{"id":36204,"date":"2018-07-26T07:53:50","date_gmt":"2018-07-26T12:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36204"},"modified":"2018-07-26T07:53:50","modified_gmt":"2018-07-26T12:53:50","slug":"erasing-flints-water-crisis-or-how-to-lie-with-statistics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36204","title":{"rendered":"Erasing Flint\u2019s Water Crisis: Or How to Lie With Statistics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erasing Flint\u2019s Water Crisis: Or How to Lie With Statistics<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Photo by Pete Souza | CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Mark Twain famously wrote that \u201cthere are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.\u201d This insight is relevant to examining the apologetics of modern-day academics in the rising neoliberal assault on the public. This subservience to power is evident in efforts to rationalize governmental attacks on the most basic of human needs: access to clean water. In seeking to numb the public to basic facts and reality, the New York Times\u00a0<\/em>has published an op-ed analysis piece<\/a> by Hern\u00e1n G\u00f3mez\u00a0and\u00a0Kim Dietrich: \u201cThe Children of Flint Were Not Poisoned\u201d (7\/22\/2018).<\/p>\n

On the face of it, many might take the above piece seriously in light of its prestigious source. It was published in the most prominent, influential newspaper in the country \u2013 the national \u201cpaper of record.\u201d Furthermore, the authors are trained experts in their fields, G\u00f3mez an \u201cassociate professor\u201d of emergency medicine\u201d at the University of Michigan, Dietrich a \u201cprofessor of epidemiology and environmental health\u201d at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Furthermore, G\u00f3mez\u2019s research on Flint has gone through the peer review process, as seen in the publication of his article, \u201cBlood Lead Levels of Children in Michigan: 2006-2016\u201d in The Journal of Pediatrics<\/em>. Scholarly peer review is designed to guarantee the highest possible quality of scholarly and medical research, although in this case it appears that the process badly broke down in relation to the study of water in Flint.<\/p>\n

Before discussing the New York Time\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>claims, it is worth briefly reviewing the history of what happened in Flint, Michigan. In a country where people\u2019s historical memory is notoriously short, many may have forgotten exactly what happened in this tragic case. To provide some context, Michigan Republican Governor Rick Snyder declared an emergency takeover of Flint\u2019s financial management in November of 2011, citing the city\u2019s fiscal mismanagement and its lack of revenues to provide for basic services.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erasing Flint\u2019s Water Crisis: Or How to Lie With Statistics Photo by Pete Souza | CC BY 2.0 Mark Twain famously wrote that \u201cthere are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.\u201d This insight is relevant to examining the apologetics of modern-day academics in the rising neoliberal assault on the public. This subservience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[20991,5493,11077,20992,20993,1921,2084,866],"class_list":["post-36204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-liberty","tag-anthony-disagio","tag-counterpunch","tag-flint","tag-hernan-gomez","tag-kim-dietrich","tag-new-york-times","tag-statistics","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36205,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36204\/revisions\/36205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}