Back when I used to go to journalism conferences, I remember there frequently being workshops offered on the theme of “math for journalists.” In other words, lessons on how not to screw up, or get tricked by, nuances of percentages, ratios, and statistics. We could all always use a brush up on those things, but I remember being surprised and disheartened at how many people who went into journalism came from the self-professed math-hating or scared-of-numbers camps.

Now, I don’t think that you need to be able to work complicated calculus problems in your spare time in order to report the news. But numbers matter. And fostering a popular understanding of what they mean matters.

The recent austerity Excel error debacle is a great case in point. In case you missed it, two economists, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, published a paper in 2010, right at the heart of the Great Recession claiming to show that when debt hit 90 percent of GDP, there was a significant tipping point in terms of reduced economic growth. Ideological supporters of austerity, looking to bolster their inhumane policies, latched onto the paper, saying it showed that even if their policies caused pain now, they were right for the long term.

And despite skepticism by many, too many journalists let them get away with it, presenting their theory as confirmed and widely accepted fact. As Paul Krugman points out, the Washington Post Editorial Board, in calling for continued aggressive action on the deficit, referred to “the 90 percent mark that economists regard as a threat to sustainable economic growth.”

Two problems: there’s the ever present correlation vs. causation problem. In other words, if two things are correlated, you don’t know which caused the other, or if they are both related to some third factor. Slow growth could be causing high debt and not the other way around. Now, if journalists reported responsibly about correlation and causation, some large percentage of health and science news would disappear entirely (and their headlines would get a lot less interesting). But anyone who has read about the publication bias toward studies that show positive results as opposed to those that don’t (but which are likely just as accurate and important) might conclude that we’d probably be better off that way.

But there was another problem with the whole austerity paper. It was just plain wrong. They screwed up. Left out some countries. Made an excel typo when creating a sum. And when those mistakes are corrected, their tipping point disappears. The justification for a set of policies that have had real, tangible, destructive consequences at the scale of nations as well as families was created by a math error. Pretty great reason to not exempt the policy folks and journalists from math class, I’d say.

Now, I’m tempted to feel a little sorry for the researchers. Everyone screws up sometime, even when they are trying to be diligent. However, my sympathy is of course muted by what the authors were trying to prove and what it was used to justify, certainly with no protest from them.

Writing in New Scientist, Velichka Dimitrova called this a good reason to support open data—everyone who publishes something on economics should make their data sets available to other researchers so their results can be replicated and built upon. I thoroughly agree, and I hope that doing so would have uncovered this mistake sooner. But I have to wonder if any business journalists or editorial boards would have bothered to look, even if the data sets were there.

It’s easy to impatiently twitch about the anti-intellectual, anti-science factions in this country who want to deny established facts about planetary orbits, overwhelming evidence for evolution and climate change, or the complete lack of evidence for any damage to children of gay parents. But it’s just as anti-intellectual to not make any distinction between scientific consensus on repeatedly, rigorously studied topics, and one-off, not-replicated, politically convenient studies. It’s anti-science to not take responsibility for knowing how the scientific process works and to fail to understand probability and statistics enough to play our role as skeptics.

And it’s a problem if we let researchers imply what moral choices we should make based on their conclusions. After all, what if Reinhart and Rogoff had been right? There has been a loud chorus of us who have for decades been saying that economic growth can’t be our measure of health—that we live on a finite planet, and infinite growth based on limited natural resources with externalities not well accounted for is the wrong model, practically and morally. So even if growth would slow, should we have made knee-jerk policies that cause suffering now in order to try to capture that old dream of forever growth in the future? Or could this moment be, in either case, a time to reframe our investments toward a lower growth, lower consumption, yet more sustainable, more fair, more humane future?

 mjoy.org

Capitol Chamber Artists will complete their 44th season this Saturday night with a varied program, with works that range from the romantic era to the 20th century.

These will include Joseph Rheinberger’s Six Pieces for Violin and Organ, as well as works by Maurice Durufle and CCA organist Alfred Fedak.

To celebrate John Corigliano’s 70th birthday, CCA will be performing his Violin and Piano Sonata of 1963. Corigliano has written of the work, “It was originally entitled Duo, and therefore obviously treats both instruments as co-partners. Virtuosity is of great importance in adding color and energy to the work which is basically an optimistic statement.”

On Saturday, the CCA lineup will include organist Fedak, pianist Aniko Szokody, violinist-violist Mary Lou Saetta and flautist Irvin Gilman.

Capitol Chamber Artists will perform Saturday (May 25) at 8 PM at Westminster Presbyterian Church (262 State St., Albany). There will be a preconcert recital at 7 PM. Tickets are $16, $8 students. For more info, call 458-9231.

On May 9, at around 6:30 PM, a small group of union members, citizens, and employees of the Albany County Nursing Home held a peaceful vigil outside of the home of Albany County Legislator Mary Lou Connolly. The action was part of a series of similar events held to protest Albany County Executive Dan McCoy’s proposal to privatize the nursing home. The group had also canvassed Connolly’s neighborhood with leaflets, which urged people to contact Connolly to persuade her to vote against McCoy’s proposal.

By all accounts, the vigil, organized primarily by the Albany County Central Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO (ACCFL), was pretty typical as far as these events go. Mindy Berman, communications director of 1199SEIU, the union that represents the ACNH workers, said that the Guilderland police had been called in advance and the group “had permission to be there.” The event was promoted on the Capital District Area Labor Federation (CDALF) Facebook page.

But there was one person on the scene whose presence seemed questionable to many eyewitnesses.

He was dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, and his nearly-white hair was neatly combed as photographs from the event indicate. These images also show that he traveled lightly—in addition to a phone clipped to his belt, a pen in his breast pocket, his wristwatch and eyeglasses, the man carried a point-and-shoot digital camera and a notebook. One picture shows him taking pictures, in another he appears to be writing in the notebook, and in one other frame, he is in the center of the photograph looking straight into the lens.

Multiple sources on the scene identified the man as Anthony Salerno, a former Albany police officer and Altamont public safety commissioner. A comparison of a photograph of Salerno in his police days, and the photos of the man taking pictures that evening, all but confirm that the man at the vigil was Salerno. But since he wasn’t taking part in the event, and eyewitnesses claim that he was photographing them and taking notes, many are wondering: Just what was Salerno doing?

Many believe that Salerno is one of two private investigators hired by the county executive’s office last year. The salaried positions were created by Resolution No. 246, which was adopted 26-10 by county legislators in July 2012.

The language of the proposal was simple: “Create and Increase Line Item A1230 1 4130 001 Investigator by $21,635 with an annual salary of $45,000,” and “Create and Increase Line Item A1230 1 4130 002 Investigator by $24,038 with an annual salary of $50,000.”

Too vague, said legislator Dave Mayo, who was one of 10 who voted against it. “There just wasn’t enough information,” he said. “No background checks, no names—it wasn’t to my satisfaction.”

Legislator Tim Nichols also voted against the resolution, and now he would like to see some more transparency. “When I found out one of the two investigators was there,” he said, “I found it disturbing. We need to know exactly what these people are doing, who they are, and who they are watching. Was this after-hours? Do they get overtime? Is this in their job description? What is their purpose?”

Nichols added, “In our county charter, the legislature cannot fire or eliminate any of the executive’s staff positions.” In other words, the investigators are here to stay.

Mary Rozak, spokesperson for the county executive’s office, confirmed that Salerno “is a county employee whose job title is investigator, and he is part-time.” She also said that there are many good reasons to have the investigators on staff. “They have found inconsistent billing practices, with an employment program that saved over $70,000,” she said. “[They] were critical in partnering with the city attorney in the Cash for Gold scheme, which [yielded] $4,000.” She added that they also investigate theft of property and potential patient abuse at the nursing home, calls and letters to the county executive that are “threatening or suspicious in nature,” and help with fact checking for the county attorney’s office.

Rozak said that she couldn’t speak to whether or not there were any county investigators at the May 9 vigil. She said that “to the best of [her] knowledge there was no one on the county payroll” at the event. 

A background scan of Salerno’s work record results in a varied report. According to a 1997 Times Union article, Salerno was involved in a case, as an Albany police officer, in which three youths testified that Salerno and at least two other on-duty cops used excessive force against them, which included a police dog handled by Salerno. A 1998 article in The Daily Gazette reported that Salerno was cited in a lawsuit stemming from the same event. The article also said, “A police department investigation into the August 1997 incident found no evidence of excessive force or racism, [Albany Police Chief Kevin] Tuffey said. But the investigation did rule the use of a police dog at the scene was improper even though it was within regulations at the time, he said.”

The Altamont Enterprise reported that Salerno ran for the position of Albany County Sheriff in 2011. According to the article, more than 50 people applied for the position and fewer than 10 were selected for a final interview, and Albany Common Council President Carolyn McLaughlin explained: “Salerno was not among them, largely because the city was looking for someone with ‘more supervisory experience’ and more experience with unions and community policing.”

The same piece reported that “Salerno stirred controversy here before leaving the village police department when he failed, after five years of what was to be a probationary period, to take and pass a Civil Service police chief exam. Salerno was praised by village trustees and the mayor as having brought the village police department up to a high standard. ‘Tony represents . . . the epitome of what we believe is the community policing model,’ Mayor James Gaughan said last August of the primary reason the village board was committed to keeping Salerno.”

Salerno wasn’t the only county employee spotted at the May 9 vigil. Brad Maione, who works on the county executive’s communications team, was also photographed on the scene. Of the potential presence of county employees there that evening, Rozak said, “I go to various events and photograph things. People have their own private lives.”