Scientific conduct: Science and policy don't always mix well it seems

There has been quite some controversy over studies showing a positive impact on weight on longevity.

Katherine M. Flegal, PhD; Brian K. Kit, MD; Heather Orpana, PhD; Barry I. Graubard, PhD, "Association of All-Cause Mortality With Overweight and Obesity Using Standard Body Mass Index Categories - A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis" JAMA. 2013;309(1):71-82  write in the abstract:

Importance:  Estimates of the relative mortality risks associated with normal weight, overweight, and obesity may help to inform decision making in the clinical setting.

Conclusions and Relevance  Relative to normal weight, both obesity (all grades) and grades 2 and 3 obesity were associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality. Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality.

An editorial in Nature, "Shades of Grey" writes:
"Walter Willett, chair of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, told US National Public Radio that “this study is really a pile of rubbish, and no one should waste their time reading it”."

"Critics of Flegal and of others who have reported similar findings take issue not just with the data used to make the claims, but the damage they feel that the claims will inflict on public-health efforts. [..]  To discuss publicly results that threaten to undermine the simple message that ‘fat is bad’ will confuse doctors and the public, the critics say."

"The political mantra on public-health advice is clear: don’t send mixed messages. The media and those who get their information from the media prefer things in black and white: red wine is good for you; chocolate is bad for you. But, of course, science does not deal in black and white, hence the common criticism that scientists cannot make up their minds. One week, one group argues that extreme exercise is positive for health; the next week, a different set of researchers says the opposite."
...

I like the last paragraph...

"It is easy to see why those who spend their lives trying to promote the health of others gnash their teeth when they see complex findings whittled down to a sharp point and used to puncture their message. It is more difficult, from a scientific perspective, to agree that these findings should not be published and discussed openly, warts and all, purely because they blend uncertainty into a simple mantra. Make things as simple as possible, Einstein said, but no simpler. And simple, black-and-white messages can cause confusion of their own. All things in moderation — and that should include the language we use."

For more of the history on obesity studies see the Nature editorial: The big Fat Truth

Conference in Bonn

I'll be at the IZA conference in Bonn in the next 2 days. Here's the program:

Monday, June 17:

08:45 - 09:00 Registration


09:00 - 09:15 Welcome Address
Ulf Rinne (IZA Deputy Director of Research)
Marius Malinowski (HypoVereinsbank)
Michael Vlassopoulos (University of Southampton) and Steffen Altmann (IZA)


09:15 - 09:30 UniCredit & Universities Best Paper Award (*)
Reinhard H. Schmidt (Goethe University Frankfurt and Scientific Committee of the UniCredit & Universities Foundation)

09:30 - 10:15 Pedro Robalo (University of Amsterdam), Rei Sayag (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
  "Paying is Believing: The Effect of Costly Information on Bayesian Updating (*)"


10:15 - 11:00 Marie Claire Villeval (CNRS, GATE and IZA), Julie Beugnot (Université Laval), Bernard Fortin (Université Laval), Guy Lacroix (Université Laval)
  "Social Networks, Peer Pressure and Labor Supply"


11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break


11:30 - 12:15 Robert Dur (Erasmus University Rotterdam and IZA), Josse Delfgaauw (Erasmus University Rotterdam), Arjan Non (Maastricht University), Willem Verbeke (Erasmus University Rotterdam)
  "The Effects of Prize Spread and Noise in Elimination Tournaments: A Natural Field Experiment"

12:15 - 13:00 Jordi Brandts (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), Andrej Angelovski (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona), Carles Solà (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)
  "Hiring and Escalation Bias in Performance Evaluations: A Laboratory Experiment"


13:00 - 14:30 Lunch


14:30 - 15:15 Anat Bracha (Federal Reserve Bank of Boston), Uri Gneezy (University of California, San Diego)
  "Relative Pay and Labor Supply"

15:15 - 16:00 Nicola Lacetera (University of Toronto), Bradley Larsen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Devin Pope (University of Chicago), Justin Sydnor (University of Wisconsin)
  "Bid Takers or Market Makers? The Effect of Auctioneers on Auction Outcomes"


16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break


16:30 - 17:15 Sebastian Goerg (Florida State University), Sebastian Kube (University of Bonn and IZA)
  "Goals (th)at Work? Goals, Monetary Incentives, and Workers’ Performance"

17:15 - 18:00 Oriana Bandiera (London School of Economics and IZA), Nava Ashraf (Harvard Business School), Scott Lee (Harvard Business School)
  "Mission Incentives: Experimental Evidence on Selection, Performance and Retention among Health Workers in Zambia "


19:00 Dinner at Restaurant "Bahnhöfchen", Rheinaustr. 116, Bonn

Tuesday, June 18:

09:30 - 10:15 Matthias Sutter (University of Innsbruck and IZA), Loukas Balafoutas (University of Innsbruck), Rudolf Kerschbamer (University of Innsbruck)
  "Moral Hazard in a Real-World Credence Goods Market"

10:15 - 11:00 Florian Englmaier (University of Würzburg), Johannes Buckenmaier (University of Cologne), Matthias Fahn (University of Würzburg)
  "Relational Contracts with Present-Biased Preferences"


11:00 - 11:30 Coffee Break


11:30 - 12:15 Michael Kosfeld (Goethe University Frankfurt and IZA)
  "Sorting of Motivated Agents: Evidence from Applicants to the German Police"

12:15 - 13:00 Mitchell Hoffman (Yale School of Management), Stephen Burks (University of Minnesota, Morris and IZA), Bo Cowgill (University of California, Berkeley), Michael Housman (Evolv on Demand)
  "The Value of Hiring Through Referrals"


13:00 - 14:30 Lunch


14:30 - 15:15 Judd Kessler (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania), Lucas Coffman (Ohio State University), Clayton Featherston (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
  "Can a Small Nudge Affect Job Choice? Evidence from Teach for America"

15:15 - 16:00 Florian Hett (University of Mainz), Yann Girard (Goethe University Frankfurt)
  "Competitiveness in Dynamic Group Contests: Evidence from Combined Field and Lab Data (*)"


16:00 - 16:30 Coffee Break


16:30 - 17:15 Muriel Niederle (Stanford University), Thomas Buser (University of Amsterdam), Hessel Oosterbeek (University of Amsterdam)
  "Gender, Competitiveness and Career Choices"


19:00 Dinner at Restaurant "Strandhaus", Georgstr. 28, Bonn

Banning ads...

Even in France...

French towns ban ads for award-winning gay film

"The sight of two men kissing and background figures appearing to have oral sex on a film poster got residents and mayors of two French towns so hot under the collar that the posters had to be removed, to the consternation of the film’s distributors."

Similar things happened in Vienna with a Exhibition at the Leopold Museum (see here in german and here in english), though with a slightly more revealing picture...

Seminar in Paris

I'll give a talk in Paris at MSE, on Friday, from 11-12:30. You can hear me talk about

 Augenblick, Ned, Muriel Niederle and Charles Sprenger, “Working Over Time: Dynamic Inconsistency in Real Effort Tasks”, January 2013, online appendix, Instructions.

Living Wills revisited

Dick Thaler's proposal of a mandatory living will (see here) has received some attention (HT Marginalrevolution.com) by Peter Ubel who wrote in Forbes on "Is Behavioral Economics the Death of Living Wills?"

He starts with
As a physician who conducts research on decision-making, I have been asked many times: What does behavioral economics teach us about the role of living wills in medical care?

Give someone a complicated choice, with lots of trade-offs, and Thaler could fill the semester explaining how and why that decision is likely to go wrong. Indeed, early developers of the living will went to elaborate lengths to create documents that describe the exact situations patients might encounter in the future. [..] No one familiar with the problem of “choice overload” could believe that reflection on so many possible futures, and some impossible choices, would somehow capture people’s true preferences.

To make matters worse, the trade-offs relevant to most living wills involve powerfully emotional and often strikingly unfamiliar choices. People must imagine what life is like with dementia or metastatic cancer or kidney failure. A slew of studies, including a number I have collaborated on with George Loewenstein and Dylan Smith, have shown that people are notoriously bad at predicting what life will be like with these health conditions. We don’t always know what we will want in our futures. My paternal grandmother said she would rather be dead than live in a nursing home, and then enjoyed her time in the nursing home so much after she moved in that she wondered what took us so long to find her a room there.

He then proposes a solution

Everyone should make sure they’re comfortable about who will make decisions for them if they are unable to decide for themselves.

Living Wills

Dick Thaler wrote an article in the NYtimes about Overcoming Obstacles to Better Health Care

One proposal is:

A requirement that all patients meet with their doctors or trained end-of-life counselors and prepare living wills. I am not suggesting that anyone be required to make any particular choices about these difficult end-of-life questions, merely that patients talk about the trade-offs and make some choices before they are incapable of doing so.

We now spend a disproportionate amount of money during the final months of people’s lives, often with little hope of meaningfully extending them. We should at least make sure that patients are given the opportunity to opt out of spending their final days in a hospital, hooked up to tubes and running up enormous bills.

Matching conference

From 11 to 12 June

Workshop on “Advances in Mechanism Design”, 11-12 june 2013 PSE

Paris School of Economics
Workshop on “Advances in Mechanism Design”
June 11–12, 2013
“Grande Salle”, 48 Boulevard Jourdan
If you wish to attend, please send a mail to beatrice.havet@ens.fr.
Please specify by June 03 if you would like to attend the lunch on June, 11 and June,
12 (subject to limitation)
Organizer: Olivier Tercieux (Paris School of Economics – CNRS)