Altruism

On this beautiful, sunshiney Sunday, I was listening to an episode of Radio Lab on my roof while waiting for my clothes to dry. The show was on the science of doing good: for all of Charles Darwin's bleak, formulaic 'survival of the fittest' theories, how could science explain why people risk their lives for others? It was a good episode to take in with a healthy dose of vitamin D. It seems absurd and sterile to break down our altruistic instincts to science, but hey, that's science. Sometimes, after all, we just want to know why.

A scientist in the 70s created a formula relating why we're willing to risk our own survival for others. It breaks down, essentially, to Darwin's same theory: I'll risk my life for my sister because she's carrying 50 percent of my same genes. If she survives but I don't, 50 percent of my genes will still be carried on. So I'm four times more likely to help my sister than my cousin, and so fourth. It really all comes down to us trying to help ourselves out. Obviously that doesn't explain a lot of actions -- why strangers risk their lives for people they don't know. But it does give us a nice, clean answer. I guess that's what science is. And, along with my extreme distrust of bunsen burners, one of the reasons why I was never too interested in science. I love the magic of not knowing. Chalking it all up to goodness, or faith, or magic. I'm fairly certain magic is the only way to explain the Shazam app and microwave ovens.

I do think there have been a lot of dramatized, or even sitcomitized (stick with me) stories around whether all good deeds are truly selfish. I, for one, am not sure I think it matters. Does it matter if the only "real" reason I would do anything to protect my little sister is because of some deep desire to pass on my superawesome genes? Or if the reason I help a stranger with their luggage is so I feel better about myself? I mean, karma is a pretty selfish way of looking at things, in some ways, but its net result is a good one. Just because it all comes down to selfishness and science, doesn't mean it's any less valuable. Love, sex and family might all be about passing on my genes for future generations, but they're also what make this life worth living.

140 Characters

"I think the modern journalism today has made a bet economically on very quick, very short and very fast. And I think what we'll see over time is that people will realize the economics of that are not so good. if everyone tries to be short, quick and fastest ultimately the reader goes someplace else." Pro-Publica's Steve Engelberg



I just listened to an amazing interview discussing longform journalism on WNYC, which I'm including above.

In the interview, they talk about our shortened attention spans -- a result of the Internet: status updates and 140-character tweets. Is this the end of longform journalism? the interviewer inquires. It's amazing how much this question relates to something I wrote a couple of years ago on here (and this was the days before Twitter was as ubiquitous as it is now). I am by no means anti-blogging -- wouldn't that be an ironic stance to make in a blog? Nor am I anti Twitter, Facebook, Gawker, Huffington Post, nor any other aggregator or blog out there. At least not officially. I think a lot of blogs, reporting in real time as events occur, are doing important, amazing work. And it's not easy work, either. But the bottom line for me is my heart belongs to longform. To the in-depth, literary-style pieces you find in the New Yorker. The articles written by Atul Gawande or Susan Orlean or Joan Didion or Jon Krakauer... those are the pieces I'm drawn to. And they're important. A lot has been written about the 24-hour news cycle and its impact on the future of journalism. But what if this "what's next. what's next. what's next"-style causes journalism to lose all analysis? All reflection? What if it's all reduced to a tweet: "Statement of Event. Snarky reaction. #Categorizing hashtag." in 140 characters.

After the revolution in Egypt, I saw several blog posts (several is an understatement here) giving themselves a big old pat on the back for their great work. This was the great victory of the Internet! While newspapers still had the stale front page headline that Mubarak was refusing to resign, Twitter and the blogosphere knew he'd stepped down. All hail the great Internet.

But while this was true - while the bloggers hashed out every last breaking detail - I saw very little analysis in any blog pieces written. And how could they? These are writers who are being paid for each click and page view and to pump out as many stories as they can (at least in most cases). They are working so quickly and so diligently to cover the news as it happens that they can't reflect on what it means. There are also blogs that are all analysis and editorial -- the aggregators. But to invest in both the extensive reporting and analysis of an indepth piece is an entirely different beast. Longform journalism is expensive. In the interview, they talk about some articles costing a half a million dollars. Research and time are real investments, and someone has to pay for them. Otherwise I believe the loss of longform journalism will come at a real cost to our society. Or at least to me at the 40 other luddites out there.

The Hot Spotters: Thesis

"The critical flaw in our healthcare system...is that it was never designed for the kind of patients who incur the highest costs. Medicine's primary mechanism of service is the doctor visit and the E.R. visit. (Americans make more than a billion such visits each year according to the Centers for Disease Control.) For a thirty-year-old with a fever, a twenty minute visit to the doctor's office may be just the thing. For a pedestrian hit by a minivan, there's nowhere better than an emergency room. But these institutions are vastly inadequate for people with complex problems: the forty-year-old with drug and alcohol addiction; the eighty-four-year-old with advanced Alzheimer's disease and pneumonia; the sixty-year-old with heart failure, obesity, gout, a bad memory for his eleven medications, and half a dozen specialists recommending different tests and procedures. It's like arriving at a major construction project with nothing but a screwdriver and a crane."

- From Atul Gawande's "The Hot Spotters", The New Yorker 1-24-11

Truth and Objectivity

Truth is a funny thing. When you’re young, it’s pretty simple -- you’re telling the truth or you’re lying. Despite our penchant for fibbing even at a young age (yes, Mom, I lied about not eating the Cherry Chapstick), the concept itself is easy to grasp. When you’re older, truth gets more complicated. It becomes more tied into Truth. With a capital T. I think I was around sixth grade when all this came into focus for me - the grays of life versus the simple black and white. As an anxious and thoughtful kid, this kept me up at night. Were there universal Truths? Was it really as simple as a fib versus a lie? How could something that one of my friends knew to be The Truth ring so false to me? I mean, some things had to be true. Gravity, science, history - those things you learned in school. At least those were true and concrete. Right?

As I got older, figuring out the Truth was less likely to cause sleep deprivation, but it was still something I grappled with. In journalism, objectivity is one of the most basic principles. And why shouldn’t it be? Each article should be unbiased and objective, naturally. And when you're uncovering and reporting on facts, why would anything else get in the way? But when truly prodded, the idea of true objectivity seems suspect. Obviously a journalist should try to remain objective, but it's hard to imagine not being swayed by your own perspective and lens. I don’t mean lying about a fact, or intentionally taking someone out of context. But your view of the world is going to affect your interpretation of everything within that. It will affect your telling of the story.

I wrote a story for my senior capstone about student loan debt and its impact on society. This was not a biased article - everything I wrote was truthful and accurate and researched. But even the topic reveals my beliefs. Let’s be honest: would someone who did not believe in the value of education and the importance of economic equality write that article? Um, probably not. I don't think this makes it any less valuable as a piece of journalism.

Life is not so simple. It’s full of squishy unknowns and countless question marks. “We hold these truths to be self evident...” hell, we can’t even agree on what those truths are.

I just read an interesting piece in the New Yorker “The Truth Wears Off” by Jonah Lehrer (sorry non subscribers, it's not available in full online). The article is about a phenomena, sometimes referred to as the shrinking effect, that reflects the tendency for the effectiveness of a study to decrease over time. Meaning scientific results become less scientific and more ...chance as they’re repeated. Initial data surrounding a study might appear robust and supportive, but it will decay over time. So even “truth” -- even science - isn’t so infallible. To quote Arrested Development, skewering the absurd: “I hear the jury’s still out on science.”

Of this disturbing decidedly unscientific shrinking effect, Leherer wrote: “If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved? Which results should we believe?” He added “It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable.”

In the article, one scientist, Michael Jennions, who has studied the decline in the truth of these studies explained his hesitancy in discussing the matter: “This is a very sensitive issue for scientists,” he said. “You know, we’re supposed to be dealing with hard facts, the stuff that’s supposed to stand the test of time. But when you see these trends you become a little more skeptical of things.”

I get that. Who are scientists without Truth and facts? Who are journalists without objectivity?

I think rather than denying it, it's important to acknowledge that nothing is infallible and a hard truth, and try to pursue the best truths we can. Keep testing the scientific data. Keep questioning everything. In the end, isn’t truth really about who you choose to believe?

Global warming seems so obviously true to me - it is the “Inconvenient Truth” after all (even though I actually never saw that movie. Oops). It’s been proven by scientists. By scientists. But what if I’m wrong and science is wrong. ….these people who don’t believe in global warming, aren’t just pulling my leg (which, honestly, sometime it feels like) they believe it to be the truth. Maybe evolution really is a lie and someone is just planting dinosaur bones to throw suckers like me off course. I guess bully for all those folks who have been tsking the idea of evolution. I’m going to have some apologizing to do in the end.

I believe in science and the scientific method as a Truth. But I’m sure some people believe just as strongly in religion.

We sort of just form lots of small truths around a few big truths and stick to it.

The main reason these scientists were found to get these positive results in the beginning with a decline later on, is simply because we like proving ourselves right and hate to be wrong. On the one hand, I feel like I was raised with the belief that science was above that. But at the same time, it’s kind of a “doi!” statement. Everyone likes to be right. Sure some of us are more stubborn than others. (Ask my family, I fall on the “...as a mule” side of this coin.) But in general - who likes to be wrong? No one likes to be wrong when they’re arguing a point. I mean, how many times have you gotten out your iPhone to prove on Wikipedia that a nectarine is not a peach and plum combined? But more to the point, no one wants to be wrong on something they truly believe. One of their tenets. A scientist who has spent their life trying to find ways of preventing heart attacks is going to find that daily low dose asprin is effective. Not because they are lying but they’re going see the pattern. They’re going to pursue their truth.

I was listening to a recent This American Life, “Last Man Standing”. On it, a young Mormon woman talks about her crisis of faith. When she believed in God, so many signs pointed to His existence: a perfectly-timed shooting star, or clearing of the clouds. Now, without the faith, she remains unswayed by the same occurrences. She spoke to a man who believed he’d had a UFO encounter. He, too, believed every day things were supporting his truth. Sometimes there’s science to back it up, sometimes we write and article and sometimes there’s just a shooting star. The Truth May Be Out There, but it also might just be each one of our own, slightly slanted truths. For the record, I’m still siding with science, though.

Welcome back.

The last post I wrote was over a year ago. Now that my job requires extensive writing every day, there’s less incentive to come home and write more. Plus, why write an entire post analyzing an article, when I can simply post it to Twitter with a hashtag, succinctly and wittily summarizing my feelings about whatever I’m sharing. You know, like: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/8045747/ #lolz.

In the past year, nearly everything has changed for me: new job, new city, new cat. OK, maybe that last item is not on par with the other two -- but essentially my life has taken a 360, or 180, or some significant turn.

I work in PR now, which is either the exact opposite of working as a journalist or just a different slice of the same pie. I go back and forth in how I think about it. This move does really mean an official exodus from journalism for me. While on some level there’s relief about escaping a sinking ship, I still sometimes get the feeling I really still belong at sea. While journalism is still in an incredibly shabby state, things seem a bit less dour at this point compared with a year ago. For one thing, compared with 2009, when 596 magazines folded (including Gourmet and a number of other Conde Nast titles), 2010 actually saw more magazines launching than folding (193 to 176, respectively). I also woke up this morning to find a Groupon for a New York Times subscription in my inbox. $24 for eight weeks of the Sunday Times -- maybe that’s going to save the newspaper industry?

Quarterlife

The other day my good friend informed me she had found her dream job. Before I successfully got any details about said job, however, she modified her statement: this was a job that she would never, ever, actually have. Not because she wasn't qualified or couldn't get an interview - she simply couldn't afford to think twice about even applying for a job with such a low starting salary. Entering her third year of law school, she's looking at a graduation present of about $1000 a month in owed student loan payments. She explained that the mere fact that she'd attended law school was essentially locking her into the profession indefinitely. "Now I have to be a lawyer just to pay off the stupid loans," she said, matter-of-factly.

Three years ago, before I'd graduated and entered the "real world" of student loans and credit card debt and unpaid internships, I wrote an article about the problem of student loan debt for my journalism capstone. For the article, "The Real Cost of Education," I interviewed a handful of experts as well as actual students facing seemingly insurmountable debt. After talking to my friend last week, I went back and re-read the article. Sure enough, her sentiments were exactly the same as those I had typed into my paper a few years back. "Many students go to law school right after getting their undergraduate degree, with little or no experience to allude to the realities of being a lawyer," I wrote. "But bridled with $80,000 or more in loans, they have little choice but to practice law in order to repay their debt, even if this means sacrificing their happiness."

It was funny reading over the article. I had poured months of my life into researching, writing and editing the piece. And yet, because my own student loans seemed such a far-away reality (it would be nearly 4 months before I made my first payment), I didn't really conceive of the impact its subject matter would have on my own life or my friends lives. Sure, the numbers were shocking and the experts' arguments were compelling, but the article was about adults: people who had the letters MD typed neatly after their names, or had completed the bar exam - people who were making grownup decisions about buying houses and having kids.

But now I don't have to scramble to find people to attest to the impacts of student loans. These are my friends. I could rewrite the entire article quoting my friends from our gchat conversations or summarizing sentiments expressed over beers at happy hour. Even now, as I find myself grappling with the decision of whether or not to go back and get my masters in teaching, it's hard to absorb the realities of being saddled with significant loans. I know full well nearly half of all teachers leave the position within the first five years. And that the degree will land me with loan payments amounting to much more than the $100 a month I pay right now for my undergrad. But while there's the potential that going back to school will be a mistake, really no amount of research can answer that for me. Fifty percent of teachers quitting still leaves 50 percent who stick it out - some, I'm guessing, even like it. For most of these jobs there's no real trial run. You can volunteer in a classroom, but you won't know what it's like to deal with the administration or standardized tests. You don't get to try out being a doctor for a year before you commit to the four (plus!) years of medical school. And how are you supposed to know at 25 what you want to do with the rest of your life?

Healthcare

I came home the other day to an invoice from Qwest Diagnostics. The bill – for just shy of $200 – baffled me: I have insurance, surely this had to be some kind of mistake. As someone who’s constantly reminded that I really shouldn't qualify as a grown up, I pored over the document. Sure enough, the $185 was the remainder from the test that had not been covered by my health insurance plan. The test itself had consisted of a "medical professional" taking my blood and a phone call a week later from my doctor informing me that I was, indeed, healthy.
I had visited the doctor after my health insurance from my job finally kicked in, to deduce whether or not I was gluten intolerant. Both my younger sister and I have had chronic stomach aches for well over a decade. She found that by eliminating gluten (adios, delicious carbs!) her stomach issues had been greatly diminished. Having far less self control and patience than a 19-year-old, I opted to take the easy way out and ask my doctor if he could just tell me whether or not gluten could be blamed for my stomach. Which is how I landed with a $200 bill and the advice (once again) to “stress less,” as that was probably the cause of all my problems. I guess here’s where I throw in the obvious ‘how can I stress less with $200 doctors bills?’ but I digress.

Obviously this does not even rate when it comes to the problems associated with our healthcare system. It's incredible how many people I know who have disaster-only insurance, or none at all. None of them would get that bill because none of them go to the doctor.

Since starting my new job, my free time for reading has shrunk significantly. After numerous recommendations to read an article on the state of healthcare in The New Yorker, however, I sifted through my ever-growing stack of ‘to-read’ magazines and found the June 1 issue with The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande.

So now it’s my turn to make the recommendation: you should read this article.

I don’t pretend to know a lot about the many nuances of the healthcare system. Even when (especially when?) I covered the health beat for the Free Lance, I consistently found myself baffled by its many complexities. This particular article looks at a city in Texas with one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. In looking at one of the most expensive cities, Gawande posits, maybe we'll figure out what makes our countries health care the most expensive in the world. The article really doesn't give any easy answers, although it's incredible thought provoking. I attempted to summarize parts of it initially and, in the end, decided that a summary is actually doing disservice to the article. So I'll just leave it at that. Read the article and please feel free to comment.