Theoidiocy and other matters

"How religion poisons everything" was the subtitle of a recent Christopher Hitchens book on God. He could equally have said: "How religion turns everyone into idiots." Case in point: Andrew Sullivan, who is otherwise one of the most intelligent and lucid commentators on the blogosphere (and the MSM) today.

It seems to have started here. It continues here, here and here. Click only if you're a masochist -- or if the following excerpt (from here) makes any sense to you:

Yes, resilience is obviously built into our genetics, but my point was the unique ability to transcend suffering, not just endure it. That requires a mind that renders humans uniquely self-conscious, which has led to inquiries into ultimate meaning that, so far as we can tell, no animal experiences in the same way. Many survive suffering - most, in fact. The question is whether it is overcome, rather than endured. For that, something beyond mere physical processes are necessary. Which is where religion has its place.

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On a related note, here's an entertaining guide to homoeopathy (thanks to Sunil). Homoeopathy has much in common with religion: rational arguments don't work with true believers, and in particular, it is impossible to answer the claim "but it worked for me!"

There are two caveats I would put, however. First, homoeopathy (and religion) may actually work if you're a believer. The best explanation of homoeopathy I've heard is the following (I previously posted it as a comment here): A colleague of mine claims the following is, roughly, an actual conversation he had with an actual practising (and believing) homoeopath. My friend expressed his skepticism on scientific grounds -- the dilution is so extreme that hardly a molecule or two would be expected to remain, if that. The homoeopath said, "Have you been to a homeopathic doctor?" My friend said yes. "What happened?" "The doctor asked lots of questions and then prescribed me a medicine." "How long did the questioning take?" "It took about 20 minutes and was very detailed." And, according to the homoeopath: "It is the 20 minutes of questioning that is the therapeutic part of homoeopathy. The pill is a placebo. It is just a sugar pill."

Now, placebos can have real effects (Skepdic has a good discussion), so it would not surprise me that homoeopathy (or praying) could help you with some conditions, if you believed in the first place that it could.

The second caveat is that not everything that passes for homoeopathy need actually be homoeopathic (that is, diluted according to Hahnemann's prescriptions). This is especially true in India, but there was also a recent case of a "homeopathic" cold medicine in the US that turned out to contain non-homoeopathic quantities of zinc, with a detrimental effect on the patients' sense of smell. "Alternative" therapies are poorly regulated, all over the world. Caveat emptor.

Why I dislike the BBC's reporting

Nearly every article that the BBC has written about Chandrayaan I that I have seen so far ends with these lines:

But the Indian government's space efforts have not been welcomed by all.
Some critics regard the space programme as a waste of resources in a country where millions still lack basic services.

For example: this article today, and this one, this one and this one earlier.

It is not just that they are repeating the same sentiment again and again: it is precisely the same text, inserted as boilerplate at the end of everything they have ever written about Chandrayaan -- going back to at least October 2008 (when the mission was launched), and perhaps earlier!

And precisely what is the point of such text? Of course "some critics" regard it as a waste of money. "Some critics" think the Apollo landings were faked. "Some critics" believe the earth is flat. In a country of a billion people, and a world of eight billion people, you will always find "some critics" to say anything. Who are those critics? Why not name them, just to let the reader judge their credibility?

Even that should not be too hard: I am sure there are some very respectable people who think Chandrayaan is a waste of money, and will be willing to be quoted as saying so. But the BBC cannot be bothered to go out and look for them. Much easier to just stick this boilerplate at the end of every damn article they write on the subject.

No doubt they think it makes them look "balanced".

How not to run an online bookstore

The point having been made, and belatedly responded to, this post and its comments are deleted. I wish the bookstore well.

Mercy droppeth from heaven

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1985 and in a Scottish jail since 2001, was released by Scotland yesterday on compassionate grounds: he is dying of cancer and has three months to live. Megrahi himself has always claimed to be innocent.

The relatives of US victims, as quoted in the media, are all furious. The relatives of the UK victims, on the other hand, are mostly supportive of the release, and several in fact remain unconvinced of Megrahi's guild.

The reaction of the US establishment has been equally furious, from the President down, but they were powerless.

Sample quote: "There is simply no justification for releasing this convicted terrorist whose actions took the lives of 270 individuals." (US attorney general Eric Holder)

Well, what about another terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, against whom there is considerably stronger evidence that he masterminded the bombing of Cubana flight 455 in 1976, as well as numerous other terror attacks? Oh, but he was fighting the Castro regime in Cuba. He must be one of the good guys.

Prevention and cure

I'll keep this one brief. The message is "prevention is better than cure".

First: Everyone is scared of "swine flu". It may be impossible to prevent if you live and work in crowded places, but one can greatly minimise the risks by washing hands frequently (or using hand sanitiser gels, which one can carry in one's pocket) and not touching one's face with one's hands. And that way, you reduce the risk of a lot of other illnesses. On the other hand, if you do have suspected swine flu, this is what Tamiflu could do to you or your kids. Not pretty.

Second: a truly thought-provoking article on healthcare in the US, and why the focus is on cure rather than prevention, even inside hospitals -- even inside emergency rooms known for transmitting hospital-borne infections!

How much could society benefit if we spent a fraction as much on prevention (and education on prevention) as on cure?

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Update: BMJ blog post on antiviral recommendations. And Sunil Mukhi, who starts with the best headline yet and doesn't let up from there. He makes a point that I had forgotten: what about spitting? Can we now start locking up spitters, Singapore-style?

Ghostwritten medical literature

How does one believe that a doctor's prescriptions are in your best interests? In India, the really good doctors are going by long experience with patients. The bad ones go by the marketing materials of pharmaceutical companies. Very few doctors read the medical literature actively. Yet, as a scientist, I would like to believe that the peer-reviewed medical literature should be the first resource for a good doctor in trying out new treatments.

And then one comes across stories like this New York Times article:

Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.

The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.....

The court documents were unveiled after a request from the NYT and the journal PLoS Medicine, which has a blog post on the topic.

This is probably the tip of the iceberg. It is not the first time I have worried about the reliability of medical advice. But I don't think the utter corruption and depravity -- I wish I could think of stronger words -- of medical research has been so clearly exposed before.

When Jan-Hendrik Schön falsifies his research, other researchers end up wasting their time and money and the field is set back by a few years. When doctors lend their names to the publicity material of pharmaceutical companies, ordinary people suffer and possibly die. Wyeth now faces about 8400 lawsuits about the consequences of their "hormone replacement therapy", but no amount of money can compensate the victims. And what of the doctors who agreed, and continue to agree, to be a part of this sordid game? We can boycott individuals like Dr Gloria Bachmann, named in the article (I wonder how many will do so, though), but how do we find a doctor we can trust? Luckily we do have a very sound paediatrician, of whom I may write more later. But we have also had bad experiences with other doctors (I gave one example here, but it was not the only one).

The medical industry is constantly worried, with good reason, that people are going for "alternative" treatments that may range from good-but-of-limited-scope (ayurveda, naturopathy) to ineffective but probably harmless (homeopathy, the genuine kind) to possibly dangerous (additives in many so-called "herbal" or "homeopathic" medicines) to totally crackpot (chiropractic). It is indeed very worrying. But the people who go for these therapies have decided that the medical community is in the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry, and are looking out only for the industry's interests and not the patient's. This is unfair to the majority of medical practitioners, but I increasingly feel, accurate about the most high-profile and headline-hogging doctors, in this country and elsewhere. The medical profession has to find a way to tackle this, if patients aren't to be driven to cranks and quackery.

Bubbles at the speed of light

A friend of mine, trained in physics, once told me that he never expected to be in a profession where the speed of light was a limiting factor. That profession was finance, and this article by Paul Wilmott explains why (and also explains why the author is worried): computerised stock-market transactions now take place at speeds limited only by computer hardware and communication systems. But I was particularly struck by the closing paragraph:

Buying stocks used to be about long-term value, doing your research and finding the company that you thought had good prospects. Maybe it had a product that you liked the look of, or perhaps a solid management team. Increasingly such real value is becoming irrelevant. The contest is now between the machines — and they’re playing games with real businesses and real people.

I wrote something extremely similar in the last paragraph of a blog post some time ago:

Once upon a time, you decided whether or not to buy a stock by comparing its price with the earnings of the company, estimating the dividends you would get, and comparing with other investment options. Somewhere along the way, the goal of investment changed into something rather different: buy a stock in the hope that its price will rise, and sell it. It doesn't matter if it is ridiculously overvalued: if the market is going up, buy. What exactly was wrong with the old model, and how many mutual fund managers actually looked into the strengths of the companies in their portfolios before putting their customers' money into them?

Wilmott doesn't talk about mutual funds, but to date his is the only article I have read that raises the question of investing for long-term sustainability. His NYT article talks about how bubbles grow and burst. It seems clear to me that most mutual fund managers feed (and feed on) bubbles, rather than look at the long term. It is not clear to me that, even today, investing with a long-term perspective in a sound company is a bad thing to do.

Fiat: the service is the thing

In 2004 I bought my first car, a 1999 Fiat Uno that had done about 25000 km. I bought it for 1 lakh rupees, about half the price I'd have paid for a comparable used model from Hyundai or Maruti. I've more than doubled its mileage since then and it has served me well. If Tata's "Rs 1 lakh" car serves its customers equally well for five years, they should be happy. [sentence corrected - originally said Maruti's]

But the people who should take credit for its smooth running are not Fiat, but a garage near my house called Kittu Auto Works. I first went to them more or less randomly, but stayed for a while. The service was fast and excellent, which cannot be said of the official Fiat channels. The reason for the low price I originally paid was, in fact, precisely Fiat's terrible reputation for after-sales service (plus the fact that the Uno was no longer being manufactured.) At that time, it was Sundaram motors who were tied up with Fiat for sales and service; based on their reputation, I did not even venture to try them.

As the years went by, Fiat started turning itself around internationally, based on some extremely successful launches like the Fiat 500 and the Grande Punto, and on some aggressive costcutting and optimisation by a new CEO. In India, Fiat continued to struggle, but made changes too, notably scrapping their agreement with Sundaram and tieing up instead with Tata Motors (who were interested in Fiat's technology and overseas reach).

So I tried giving the new official Fiat service centre, Concorde Motors, a try. No luck. The guy told me frankly that the waiting time for Uno parts is typically 3 weeks. I said that my mechanic gets all parts the same day so far. He said "local guys can get it locally, but we have to go through the official channels." Given how many Unos are still on the road (I'd guess that, at least in Chennai, it's the most common car not still in production), I find it inexcusable.

So I stuck with Kittu. But I was growing a bit dissatisfied: the car, as it gets older, was showing more severe problems and it seemed like he was band-aiding them rather than fixing them. Also, every time he returned the car, it seemed a new problem would crop up.

Finally, after a repeated failed attempt to fix a radiator leak (he had fitted a new pipe, but placed it too close to the radiator body, and a sharp edge had cut into the pipe), I lost patience and decided to explore another mechanic. This was a new shop called Ignite, run by a young, articulate man called Raghav who had quit his software-industry job to pursue his first love, fixing cars. After a stint with Hyundai he had decided to set out on his own.

So far I am entirely satisfied with Ignite (and recommend them to anyone in Chennai who may be reading this). I find Raghav responsive, quick to understand the problem, and thorough in fixing it. Two examples: a persistent gearbox oil leak, that Kittu kept claiming was due to the driveshaft seal, was identified by Raghav as coming from deeper inside, and he fixed it. And a cold start problem, that had been around since the time I got the car but had been getting worse, was identified as a carburettor problem; he replaced the idle jet and the car has been as good as new since. He was also upfront in telling me what he did not fix and why not (basically, difficulty in getting parts plus lack of immediate severity of the problem); if it gets worse, he would do it, fabricating parts if necessary.

Thanks first to Kittu and then to Ignite/Raghav, I have been happy with my Uno. As for Fiat India, I am grateful to them for building good cars, but also, in a way, for their horrendous after-sales service that enabled me to buy a used car at a great price.

[UPDATE 05/02/2010: I really must update the above. A little after I wrote all that, the car developed a persistent problem in the ignition system that Raghav, after changing the spark plugs, wires, ignition coil, distributor cap and rotor, and much else -- all of which needed changing, except the ignition coil -- decided he did not know how to fix. I returned to Kittu, who immediately identified the problem as the distributor -- not the cap or rotor, but the timing mechanism -- and fixed it. Moreover, a couple of parts replaced by Raghav developed problems within a few months and had to be replaced again by Kittu. So I am back to Kittu, for the lifetime of this car. The guy knows his stuff and I highly recommend him to anyone who lives in or near Kottivakkam, Chennai. He has a tendency to minimise costs, but usually that's not a bad thing. I notice he even gets lots of Hyundai cars to repair, even though there is an official repair shop about 300 metres away. As for Raghav/Ignite, he's probably good too, but hasn't seen thousands of cars yet: he'll probably get there...]

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Though I am not on the market for a new car, I have been following Fiat India's recent doings with interest. They have launched three cars this year. First, the Fiat 500 (Cinquecento), a super-small car (comparable with the Volkswagen Beetle), which is exorbitantly priced partly because, as a fully-imported car, it attracts 100% import duties. I believe sales have been in the low single digits. Second, the Fiat Linea, a very nice looking sedan whose sales have reportedly been very encouraging. I see quite a few of those on the road now. Third and most recently, the Fiat Grande Punto, a hatchback meant to compete with the likes of the Maruti Swift or Ritz, or the Hyundai Getz or i20.

The Linea and the Punto have been very competitively priced, and both are visually outstanding -- the best-looking in their category on the market, in my opinion. Reviews for both have been excellent, too. But looks and build quality have never been Fiat's problem: it's their after-sales service.

Yesterday I saw a Punto, clearly a demo vehicle, parked in front of my car as I was returning to it from a shop. Seeing my interest, the lady inside smiled at me; I asked if she worked for Fiat, and she said yes.

"Very nice car", I said.

"Thanks," she said.

"But the problem with Fiat is not the car quality: I have a Fiat Uno, parked behind [gesturing], and am happy with it. The problem is the service."

"Yes sir, for Uno and Palio there is problem with parts, but for Linea and Punto there will be no problem".

I had been preparing to argue that it was not nice to dump Uno customers after ceasing manufacture of the Uno, but this took me aback.

"Wait a minute -- the Palio is a current car! Are you saying there are problems with parts for it?"

"For petrol Palio there are problems sir, but no problems for diesel Palio."

"But then why should customers believe that servicing for the Punto is good? Maybe you have it in place now, but will you dump your Punto customers after a few years?"

"No sir, for Punto and Linea there will be no problem."

"See, the problem for Fiat has not been the cars, it has been the after-sales service. If you can't even service the Palio you have a problem. You need to make sure the service set-up for the Punto and Linea are good."

"Yes, sir, I agree. Thank you."

I will watch with interest. Apart from anything else, there seems to be a conflict of interest with Tata: the Palio and Punto compete directly with Tata's Indica, and the Linea competes with Tata's Indigo. One hopes that this does not affect their sales network.

The point is, parts are available even now for the Uno -- just not with Fiat. Due to high localisation, most parts are not actually made by Fiat, and even if Fiat doesn't warehouse them, others do. As the localisation levels of the Linea and Punto increase, I expect that the same will be true of those models too. Even if Fiat leaves customers of those cars in the lurch, third parties will step in.

I don't expect to buy a new Fiat car (or a new car of any sort) any time in the near future. But if they don't improve their after-sales service, a used Fiat could continue to be a very cheap and tempting option.

Is 377 now 404?

I've been going slow on blogging for a while. Yesterday's news of the Delhi High Court's ruling on Section 377 of the IPC is the biggest civil-rights news in India that I can remember: perhaps the biggest since untouchability was abolished. Just like untouchability, homophobia will persist in our society, but apparently it is no longer blessed by the law. But given the complexity of the situation, I wanted to spend some time absorbing the news before blogging. It is now over 24 hours and I'm not sure I'm much the wiser.

There is no ambiguity in the Delhi High Court's ruling: it is clear, and it is common sense. Outlawing consensual homosexual acts among adults is clearly discriminatory and violative of fundamental rights. (One should note that 377 does not outlaw gay sex specifically, but "carnal intercourse against the order of nature", which could be interpreted to mean anything. For example, it could outlaw any form of sex other than penile-vaginal penetration; on the other hand, given that homosexual behaviour is widespread in the natural world, one could argue that gay sex is not "against the order of nature" and not outlawed. But any interpretation of article 377 as outlawing consensual adult gay sex has been struck down, rightly, by the court.)

What I was wondering was, is this the end of the story? First of all, does the Delhi High Court's writ run across India? I am not a lawyer, but from what I gather on the net, the answer is yes -- unless the Supreme Court overrules it, which they would consider doing only if the Union Government challenges the HC ruling. But what if another High Court upholds 377? One assumes that the SC will then have to step in.

And what if the SC does step in? I am not pessimistic: after the Delhi High Court originally dismissed the Naz Foundation's petition in 2004, on the grounds that it was not of public interest, it was the Supreme Court that asked the HC to reconsider the case. I think it is not likely that the SC will rule differently, if asked to do so. Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution, cited by the High Court, surely overrule any colonial-era laws that have lingered on in our books.

Our religious leaders are, predictably, having fits -- this is one issue that unites all religions and religious leaders. Some, like the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, are relatively temperate in their response, saying they are "not opposed to" decriminalising homosexuality. One must be grateful for small mercies.

What is most amusing is this harping on "Indian culture" (a phrase used by nearly all religious leaders): our epics feature such stories as Vishnu turning himself into a woman to seduce Shiva, while the law in question is a legacy of the British and represents Victorian English culture (the same culture that imprisoned Oscar Wilde), not Indian culture at all.

Huge news from Iran, thanks to The Hindu

I refer to this article (hat-tip: Rahul Basu).

In response, I just sent the following e-mail to the Readers' Editor at The Hindu:

Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:34:41 +0530
From: Rahul Siddharthan
To: readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
Subject: The Hindu: information that nobody else carries

Dear Sir,

Old-timers in Chennai have always counted on The Hindu for information and enlightenment, and this morning you did not disappoint. I was amazed to know, thanks to your editorial pages and specifically to our former foreign minister, K. Natwar Singh, that the former Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the current Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are in fact one and the same person, whom Mr Singh refers to (twice) as "Ayatollah Ali Khomeini" (and also as "supreme leader", "great man" and numerous other flattering epithets).

So Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not die in 1989, as widely reported, but merely changed the spelling of his name and continues in power to this day. (One assumes that a person as eminent as Mr Singh, and a newspaper as prestigious as The Hindu, will not misinform the public on such grave matters.)

I believe this news is significant in today's context and should be more widely known: it could have grave international implications. I request you to carry it prominently on your front page, and disseminate it as widely as possible.

With best regards,

Rahul Siddharthan

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UPDATE: The Hindu has a correction/clarification today, and I sent the following in response.

Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:50:20 +0530
From: Rahul Siddharthan
To: readerseditor@thehindu.co.in
Subject: Today's correction Re: The Hindu: information that nobody else
carries

Dear Sir,

(Ref: my mail yesterday, quoted below)

I am disappointed that the conflation of the two "supreme leaders" in Mr Natwar Singh's article yesterday was a simple error. However, the explanation that he was referring only to Ayatollah Khomeini and not to Ayatollah Khamenei is rather puzzling.

Mr Natwar Singh, as you observe, uses present tense throughout for Ayatollah Khomeini; and this is not a general habit with him in referring to deceased people, for he uses the past tense in referring to Mr Rajiv Gandhi. ("Ayatollah Ali Khomeini has a magnetic personality. If one is eye to eye, you blink first... Rajiv Gandhi too had uncommon charisma.")

Later, he writes:

"The Ayatollah is still the supreme leader. The West and Israel would be unwise to take him on.

"I have related this memorable episode to highlight the fact that the Iranian leader is no run-of-the-mill leader...."

But Ayatollah Khomeini is not still the supreme leader. The memorable episode, according to your clarification, features a man who died in 1989 and it is not relevant today whether or not he was a run-of-the-mill leader. This is similar arguing for caution in dealing with Gordon Brown because Margaret Thatcher was no
run-of-the-mill leader.

Here is the alternative explanation that I had thought of before your clarification: today, international conferences are attended by Iran's President, not the Supreme Leader. So the person whom Mr Natwar Singh met at the NAM summit was probably the President, who at the time was Ali Khamenei. Perhaps his 1982 anecdote also refers to Ayatollah Khamenei (who was the president throughout the 1980s). He was not the supreme leader then, but he was an important man; and if Mr Natwar Singh was referring throughout to Ayatollah Khamenei and not to Ayatollah Khomeini, and the error was due to his own mistyping or due to sub-editing errors, his article makes much more sense. (It is still doubtful whether there is any useful content in the article, and whether it is worthy on its merits of being published, but this is a separate topic.)

But your clarification, I'm afraid, raises more questions than it answers. If what you say is true, on what basis was this article published? Perhaps Mr Natwar Singh's advanced years are to blame in what he sent you, and one should not be too harsh on him, but how could such flagrant errors pass your editorial desk?

Sorry if I seem to be belabouring the point, but I think this case is symptomatic of a large number of problems I see in The Hindu lately.

With best regards,

Rahul Siddharthan