criticism, recently ended most parts of the tuition plan, and the school announced that some courses would now be taught in English and Korean.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Just Give Money to the Poor
Friday, May 20, 2011
Children of Heaven (1997) - Iranian film by Majid Majidi.
Children of Heaven premiered in February 1997 at the Teheran Fajr Film Festival and was awarded several national film awards. It opened in the US on 22 January 1999, with a total US box office total of $930,000.
Critical response to the film was very positive. Some critics compared it to Vittorio de Sica's 1948 Bicycle Thieves. The few negative voices found fault in a too-simplistic storyline and unanswered questions. Roger Ebert's review in the Chicago Sun-Times called it "very nearly a perfect movie for children" that "lacks the cynicism and smart-mouth attitudes of so much American entertainment for kids and glows with a kind of good-hearted purity".[1]
In 1998, it became the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, losing to the Italian film Life Is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni. After the film had become well-known worldwide due to the Oscar nomination, it was shown in several European, South American, and Asian countries between 1999 and 2001. It was successfully shown in numerous film festivals and won awards at the Fajr Film Festival, the World Film Festival, the Newport International Film Festival, the Warsaw International Film Festival, and the Singapore International Film Festival. It was nominated for the Jury's Grand Prize at the American Film Institute's festival.
Ali is desperate. He knows how precious those shoes are to his seven-year-old sister, Zahra (Bahare Seddigi), and both realize that revealing the loss would upset their financially strapped parents. So there's the basic plot—plain and simple. It may be hard to imagine a filmmaker making such a premise last for ninety minutes, but Majidi succeeds spectacularly with a work that profoundly expresses dogged determination, great compassion, and basic familial love. And all done without special effects and big name actors!
Carrying the film without any other credits to their names, the two child actors truly care for each other and give the film rare intimate insights into Iranian daily life. Heartbroken at the loss of her shoes, Zahra sheds honest tears and worries about what she can wear to school the next day. She and Ali furiously pass notes back and forth under their parents' noses, until a workable solution is agreed upon: The two siblings share Ali's tennis shoes since they attend school in separate shifts, setting up natural dramatic device for the narrative.
Of course complications arise—Zahra's morning session runs late, or her brother's tennis shoe slips off her tiny foot into the city sewer system. Meanwhile, beagle-eyed Ali searches for ways to get his little sister a new pair of shoes by earning some extra money before seeing the ideal solution: Third place in a foot race offers a free pair of shoes and should be no problem, since he feels he is the fastest nine-year-old in Tehran.
Even if you find the lost shoes device difficult to swallow, the children's sincerity and warmth shine through brilliantly, and introduces basic Iranian family values. Unlike many American children, they are quietly respectful of adults, while retaining their inner dignity. Witness young Ali politely raising his hand to speak to his elders at the school even in one-on-one conversations, yet he's also quite adamant about entering the foot race when a teacher tells him that it's too late. Both children go to extremes to cause no worries for their parents, especially their very stern father.
Both Ali and Zahra personify the American title, Children of Heaven, through sincere sweetness that doesn't come across as acting at all. This naturalness makes Majidi's visual poem work so splendidly—that and the intimate cinematography that captures the children's reactions at close range. Their characters shine through in simple ordinary daily life in layered vignettes that completely charm the audience and warm the heart of everyone not totally addicted to the quick fix of mainstream multiplex releases that methodically numb the senses.
As he does with the blind boy in Color of Paradise, Majidi unpretentiously reveals character through the small gestures of children in another poignantly constructed Iranian family portrait. Majidi must be wonderful with children himself—how else has he been able to get such performances from non-acting children in these two films? Children this good in America would come across as either smug or falsely saccharin, but not so here.
In essence, Children of Heaven serves as a heart warming meditation about real goodness in humanity—helping balance the negative prejudices that most Americans project towards Iranians. Recently released on DVD, this is definitely worth a rental and can work as a suitable family film.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
How do we improve the wellbeing of the poor?
Posted byRachel Godfrey WoodWednesday 18 May 2011How do we improve the wellbeing of the poor?
A new book explodes the myth that the poor can't be trusted with direct cash transfers because they make 'bad' life decisions
As recent blogposts by Duncan Green and Madeleine Bunting have pointed out, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo's book, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, is making waves in development circles. Beyond the strong focus on randomised control trials, the book distinguishes itself by wading into issues on which the development community has often ignored or made uninformed guesses. These include the rationale behind the decisions made by the poor, whether they make the "best" decisions available, and how policymakers should respond.
As someone who is in favour of policies that transfer money directly to the poor, I just had to have a look. After all, cash transfers and other forms of welfare are often opposed on the basis of claims that the poor make "irrational" or uninformed decisions and therefore shouldn't be trusted with public resources. And the kneejerk response to this argument risks moving to the other extreme: assuming that the poor live up to a straight-jacketed vision of generally well-informed, "rational" individuals.
Actually, Banerjee and Duflo's book doesn't really support either view. To their credit, the authors certainly don't shy away from cases where the poor don't make perfect decisions from a development perspective. For example, the poor often believe that it's only worth sending children to school if there's a chance they can go all the way and complete secondary education. And that belief can lead to brutal trade-offs: selecting the "cleverest" child to go to school while making the others work.
In other cases, they might spend money on alcohol, tobacco and festivals even though they don't have enough to eat. And when they do buy food, they might opt for food that is tasty, rather than nutritious. The poor often struggle to control their temptations and make impulsive purchases, thereby failing to save for the future. Indeed, even when they do save up to make calculated purchases, their decisions can confound even the most well-meaning of development practitioners: In one village in Morocco, for example, Banerjee and Duflo talked to a man who didn't have enough money to feed his family, but had a TV and a DVD player.
So surely it's case closed? If the poor don't fully understand the benefits of education, don't eat enough of the right food, have limited self-control and use scarce resources to buy things such as TVs, who would want to place state resources in their hands through cash transfers? Surely it's best to make sure that money gets used by educated people in governments and NGOs who, let's face it, know what's best?
Well, not necessarily. A careful reading of Poor Economics, and a look at broader research, suggest that many of the examples above are not strong arguments against cash transfers, and could even be used to advocate for them. On the issue of education, it may be the case that the poor undervalue the importance of even a small amount of education, but that does not change the fact that the root problem is a basic lack of money and livelihood security. So when the World Bank looked at a cash transfer pilot programme in Malawi (pdf), school attendance rose significantly even though it was not a condition of the transfers.
On the issue of nutrition, I feel there is a danger of reading too much into Banerjee and Duflo's findings: we might discuss why the poor don't always spend as much on nutritional food as one might expect, but that shouldn't detract from the overwhelming evidence that bolstering the incomes of the poor with cash transfers really does improve nutrition (see DfID's review of the evidence). There may still be a case for Duflo and Banerjee's suggestion of packing nutrition into the food children eat in schools, but given that most of the food the poor eat comes from the unregulated informal economy, this approach might have its limits.
Perhaps the most important finding in Poor Economics is the impact of insecurity, stress and hopelessness on the decisions of the poor. Why worry about the future if that future only promises misery, or if any attempts at self-improvement are likely to fail? As Banerjee and Duflo make clear, when poor people gain a degree of genuine security and opportunity for self-improvement, their attitudes and decision-making can change dramatically, and social protection is one way of bringing this about.
And as for poor people spending money on TVs and DVD players, something that is frequently judged and used as evidence for "irrationality", it might be worth seeing things from their perspective. Poor Economics reminds us that for many of the poor, particularly those in rural areas, life is often just a bit boring, and getting a modern gadget can have a major impact on people's happiness or wellbeing. This might not contribute much towards the millennium development goals, but if development is supposed to be about improving the wellbeing of the poor, seeing wellbeing from their point of view has to be central to that vision.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
The Malays, Economy and Politics....
Health warning: exercise makes you fat?
Health warning: exercise makes you fat?
The Sunday Telegraph gives you permission to do nothing with a misleading feature that claims re-programming body fat is the key to weight loss, not working out
Why would you listen to a government health message, or your GP, when the Sunday Telegraph has more exciting news? "Health warning: exercise makes you fat" is the kind of full-width headline you want to see across a broadsheet page: it's affirmative, it's reassuring, and it gives you clear permission to sit on your arse all day. "Re-programming body fat is the key to weight loss, not working out." Praise be. "Is it possible exercise is doing nothing to make us slimmer?" Please let the answer be yes.
The Telegraph produced three lines of research for this claim. Firstly, more people are spending more money on more exercise than before, but there is also more obesity in the UK than before: explain that with your science. Then there was some speculative laboratory research about interfering with brown fat in animal models using stem cells and things. Interesting to read, but distant from the headline claim, and not much use to you on a Sunday.
To properly examine whether exercise really will make you fat, they described two trials. The first one, I can tell you right now, is cherry-picked. The Cochrane Library is a non-profit collaboration of academics who produce unbiased, systematic reviews of the medical literature, and they have a systematic review of all the 43 trials done on exercise for weight loss. This produces clear evidence that exercise is beneficial, albeit more modestly than you'd hope. Exercise plus diet was compared with diet alone in 14 trials: both groups lost weight, but 1.1kg more in the exercise group. High intensity exercise was compared with low intensity in 4 four trials. High intensity exercise came out better in all of them, with extra weight loss of 1.5kg. There were also improvements in blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugars, sense of wellbeing and so on.
The Telegraph quoted one trial from Dr Timothy Church of Louisiana University. It compared three different levels of exercise with a personal trainer in overweight people. There were no significant differences between the weight lost in any of the groups, including the "control" group, who were not given a personal trainer at all. So it is true that exercise did indeed have no benefit, in this one single trial the Telegraph quoted, while ignoring the vast, overwhelming majority of published literature examining the same question. Dr Church speculates that the explanation for his finding is that people who exercised more also ate more. Fine.
Then there is the Telegraph's second trial. "Another study due to be published next month in the journal Public Health Nutrition by researchers at the University of Leeds draws similar conclusions. Professor John Blundell and his colleagues found that people asked to do supervised exercise to lose weight also increased the amount they ate and reduced their intake of fruit and vegetables."
I have this trial in front of me. It's simply not true. Only 15% of all participants gained weight during the study, and these were the only people to increase their food intake, but the weight gained even by these people was lean tissue, and they lost fat tissue.
In fact, what the Telegraph don't tell you, bafflingly, is that overall, participants doing supervised exercise in this trial lost more weight. People doing exercise lost 3.2kg more weight, on average, over just 12 weeks.Prof Blundell says: "The Telegraph article was a complete distortion of the facts of our investigation, which showed that exercise is very effective for weight loss. They completely reversed the outcome of our study."
Misleading journalism such as this is becoming a public health problem. We've previously seen the evidence that people change their health behaviour in response to what they read in the media.To add to this, the World Cancer Research Fund recently commissioned a survey from YouGov. This was a proper survey, in a representative sample, from a reputable data collector, where anyone is allowed to see the questions and the results, not a secret PR survey to get free advertising in a newspaper. Healthy living advice hasn't changed at all for at least a decade – don't smoke, exercise, eat more fruit and veg. And a quarter of all respondents said that because scientists keep changing their minds, you might as well eat whatever you want, because it won't make any difference anyway. Have another pastry and put the telly on.
Peer review is flawed but the best we've got
This week the peer review system has been in the newspapers, after a survey of scientists suggested it had some problems. That is barely news. Peer review – where articles submitted to an academic journal are reviewed by other scientists from the same field for an opinion on their quality – has always been recognised as problematic. It is time-consuming, it could be open to corruption, and it cannot prevent fraud, plagiarism, or duplicate publication, although in a more obvious case it might. The problem with peer review is, it's hard to find anything better.
Here is one example of a failing alternative. This month, after a concerted campaign by academics aggregating around websites such asAidstruth.org, academic publishers Elsevier have withdrawn two papers from a journal called Medical Hypotheses. This journal is a rarity: it does not have peer review, and instead, submissions are approved for publication by its one editor.
Articles from Medical Hypotheses have appeared in this column quite a lot. They carried one almost surreally crass paper in which two Italian doctors argued "mongoloid" really was an appropriate term for people with Down's syndrome after all, because they share many characteristics with oriental populations (including: sitting cross-legged; eating small amounts of lots of types of food with MSG in it; and an enjoyment of handicrafts). You might also remember two pieces discussing the benefits and side-effects of masturbation as a treatment for nasal congestion.
The papers withdrawn this month step into a new domain of foolishness. Both were from the community who characterise themselves as "Aids dissidents", and one was co-authored by their figureheads, Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick.
To say a peer reviewer might have spotted the flaws in their paper – which had already been rejected by the Journal of Aids – is an understatement. My favourite part is the whole page they devote to arguing that there cannot be lots of people dying of Aids in South Africa because the population of the country has grown in the past few years.
We might expect anyone to spot such poor reasoning but they also misrepresent landmark papers from the literature on Aids research. Rasnick and Duesberg discuss antiretroviral drugs that have side-effects but which have stopped Aids being a death sentence, and attack the notion their benefits outweigh the toxicity: "contrary to these claims", they say, "hundreds of American and British researchers jointly published a collaborative analysis in The Lancet in 2006, concluding treatment of Aids patients with anti-viral drugs has 'not translated into a decrease in mortality'."
That is a simple, flat, unambiguous misrepresentation of the Lancet paper to which they refer.
What does this tell us about peer review? The editor of Medical Hypotheses, Bruce Charlton, has repeatedly argued – very reasonably – that the academic world benefits from having journals with different editorial models, that peer review can censor provocative ideas, and that scientists should be free to pontificate in their internal professional literature.
But there are blogs where Aids dissidents, or anyone, can pontificate wildly and to their colleagues: from journals we expect a little more
.