I am delighted to report that I got the chance to write an essay for one of my favorite publications:
"The New Old Lie."
UPDATE: A link from Arts and Letters Daily brought out my fan club, so please check the comments to enjoy a fine collection of logical fallacies.
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Wikipedia Fail
If anyone (students, pundits, etc.) ever wants some reasoning for why Wikipedia is not a credible source, here you go:
The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia.
I did not realize that Wikipedia aimed to be a conventional wisdom aggregator, even if the conventional wisdom is verifiably wrong. Wow.
The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia.
I did not realize that Wikipedia aimed to be a conventional wisdom aggregator, even if the conventional wisdom is verifiably wrong. Wow.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Obama's Faith
There is a special category of "Things that people think that Bush did, bud did not do, but Obama did, or does." Add this to the file.
Friday, January 20, 2012
A Little Storm
Well, that got some attention. The account of my interaction with PolitiFact made a little tour of the interwebs. Here are a few highlights, for those keeping score.
Scott Johnson at Powerline wrote a post called "A PolitiFact Case Study," which reviewed some previous stories about fact checking organizations.
Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online's The Corner found the story "pretty amazing," and called it, "The Lameness of PolitiFact."
Ace of Spades wondered if this meant 'the end of PolitiFact'. Hot Air and Rand Simberg followed a similar line.
John Nolte at Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism also criticized PolitiFact based on the post.
Politico's Dylan Byers noted the affair, and kindly agreed with my opinion on the matter. Of note, Byers asked whether or not Jacobson consulted any other experts. For the record, he did contact about a dozen other people, some I know and can verify are much smarter than me (faint praise, but still). Bill Adair at PolitiFact chose to respond to the Politico post, and did so here, defending their "pants on fire" determination.
The most detailed response to the whole episode thus far came from Jason Linkins at Huffington Post, "Politifact Hands Mitt Romney Premature 'Pants On Fire'." Linkins filled in the context of Romney's statements from the debate, and concluded that, "Maybe Romney's pants are on fire. But Politifact hasn't yet done the work to make that determination."
That seems right to me, at least on this issue. Because I was not trying to show up the folks at PolitiFact or defend or attack Governor Romney. I thought it was an interesting look into how a fact checking group like PolitiFact worked in one instance. Since I thought their conclusion in this instance went too far, I figured my different perspective was worth sharing.
Thanks for all the links and reading!
UPDATE: A few more links and comments have appeared in the last couple days.
Andrew Sullivan blogged about the issue here. A similar view to Sullivan's can be found in this post at Outside the Beltway.
Ted Bromund, one of the experts quoted in the PolitiFact piece, gave his take at Commentary's Contentions blog. More detail from Bromund can be found here at PolitiFact Bias.
Ed Driscoll at Pajamas Media also took a look, and Verum Serum had a link.
Finally, Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard, who has looked at PolitiFact for a while, wrote about the issue here. (Incidentally, it seems that Hemingway is the first to start the trend of spelling my name as "Bruschino," which was picked up by a few others. It is a common mistake, maybe driven by the Rossini opera that is often spelled both ways. But in our branch of the family, we spell it "Bruscino.")
_________
As long as you are here, you might as well go buy my book!: A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along. If you would like to know what it is all about, Michael Barone reviewed it for Claremont Review of Books.
If you want to read something for free that covers military history and politics, I would recommend "Another Vietnam," my CRB essay on the tired debates and overuse of the Vietnam War. (Here is my page of essays for Claremont.) A little more historical in focus is an essay about Saving Private Ryan and the memory of World War II.
Scott Johnson at Powerline wrote a post called "A PolitiFact Case Study," which reviewed some previous stories about fact checking organizations.
Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online's The Corner found the story "pretty amazing," and called it, "The Lameness of PolitiFact."
Ace of Spades wondered if this meant 'the end of PolitiFact'. Hot Air and Rand Simberg followed a similar line.
John Nolte at Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism also criticized PolitiFact based on the post.
Politico's Dylan Byers noted the affair, and kindly agreed with my opinion on the matter. Of note, Byers asked whether or not Jacobson consulted any other experts. For the record, he did contact about a dozen other people, some I know and can verify are much smarter than me (faint praise, but still). Bill Adair at PolitiFact chose to respond to the Politico post, and did so here, defending their "pants on fire" determination.
The most detailed response to the whole episode thus far came from Jason Linkins at Huffington Post, "Politifact Hands Mitt Romney Premature 'Pants On Fire'." Linkins filled in the context of Romney's statements from the debate, and concluded that, "Maybe Romney's pants are on fire. But Politifact hasn't yet done the work to make that determination."
That seems right to me, at least on this issue. Because I was not trying to show up the folks at PolitiFact or defend or attack Governor Romney. I thought it was an interesting look into how a fact checking group like PolitiFact worked in one instance. Since I thought their conclusion in this instance went too far, I figured my different perspective was worth sharing.
Thanks for all the links and reading!
UPDATE: A few more links and comments have appeared in the last couple days.
Andrew Sullivan blogged about the issue here. A similar view to Sullivan's can be found in this post at Outside the Beltway.
Ted Bromund, one of the experts quoted in the PolitiFact piece, gave his take at Commentary's Contentions blog. More detail from Bromund can be found here at PolitiFact Bias.
Ed Driscoll at Pajamas Media also took a look, and Verum Serum had a link.
Finally, Mark Hemingway at the Weekly Standard, who has looked at PolitiFact for a while, wrote about the issue here. (Incidentally, it seems that Hemingway is the first to start the trend of spelling my name as "Bruschino," which was picked up by a few others. It is a common mistake, maybe driven by the Rossini opera that is often spelled both ways. But in our branch of the family, we spell it "Bruscino.")
_________
As long as you are here, you might as well go buy my book!: A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along. If you would like to know what it is all about, Michael Barone reviewed it for Claremont Review of Books.
If you want to read something for free that covers military history and politics, I would recommend "Another Vietnam," my CRB essay on the tired debates and overuse of the Vietnam War. (Here is my page of essays for Claremont.) A little more historical in focus is an essay about Saving Private Ryan and the memory of World War II.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
A PolitiFact Example
So yesterday I got an email from Louis Jacobson of PolitiFact. It said:
I do not have a dog in this hunt. I am ambivalent about Romney and his candidacy, and I think the issue of defense spending is enormously complicated. I did not watch the debate, and I have not read the entire transcript. So, like Jacobson, my focus is entirely on the question of the relative size of the U.S. Air Force and Navy.
Jacobson did a remarkable bit of research in a very short period of time. However, I did think his questions to me were leading. Remember, Mr. Jacobson asked "(2) What context does this ignore (changing/more lethal technology, changed geopolitical needs, etc)?," which both assumes and implies to the interviewees that Romney ignored those specific contexts.
Additionally, in his final few paragraphs, Jacobson refers to Romney's statements as "meaningless," "glib," "preposterous," and "ridiculous." To be frank, I'm a little surprised by that wording, especially in writing for a site that strives for objectivity.
My opinion, for what it is worth, is that since Romney's base statement was factually accurate when it came to most numerical metrics, it would seem that he could be given credit for a half-truth, even if the context complicates the matter.
In any event, that is how PolitiFact worked in this case. Just in case you are interested.
Good morning,Here is what I wrote back:
Hope all is well! I wanted to throw a new military-related PolitiFact fact-check your way.
In last night's South Carolina debate, Mitt Romney said, "Our navy is smaller than it's been since 1917. Our air force is smaller and older than any time since 1947."
(1) Is this technically true, and if so, by what metrics?
(2) What context does this ignore (changing/more lethal technology, changed geopolitical needs, etc)?
Thanks so much!
All best,
Lou J.
Lou,The final article is here. Jacobson's Truth-O-Meter conclusion, which is based on much more than just my response, is "Pants on Fire," because while the numbers are basically accurate, the context makes his claim a lie. Jacobson writes:
1. On the Navy question, Romney appears to be accurate using the standard Navy metric, which is number of active ships. In 2003, the US Navy dropped below 300 active ships, and is currently at about 285. The last time the number was below 300 at the end of the year was 1916, when it was at 245. By the end of 1917, the number was 342. An excellent source is the Naval Historical Office, here: http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org9-4.htm
I suppose you could ding Romney for personnel numbers, which were lower in the 1930s than they are now, but navies usually are judged by ship totals. See here: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq65-1.htm
As for the Air Force, that one is trickier, because I cannot find a good single source to point the way. That said, the Air Force has a large statistical collection at this page: http://www.afhso.af.mil/usafstatistics/index.asp
It appear that the figure is accurate personnel-wise. The current force has about 332,000 active duty, and the last time it was that low was in 1947, when the number was 305,000. As for numbers and ages of aircraft, the numbers vary based on active duty or counting reserves, but generally it appears that aircraft were slightly fewer and a bit older in the mid 2005-2008 range. I am not a statistician, but the specific numbers seem a bit more complicated than the statement from Romney implies. Then again, the overall statement appears to be accurate about the trend--the Air Force is older and smaller than it has been for almost its entire history.
2. As for the issue of context, it cuts both ways. Certainly the Navy had to deal with rivals of varying strength and compositions throughout the era from 1917 to now, much as the Air Force was dealing with a peer competitor in the Soviet Union for most of its history. Likewise, newer technologies for the Navy and Air Force are probably more lethal, both absolutely and relative to most competitors, than they were in the past. So, given the geopolitical situation and the state of technology, it seems that the Navy and Air Force can stand to be smaller than they have been in the past. But there is a key contextual difference. Because the forces are so reliant on a small number of expensive and highly sophisticated ships and aircraft to to the job of large numbers of less sophisticated technologies in the past, the current technologies are more valuable and the overall system is more fragile.
If the Navy loses one carrier to enemy action, for any reason, that loss would be catastrophic in a way such a loss would not have been in the past. Likewise, the Air Force cannot afford to lose even small numbers of the highly sophisticated airframes of today. An additional contextual difference is that the U.S. military used to prepare during peacetime to mass produce weapons and material in the event of war. That is not the case today. For better or worse, the military is stuck with what it has for a long time once war begins, and regardless of losses (e.g.: the delay in producing up-armored Humvees and MRAPS for Iraq). In that sense, the small but sophisticated military is also risky.
Sorry for going on so long. I hope this helps.
All best,
Tom Bruscino
Our ruling
This is a great example of a politician using more or less accurate statistics to make a meaningless claim. Judging by the numbers alone, Romney was close to accurate. In recent years, the number of Navy and Air Force assets has sunk to levels not seen in decades, although the number of ships has risen slightly under Obama.
However, a wide range of experts told us it’s wrong to assume that a decline in the number of ships or aircraft automatically means a weaker military. Quite the contrary: The United States is the world’s unquestioned military leader today, not just because of the number of ships and aircraft in its arsenal but also because each is stocked with top-of-the-line technology and highly trained personnel.
Thanks to the development of everything from nuclear weapons to drones, comparing today’s military to that of 60 to 100 years ago presents an egregious comparison of apples and oranges. Today’s military and political leaders face real challenges in determining the right mix of assets to deal with current and future threats, but Romney’s glib suggestion that today’s military posture is in any way similar to that of its predecessors in 1917 or 1947 is preposterous.
In addition, Romney appears to be using the statistic as a critique of the current administration, while experts tell us that both draw-downs and buildups of military equipment occur over long periods of time and can't be pegged to one president. Put it all together and you have a statement that, despite being close to accurate in its numbers, uses those numbers in service of a ridiculous point. Pants on Fire.
I do not have a dog in this hunt. I am ambivalent about Romney and his candidacy, and I think the issue of defense spending is enormously complicated. I did not watch the debate, and I have not read the entire transcript. So, like Jacobson, my focus is entirely on the question of the relative size of the U.S. Air Force and Navy.
Jacobson did a remarkable bit of research in a very short period of time. However, I did think his questions to me were leading. Remember, Mr. Jacobson asked "(2) What context does this ignore (changing/more lethal technology, changed geopolitical needs, etc)?," which both assumes and implies to the interviewees that Romney ignored those specific contexts.
Additionally, in his final few paragraphs, Jacobson refers to Romney's statements as "meaningless," "glib," "preposterous," and "ridiculous." To be frank, I'm a little surprised by that wording, especially in writing for a site that strives for objectivity.
My opinion, for what it is worth, is that since Romney's base statement was factually accurate when it came to most numerical metrics, it would seem that he could be given credit for a half-truth, even if the context complicates the matter.
In any event, that is how PolitiFact worked in this case. Just in case you are interested.
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