Causation vs. Correlation: A Real World Example

Blogger Dennis Mangan points to a study that suggests the US may have suffered almost 14,000 excess deaths as a result of nuclear fallout (PDF) from the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear core meltdown. Here is the story as it originally appeared in the June 10-12 Weekend Edition of Counterpunch. Although this does not necessarily discredit the authors of the "study," you should probably be aware that Joseph J Mangano (MPH, MBA) and Janette D Sherman (MD), have been involved for many years in anti-nuclear activism.

Here is the abstract of the article as it appeared in the International Journal of Health Services:

The multiple nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima plants beginning on March 11, 2011, are releasing large amounts of airborne radioactivity that has spread throughout Japan and to other nations; thus, studies of contamination and health hazards are merited. In the United States, Fukushima fallout arrived just six days after the earthquake, tsunami, and meltdowns. Some samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal; however, the small number of samples prohibits any credible analysis of temporal trends and spatial comparisons. U.S. health officials report weekly deaths by age in 122 cities, about 25 to 35 percent of the national total. Deaths rose 4.46 percent from 2010 to 2011 in the 14 weeks after the arrival of Japanese fallout, compared with a 2.34 percent increase in the prior 14 weeks. The number of infant deaths after Fukushima rose 1.80 percent, compared with a previous 8.37 percent decrease. Projecting these figures for the entire United States yields 13,983 total deaths and 822 infant deaths in excess of the expected. These preliminary data need to be followed up, especially in the light of similar preliminary U.S. mortality findings for the four months after Chernobyl fallout arrived in 1986, which approximated final figures. _Source (PDF)

The basic thesis is fairly simple: The authors claim that a comparison of CDC weekly death rates for a select group of US cities -- from just before and just after the Fukushima meltdown -- will provide a valid picture of the fatal effects of fallout from the Japanese nuclear plant on these US cities of the Pacific Northwest.

We will look at this thesis from the standpoint of Hill's Criteria of Causation, recently considered in this Al Fin blog post.

1. Temporal Relationship
The authors do present a "before exposure" vs "after exposure" scenario, which they claim demonstrates a significant rise in deaths in the US Pacific Northwest, thousands of miles downwind in the weeks just after the Japanese incident.
2. Strength
The authors claim nearly 14,000 excess deaths in the US in the 14 weeks after the detection of excess radiation, one week after the meltdown incident.
3. Dose Response Relationship
The authors are unable to present reliable graduated exposure data which might prove or disprove a "dose-response relationship."
4. Consistency
The author's claim that the rate of excess US deaths which they detected for the 14 weeks after Fukushima, is comparable to the rate of excess US deaths detected by US researchers in the first 4 months after the Chernobyl explosion and meltdown in 1986.
5. Plausibility
There is no known biological mechanism to explain this number of excess deaths so quickly, from such relatively low levels of possible radiation exposure. The excess mortality as reported by the CDC were attributed to seasonal infections and SIDS deaths.
6. Considerations of Alternate Explanations
There is no indication that the authors considered alternate explanations for their findings.
7. Experiment
An experimental design to test this hypothesis in humans would encounter ethical difficulties. Animal testing up to this point is unlikely to explain how such low levels of excess radiation could lead to such a rapid elevation of death rates.
8. Specificity
There is no specificity relationship that is detectable in this data. In other words, there is no logical connection between these "excess deaths" and possible exposure to low levels of excess radiation.
9. Coherence
The claims of the authors are not consistent with the existing body of knowledge in regard to human health responses to transitory, relatively low radiation exposures.

A far more devastating criticism of the authors' thesis can be found here.

.....there are several conclusions to be drawn here:
-- There is no spike in infant mortality due to Fukushima. Instead there is an accidental dip during the 4 weeks before the radioactive releases reached the U.S. west coast.
-- The infant mortality rate in the northwest U.S. was actually 23% higher in the first 7 weeks of 2011 than after Fukushima, 108 cases in 7 weeks give a weekly ratio of 15.43. We can thus say, by using Sherman and Mangano's own way of phrasing it, that this amounts to a decrease of 23% and is statistically significant.
-- The data for the full time period of weeks 1 - 21 amount to 272 infant deaths over 21 weeks, i.e. a weekly rate of 12.95. This is slightly higher than the weekly rate after Fukushima (12.50).
-- Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano have a lot to explain for us...if anybody cares to listen to them after this low point in their so called scientific careers. _Source

Source
Excess deaths from relatively low, transitory radiation exposures should only show up years after the exposure. One would not reasonably expect to find "instant deaths" from such low level, short term exposures. And yet, that seems to be what the authors were trying to find, using quite noisy data from the CDC which was never meant for this type of comparative analysis.

But what is the question that everyone should be asking of the authors? "What does your follow-up data show, over the subsequent time period since the Fukushima event?"

A quick check of the most recent CDC MMWR of 6 Jan 2012 (PDF) shows a total death count for the sample 122 cities, as 9,530. This is down by over a thousand from the 3 June 2011 MMWR (PDF) which shows a death count of 10,839, for the sample 122 cities. Should I then claim that radiation from the Fukushima incident was beneficial to the health of US residents, since the US death rate has declined over time since the meltdown? Of course not. The data bounces up and down every week, for a large number of reasons. Simple correlational studies based upon this type of data should never be used to prove causation.

Index for all MMWRs in 2011, where you can find the tables for each week of 2011.

The remarkable aspect of Mangano and Sherman's paper, is the number of people who were taken in by their shoddy "research." This includes the International Journal of Health Services, as well as a wide range of "green" and anti-nuclear political sites. One of the most disheartening articles linked to this issue is this article in Oilprice.com, by John Daly.

In the real world, people are paid a lot of money to generate such pseudo-scientific "studies", "surveys," opinion polls, marketing research, and the like. Billions of dollars can change hands based upon the results of such shoddy analysis. In the case of the UN's IPCC and global climate policy, monetary redistribution into the $trillions might be easily achieved, by "scientific" methods no more valid than those used by Mangano and Sherman.

At this point in time, most of the global media is willing to cut corners on fact-checking, for the sake of "a good story," or for the sake of "advancing the agenda."

The book, How to Lie With Statistics, is as timely now as ever. If you read it and understand it, you are likely to grow angry more frequently when consuming media pieces. If you prefer bliss, you should probably choose ignorance, like most folks.

More: A quick and dirty takedown of the Mangano / Sherman "study" by Scientific American Technology Fellow Michael Moyers

Safer, More Efficient Nuclear Power

Current high oil prices add an exclamation mark to the need for new, reliable energy sources. Converting our automobiles from petrol to electricity will require new high capacity power plants--like nuclear fission reactor plants. It is important to make nuclear power so safe that the public becomes more accepting of the necessary expansion.

Brian Westenhaus at New Energy and Fuel explains some clever modifications of nuclear fuel that will make the fuel both safer for use and disposal--and--much less likely to be used to make nuclear weapons.

The technology is about the coatings that are applied to particles of fuel. Two paths are being followed, one is a cylinder shaped pellet of particles and the other is the pebble or spherical shaped pellet. The choices are made due to the diverging engineering sets that are going to pebbles that are entered into a fuel system and reside until burned through and rods filled with cylindrical pellets in common use today. The paths exist to accommodate the helium-cooled reactor where the helium gas is used to transfer the heat out to the electrical generation plant.

Spherical pellets are planned for use in systems that would meter through the fuel so avoiding a full shutdown to refuel. Cylindrical pellets would be used in rods that would produce larger reactors while still requiring a shutdown to refuel.

The advantages of the research and development of coating technology offers more beyond the increase of burnup percentage. The effects yield that the total fuel used is reduced, the amount needed to produce a given output is reduced and most importantly, the operating temperatures can be raised which brings a dramatic increase in the efficiency, or much more electricity is generated for a given amount of fuel. Nevertheless, the main concern for utility owners and customers is the safety increases as the coatings are stable beyond the reactive temperatures of the active fuel so blanking the “meltdown” or being a rich deposit of fuel that could be made into weapons.___NewEnergy

This technology appears to offer several advantages in both safety and operational efficiency over current types of fission fuel.

Brian Wang at NextBigFuture explains that nuclear energy is actually much safer than people believe--even in its worst designs.

Those who talk about PV solar power (millions of roofs) need to consider roof worker safety. About 1000 construction fatalities per year in the US alone. 33% from working at heights.

Falls are the leading cause of fatalities in the construction industry. An average of 362 fatal falls occurred each year from 1995 to 1999, with the trend on the increase. 269 deaths (combined falls from ladders and roofs in 2002).___NextBigFuture

As Brian explains at his post, only 50 workers died at Chernobyl, the worst commercial nuclear reactor accident. And of course, no one died at Three Mile Island, the most celebrated nuclear reactor mishap in the western world.

Ambitious planners who wish to see solar panels put on every rooftop, would likely be responsible for the deaths of many thousands of workers from accidental falls. Similar safety problems apply to the use of wind generators--which can be particularly hazardous.

Russia (and the West) Goes Anti Natalist: Better Never to Have Been?

Anti natalism is the view that it is better not to be born. The argument is made by David Benatar in Better Never to Have Been:"The central idea of this book is that coming into existence is always a serious harm". The breeding pairs of several western countries are putting Benatar's ideas into practise.

The most recent predictions indicate a decline in the Russian population of twenty million people in the next decade due to an excessively low birthrate of 1.2 children per family (well below replacement level) and a rise in the death rate because of widespread alcoholism and the spread of disease.

According to one Professor Antonov, “Two thirds of Russian territory is settled now as sparsely as it was in the Neolithic Age: less than one person per square kilometer. In other words, east of the Urals, a demographic wasteland is superimposed on the geographic wasteland.”

What this startling point reveals is a dramatic decline in the desire for reproduction among the younger generation. The prevalence of one-child families, the decline in the number of recorded marriages, the increase in cohabitation, and the rise in divorce are all symptoms of this condition.

Source

But not just in Russia. Imagine a world with no brothers, no sisters, no uncles, no aunts, no cousins, no nieces, no nephews . . . western societies grow progressively "anti-natalist." Birthrates decline, more women choose sterilisation before ever giving birth. This is Russia, Italy, Spain. This is the western world, the world instigating its own "die off."

As more and more people find themselves living under urban conditions in which children no longer provide economic benefit to their parents, but rather are costly impediments to material success, people who are well adapted to this new environment will tend not to reproduce themselves. And many others who are not so successful will imitate them....Japanese fertility rates have been below replacement levels since the mid-1950s, and the last time Europeans produced enough children to reproduce themselves was the mid-1970s. Yet modern institutions have yet to adapt to this new reality....Not only is the spread of urbanization and industrialization itself a major cause of falling fertility, it is also a major cause of so-called diseases of affluence, such as overeating, lack of exercise, and substance abuse, which leave a higher and higher percentage of the population stricken by chronic medical conditions. Those who reject modernity would thus seem to have an evolutionary advantage, whether they are clean-living Mormons or Muslims, or members of emerging sects and national movements that emphasize high birthrates and anti-materialism.

Source

Anti-Natalism is particularly strong among the young--those who ordinarily would produce the next generation of scientists, engineers, builders, caretakers. University educated youngsters are the most likely to have absorbed the ubiquitous defeatist message of the anti-natalists on campus.

Some lives are so bad that it would be wrong to start them. There is an obligation not to start these lives. But no lives are so good that it right to start them. There is no obligation to start these lives....So all our lives are such that it would have been better had they never been started.

Source

College students are listening to that message--they have no choice if they are to pass their professors' exams and achieve good grades in the professors' classes. But what is to become of the modern west--the welfare state--if students continue to put these ideas into practise?

The social institutions most likely to experience strain from the twin trends of ageing and depopulation are the pension and health systems that comprise the crown jewels of the postwar welfare state. These are by far the largest source of public expenditure in the industrial countries. And they are the programs most likely to be affected by the coming explosion in old-age dependency.

Source

The problem will not continue indefinitely. For Russia, rich with oil and gas, the end will come from the south and east. Resource hungry but population rich China will happily take the resources of a de-populated Siberia off Russia's hands. Putin and the other post-KGB oligarchs lack the ability to prevent it.

For Europe, the end will also come from the south and east. Pro natalist muslim immigrants to Europe will gladly utilise the mechanism of democracy to overturn secular liberalism. The current multiculturalist leftism that leads Europe lacks the ability to resist the dismantling of enlightenment safeguards against the type of tyranny that the new immigrants bring with them.

Japan will find that robots cannot truly replace people. They will also find that if the Japanese people are replaced by non-Japanese, their country will no longer be Japan. Claro que, si.

The future belongs to the people of the future. If the people of the present choose to adopt an anti-natalist stance, their time is as good as gone. But they should not assume that everyone will share their enthusiasm for non-existence. A die-off in western countries simply makes room for an uptick in birthrates for those who inherit the wealth of the absentee builders.

The Real Wars--How Most North Americans Die

While approximately 1,000 US military service members have died every year for the past three years while away at war, the true slaughter of US citizens takes place on America's highways, in homes, hospitals, and workplaces.

1. Heart disease: 654,092
2. Cancer: 550,270
3. Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 150,147
4. Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 123,884
5. Accidents (unintentional injuries): 108,694
6. Diabetes: 72,815
7. Alzheimer's disease: 65,829
8. Influenza/Pneumonia: 61,472
9. Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 42,762
10. Septicemia: 33,464

Source: Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2004, tables 7

Source

The image at the top of this post is of Randy Pausch and his children. Randy is an accomplished professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, diagnosed and under treatment for pancreatic cancer--a particularly rapid and deadly malignancy. It helps to put a face to the statistics.

The real mass casualty wars of our time are these wars taking place on home soil. The true anti-war protesters are those who work against the wanton death and destruction caused by these mass killers.

Speaking only for myself, I would choose a quick death in combat over a lingering death from heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, liver disease, Parkinson's, nephrosis, and any number of diseases that kill large numbers of us every year. My long experience in several intensive care units taught me the mercy of a rapid death.

Link to Randy Pausch courtesy of Pastorius via email.

Space Colonisation as an Alternative to War

As supplies of conventional energy resources begin to plateau--while demand continues to grow wildly--prices will rise, sparking territorial disputes over energy supplies. As demand for biofuels grows, crop prices will grow, sparking territorial disputes over prime cropland. Humans fight over any number of things, and until abundant (fusion?) energy is ubiquitous and nanotechnology provides near-universal affluence, humans will fight over whatever is there to fight over. Unless . . .

Consider:

* If the materials in the single largest asteroid, Ceres, were used for orbital space settlement construction, we could build territory equal to over 200 times surface area of the Earth (1). This is enough to provide every single nation as much territory as if they conquered the entire Earth. Furthermore, conquering Earth is probably impossible, whereas building space settlements is merely incredibly difficult.
* The total energy resources of this solar system are about 2.3 billion times the energy available on Earth. This is simply the Sun's energy output -- and the Sun is an enormous nuclear fusion reactor that works perfectly right now, today, and is perfectly safe -- or at least isn't going away. Furthermore, we know, more or less, how to exploit space solar power .
* There are thousands of asteroids in orbits that cross Earth's, and just one of them, 3554 Amun, contains roughly $20 trillion dollars worth of precious metals.

Space settlement can make resource wars a thing of the past, something we only read about in history books, because space settlement can deliver far, far more resources at far, far less cost. Less money, less death, less destruction, and infinitely less stupidity.

Resources and territory are not the only reasons for war, but they cause a lot of them. The U.S. has spent far more defending oil access in the Mid-East than it would cost to build space settlements. Perhaps it's time to change direction. Perhaps it's time to make Earth a bit healthier for children and other living things. Perhaps it's time to choose life over war. Perhaps it's time to start building space settlements.

Space

The resources of the solar system and its neighborhood are incomprehensibly vast. Would humans only learn to develop the tools of surviving and thriving in the space environment, there would be no resource scarcity.



The energy of testosterone laden young males needs an outlet. That outlet can be either exploration or war, unless the young male devotes most of his energy to work and family life.

When you look at India and China, you see two populous countries with tens of millions of excess males each. Muslim countries that allow polygamous marriages likewise produce an excess of non-marriageable males.

As women in more parts of the world devote their lives to careers instead of raising families, more men find themselves with abundant time and energy on their hands. After a generation or two of this, the population begins to drop, and the number of excess males will decline. Western Europe, Japan, and Russia have populations that are imploding rapidly. For those, the drive toward war and exploration may be declining, currently.

Alzheimer's and Parkinson's May be Linked to K Channel Gene Mutation

Potassium Channels are vital gateways in all body cells, and play a particular role in nerve cells for propagating action potentials, or nerve impulses. Now, researchers at the US NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), have linked mutations in potassium channel genes (KCNC3) to different types of spinocerebellar ataxias, cerebellar degeneration, and a form of mental retardation. The mutated KCNC3 genes are linked to nerve death in these disorders. In addition, abnormal potassium channels have been found in Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and Huntington's Disease--all severe progressively degenerative neuronal maladies.

"This type of gene has never before been linked to nerve cell death," says Stefan Pulst, M.D., of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the new study. The report will appear in the February 26, 2006, advance online publication of Nature Genetics.*

In the study, the researchers looked for the gene that caused a neurodegenerative movement disorder called spinocerebellar ataxia in a Filipino family. This disorder typically appears in adulthood and causes loss of neurons in the brain's cerebellum, resulting in progressive loss of coordination (ataxia). Dr. Pulst and his colleagues traced the disease in this family to mutations in a gene called KCNC3. The gene codes for one of the proteins that form potassium channels – pore-like openings in the cell membrane that control the flow of potassium ions into the cell. The researchers found a different KCNC3 mutation in a previously identified French family with a disease called spinocerebellar ataxia type 13, which causes childhood-onset ataxia, cerebellar degeneration, and mild mental retardation.

The KCNC3 gene codes for a type of potassium channel that normally opens and closes very quickly. This type of channel is particularly important in "fast-bursting neurons" that fire hundreds of times per second in the brain. "Fast-bursting neurons are like building blocks – they are used in the nervous system a lot," Dr. Pulst says. Among other places, these neurons are found in the brain's substantia nigra, where they aid in motor control, and in the hippocampus, where they play a role in learning. Previous studies have found abnormalities in the number of potassium channels in Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Huntington's diseases. Together with the new study, these findings suggest that potassium channel abnormalities may contribute to a wide variety of neurodegenerative diseases.

....Through cell culture experiments, the researchers learned that the KCNC3 mutations in the Filipino and French families affect the potassium channel very differently. The mutation found in the Filipino family completely prevented the potassium channel from functioning. The mutation from the French family caused potassium channels to open earlier than normal and close too late. This reduced the rate at which the neurons could fire.

Researchers have long known that potassium channels are important for neuronal function. Mutations in other potassium channel genes have been linked to problems such as epilepsy, cardiac arrhythmias, and periodic muscle paralysis. One type of potassium channel defect has also been found in a disorder called episodic ataxia type 1 that causes brief episodes of ataxia without neurodegeneration. However, potassium channel mutations have never before been linked to neurodegenerative disease or mental retardation. The findings were surprising because mice lacking the KCNC3 gene have only mild behavioral changes, Dr. Pulst says.

It is not yet clear exactly how the potassium channel mutations cause neurodegeneration. One theory is that the mutations might increase the amount of calcium that can enter cells, causing them to die because of excitotoxicity (overstimulation). The altered potassium channels might prevent neurons from coping well with oxidative stress – damage from reactive molecules called free radicals that are produced during metabolism. The mutations also might cause subtle developmental defects that reduce the long-term survival of neurons, the researchers say.

Potassium channels in many nerve types must be very fast, and their timing of opening and closing has to be precise. Very subtle changes in the gene sequence could throw off the timing of the channels. The more overt the changes, the earlier in life the defects would exhibit themselves as poor neuronal functioning.

This type of defect strikes me as a candidate for gene therapy, more than traditional pharmacotherapy. Until ultra-selective means of introducing genes into particular cell types are perfected, good and definitive therapies for such mutational changes may be delayed. Nevertheless, it is important to catalog these defects and their manifestations, so that scientists in all the various therapeutic approaches can evaluate potential therapies. This is the grunt work that absolutely must be done to pave the way for the magnificent treatments that will in time appear smooth and effortless.