Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Diagnosis
A patient walks into his doctor's office.
"Doc, I'm really sick. I have a tumor the size of an orange growing here, I'm constantly nauseated, tired, throwing up all the time, unexplained weight loss...My dad died of cancer...and I think I might have it too."
"How do you know you have cancer?"
"Well, I have all the symptoms...Something is seriously wrong with me, Doc. Can you run a test or something?"
"Look, I'm not going to investigate your illness unless you prove to me you have cancer."
"But...that's what the test is for..."
"Do you think you have cancer?"
"Maybe. Yeah."
"Can you prove it to me?"
"Well, no...but...that's why I came here, so you can test me..."
"Then you're out of luck. Come back to me when you can prove to me you're dying."
Two good exegeses (exegesises?) of the fraud issue are laid out here and here. I strongly recommend them to anyone who has any interest in the issue - regardless of their viewpoint. No shrillness here, merely evocation of facts. I've also run across some good discussions of the distinctions between fraud and ineptitude, and when one turns into the other. If any of those see linkworthy form, I'll put it up here.
I also recommend the analysis being done by Blumenthal, on the exit poll thing. He concludes that if one posits a systematic bias of 1.9% error between poll results and votes reported, then it doesn't look like there is conclusive evidence of anything from this indicator. It remains suggestive; it just doesn't prove anything. As to discussion of where this shift comes from? He cites nonresponse error as most likely, but admits that he can neither defend nor attack this hypothesis. Nor can anybody else I can find; Armando's points in the above summation are the best I get. There's some NEP data now circulating, which will get analyzed soon; we'll probably see data from that at about the same time as the Jan. 6th showdown when a Senator will - or will not - stand up with Conyers to protest Ohio.
At a protest in Boston, this quote being played - from Martin Luther King - might put a little spine into their wariness...
"Doc, I'm really sick. I have a tumor the size of an orange growing here, I'm constantly nauseated, tired, throwing up all the time, unexplained weight loss...My dad died of cancer...and I think I might have it too."
"How do you know you have cancer?"
"Well, I have all the symptoms...Something is seriously wrong with me, Doc. Can you run a test or something?"
"Look, I'm not going to investigate your illness unless you prove to me you have cancer."
"But...that's what the test is for..."
"Do you think you have cancer?"
"Maybe. Yeah."
"Can you prove it to me?"
"Well, no...but...that's why I came here, so you can test me..."
"Then you're out of luck. Come back to me when you can prove to me you're dying."
Two good exegeses (exegesises?) of the fraud issue are laid out here and here. I strongly recommend them to anyone who has any interest in the issue - regardless of their viewpoint. No shrillness here, merely evocation of facts. I've also run across some good discussions of the distinctions between fraud and ineptitude, and when one turns into the other. If any of those see linkworthy form, I'll put it up here.
I also recommend the analysis being done by Blumenthal, on the exit poll thing. He concludes that if one posits a systematic bias of 1.9% error between poll results and votes reported, then it doesn't look like there is conclusive evidence of anything from this indicator. It remains suggestive; it just doesn't prove anything. As to discussion of where this shift comes from? He cites nonresponse error as most likely, but admits that he can neither defend nor attack this hypothesis. Nor can anybody else I can find; Armando's points in the above summation are the best I get. There's some NEP data now circulating, which will get analyzed soon; we'll probably see data from that at about the same time as the Jan. 6th showdown when a Senator will - or will not - stand up with Conyers to protest Ohio.
At a protest in Boston, this quote being played - from Martin Luther King - might put a little spine into their wariness...
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends."
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