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Tuesday 24 February 2015

Lloyd's new 'wind turbine syndrome' expert: A Computer Scientist Who Openly Dislikes Wind Farms

Yesterday, The Australian found itself in the odd position of having to defend an extremely unscientific report their environment editor has been covering regularly since earlier this year.

The defenders all took refuge in attacking the credentials of those critiquing the study. Senior Reporter Simon King writes:

"Other experts lined up to slam the report included the Australian National University’s Jacqui Hoepner and Will Grant, who wrote about it for The Conversation. Grant has a PhD in politics and Hoepner is a journalist and neither has either acoustic or medical training.
Then came the most damning of them all, Sydney University’s professor of public health, Simon Chapman. Professor Chapman is also neither an acoustician nor a medical practitioner"

Originally, King lambasted Chapman for 'not having a PhD in medicine' - something quietly altered after Chapman issued a correction. His focus changed to the topic of Chapman's PhD:





Confusingly, the author of the original report insists, a lot, that his study wasn't a 'medical study', so it's weird and inexplicable that King angrily insists one needs to be a medical practitioner, or have a PhD in medicine, to offer comment on Cooper's study.



Anyway, it gets funnier, today, now that Lloyd's published another follow-up:

"Richard Mann, at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, said scientists there had arrived at a similar position to Mr Cooper despite working in a different way. 
“Our results show that wind turbines emit a characteristic pulsation (change in barometric pressure) that repeats with every blade passage,” Professor Mann said.
“This is consistent with the infra sound ‘signature’ you have reported.” 
The Waterloo University research did not consider health effects from wind turbine infrasound. But Professor Mann said: “I join the many scientists and experts worldwide requesting a thorough investigation of wind turbine noise.’’"

Well, first of all, the research wasn't published by Waterloo University. In fact, it wasn't published anywhere. Obviously, Richard Mann is an expert in acoustics, or a medical expert, or perhaps both.

source
Mann's published work include "Detecting Hand-Ball Events in Video Sequences", "Categorization and Learning of Pen Motion Using Hidden Markov Models" and "Analyzing the kinematics of bivariate pointing". Interesting, probably quite fascinating, but it's a little hard to detect his acoustics and medical training. Perhaps I'm just not googling enough?

"You probably know me for my recordings of live music and also nature and ambient sounds (see above). 
Recently I have been recording Industrial Wind Turbines (IWT).  It is not because I like the sound.  On the contrary I am recording to show just how noisy and intrusive the sound really is.  They are enormous industrial machines that have been forced on rural communities by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment (MOE).  Below is my (ongoing) documentation of noise polution (sic), noise and vibration (aka "infra sound"), medical evidence for harm to humans, and scientific links related to Wind Turbines."

On Mann's website, SoundMann.com, he details a long list of wind farm opposition groups. It turns out I once interacted with him on a comment thread, in an article from a while ago. He says:

"I am not (yet) a claimant. I don't know if they will impact me or not. However, I have met people who are suffering. I met a woman who drives 20 miles every night to another place to sleep. There are many like that. Not the majority, but a significant minority of people. I just find it hard to believe all these "coincidences" are an accident. If this were a "clinical trial" it would be called off. Any other field of scientific inquiry would put a probable hypothesis on wind turbines. Maybe you think people are somehow "hypnotized" to believe turbines are bad. Many were pro Wind until they noticed the problems."
His Disqus profile is revealing. He's active on the Guardian, too:


Mann's also a member of the succinctly-named "Ontario Coalition for Harm-to-Health from Industrial-Wind-Turbines":


And his public Facebook page gives us a hint as to his motivations:


Post by Richard Mann.


Of course, he's free to say all these things, but it's really quite amusing that, after yesterday's angry retaliation from journalists at The Australian, they've now enlisted the expertise of a computer scientist who doesn't like wind farms.
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Tuesday 17 February 2015

Bad Science Reporting Causes Real Harm

Last night, Media Watch reported on The Australian's coverage of a study into wind farms and medical impacts. The Australian's full response named me as a leader of criticism:

"Published criticism of the methodology used in the Cooper report in Australia has been led by psychologist and wind company Infigen's communications officer, Ketan Joshi"

I'm not a psychologist......but, whatever. It's an under-handed, simple way of saying my arguments can be rejected due to my interests and my employer, rather than any rational engagement with what I've said. That's their choice.

But the Media Watch story itself highlights a confusing and relentless paradox that won't settle: did the study establish a causal link between health symptoms, or didn't it? The residents believe it did, but the author of the report says it didn't, but also says he fully accepts reporting saying it did. It matters, because a lot of beliefs are being solidified on the back of the reporting of his work.

"Pacific Hydro are correct that we don’t have a correlation in terms of medical and I agree with that 100%" 
— ABC Ballarat, Mornings with Anne-Marie Middlemast, 21st January, 2015 
"Another participant, Jo Kermond, said the findings had been “both disturbing and confirmation of the level of severity we were and are enduring while being ridiculed by our own community and society.”"  
- Statement from The Australian to Media Watch 

These beliefs are strongly held, and they're defended with real passion. A letter published in the Hamilton Spectator shows that the participants in Cooper's study believe wind turbines don't even need to be moving to cause health impacts: 

"Around the Macarthur wind farm, residents suffer from infrasound emitted by the turbines, even when they're not operating, similarly to Cape Bridgewater.

Even when the turbines are turned off, we feel the same "sensation", being headaches, ear pressure, nose pressure, heart palpitations, nausea, dizziness etc., and still cannot sleep at night.

Due to the mammoth scale of these towers, there is movement all the time, whether high or low winds, in addition to when they're turned off. Due to the extreme size of the towers, they still continue to vibrate, thus emitting infrasound waves. The laws of physics show such structures exhibit natural frequencies that are associated with structural resonances in the infrasound region"

The idea that a stationary wind turbines emit low-frequency noise that's injurious to human health is a relatively new modification to the 'wind turbine syndrome' theory. It first emerged in mid-2014, in a publication by acoustician Les Huson:

"The tone "lines" in the spectrograms show that structural resonances from the turbines continue irrespective of whether the blades are rotating or parked"

It's repeated in The Australian's rolling and increasingly confusing coverage of the 'peer reviews' of Cooper's report, this time by an American acoustician:

“It really does not matter what the pathway is, whether it is infra-sound or some new form of rays or electromagnetic field coming off the turbine blade"

So, if wind turbines are said to cause 'wind turbine syndrome' even when stationary, how did Steven Cooper establish a 'cause and effect' relationship?

I went through the three appendices that contained graphical representations of wind farm power output and sound measurements, upon which Cooper had overlaid instances of complaints - the full table is here.

Cooper claims a total of 522 sensation reports were written in the course of the study - my count of the appendices shows 258 of these were reported during times at which wind farm output was zero kilowatts.

234 'vibration' and 233 noise reports were also penned during times of non-operation.


Going by the information in Cooper's report, it seems nearly half of the 'sensation' reports, the variable upon which Cooper bases his conclusions, were written during times at which wind speeds were low, or the wind farm was offline.

Does it mean the participants were lying? No, it doesn't. It just raises the possibility Mr Cooper was measuring something other than what he seems to say is a human physiological response to wind energy.

Regardless; there's not the faintest semblance of correlation, here - let alone causation, or definitive proof of medical health impacts. Only a tiny fraction of Cooper's recorded data were 'selected' for inclusion in his analysis, and even on this specially selected sub-set, Cooper didn't use measures of statistical significance.

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This isn't the first time an inert, motionless and unpowered structure has been blamed for human suffering. In 2010, a mobile phone tower in Craigavon operated by iBurst received a raft of complaints over a four week period, with residents reporting, during a town meeting, of 'headaches, nausea, tinnitus....totally disrupted sleep patterns'. Sound familiar?

The operator of the tower had actually switched off the tower six weeks prior to the meeting. Did that resolve the issue, once and for all?

"Bismarck Olivier from the legal firm Bezuidenhout, Van Zyl and Associates, who represents the Craigavon residents, previously said that there is no talk of abandoning the action against iBurst and that the recent activity surrounding the issue is ‘only the beginning’"

Eventually, the company tore down the tower. "To raise it again is to the benefit of no one. This is not good for us, the industry, or anyone".

Spreading health fears can itself result in harm. A BBC Panorama report on the 'health dangers of wifi' warped a collection of already-flawed 'studies' to present the theory that WiFi causes health impacts. Subsequent research showed that people 'primed' with this documentary perceived a greater severity of symptoms, compared to a control group shown scientific information.

Will media coverage continue to spread fear around wind farms? I hope not, but I've little to justify that hope.

If technology doesn't even need to be operational, or energised, to cause health impacts, it reminds us of the importance of accurate information - something we won't see much of, today.

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Monday 16 February 2015

Tanveer Ahmed's Weird Article Seems To Have Been Plagiarised

Tanveer Ahmed, a psychiatrist and ex-Sydney Morning Herald columnist, wrote an extremely terrible opinion piece for The Australian last Monday the 9th of February, re-entering the heady world of opinion writing after he was revealed on ABC's Media Watch as a serial plagiarist - the show lists an unbelievable number of examples of Ahmed plagiarising himself, or directly copying and pasting the text of other journalists:


His most recent work in The Australian is reprehensible. He hypothesises a cause for male violence as such:
"Family violence within newly arrived ethnic groups is often related to the sudden dilution of traditional masculinity, leaving men lost and isolated, particularly as females enjoy greater autonomy and expectations"
MP Tim Watts explains why this view is abhorrent much better than I can:



Ahmed is, ridiculously, still an ambassador for White Ribbon - a movement that works to reduce domestic violence. This piece by Petra Bueskens at The Conversation is excellent.




Out of curiosity, and following some of the social media commentary around Ahmed's piece, I plugged his writing into a bunch of online plagiarism checkers, and, lo and behold, a portion of his article is either plagiarised from work he's published well into the past, or ripped directly from another website.

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This paragraph seems to have been copied from the website Prospect.Org:

The Australian, February 2015 (full text)

"...it is critical that improving arrest and prosecution rates, establishing shelters and abuse hotlines, pushing for state provisions against stalking, and creating protections for immigrants all have the goal of getting victims out of abusive -relationships"

Prospect.org Feb 2013, Marcotte

"Improving arrest and prosecution rates, establishing shelters and abuse hotlines, pushing for state provisions against stalking, and creating protections for immigrants all have the goal of getting victims out of abusive relationships and into safe situations."
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This paragraph has been used four times in the past five years, with only minor alterations, most recently in an article on 'Online Opinion'. It's been copied so many times by Ahmed that it actually shows up in the PDFs hosted on the Media Watch website, from his appearance on the show in 2012.


The Australian, February 2015

"Men for whom the security of unionised labour in the manufacturing industries is becoming a distant memory are experiencing a huge displacement from modern economic trends. It’s been replaced by casualised, service-oriented work with relatively low wages. In essence, their work has been feminised."

Online Opinion, 2013

"In the Western world, it can be seen among the traditionally white Anglo-Saxon working class, for whom the security of unionised labour in the manufacturing industries is slowly but surely becoming a distant memory. It is (sic) been replaced by casualised, service-oriented work with relatively low wages. In essence, their work is being feminised..."

Sydney Morning Herald, 2012

"Men, for whom the security of unionised labour in the manufacturing industries is slowly but surely becoming a distant memory, are experiencing a huge displacement from modern economic trends. It's been replaced by casualised, service‐oriented work with relatively low wages. In essence, their work has been feminised...."

Sydney Morning Herald, 2011

"Men for whom the security of unionised labour in the manufacturing industries is slowly but surely becoming a distant memory are experiencing a huge displacement from modern economic trends. It's been replaced by casualised, service-oriented work with relatively low wages. In essence, their work has been feminised, a development exacerbated by the financial crisis"

Sydney Morning Herald, 2010

"Men are experiencing a huge displacement from modern economic trends. In the Western world, it can be seen among the working class, traditionally white Anglo-Saxon, for whom the security of unionised labour in the manufacturing industries is slowly but surely becoming a distant memory. It's been replaced by casualised, service-oriented work with relatively low wages. In essence, their work has been feminised, a development exacerbated by the financial crisis."

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This rabbit hole is curiously deep. Ahmed wrote an article in the Medical Journal of Australia in 2013, outlining his views on alternative medicine. At the end, there’s this note:

“Dr Ahmed has given an assurance to MJA InSight that this is his original work”

To the plagiarism checker:

Ahmed, MJA, 2013

“The thinking is that the human body has an energy to it that can be guided by external manipulation, much the way that matter and tissues are influenced by chemicals and radiation in conventional medicine.”

Dworkin, 2001

“Supposedly, the human body has an energy to it that can be guided by external manipulation, much the way that matter and tissues are influenced by chemicals and radiation in allopathic medicine.” 

Dworkin was the source of Ahmed's plagiarised SMH articles (in that case, a different article Dworkin wrote for The Atlantic).

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Ahmed wrote another piece, this time more recently, in January this year, in The Australian, on the same topic. Some paragraphs are ripped directly from his article in the MJA:

Ahmed, The Australian, January 2015 (full text)

“According to the National Institute of Complementary Medicine, two in three Australians use complementary medicines each year and spend almost four times as much on out-of-pocket expenses for these medicines as on pharmaceuticals. Mostly, the use of vitamins or supplements is unwarranted in healthy people.”

Ahmed, MJA 2013

“According to the National Institute of Complementary Medicine two in three Australians use complementary medicines each year and spend almost four times as much on the out-of-pocket expenses for these medicines as they do on pharmaceuticals. In most cases, the use of vitamins or supplements is unwarranted in healthy people.”

Which itself seems to be taken directly from this website:

Life Sciences Queensland, Date Unknown

"Research has shown that two in three Australians use complementary medicines. Furthermore, consumers are spending four times more in out of pocket expenses on complementary medicines than on pharmaceuticals"
Another line has been edited slightly, but clearly self-plagiarised:

Ahmed, MJA 2013

"There also needs to be an admission of the power of placebo, the inherent doubts that are part and parcel of health care, and that the veneer of omniscience within the medical profession is, in part, charade"

Ahmed, The Australian, January 2015 (full text)

"We need to recognise the power of the placebo and that the veneer of omniscience in the medical profession is, in part, a charade"

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When you submit work to a publisher, you agree that what you've written is original work - copying something you've submitted to another publisher also counts as plagiarism, given you're forcing an outlet to unwittingly publish and derive revenue from content also published elsewhere.

Plagiarism is a shitty thing to do for a large variety of reasons, but to me, putting other people, who have placed their trust in you, in a legally compromised position, is really nasty part.

In an interview on ABC's Radio National in late 2012, Ahmed confusingly confesses his sins, tries to explain his plagiarism, and pleads to be given a 'second chance':

"And already, I must say, the…I’ve been…I’ve felt well supported. I’ve felt lots of journalists and doctors too have said, okay, look, you screwed up but nobody really thinks you need to plagiarise but, you know, this’ll take time. You need to steadily ride up again, build trust. And that’s, that’s what I’d like to do, you know, and do it in a humble way with purpose."

I have very strong feelings about the perpetration of domestic violence (a big part of the reason why I'm not really qualified to offer meaningful commentary on the issue). A huge number of men get away with the infliction of harm because they're talented at creating awkwardly misshapen justifications for their actions - post-hoc rationalisations that allow them to slip easily and regularly into state of stupidity.

Ahmed's incoherent justification of plagiarism seems to mirror his twisted explanatory reasoning around domestic violence. He characterises himself as some sort of innocent automaton - carelessly copying paragraphs from other people's work, only semi-aware that his actions are wrong.

In his article in The Australian last Monday, he imagines male perpetrators of violence in the same way - stressed, struggling with identity and reacting only to external pressures - devoid of any personal responsibility.

Both arguments are devoid of logic and evidence, and both are ethically indefensible.
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Thursday 12 February 2015

The "Wind Turbine Syndrome" Study: Demand, Reject, Repeat

Today's National Health and Medical Research Council report re-affirms the answer to a question that's been asked by scientists many, many times prior. Is there any scientific evidence to support the claim that wind farms have direct impacts on human health?

"The National Health and Medical Research Council has today released a statement concluding that ‘there is currently no consistent evidence that wind farms cause adverse health effects in humans.’"

No; there isn't.

But, if a little thing like the vast, howling absence of scientific evidence highlighted above could impact the zest of groups that propagate the 'wind turbine syndrome' theory, it would have happened years ago.

As expected, the NHMRC re-asserted its call for more 'research' into this issue, an idea that's seemingly the brainchild of Liberal-National Party - an article from last year elaborates:

"Abbott told commercial radio this month that research should be refreshed "from time to time" to consider whether there were "new facts that impact on old judgments". "It is some years since the NHMRC last looked at this issue - why not do it again?" Mr Abbott said."

This mirrors a recent announcement from conservative US Governor Scott Walker, who's dedicating US$250,000 to study 'wind turbine syndrome' in America.

On the surface, it seems like a harmless venture. If there's community concerns, why not answer them with scientific research? Scientific answers offered in response to unscientific questions will be perpetually ignored.

If we commissioned a million studies, they would all impact with a dull, unceremonious thud against a solid wall - an impenetrable fortress of belief that was fully armed and operational the very moment the syndrome was first imagined.

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The genesis of 'wind turbine syndrome', the nature of its spread and the motivation behind its uptake unambiguously indicate that no scientific research will convince proponents of the theory.

Wind turbine syndrome was first hypothesised by Nina Pierpont - the wife of a particularly profane anti-wind activist named Calvin Luther Martin. Both lived near a wind farm proposed near their home, and both were behind the creation of (now, seemingly defunct) Windturbinesyndrome.com and the publication of 'groundbreaking' research in which a tiny sample of self-selected individuals were asked about their symptoms on the phone. Pierpont writes:

"I never set out to prove that wind turbines cause Wind Turbine Syndrome. This was already obvious. Instead, I chose to study and document the observations made by people who had already figured it out and proved it on their own."

The theory was not created by disinterested parties investigated a theory. The dual architects of "Wind turbine syndrome" openly admit that they believed their theory to be true before they put pen to paper.

Their study only needed a thin veneer of scientific credibility - enough to convince unforgivably credulous journalists that their investigation was scientifically worthwhile.

Since it reached the shores of Australia in 2009, a full eight years after the first wind farm in Australia began operation, it's been adopted by groups and individuals that harbour some motivation to oppose wind power.

The utility of the syndrome was immediately apparent to anti-wind groups.

An ad placed in the Pyrenees Advocate clearly demonstrates the reason 'wind turbine syndrome' was created
As is the case with Pierpont, the moment the theory was adopted, it was assumed to be correct, and unassailable.

Peter Mitchell, chairman of the Waubra Foundation (an anti-wind group focused on health impacts), opponent of a wind farm development near his property in Victoria, and a listed 'observer' on the NHMRC review, states in objection to the development:

"There are proven health problems associated with living too close to turbines. That is a fact. No quibbling by proponents or politicians nor the Department of Health’s apparent ducking for cover and state of ignorance can dissolve or camouflage that fact. 
Essentially, Dr Pierpont collected sufficient data to demonstrate a link between wind turbines and human health problems. She then proposed a theory linking the certain cause and the observed effect. This theory is of no importance to our consideration. What is important now is to ensure avoidance of symptoms from this project. 
The industry, and government wind enthusiasts will continue to attempt to remain in denial, and response with ad hominem criticisms and pedantic mini-criticisms of work published on the subject. Regardless of their ‘assurances’ it is imperative that precautionary action is taken in this project so that the 12% of exposed families affected at Waubra is not repeated at [Stockyard Hill Wind Farm]"

It should be noted how perverse it is that a listed observer of the NHMRC review is the chairman of an organisation that exists solely to spread the health fears being research by the review.

This is five years in the past - even then, the proponents of the disease asserted that the theory was unquestionable.

Sarah Laurie, CEO of the Waubra Foundation, stated in an interview:

"Sarah Dingle: If federal and state governments agree to fund the research you're calling for around the country, and it clears wind farms of any adverse impact on human health, would you accept that? 
Sarah Laurie: Sarah, the adverse impacts have been shown by a number of studies, both overseas and in Australia"

It's hard to get any clearer than that: No, the NHMRC's expensive study isn't going to convince her: she's already convinced, and logically then, information that contradicts that view must be wrong.

The Waubra Foundation (it recently had its 'Health Promotion Charity' status revoked by the ACNC), harbour an extremely weird set of beliefs about wind energy:

Will the NHMRC investigate these as part of their research? Source
If there's no evidence either way on the impact of wind farms on the discharge of cameras, does that mean we have to investigate it, just to be sure? What's that, you're opposed to research it? What have you got to hide, hmm?

A recent and major complication in the issue the new-found aspect of the theory - that the impact of wind turbines on human health can actually occur during periods at which the turbines are stationary - revealed as part of a Pierpont-esque report that involved self-reported health measures, a self-selected, small sample size, and no control group:

In the Hamilton Spectator, Saturday the 7th of February, 2015, written by two Penshurst residents
Again; the outcome is simple: there is literally no way that this theory can be countered by any format of scientific investigation.

Another example  is an enormous, long-running and extremely expensive research project commissioned by the Canadian equivalent of the NHMRC late last year. Coming in at $2.1 million, the research project examined objective and subjective health measures of randomly selected residents living near a large number of different wind turbines in Canada.

The study found no linkage between wind farms and health: it was immediately rejected by Canadian anti-wind groups. They continue to call for more 'research' into 'wind turbine syndrome'.



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This relentless cycle, of demands and the instantaneous rejection of the outcomes of those demands, has been given new life by the government's demands of the National Health and Medical Research Council.
"The CEO, Professor Warwick Anderson noted that, based on the poor evidence base and continued public interest, NHMRC intends to issue a one-off Targeted Call for Research"
The funds could be direct to expanding our knowledge of the world. Instead, the money serve the sole purpose of keeping a pseudoscience on life support for several more years - leading to more anxiety, more fear and more consternation for communities around proposed and operational wind farms. The outcomes of the study will be rejected by the misinformers, and ignored by everyone else.

The NHMRC could spend money researching how community engagement and ownership models have essentially stunted any efforts to spread health fears to countries like Germany and Denmark, and how better models of science communication can counter pseudoscience that's tailored to feed our fears and anxieties. Though there's brief mention of psychosocial factors, the influence of anti-wind activism goes completely unmentioned.

This direction would be roundly rejected by the political and activist groups currently dictating our medical research agenda. An actual resolution of this issue would be a horrifying scenario, for them.

In their ideal world, they continue to demand ever-expanding scientific research, whilst the outcomes of each study deflect off the solid concrete walls of belief that have always bound this manufactured malady, and always will.
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