Tough Decisions

Many people have been quick to criticize the Scottish decision to liberate Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

The general tone of the criticism is shocked, puzzled or angry. Before the decision was announced, Hillary Clinton described the possibility of Megrahi's release as "absolutely wrong" [BBC News 19 August 2009]. Following the announcement, Barack Obama has denounced the release as a mistake [Guardian 21 August 2009], the head of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a scathing attack on the Scottish government [BBC News 22 August 2009], and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm Mike Mullen said: "This is obviously a political decision" [BBC News 23 August 2009]. As if these powerful and (presumably) well-informed people considered the decision to be quite straightforward. Or perhaps they are simply aggrieved that their own wishes haven't prevailed.

Two main lines of conspiracy theory are emerging. One line is that the release is in return for arms sales or some other secret deal. (So that's why the US government are complaining?) The other line is that the authorities have privately conceded that the conviction was unsound (as the UN observer believed at the time, and as Paul Foot documented in great detail in a 2001 Private Eye special report) and now wish to release Megrahi before an appeal against the conviction can be heard (as a CIA spook now suggests).

• Hans Köchler: I saw the trial – and the verdict made no sense (Independent 21 August 2009)
• Libyan Takeaway (Private Eye #1243 21 August 2009)
  
• CIA spook says Megrahi was freed before appeal humiliated justice system (Sunday Mail 23 August 2009)
• Malise Ruthven, Deception Over Lockerbie? (New York Review od Books, Volume 56, Number 15, 8th October 2009)

Perhaps it's inevitable that people are going to be angry about the decision if they don't know all the facts. And it's easy to criticize from your armchair, if you aren't the one making the tough decisions. As always, my recommendation is to think of a frame in which the decision appears to make sense. Compassion or conspiracy - you choose.

Obama Heathcare Plan

What kind of nitwit (asks @RSessions ) would believe Obama's health care plan wants to kill the elderly? Roger cites a New York Times article, Obama Calls Health Plan a 'Moral Obligation' (20 August 2009).

Another way of putting this question is as follows. Within what frame or worldview does this outcome (killing elderly people) seem both likely and deliberate? And what are the characteristics of those people who view Obama's healthcare plan in this way?

One of the hotly contested frames is the religious one. Obama is specifically addressing the religious lobby, and is hoping to get the moral high-ground. Obama turns to faith leaders Josh Gerstein (Politico, 20 August 2009).

Care for the elderly has apparently become a focal point for opposition to the healthcare plan. Conservative religious leaders such as Dr Alveda King (niece of Dr Martin Luther King jr and supporter of John McCain in the recent presidential election) adopts the rhetorical trick of stringing emotive words together ("health reform ... unborn ... elderly ... genocide"), which may create the desired effect in some audiences without the need for detailed (and refutable) argument.

One of the interesting things here is the way a single word or phrase (in this case "elderly") becomes a substitute for a proper argument and well-articulated worldview. This is a very common phenomenon: the word acts as a totem, creating a frame around itself. The power of words.

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Sources

• Health reform fact check: Euthanasia of the elderly, Cindy House. Rocky Mountain Independent, 10 August 2009
• Fox & Friends crew frighten elderly viewers: health-care reform is 'a subtle form of euthanasia' David Neiwert Crooks and Liars Blog, 27 July 2009

See also

• Matt Frei, Washington diary: Making the sale, BBC News, 23 July 2009.
  
• Arnold Relman, The Health Reform We Need & Are Not Getting. New York Review of Books, July 2, 2009.
• Theodore R. Marmor and Jonathan Oberlander, Health Reform: The Fateful Moment. New York Review of Books, August 13, 2009.

School League Tables

Is assessment in schools fit for purpose? asks the UK Teaching and Learning Research Programme. (Full report pdf, press release pdf, BBC News)

Obviously the answer depends on what you imagine the purpose to be. The report identifies a wide range of possible (and sometimes conflicting) uses, and politely pours scorn on the view expressed last year by David Bell, who as permanent secretary at the Department for Children, Schools and Families told MPs:

“While I hear the argument that is often put about multiple purposes of testing and assessment, I do not think that it is problematic to expect tests and assessments to do different things.”

As the report points out, the reason that this expectation is problematic is that assessments have two different effects: they provide information and they influence what people do. These effects generally conflict: measurement (especially targets) distorts performance.

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Using Stafford Beer's POSIWID principle to determine the real (de facto) purpose of assessment, we can identify four real purposes, one internal to the educational establishment, and three external.

For head teachers and bureaucrats, assessment is a way of competing for resources. Assessment results are used to allocate funding to schools, and to cost-justify a wide range of innovations and initiatives, and are therefore subject to strong vested interests from various stakeholders within the education system.

For politicians, assessment provides a way of claiming that education standards have improved monotonically since records began, with especially good progress during the current regime. (I don't actually know anyone outside the "system" who takes these claims very seriously.)

The schools at the top of the league tables can attract the best teachers and the best pupils, and therefore should be able to maintain their position at the top of the table in perpetuity. (A bit like professional football.)

Therefore, for ordinary people, assessment provides a way of selecting the "best" school for your child, and helps to increase and maintain property prices within the desirable catchment areas. (Obviously this effect is viewed differently by those families who can afford these property prices and by those who cannot.)

In summary, despite an official Government agenda for innovation and change, the league table system helps to maintain an unsatisfactory status quo. POSIWID.

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As a champion of systems thinking, I find it encouraging that so many ordinary people (almost everyone except politicians and bureaucrats) understand the problems with target-setting. One of the effects (and therefore the POSIWID purpose) of the target-setting regime may be to encourage people to embark on real system thinking. And by "systems thinking", I don't just mean the John Seddon approach to service design but holistic joined-up thinking. I live in hope.

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See also

• What do school tests measure (New York Times, 3 August 2009)

The Benefits of Doubt 2

@ghall49 (Gerald Hall) writes: "Birthers are a great example of how impervious delusional beliefs are to reason and evidence. They only accept what they want to believe."

According to the BBC, a growing number of Americans (the so-called Birthers) doubt the circumstances of Obama's birth [Q&A Obama's Birth Certificate]. Some of them suggest that he might possibly be Kenyan or Indonesian.

Birthers do not seem overly concerned at the absence of evidence for either of these suggestions. Obviously the absence of evidence merely proves that the evidence has been destroyed by the conspirators. For them to feel morally justified in rejecting the authority of the elected president, it is apparently sufficient that there is a smidgeon of doubt about the documentation that the President has produced. The fact that Obama is supported by a "fairly significant faction" puts him into the same historical category as the mediaeval antipopes.

Do Birthers actually believe that Obama is Kenyan? Or do they merely believe that he might be Kenyan, that he might as well be Kenyan? Or that, like Macduff, he was not of woman born? Birthers don't have to be certain that Obama is this or that, they merely have to be uncertain that he is American. The real delusion is not about the circumstances of Obama's birth, but about the relevance of these doubts to the American polity.

Meanwhile, some Birthers have discovered a further reason to deny President Obama the respect owing to a duly elected president. According to the latest theory, Obama's middle name is not Hussein or Mohammed but Lucifer.

Here's the method. First take the following verse from the Bible, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." (Luke 10:18). Now insert the Aramaic word for "lightning" (barak) and the Hebrew word for "from the heights" (bamah). Obama isn't just Kenyan, he's also the Antichrist?

Just the faintest possibility that he might be the Antichrist? Isn't that enough?

See also From Malcolm X to Barack Obama