Pater Familias

5% TO 20%—THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT “OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES”.

Philip — Fri, 18 May 2012 00:22:12 +0000

5% TO 20%—THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT “OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES”. I am encouraged by the estimates of the percentage of findings from statistical studies that can be replicated. The estimates of 5% to 20% for multiple regression studies are higher than I would have expected, and the figure of 80% for randomized controlled experiments is heartening as well. Observational studies are much cheaper than controlled trials (tens of thousands of dollars for a study versus millions of dollars for a randomized controlled trial.) Observational studies generally serve a different purpose—formulating hypotheses and checking leads rather than testing whether a proposition is true.

The “bad news” about both kinds of statistical studies comes about because the scientific process is slower and less accurate than people think. Problems develop because results of trials are almost always reported without a caveat. If people were aware that in general only 80% of controlled studies and 5% to 20% of observational studies can be replicated, finding these facts out would not be considered bad news.

5% TO 20%—THE BAD NEWS ABOUT “OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES”.

Philip — Thu, 17 May 2012 00:21:37 +0000

5% TO 20%—THE BAD NEWS ABOUT “OBSERVATIONAL STUDIES”. Gautam Naik had an article in the Wall Street Journal (May 3) headlined “Analytical Trend Troubles Scientists”. The troubling trend is that “observational studies often use different methodologies and arrive at different conclusions.” (“Observational studies” are one ones in which “scientists often use fast computers, statistical software and large medical data sets to analyze information previously collected by others”. I think of them as multiple regression studies.) Estimates are that there were almost 80,000 observational studies published across all scientific fields from 1990 to 2000 and over 260,000 published from 2001 to 2011. The article cites Dr. John Ioannidis as estimating that observational studies in general can be replicated only 20% of the time versus 80% of the time for controlled random trials. Another expert estimates the replication rate for observational studies at 5% to 10%.

ADAPTING GATSBY.

Philip — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:21:10 +0000

ADAPTING GATSBY. I posted here about Gatz, an adaptation of THE GREAT GATSBY in which one of the characters reads aloud all of THE GREAT GATSBY. It’s a wonderful experience, and it is now having a second run at the Public Theater. Barbara Chai interviewed John Collins, the director of Gatz, in the Wall Street Journal (May 8),and asked him about Baz Luhrmann’s coming adaptation of the book. Collins is curious about it, after having spent so much time with Fitzgerald’s words. He volunteered that the risk in adapting the book is in adding material rather than leaving things out (of course, Gatz leaves nothing out). He says: “That’s some of what Fizgerald does best in this book—the way he writes around certain important events and details.”

THE LACK OF PRIMOGENITURE AND THE FALL OF ROME.

Philip — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:59:41 +0000

THE LACK OF PRIMOGENITURE AND THE FALL OF ROME. In Mary Beard’s review in the London Review of Books (April 26) of CALIGULA: A BIOGRAPHY by Aloys Winterling, she says that Augustus failed to create a reliable system of monarchical succession, in part because Rome did not have a system of inheritance such as primogeniture. I posted here about Adrian Goldsworthy’s theory that Rome fell because emperors were preoccupied with attempts on their lives; Goldsworthy says that starting from 180 A.D. every adult emperor faced at least one attempt to depose him. Mary Beard says that there are claims that every member of the first dynasty of Roman emperors was murdered. I can explain the quiet period in the middle as being primarily the period when each emperor adopted as a son his chosen successor. When Marcus Aurelius, the last of the Five Good Emperors, died in 180 A.D. he returned to the hereditary principle of naming his genetic son as his successor, and the bloody battles for succession began again.

Mary Beard also ventures an explanation for why the Roman historians portray emperors as monsters. If an emperor has been killed in a coup, men who were courtiers in the old regime may curry favor with the successor by speaking ill of the previous emperor. And those contemporary histories are the basis for modern histories.

IS HEREDITARY GOVERNMENT GOOD?

Philip — Mon, 14 May 2012 00:43:53 +0000

IS HEREDITARY GOVERNMENT GOOD? In his review in the Wall Street Journal (May 11) of THE CREATION OF INEQUALITY by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto says that his students in global history at Notre Dame have trouble understanding “societies that esteem birth more highly than wealth and rate breeding above achievement.” He begins the review by telling a story about the first Japanese ambassador to the United States in 1860 who was baffled that George Washington’s descendants were not “revered above all other families.” I have the same American preconception as his students. Choosing leaders by birth seems absurd to me. I am grateful for the society that produced Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman. I think of Henry III and Henry VI in English history as examples of the misfortunes a hereditary system can produce. Fernandez-Armesto praises heredity as rational and scientific. He doesn’t mention ancient Rome, but although Rome had elections and checks and balances, the leadership for hundreds of years came from the same aristocratic families. While I am thinking better of the Dark Ages, I will try to give some thought to the advantages of heredity.

ARGUING THAT THE DARK AGES WEREN’T SO DARK.

Philip — Sun, 13 May 2012 01:53:06 +0000

ARGUING THAT THE DARK AGES WEREN’T SO DARK. Nick, knowing that I am interested in the transition between the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, gave me last Christmas BARBARIANS TO ANGELS: The Dark Ages Reconsidered by Peter S. Wells. It seems to me that the chief reason why the Dark Ages are considered dark is that there was not much literacy. The chief texts for the period relate to the church so that there is not much written information about how people lived. Wells is an archaeologist, and he argues that there is an increasing amount of archaeological information which suggests that people in the Dark Ages lived better than is usually portrayed. Measurements on skeletal remains are evidence that people in this period lived well. For example, measurements in southwestern Germany and in Denmark show average heights of 5 feet eight inches or 5 feet nine inches for men and five feet four inches for women. Wells notes that these average heights were not reached again until the twentieth century. Wells stresses the importance of technological improvements during this period and by this he means the moldboard plow: “Of fundamental importance was the development of new technology of agriculture—the moldboard plow—which vastly increased the efficiency of food production beyond anything in Roman times.”

How you evaluate the Dark Ages may depend on the weight you give the material standard of living of the ordinary man against things like literacy.

DAMIEN HIRST—AN ART MARKET BUBBLE?.

Philip — Sat, 12 May 2012 00:15:56 +0000

DAMIEN HIRST AND THE ART MARKET. Damien Hirst is the world’s richest artist. Hari Kunzru in the Guardian (March 16) had an article about the market for Hirst’s art, raising the possibility that current prices could represent a bubble. Kunzru’s article reads like a stock market analyst’s report. He says that the artist’s future reputation “is not as secure as it might appear.”

I posted here about Hirst’s January exhibit worldwide of 331 of his spot paintings. (There are about 1400 of them, following the rules that they consist of enamel dots on a white background arranged in a grid at intervals equal to the diameter of the dots and that no color can be repeated). Kunzru says: “Investor confidence is the key to understanding the unprecedented Gagosian show of Hirst’s spot paintings.” He asks about the Hirst spot paintings: “Do they have a future as anything more than wallpaper?” The question is whether the spot paintings are desired for themselves or as speculative investments bought in hopes of continuing price increases.

Kunzru notes that at the moment contemporary art is doing well compared with alternative investments and that Hirst’s work is doing better as a financial investment than contemporary art in general. And Hirst is still investing in the manufacture by employees of ambitious art works. Kunzru concludes his report: “[Hirst] recently announced that he has enlisted two assistants to paint 2m tiny spots on a canvas. He estimates that it will take them nine years to complete.”

REVISITING THE CHICAGO SPIKE.

Philip — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:42:39 +0000

REVISITING THE CHICAGO SPIKE. I posted about Caltrava’s proposed Chicago Spike here in August, 2007. The Chicago Spike was influenced by Calatrava’s Turning Torso in Malmo Sweden. The twisted spire (described as similar to a drill bit) would reduce the wind forces that make skyscrapers sway. The building would have had 150 floors and would have been the tallest residential building in North America. The date of my post—August, 2007, just at the start of the financial crisis—is important because the Chicago Spire has not been built. An Irish government agency that took on debt from a failed Irish bank is responsible for the property expenses. An article by Maura Webber Sadovi in the Wall Street Journal (May 2) told the story and had a picture of the hole in the ground at the site.

WHY ARE BRUTALIST BUILDINGS UNDER ATTACK?

Philip — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:41:35 +0000

WHY ARE BRUTALIST BUILDINGS UNDER ATTACK? One reason, of course, why brutalist buildings are out of favor is that the name is uncongenial. As the wikipedia article points out, the name comes from the French term for raw concrete: “beton brut”. The unfavorable overtones of “brutalism” are apparently just an unfortunate pun. However, the cost profile of brutalist buildings is the main reason for much of the criticism. Brutalist buildings proliferated in part because they were relatively inexpensive to build. They are in trouble now because they are relatively expensive to maintain. This article by James S. Russell on the Bloomberg site describes one major problem with the Orange County Government Center: Flat roofs tend to develop leaks. Roof seams tend to develop leaks. There are 80 different roof levels on the building. The building has been closed since last fall because of severe water damage.

ANOTHER BRUTALIST BUILDING IS PRESERVED.

Philip — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:23:29 +0000

ANOTHER BRUTALIST BUILDING IS PRESERVED. The most recent of Paul Rudolph’s buildings to come under attack is his Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York. It is on the World Monuments Fund’s 2012 Watch List as a threatened landmark. There was a crucial vote on May 3 on whether to replace it with a less distinguished building. (Paul Goldberger in this post on the Vanity Fair blog called the proposed new building that would have replaced it “a bland, pseudo-Georgian building, a sort of blown-up version of a Friendly’s ice-cream store”.) This article on the Arch Daily blog reports that in the March 3 vote, the Rudolph building survived by an 11 to 10 vote. (The article in Arch Daily has a good picture of the building if you are are curious.)

BRUTALIST BUILDINGS UNDER ATTACK.

Philip — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:30:21 +0000

BRUTALIST BUILDINGS UNDER ATTACK. I posted here three years ago about how two of Paul Rudolph’s Brutalist buildings had been threatened with demolition. The attacks on Rudolph’s buildings have continued. This article from March of this year on the Atlantic blog by Alison Arieff about “Paul Rudolph and the Challenge of Preserving Modern Architecture” describes Rudolph, who served as Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, as “one of the harder hit modernists” and says: “More than perhaps any of his peers, Rudolph’s buildings are either under threat or have already been destroyed.” You will have seen a number of Brutalist buildings. This wikipedia article describes Brutalist architecture as “architecture which flourished from the 1950s to the mid 1970s, spawned from the modernist architectural movement. Examples are typically very linear, fortresslike and blockish, often with a predominance of concrete construction. Initially the style came about for government buildings, low-rent housing and shopping centers in order to create functional structures at a low cost.” The article has a picture of an example of the style— the Boston City Hall (1969)—and calls attention to certain Brutalist features: “top-heavy massing, the use of slender base supports, and the sculptural use of raw concrete.” It is strange to me that buildings that were considered to be representative of prestigious modern architecture when I was young are now so out of fashion.

MY OPINIONS ON PINKER’S HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (COMMENT).

Philip — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:13:44 +0000

MY OPINIONS ON PINKER’S HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (COMMENT). I have revisited Pinker’s arguments on violence because I have been thinking about it a good bit. My thoughts at this point (before reading the book): First, the most important thing about the book is its originality. Pinker asks a very important question in a way that has not been asked before. Next, I agree with Dick’s rejection of Pinker’s argument that the last hundred years reflect a decline in violence. It is not legitimate to exclude outliers by saying that “except for…..” The same argument could be used to exclude major tragedies in other centuries. Then, Pinker’s summary of the archaeological evidence that savages weren’t noble and that human nature was violent from the beginning is persuasive to me. Finally, I find comfort in Pinker’s hopeful analysis of the restraints on violence that have developed—what erik calls argumentation.