Today the world learns that calorie restricted diets help monkeys live longer lives.  You can see a current lineup of news sources and how they are covering this story and see that folks generally view this as important news for humans living longer and healthier lives.  You can certainly find cautionary quotes in some articles about replication, extension to humans, practical barriers, still-a-long-way-to-a-pill notations, but generally, it’s all good.

Except it isn’t.  This is lousy news and makes things worse for most people while making it better for people who write grants.  To borrow from Denise Richards:  It’s complicated.  But understandable.

1.  This new report published in Science shows another example of how seriously restricting an organism’s daily calorie intake (about 30% less than normal), extends life and improves health.  The first demonstration of this effect occurred in 1935 and has since been studied in bugs, yeasts, rats, and monkeys.  The effect holds across these diverse species.  At a detailed level researchers find exquisite changes in DNA machinery in these restricted calories critters, meaning that a large behavior like diet can affect the most delicate and tiny element of biological functioning.  So, we have an effect at a large level of analysis (eat less, live longer), across many species, and a plausible biological mechanism, plus much of this work is experimental, meaning we’ve got great control over the variables.  Hubba-hubba.

2.  Consider the specific outcomes from this latest monkey study.  The University of Wisconsin researchers randomly assigned 38 adult monkeys to a “free range” diet, meaning the monkeys ate as much as they wanted while another 38 monkeys got the “restricted calorie” diet.  This was done in a monkey lab so these critters were not running across the savannah, but living in a carefully controlled setting.  We know what they ate.

The researchers tracked these 76 monkeys for over 10 years and that’s a long time in monkey years (average life span is 27 years).  Let’s look at a windowpane illustration of the outcome after 10 years.  We have two groups (treatment versus control) and two outcomes (alive or dead).  It looks like this.

If you do an appropriate test of statistical significance, in this case a chi-square, you derive a value of 5.68, with a p of less than .017, and a w effect size of .27.  Since these monkeys were apparently randomized to condition (the restricted calorie treatment or control), tests of statistical significance are warranted.  You’ll see a lot of quantitative voodoo with epi observational studies where there is no randomization of anything except the sequence of items which is the Mark of the Beast by my training, so we’re on good scientific footing here because this is a true experiment.

However, while we can remove sampling error as a rival explanation for the outcome differences, consider that outcome.  Nearly 3 times (14/5) as many monkeys in the control condition died compared to the treatment condition.  That sounds like a lot, but please note the effect size estimate, the w, of .27.  That’s a Small Windowpane effect, roughly equivalent to a d of .20 or an r of .10.  Here’s how “small” it is.  If instead of 5 treatment monkeys dying, it had been 7 monkeys, the test of statistical significance would have failed to reach the conventional .05 probability level.  And that would have still been a 2 to 1 ratio (14/7).

This outcome looks marvelous when you start playing the guitar with ratios, but when you get down to the details, the effect just barely exceeds random variation.  And this is with a highly controlled experimental study where we know exactly what each monkey is getting and we can measure with great precision all the variables we study.  And, consider, too, that this is a 30% reduction in normal calorie intake every day of life for every monkey in the treatment group.  That is a huge change in normal behavior, just to obtain an effect that can be made to look large or beneficial or important, but that is actually just barely detectable over random variation.

3.  Consider, now, my problem as a persuasion campaign guy trying to mount an intervention aimed at influencing people to eat 30% fewer calories every day for the rest of their lives.  And, this 30% reduction is not aimed at their current consumption level which is way too high to begin with.  It’s aimed at the “normal” or “average” level which is about 2,200 calories for a normal weight adult.  Thus, I’m gonna tell people who are eating 3,000 calories or more a day (and are overweight or obese as a result), that they need to get down to 1,800 calories a day.  You’ll live LONGER because the monkey science says so.  It’s experimental.  It’s replicated.  It’s cross-species.  It’s diddles your DNA.  It’s Science!

And, for what real effect?  A possible gain in life span.  By one reasonable estimate (PDF), the standard deviation for life expectancy is about 15 years.  With a small of effect of .2 we are talking about an average expected gain in life of 3 years.  Thus, if you cut down to 1,800 calories a day for your entire life, you can expect to live on average 3 more years.

I’ll need to bring back P.T. Barnum from the dead to sell that proposition.

4.  Hey, instead of people having to do the heavy lifting of big calorie restriction, maybe we can make a pill that creates the same effect.  Now, that’s a persuasion proposition of an entirely different color.  Instead of poor old me having to design and run an intervention that tries to convince people to eat 1,800 calories a day, all I have to do is find the pill, get a patent that kills any potential competitor, unleash a media ad campaign, and rake in the big bucks.  But, remember, to achieve this gain, you have to take this pill your entire life.  That might cost some money.  And, of course, there’s no real serious chance of side effects like an erection lasting longer than four hours, vaginal dryness, wretching, runs, liver damage, or birth defects since you’re taking a pill that will affect the molecular functioning of your DNA!?!

5.  There is great science in this line of research.  Serious people are working seriously and have reasonable results to pursue.  For science.  Not for real life.  The newspaper buzz on this science is, to put it mildly, demented, irrational, and absurd.  And, the scientific community is playing along with the delusion, too.  The summary story in Science that describes this report puts lipstick on the pig.  Nowhere does anyone raise any of the points a lightweight persuasion “social scientist” like me makes.  And, the points I make are valid.

This is good science.

It is bad for persuasion.

It is bad for the general population.

It is good for journalists and scientists.

It is normal life.

P.S. The pictures are inflammatory.  The primate eating the carrot is not a monkey, but a baboon.  The monkeys eating the popsicles are clearly not experimental participants.  And, calorie control is not achieved by the type of food (carrots versus popsicles) but rather by the total number of calories in the yummy monkey chow.  And, that’s a cartoon image of P.T. Barnum, not a photo, but it is accurate.

P.P.S.  Don’t get confused here.  This is good science, but the reporting and PR spin on it is Very Bad.  I strongly support the science and would recommend funding for this line of research if I was on a grant committee or the Branch Chief evaluating my own scientists’ proposals.  I don’t want the results bandied about in the New York Times as if journalists know the difference between baboons and monkeys or between telomeres and mallomars.  They don’t, but they offer the prestige of public discussion and some scientists like that more than peer review.  Cassandra has spoken!

Just back from a quick trip to Wheeling WV to visit my sweet wife while she teaches an off-campus graduate course.  I missed her, so we got together over white linen.  And, the next day, I had lunch with a former student, colleague, and now, friend, Sybil.  Much to blog on here, after feeding and loving up little Zeus who spent twenty four hours home alone.

Melanie and I ate dinner over white linen at the Ihlenfeld Dining Room in the Oglebay Resort and Conference Center.  Oglebay is set in a gorgeous location, up in a slight elevation from the river in Wheeling, on a series of small rolling mountains.  It is a tree crowded location with various resort facilities, golf courses, stables, and other resort treats nestled in the woods and hills.  The Resort is a hidden treasure of West Virginia.  And, if you like golf with hills and valleys, you need to shoot Oglebay.

But, tonight was the Dining Room which has been recently and beautifully redesigned and decorated.  The Room overlooks a fabulous scene of hills and woods with a beautiful lake nestled in view.  Every seat in the Room has that view, plus the room has been arranged as a step down series of three staggered rows of tables so that you can look over other guests rather than through them at the view.

And, the food’s pretty good, too.

I had a wild mushroom cream soup, house salad, then rotissiere chicken with creamed spinach.  The mushroom soup was simply to die for.  Buttery, creamy, thick like gravy with at least two hundred and six pounds of chopping and slivered mushrooms.  We did not take a shot of it because we ate it so fast, I forgot.  But the creamed spinach (pictured above) was in the same Wow! category as the soup, so you get a taste of the flavor we experienced with the soup in the spinach shot.  Man, that was good spinach.  Hey, and the chicken was great too.  Moist, nicely seasoned with herbs and a fair amount of garlic that didn’t really finish like garlic.  Great touch from the chef.  And, this is just the kind of place the Food Police want to attack with required menus bearing calorie counts adorned with skull and crossbones warnings.

I can unreservedly recommend both the Resort and Ihlenfeld Dining Room.  If you’re in the Wheeling area, it would be worth a day and night’s visit just for the view, the air, the scene, and the food.

The next day, on Melanie’s recommendation, I met my friend, student, and colleague, Sybil Ott at Figaretti’s for lunch.

Figaretti’s is a quiet, comfortable Mom and Pop, red (versus white) Italian place.  The clientele is older with abundant evidence of family and old friend tables.  Frank Sinatra croons perpetually from his Greatest Hits CD.  And nice pictures on the wall.  It’s not a big place, and dark with heavy wood paneling and low lighting.  Relaxing.  Plus they employ a friendly and helpful wait staff.  Ashley, our server, took this shot of Sybil and me.

Sybil and I go back a ways.  I met her in the mid 1990s when she was an undergrad taking my advanced persuasion course.  She took her bachelor’s from the Communication department, then stayed for her Masters.  As she was finishing her degrees, I moved over to the Federal government to take over the Health Communication Research Branch (HCRB) in the CDC.  Sybil became on of my first hires.  And, she liked the Fed so much she stayed after I left.  She’s now an administrative assistant in the Department of Justice.

When I miss professoring it’s because of people like Sybil.  She’s bright, practical, responsible, self-reliant without being a prima donna, friendly, cooperative, and very tactical – she knows how to get things done.  She’s smart enough to think conceptually, but skilled enough to translate theory into action.  One of my favorite work experiences occurred with Sybil when we sat down and worked out a complicated research and action plan for a multi-year Fed intervention.  We just found an empty workroom with a whiteboard and wrote it out as a storyboard, like shooting a movie.  I’d never done this with her before and she immediately got the scheme, then ran the project for the next several years and we never had to go over the plan again.  Strong talent with Sybil and if you are a taxpayer you should be pleased to know that she’s working for you.  I know I am.

It’s a joy to have a good meal with a friend.

Two interesting health stories today with a strong persuasion link.  Carl Bialak has a nice essay on the relationship between caloric information on restaurant menus and eating.  The second looks at companies that require various health actions from their employees as part of the health insurance coverage.  At first glance most readers would see these as straight health stories, but the main point of each is not health, but rather persuasion about health and what works, how it works, and how it should be done.

I know and have worked with some of the people quoted in these stories from my work as both a professor and a Federal administrator on various health and safety projects.  Thus, this is both personal and professional for me, so all those biases operate on my thoughts and opinions here.

After spending over 20 years working all sides of the fence and the argument and talking out of all sides of my mouth, I am surely disgusted with the whole thing.  Most often, the intervention will at best have small positive effect, if any effect at all.  The Bialak article on calorie counting menus does a good job of addressing this.  The world clearly has an obesity problem and to fight for detailed menus as one means of reducing fat butts is an idea only a zealot can embrace.

From the perspective of a persuasion campaigner, interventions like this drive me insane because any persuasion campaign is hard to do, much less do well, and to go through all the effort a campaign requires just to add some numbers and words to a menu, is awful practice.  It reminds me of comparisons to bad generals in wartime who kill thousands of their soldiers to take an insignificant hill.  It’s a waste of resources and it doesn’t win the war.  Just makes a general look busy.

What’s worse is that the advocates involved are truly correct in their observations that there is a problem and that their intervention will likely have impact.  But, they lack proportion.  As I was leaving NIOSH in 2002, I encountered a locust eating safety zealot who inveigled me to back an intervention for . . . properly inflated tires.  Equipping all wheels with special tire valves that alert for low pressure could save at least 100 American lives a year.  Menus with calorie counts would probably have even less expected effect and given the poor science behind the original risk estimates, it’s more likely nothing good will occur.

My concern with the second article on mandatory health actions for employees rests on different issues.  Again as a persuasion campaign guy, I have to note these kind of programs operate under the persuasion advice of that old school Chicago philosopher who asserted, “You can get farther with a kind word and a gun than you can get with either alone.”  That would be the notorious gangster, Al Capone.  Employers who point guns at employees also tend to add kind words to the campaign to encourage, motivate, stimulate “free” choice.  The combination for persuasion is often awful.  The persuasion part, that motivating free choice, gets swallowed up with the threats of job loss.  (That’s not to say that power and persuasion never help each other, but rather to note that they can work against each other sometimes, like here.)  And, I also see the same proportion problems.  Most of these programs produce small positive effects in health at best, but require significant resources to run.

Persuasion campaigns can produce practical behavior change, but they always cost something to do.  You always need to make sure you are targeting the “right” behavior or else you are just a zealot and not a scientist or even a bureaucrat.

Meet Zeus, new kit of the house and both inspiration and assistant for today’s post.

As you can see Zeus already has a flair for the dramatic pose and the attitude of a runway model.  Perhaps, Zoolander, Zooey for short, would be a better name?

Zeus enjoys many toys and games as a kitten – but of course to a kitten life itself is merely a game and a toy – but now he prefers to punish a turkey feather.

While we were playing Zeus demonstrated an interesting observation about doing persuasion.  Actually, he inspired a metaphor with his dramatic fights to the death with Mr. Turkey Feather.  Look closely at this.

Note Zeus’s eyes.  While this looks a snap of random cat eye fixation, in this case, the eye fixation is not random.  Young Zeus only attacks the tip of Mr. Turkey Feather.  When he loses sight of the tip, but not the feather, he thinks it is gone.  Much like a human infant in the first Piagetian stage of development, Zeus is still learning and right now incapable of feats of cunning and intelligence older cats possess.

But Zeus can also be read as a metaphor for persuasion.  He is the receiver, the target, the thing with the TACT, a source (me, just right of camera) wants to change.  My hand holding and manipulating Mr. Turkey Feather is the persuasion play aimed at changing the way Zeus thinks, feels, and most importantly, acts.

Zeus does not see the entire feather (the persuasion play), but only sees the tip which drives him wild with mad kit killer fever.  As long as my play with Mr. Turkey Feather keeps the tip in front of Zeus, my sweet new kit will run himself ragged until he is hungry and exhausted.  Then a quick snack and a long nap for Zeus and I’ve attained my persuasion goal:  Enough free time to write this post!

And that is a visual demonstration of how persuasion works.  You want to create a persuasion play that hides in plain sight, but presents a “tip” that moves your target when you want the target to go.  Zeus “sees” the feather, but doesn’t (yet) realize the feather and my hand holding it makes the tip so interesting.  Soon he’ll figure out my persuasion play and instead of falling for the tip, he’ll just jump at my face!  Which is what people do when your persuasion plays fail.  (Remember the Rules:  If you can’t succeed, don’t try!).

And you thought kits were only good for props!

Stay tuned for the continuing persuasion adventures of Zeus, the persuasion kit!

Today I stumbled into a disconcerting story about the Washington Post.  They are using their journalistic connections with various shakers and movers in the Obama adminstration and Congress to setup meetings between said shakers and movers and those who desire access to them – for a price ranging between $25,000 and $250,000 per meeting.

Here’s a description from the WP offer:

“Offered at $25,000 per sponsor, per Salon. Maximum of two sponsors per Salon. Underwriters’ CEO or Executive Director participates in the discussion. Underwriters appreciatively acknowledged in printed invitations and at the dinner. Annual series sponsorship of 11 Salons offered at $250,000″

So, if you pay WP $25,000, you can have an upclose and personal dinner with a very powerful person, all compliments of the brokering services of the Washington Post.  I’ll quote Mike Allen on this:

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — is a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

This astonishes me.  While news sources often do a less than competent job in reporting at least I’ve assumed that they were independent of the people and stories they reported on.  It now appears that the Post thinks it can “independently” report on people and then take money from third parties to arrange private meetings between the third parties and the people the WP covers.  The tangled bias here is so obvious – how can you honestly report on people when you are also selling access to them – that it renders me speechless, but not wordless.

Has this been going on for some time and I’ve not known it?  Do other media sources do this?  Will Lassie rescue Timmy from the well?

The persuasion angle on this is that I often rely upon the credibility of sources like the Washington Post for information about persuasion concepts.  If, for example, I find an interesting story in the WP about how health care advocates are trying to influence Senators – oh wait, I’ve already done this – I assume the WP is an honest broker in its reporting of the story.  But, if the WP is also using its connections to sell meetings between advocates and Senators as this report discloses, then what can I really believe in the report?

UPDATE:  Howard Kurtz of the WP reports that the paper no longer plans to offer this program.  Importantly, however, the WP admits that such planning was in development and had at least gotten to the stage of printing potential offers for public distribution.  Apparently, a flier got leaked and the leak may have been responsible for the decision to drop the program, for now, rather than concerns about credibility and integrity.  I still don’t trust the WP.

UPDATE UPDATE:  Howard Kurtz again reports on the continuing confusion over this program.  He works for the WP and he’s not sure what’s going on still.