Magic Statistics

Colleges of obstetricians and gynaecologists in both the United States and Canada have recommended that all pregnant women should be tested to see whether their babies might have Down’s Syndrome.  Previously, only pregnant women over 35 were encouraged to be screened for Down’s.

In the same month, both the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada (SOGC) are recommending that all pregnant women, not just those over 35, should be screened, including with invasive procedures such as amniocentesis, to discover whether they have a risk of bearing a child with Down’s Syndrome.

The American college did not mention what action a pregnant woman might take if her unborn baby is found to be at risk of Down’s, but the Canadians were not so coy about that.

Dr. Andre Lalonde, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Ottawa and the executive vice president of the SOGC, said the society decided to issue the recommendation so that a greater number of women would have the option to terminate their pregnancies should fetal abnormalities be detected.

"Yes, it's going to lead to more termination, but it's going to be fair to these women who are 24 who say, 'How come I have to raise an infant with Down's syndrome, whereas my cousin who was 35 didn't have to?' " Dr. Lalonde said. "We have to be fair to give women a choice."

The executive vice president of the SOGC says having a baby with Down’s Syndrome is unfair.  By implication, raising a Down’s Syndrome child is more of a burden than any adult should have to put up with.

In the view of Prof Joseph Boyle, a Catholic who teaches bioethics at the University of Toronto, being told that one’s unborn child is at risk of Down’s may lead parents who would not otherwise do so to have an abortion.

"From a traditional ethical point of view, I think the question has to be: Is there a good reason for doing this other than what the pro-lifers call the 'search-and-destroy' rationale," he said. "If your reason is to allow people to have an abortion, that isn't a good reason."
. . .
"From the point of view of a lot of people, even people who are pretty stoutly resolved not to get abortions, it might be pretty tempting," he said. "And, of course, you don't put yourself into temptation's way without a very good reason. My wife and I are long past having to deal with an issue like that, but I don't know what we'd do."

This information obtained in the screening test has only one practical use: informing a decision to abort.  Parents who are opposed to abortion should simply decline a doctor’s recommendation to have the test.

Gregory S Paul’s study on social dysfunction and religiosity has taken a beating from several bloggers, myself included.  Now it emerges that the Journal of Religion and Society, which published Mr Paul’s paper, has also printed a thorough refutation.

Gerson Moreno-Riaño, Mark Caleb Smith, and Thomas Mach of Cedarville University take Mr Paul to task on just about every aspect of his paper.  His concepts and definitions were ambiguous, inadequately explained, and, in some cases, excessively flexible.  He focused his analysis exclusively on the individual level and failed utterly to recognise, never mind take into account, the complications arising from the fact that national polities do not necessarily reflect the prevalence of religious belief among citizens.  Thus, for example, most Western European nations favour one particular religion or denomination, yet have great majorities of non-religious individuals.  The United States, by contrast, is an officially secular nation with a highly religious populace.

Moreno-Riaño et al. also discuss data quality problems in Mr Paul’s fundamental data source, the International Social Survey Program, especially with regard to the religion questions.  The concerns are widely known and well-documented in the academic literature but Mr Paul gives no indication that he is aware of the controversy.

And then there’s the fact that Paul’s article contains no actual statistical analysis.

Paul does not provide the reader with a meaningful opportunity to evaluate his findings, for he provides no correlation coefficients. He also fails to determine or report the significance of these correlations, so the reader is left to trust Paul’s judgment that a negative correlation between theism and indicators of societal health has been established. Statistics exist so that we are not required to trust the subjective judgment alone, particularly in regard to matters as weighty as theism, democracy, and the social good.

Mr Paul apparently expected us simply to trust his judgment.

h/t: Telic Thoughts and Thinking Christian.

Previous related posts:

• I can’t believe that atrocious article is still being touted
• Dogma bites man
• From our bulging “How not to do statistics” file

US troop strength isn’t the only thing surging in Iraq right now, so’s the economy.  Growth is booming in most economic sectors, including construction and real estate development, retail and wholesale trade, and oil production.  The average employed Iraqi is earning double what he or she earned under Saddam, and that’s after adjusting for inflation.

Globe and Mail business columnist Neil Reynolds reports on an almost invisible story.

Three years ago, Iraq had 8,000 registered companies. Last year it had 34,000. Two years ago, Iraqis owned 1.4 million cellphones. Last year, they owned 7.1 million. (Iraqna, the country's leading mobile phone company, reported revenue of $333-million [U.S.] in 2005, $520-million in 2006.) Baghdad now has five times as many cars as it had before the war.

Global Insight, the economic research company, puts Iraq's GDP growth for 2005 at 17 per cent and for 2006 at 13 per cent.

Guesstimates of joblessness in Iraq have varied widely, most suggesting that unemployment is rampant—between 30% and 70%.  In mid-2005, however, a survey by the Rand Corporation applied internationally accepted concepts, definitions, and methods to produce a reliable estimate of 10.1%.

The Rand report to Congress described Iraqis as hard-working and self-motivated entrepreneurs.

"The problem in Iraq isn't unemployment," the report said. "It's poverty."

One big reason for Iraq’s economic resurgence is the 15% flat-rate personal and corporate income tax implemented by former US administrator Paul Bremer in 2004.  The government has also made much progress in dismantling Saddam’s labyrinth of economic preferences and restrictions in order to decentralise economic decision-making.

A Muslim group has proposed an inter-faith convention to be held in my home town.  Muhammed Mirza of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community says his organisation is planning to hold a World Religions Conference in Whitehorse this September.

Muhammad Mirza thinks the Third World War is on the way if religious leaders don't join together to address extremism and rising tensions in the Middle East.

To deal with that threat, Mirza, a minister for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in British Columbia, wants to hold an interfaith religious conference in Whitehorse this coming September.

The conference would include participants from many religions for a discussion about the things they have in common.

"What we want to accomplish in this program is bring different faiths together and make a very strong statement," he said in an interview in November in Whitehorse.

If the interview was held in November, why was this story only published yesterday?

"We strongly believe that all the faiths have one thing in common, living in peace."

He said denominations of many religions emphasize this principle. Working from this shared understanding, he believes, confrontation can be avoided.

"In the political work, we find the Third World War is just about to happen. If religions today don't stand up and say, 'There is no room for this beautiful planet to be destroyed by our own hands,' then there is no hope."

Call me a wet blanket, but that sounds like a hallucinatory fantasy.  I doubt that the world will take much notice of a "very strong statement" issuing from an inter-faith meeting held in a far corner of Canada's sub-Arctic.

Speaking as a Christian, I have to say that Mr Mirza's understanding of "living in peace" lacks theological depth.  Christianity teaches that peace is possible through trusting in Jesus Christ as the unique Son of God, Messiah, and Saviour, and following his teachings, with the aid and guidance of the Holy Spirit.  No other faith holds that "in common" with Christianity.

Many Muslims regard the Ahmadiyya movement as a schismatic, if not heretical, offshoot of genuine Islam.  Pakistan, for one, has pronounced that Ahmadis are in fact not Muslims.

The story was in yesterday's print edition of the Whitehorse Star; however, the online text is behind a subscriber wall.

Previous related post: Muslim martyrs in Yukon