Letter to the Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore Sun published a letter I wrote to them: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-rr-oprah-letter-20180110-story.html

Text reproduced here:

Dear Baltimore Sun,

Do you ever ask yourself what might have happened if, in the very early days of the 2016 presidential election, you hadn't breathlessly reported every movement and tweet of a celebrity whose only qualifications for running for national office were wealth and fame? Have you soberly reflected on dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2017, "complicit," and asked yourself to what extent you too are complicit in the current state of the world?

If you have, then, why, after everything we have all learned, did you choose to publish, "Oprah 2020: She can run, but will she?" (Jan. 9)? Before publishing this article, did you ask yourself to what extent does it report what actually happened (Oprah Winfrey gave a speech as she accepted an award at the Golden Globes), and to what extent does it fan the flames of wild speculation that a celebrity whose only qualifications are wealth and fame might run for national office?

Did you hope that reporting on Ms. Winfrey's presidential run would make the idea sound as plausible as "Icebreakers called out as cold weather persists" (also on page 6), and that two wrongs would somehow make a right?

Today I'm thankful for: The Baltimore Sun

Today (and every day) I'm thankful for the Baltimore Sun.

An independent free press is crucial for any democracy.  All politics is local, so a local newspaper is even more important.  The Baltimore Sun is still here, and I am thankful.

Letter to the Baltimore Sun: fact-checking op-ed pieces

The Baltimore Sun posted to their web site a letter I wrote them: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-goldberg-letter-20150909-story.html

There's a pay wall, so I'm posting below the original text (for whatever reason, they revised it).

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Dear Baltimore Sun,

I read Jonah Goldberg's op-ed piece in the September 6 edition ("Political correctness and the Wonder Woman lunchbox") with interest.  I thought his analysis was reasonable enough, but did the incident even happen?  The column cites the web site The Mary Sue, which found the story from a post on the social media site Imgur.  I found the original picture online without much trouble: it's a picture of a printed letter that could have been typed and printed by, well, anyone.  What is your fact-checking process for op-ed pieces?  Did you try to get a quote from the family involved, or to identify who they are, or to identify the school, or even the state in which the incident supposedly happened?

I understand I can't believe everything I read on the internet, but I had higher expectations for the Baltimore Sun.

Recent blog post roundup and Sun letter on fetal learning

Recent posts for the ACS Chemical Biology Community have been on social taboos about discussing compensation, what to wear to work, and gender and scientific authorship.

The Baltimore Sun also published my letter in response to a pop science story they ran on fetal learning.  (The Sun's version appears to have fallen down the memory hole, but here's the original Reuters reports: it's very similar to the Sun story, except the Sun changed "babies in the womb" to "fetuses".)  The Sun has a pay wall, so I'm reproducing the letter here:

Your headline "Fetuses show signs of learning at 34 weeks" (July 27) was inconsistent with the content of the story accompanying it.

The author admitted that the findings were "not statistically significant." In layperson's terms, "not statistically significant" means that the evidence is not strong enough support a conclusion one way or the other.

Scientist Carl Sagan famously said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To claim that fetuses show evidence of learning three weeks earlier than previously thought, the authors would have to show convincing evidence that the earlier work was mistaken. But because their findings were not statistically significant, they can offer no such evidence.

Science journalists are the final interpreter of science for the public. It is their duty not just to report recent findings but also — and more importantly — to critically evaluate them for their non-scientist readers.

The letter was edited somewhat: for brevity, I guess.  Here’s the original text:

Your recent headline "Fetuses show signs of learning at 34 weeks" was inconsistent with the content of the story.  The author admitted that the findings were "not statistically significant".  In layperson's terms, "not statistically significant" means "the evidence is not strong enough support a conclusion one way or another".  Carl Sagan famously said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  To claim that fetuses show evidence of learning three weeks earlier than previously thought, the authors need to show convincing evidence that the previous work was mistaken: because their findings were not statistically significant, their findings are not such evidence.  The author was wrong to "cautiously" conclude, the reviewers were wrong not to insist on removing that conclusion, and the journal was wrong to publish that conclusion, but science journalists are the final interpreter of science for the public.  It is the sacred duty of a science journalist not just to report recent scientific findings, but also, more importantly, to critically evaluate them for their non-scientist readers.

Neither "skateboarding" nor an "accident"

Letter submitted to the Baltimore Sun:

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Dear Baltimore Sun,

I was disappointed to see your headline for the story about U.S. Naval Academy midshipman Hans Loewen's untimely death ("Midshipman dies after skateboarding accident", March 30).  From the family memorial, it sounds like Mr. Loewen was run over by a car.

Americans consistently and significantly underestimate the dangers posed by motor vehicles, and headlines like this one contribute to this public misperception and the consequent underinvestment in public transit infrastructure, difficulty in passing distracted driving laws, and, of course, tragic and entirely preventable deaths of pedestrians, cyclists, and skateboarders, not to mention occupants of other motor vehicles.

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(As far as my own title, I certainly don't mean to suggest that whoever was driving the car intended to kill anyone, but I do very much want to reinforce that crashes aren't accidents.)

letter to the Sun: horror vs. terror

Here's a letter I sent to the Sun:

Dear Baltimore Sun,

I was intrigued by your choice to use the word “horror” and not “terror” in your headline for your report on the devastating shooting in Colorado (“Real-life horror”, July 21).  I was then disappointed to not find any meaningful discussion in the story about whether this act of violence should be considered an act of terrorism.  Perhaps there are good reasons not to, but, without a presentation of those reasons, I cannot help but wonder whether if the suspected shooter were Muslim, had brown-colored skin, or had an Arabic-sounding name, your editorial choices would have been different.

The distinction may seem academic to the families of the victims, who are now going through the darkest hours of their lives, but this question actually raises two important issues.  During a time of limited resources and concern about the deficit, questions about how we will allocate those resources get to the very core of our priorities as Americans.  Our nation spends literally billions of dollars fighting terrorism: are we going to spend some of those dollars to prevent violent and, yes, terrifying attacks in our own country, even when the perpetrators are white?

The second issue is continued hostility toward Muslim Americans.  These sorts of editorial choices contribute to the misconception that only Muslims are terrorists, which leads to the further confusion that all Muslims are terrorists, which leads to irrational activities such as the inquiries currently led by U.S. Rep. Bachmann.  Not only are these inquiries a poor use of our aforementioned scant resources, but they also broadcast to the world how hypocritical Americans are: the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reflects that this country was first colonized by Europeans primarily in order to escape religious persecution, and, by prohibiting any sort of religious test for public office, our Founding Fathers recognized that someone’s religion is a poor basis on which to judge their character.  And an ugly perception of Americans around the world will, sadly, fuel more violence against Americans.

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Tone Alert gave me five red bars for this one: but I'm not sure there's a way to talk about terrorism and racism without setting it off.

More anti-science sentiment in the Sun

A recipe for scones in today's Baltimore Sun (warning: pay wall) includes the words "Tips: I always use aluminum-free baking powder because I don't like the idea of eating metal."

Metals are actually a necessary component of your diet to maintain good health.  This concept is in fact so important that it's what we cover in the very first lecture of the Metabolism course for first-year medical students (here at what U.S. News & World Report considers the second-best medical school in the United States).  Calcium, potassium, and sodium maintain important membrane potentials, and magnesium, iron, zinc, manganese, copper, molybdenum, and selenium are required at the active sites of important enzymes, where they bind substrates, transfer electrons, withdraw electrons, or maintain enzyme conformation.

It's true that aluminum is not on this list (so far!), so if you want to avoid eating it, that's just fine: but please don't avoid it just because it's a "metal".  (Or, heaven forfend, a "chemical".)

letter to the Baltimore Sun: human trafficking in Maryland

Here's the text of a letter I sent to the Baltimore Sun, and here's a link to the article I refer to.  (Warning: the Baltimore Sun now has a New York Times-style paywall, so you only get a certain number of free page views per month.)

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Dear Baltimore Sun,

I was very pleased to see your front page story today (Nov.6, "On the streets of Baltimore, a new hustle") on human trafficking in the United States. When most people think of human trafficking, they imagine third-world countries, not Baltimore Street. Thank you for doing your part to raise awareness about this very important, very relevant, and very local issue. I hope that you will continue your coverage on this important topic: for example, what is the status of the Phylicia Barnes murder case, and is anyone investigating whether she was a victim of human trafficking?

Baltimore Sun letter update

The Baltimore Sun posted my letter on their web site.  (I like my version better, but whatevs.)

letter to the Baltimore Sun: Grand Prix police priorities

Here's the text of a letter I sent to the Baltimore Sun:

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Dear Baltimore Sun,

On Saturday, I crossed over the Grand Prix track via the skywalk between the Pratt Street Pavilion and the Gallery.  Racecars were driving on the track, so I lingered for a moment to see what it was my tax dollars had bought.  But only for a moment, because then three police officers ordered me to move along.  Now, I know that it wasn’t for crowd control (there were only three other civilians on the bridge besides me, so there was no congestion crossing the bridge) or safety purposes (I have seen far more people congregated on this very bridge during parades down Pratt Street without risking the bridge’s collapse), so I could only conclude that they were there on behalf of the race organizers, who presumably believe that in addition to buying the right to use the people’s roads, they had also bought the right to observe the race from any other point in space, public or private.

I was delighted.  I could only conclude that there were no homicides left to clear, no citizens in the Northeastern District waiting for cops to respond to calls, and no teenagers dealing drugs on West Baltimore corners, if three of Baltimore’s finest could afford to spend their time hassling taxpayers for standing on public property.  Surely Mayor Rawlings-Blake had therefore scrapped her plan to hire 300 more police officers, and the money saved could instead be put toward repairing our crumbling schools and reopening our shuttered rec centers and city pools to keep our children off the streets and out of trouble.

Imagine my disappointment, then, when I opened Monday’s Baltimore Sun to learn that, in fact, there had been no fewer than six shootings in the city during the course of the Grand Prix, one of them fatal.

Turns out it was just another case of our city’s administration's putting the interests of developers ahead of those of its own citizens.  I cannot help but wonder that we might do more to convince people to come visit and spend money in our city if we focused our limited police resources on reducing crime in our city neighborhoods rather than letting the Grand Prix organizers use them as taxpayer-provided hired muscle on deserted skywalks downtown.

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In conclusion: I survived the Grand Prix, but I'll be glad to have an excuse to be out of town come next Labor Day.