What's Wrong With This Picture, Iranian Election: Cooked Data
June 22, 2009
What's Wrong With This Picture
Ah yes, Watergate. The Washington Post just got lucky during Watergate helping the agency dump Dick, who deserved to be dumped. Ex. Sen. Howard Baker (R. - Tenn.), a member of the Senate Watergate Committee, was more prophetic than he probably intended when he opined that he heard elephants crashing around in the woods but couldn't determine who they were. There were elephants all right but their identity will probably remain forever obscured. How? Through the good offices of The Washington Post, Bob Woodward, Senate committee majority counsel Sam Dash, and Senate committee minority counsel Fred Thompson (who lost his bid in 2008 to be nominated by the party of elephants to be a successor to Tricky Dick).
No one died because of Watergate. Well, with the possible exception of Dorothy Hunt (Howard Hunt's wife) and CBS News correspondent Michelle Clark. And maybe Murray Chotiner (a long-time political operative for Richard Nixon) who was killed by an employee of the federal government at the general time of Watergate (in a car crash in McLean, Virginia, with a U.S. Postal Service truck).
There are over 4,300 needlessly dead American service personnel because of the failures of The Washington Post. Not just the Post, of course, but other journalistic organizations, notably The New York Times. Also failures were gullible politicians, one of whom is now Secretary of State, another of whom is now Vice President, and another of whom is now chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Before the illegal, unnecessary, and unconstitutional invasion of Iraq, Dan Froomkin, a recently dismissed electronic journalist for The Washington Post, tried to stop the invasion and has since criticized for other acts.
The Post's reward to Froomkin? They fired him and gave column space to an architect of the invasion - Paul Wolfowitz.
Is there something wrong with this picture?
***
Iranian Election: Cooked Data
I'm not going to spend much time on the Iranian election. I am not an expert on either Iran or the Middle East. Alas, I do know a thing or two about cooked data, from both the technical high school I attended and my four years at MIT. Even the saintly monk Mendel, the father of genetics, is alleged to have "cooked" his published data (altered the data to fit his hypothesis). Just Google "Mendel cooked data" and you'll get an eyeful of the still-unsettled argument (was it Mendel or an assistant who did the cooking? What would his motive have been?)
Anyway, even I, even in high school, knew better than the draw the line first, the match the "data" to the prediction. Apparently, Iranian election authorities (at least some of whom probably went to MIT), apparently did about as well in 18.02 as I did. Which is to say, not very well at all.
Even if a poll showed support for the incumbent, it doesn't excuse releasing fake numbers.
Briefs
- "I do not think that intensification of traditional supervision and regulation of large financial firms will effectively address the too-big-to-fail problem" - Gary Stern, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis addressing Congress.