The most important recent paper in nutrition wasn’t written by a nutritionist and it wasn’t written about nutrition. Rather, it was written by a statistician, John Ioannidis of Stanford University, and it was titled “Why most published research findings are false.” It has been cited 7,500 times (i.e., a lot) because it really does show that most published research findings are false.

Moreover, most research findings in the so-called ‘hard’ sciences such as math, physics or chemistry are true, which by process of elimination means that almost all the findings published in the ‘soft’ sciences are false. And sciences don’t come much softer than nutrition.

So, is coffee bad for you? Currently not, but a few years ago it was, and a few years before that it wasn’t, and a few years before that it was, and a few years before that it wasn’t–and almost all those findings were false because, as John Ioannidis has shown, the statistics used to justify those sorts of study, whether pro-coffee or anti-coffee, were rarely good enough to support any conclusion at all. The abuse of statistics is the greatest block to good science today.

In the past, nutrition research was about deficiencies; and it was good research. Do we need vitamins? Yes. Do we need essential minerals? Yes. Do we need protein? Yes. We can be sure about those findings. But nutrition research today is about excess. Is too much meat or carbohydrate or fat bad for you? And what does ‘too much’ mean? We rarely know the answers to such questions.

Sadly, one of the few facts we do know about modern nutrition is that the outbreak, in 1980, of the current epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes, followed hard on the issuance by the federal government, in 1977, of advice to eat less fat and more carbohydrate: and that as the American people dutifully followed this advice, so they got fatter and more diabetic. We don’t know if that was a coincidence or whether it was cause-and-effect, but as Thoreau said, “some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

We’ve long understood chicken and fish to be safe, but a new study has been released suggesting that both red meat (beef, pork, lamb or venison) and processed meat (sausages, bacon, ham, hot dogs) are also safe; and the panjandrums of the nutrition orthodoxy are outraged. “This report has layers of flaws and is the most egregious abuse of evidence that I have ever seen,” said Walter Willett of Harvard. “Their recommendations are really irresponsible,” said Frank Hu of Harvard. A contrarian would immediately assume, therefore, that the study in question must be marvelous. Is it?

Well, it represents part of a new wave in nutrition, in which a group of scientists who have no financial ties to the food industry set themselves up, like the justices of the Supreme Court, to adjudicate as a panel on a field of research. And, again like the justices of the Supreme Court, they are not frightened from disagreeing with each other and from voting differently from each other. That represents a useful advance in science, as scientists move away from papers that present a monolithic consensus to papers that admit a more conflicted recognition of doubt.

How did the scientists in this new study vote? Well, in essence, they agreed that the evidence just isn’t very good. It’s probable that both ordinary meat and processed meat might be bad for you, but they don’t seem to be very bad, and the authors of the paper suggested that their badness does not justify the disruption of a person’s lifestyle by their going vegetarian, let alone vegan. Also, the authors suggested, switching from meat to other foods (pizzas for example) might incur other risks.

My own feeling is that this new study is less important than the media reports suggest. Everybody agrees that the evidence about the dangers of meat, processed or otherwise, is necessarily weak (nutrition research is difficult to perform, as people need to be studied over decades and people’s knowledge of their own diets is often surprisingly vague), but everyone also agrees that meat, processed or otherwise, is probably a bit bad for you. The authors of this new study have introduced a value judgement, in that they’ve tried to determine if the health benefits of going vegetarian or vegan can justify the disruption to a person’s lifestyle, and I’m not sure the authors have the data to justify such a value judgement: how do you balance health risks over lifestyle changes? Is that not comparing apples and oranges?

On the other hand, the authors have done a public service by highlighting how modest the health benefits–real though they may be–of shifting to a vegetarian or vegan diet might be, and (again) how weak is so much nutrition research.

Where does this leave us? As so often, it leaves us in the hands of the three most-trusted writers in nutrition. Amazingly, not one is a nutritionist (all three are journalists) and their advice clashes, but the person who reads Gary Taubes, Nina Teicholz and Michael Pollan, and who then tries to synthesize their judgments into one culinary world view, will be following the best food advice currently going.

There is a libertarian lesson to be learned in this—in a 2018 policy analysis, I noted the federal government may be institutionally incapable of providing wise dietary advice. If the base of knowledge is inadequate or incapable of being adequate, any emanating advice will be inadequate. When that advice comes from government bureaucracies burdened by politics and interest groups, the science and advice must overcome even greater adversaries.

Today’s Google Doodle is about Dr. Herbert Kleber, a noted U.S. psychiatrist who died on October 5, 2018. After his early work with addicted inmates at a national prison in Kentucky, he became very disappointed with the results of what was, in effect, abstinence therapy augmented by work assignments and group therapy sessions—which had been the standard approach in the 1960s. This approach was associated with a roughly 90 percent failure rate.

His research at Yale and later at Columbia University was largely responsible for the now widespread acceptance of methadone, and now other forms of what is referred to as Medication Assisted Treatment (referred to by many therapists as Opioid Replacement Therapy) for patients suffering from addiction.

Now a time-tested tool for the treatment of substance use disorder, Kleber met much resistance from the public policy community, who tended to view addiction as a vice rather than an illness, preferring incarceration and punishment over treatment. Kleber argued for an evidence-based approach to the treatment of substance use disorder. Despite extensive evidence that MAT is much more successful than forced abstinence within the penal system, resistance to this approach persists among many policy makers. In fact, in 2017, then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon, dismissed methadone treatment as “substituting one opioid for another.”

A growing number of addiction researchers and therapists view addiction as a learning disorder automatized as a coping mechanism. Most of the medical community chooses to employ more of an organic disease model approach to the understanding and treatment of addiction. Both schools of thought recognize the value of MAT in helping addicts overcome the fear of withdrawal while dealing with stress-induced triggers without resorting to a drug-induced “safe space.” As their lives stabilize, MAT in conjunction with group and individual therapy gets addicts on the road to recovery.

Dr. Kleber served as Deputy “Drug Czar” in the Reagan Administration. In later years he continued research on evidence-based approaches to substance use disorder at Columbia University. In recognition of his efforts to destigmatize substance use disorder and promote treatment over incarceration, he deserves to be today’s Google Doodle.

The Cato 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth National Survey finds 59% of Americans favor building more houses, condos, and apartment buildings in their community while 39% oppose. These data suggest that liberalizing density zoning is desired among the public.

Full survey results and report found here.

Expanding the supply of housing is broadly popular across partisans and demographics—particularly in cities. City residents (69%) are nearly 20 points more supportive than suburban residents (52%) of building more housing. Majorities of White (56%), Black (62%), and Latino (66%) Americans also favor building more housing.

Majorities of Democrats (67%), independents (57%) favor building more housing in their neighborhoods. A slim majority (52%) of Republicans also favor more construction in their neighborhoods, while 46% oppose. Republicans’ more tepid support is notable because constraints on construction often come from government zoning restrictions. Yet Republicans typically are more skeptical of government regulation. The fact that Republicans are more likely to own homes may have something to do with it. A CBS News poll in 2012, accessed via the Roper Center iPoll Databank archive, found that Democrats (30%) are about twice as likely as Republicans (18%) to rent their homes. Just as allowing more construction can make housing more affordable for families, it puts downward pressure on home values for existing homeowners.

71% Favor Building More Housing if It Makes Housing More Affordable

Americans become even more supportive of building more housing in their communities if it made housing more affordable. Nearly three-fourths (71%) would favor building more houses, condos, and apartments in their community if it meant that “it would be easier to afford housing in your neighborhood.”

Americans Say Housing Is Too Expensive

One reason Americans may support more construction in their neighborhoods is that most have dealt with prohibitively high housing costs. A majority (56%) say that expensive housing costs have prevented them from moving to a better location. Not only that, but nearly half (44%) rate housing prices in their current neighborhoods as “bad.”

High housing costs have had a disproportionate impact among the nation’s poor and middle class. Nearly 8 in 10 (78%) of current welfare recipients report expensive housing costs prevented them from moving to a better neighborhood.

It’s not until families begin earning more than the median household income that Americans say housing costs are not prohibitive, the survey finds. Among those earning less than $60,000 a year, about two-thirds say expensive housing costs prevented them from moving to a better location. However, among those earning over $60,000, a majority (56%) say expensive housing costs did not prevent them from moving to a better neighborhood.

The high cost of housing is a post-partisan problem. Majorities of both Democrats (61%) and Republicans (54%) say expensive housing costs prevented them from moving to a better neighborhood.

Full survey results and report found here.

Read more of the survey report here.

The Cato Institute 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth Survey was designed and conducted by the Cato Institute in collaboration with YouGov. YouGov collected responses online March 5 to 8, 2019 from a representative national sample of 1,700 Americans 18 years of age and older. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 2.2 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence.

Sign up here to receive forthcoming Cato Institute survey reports.

Recently, Pew published a wide-ranging survey entitled “Why Americans Don’t Fully Trust Many Who Hold Positions of Power and Responsibility.” Police officers were among the groups polled among respondents. The results on cops align with what is shown in the annual Confidence in Institutions survey published by Gallup—briefly, that cops are among the most liked and trusted groups in America, despite the enduring “war on cops” narrative—but the general affinity for police breaks down across demographics. The results also mesh well onto what my colleague Emily Ekins found in her 2016 polling on American attitudes toward police.

From the Pew release:

“[O]pinions about police officers differ widely by racial and ethnic group, with white people holding more positive opinions about police officers than black people and Hispanics do. This racial and ethnic divide is most apparent when it comes to police officers treating all racial and ethnic groups equally. Roughly seven-in-ten white Americans (72%) say police officers treat racial and ethnic groups equally at least some of the time. By way of comparison, half of Hispanics and just 33% of black adults say the same. The racial divide extends beyond opinions about police officers treating racial and ethnic groups equally. Across all six questions asked about police officers, whites are more likely than both Hispanic and black Americans to express positive views of police officers.” (emphasis added)

Fully two thirds of black respondents and half of Hispanic respondents do not believe that police officers treat racial and ethnic minorities equally. While it is theoretically possible that so many ethnic and racial minorities have been hoodwinked into believing something that is not true—or are perhaps oversensitive to just and fair police procedures—the far more likely (and statistically supported) explanation is that blacks and Hispanics are treated differently than whites, and many are quite cognizant of that difference. Social networks and personal experience in these racial and ethnic communities inform these beliefs, lending credence to their position.

Given that many Americans live in racially homogenous areas and that some cities remain de facto segregated, many white Americans may not be aware of how police operate in spaces and neighborhoods that are not white-dominated. Likewise, white Americans may not understand how being not white in white-dominant spaces may incur unwanted (and unwarranted) contact with police officers. Such interactions are not always hostile, and the vast majority are not violent, but the experience may nevertheless be a negative one because the person who is stopped recognizes, or at least has legitimate reason to believe, that their perceived race or ethnicity played a considerable role in an involuntary police contact.

As an example of this repeated and unwanted contact, African-American motorist Philando Castile was stopped nearly 50 times for minor violations before he was shot and killed by a police officer in suburban Minnesota in 2016. In many of these stops there was no moving violation at all. In a book published by University of Kansas researchers, evidence suggests that black drivers are far more likely to be pulled over for minor, non-speeding violations than white drivers, who are primarily pulled over for excessive speeding and other less ambiguous violations.

Even if one disregards all the available statistical, anecdotal, and historical evidence of racially disparate policing, the perception that police treat people differently based on race is nevertheless a genuine policy problem for police agencies. Police need human intelligence—that is, public cooperation—to solve most serious crimes. Communities that believe they are regularly targeted by police because of their race or ethnicity will be far less likely to cooperate with those police when major crimes occur. Thus, the perception of racially disparate police practices may hinder police investigations and lead to less safe communities.

But there is ample reason to believe that, in many jurisdictions, police practices vary by race and ethnicity. Therefore, as a matter of public safety and security, police must change their behaviors in order to rectify those issues and cease the invasive practices that engender distrust among people of color. Because police need the public’s trust to function effectively, officers and departments must prioritize earning that trust.

You can read more Cato work on racially disparate policing here and here; you can read about other ways police need to change to earn trust here.

With the democratic primaries underway, the multitude of Democratic candidates will likely highlight the fault lines that divide the Democratic Party. The recent Cato 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth National Survey found one such fault line dividing liberal and moderate Democrats: socialism and attitudes toward the rich.

Liberal Democrats are about 10–25 points more likely than moderate Democrats to:

• have favorable views of socialism (74% vs. 49%)
• to strongly support raising top marginal tax rates to 70% (60% vs. 38%)
• to strongly agree that people admire the rich too much (51% vs. 36%)
• to strongly agree the U.S. wealth distribution is “unjust” (51% vs. 30%)
• to believe that billionaires are a threat to democracy (58% vs. 49%)

Conversely, moderate Democrats like the rich more than liberal Democrats do. Moderate Democrats are about 10–20 points more likely than liberal Democrats to

• feel more “admiration” than “resentment” toward the rich (65% vs. 48%)
• believe the rich earned their wealth by creating value for society (64% vs. 48%)
• agree “we are all better off when people get rich” because they invest in new businesses and technology (58% vs. 41%)
• strongly agree there’s nothing wrong with making as much money as possible (50% vs. 38%)

Full survey results and report found here.

Implications

These divisions could have important implications as Democratic candidates seek to stand out and attract primary voters. In particular, as Democratic candidates have proposed new wealth taxes, “taxing the hell out of the wealthy,” or asserted that billionaires are the reason for people’s frustrations. These proposals and claims may be effective in garnering the support of the Democratic Party’s leftward flank, but may fail to capture the enthusiasm of more centrist voters.

Read more of the survey report here.

The Cato Institute 2019 Welfare, Work, and Wealth Survey was designed and conducted by the Cato Institute in collaboration with YouGov. YouGov collected responses online March 5 to 8, 2019 from a representative national sample of 1,700 Americans 18 years of age and older. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 2.2 percentage points at the 95% level of confidence.

Sign up here to receive forthcoming Cato Institutesurvey reports.

As Americans become older and wealthier, there’s growing interest in “aging-in-place design” for our homes. In the Washington Post, Stephanie Brick notes that aging-in-place

actually falls under the umbrella of universal design, which is becoming better known in the design industry as inclusive design. This is design — from the full architecture of a building to minute details such as material or fixture selections — that creates an equal experience for people across a wide spectrum of abilities.

Although many of us hearing this would naturally think of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), Brick notes that inclusive design is not just “a set of minimum requirements to be met” but a “holistic strategy” that seeks make living spaces accessible in multiple ways for many kinds of people, now and in the future.

What occurred to me as I read the article is that this is a manifestation of our increasingly affluent society. The average new single-family home today is about 1000 square feet bigger than new homes in 1973, even as household size has declined. Homes are safer, more luxurious, and more technologically advanced than they were a decade or a generation ago. Inclusive design is part of that trend. Deirdre McCloskey writes in her imminent book that “the greatest, yet regularly overlooked, fact about the modern world” is the Great Enrichment, the fact that we are roughly 3,000 percent richer than our ancestors in 1800. And that enrichment continues, in the United States and in increasing parts of the world.

Of course, there are always tradeoffs in design choices. Stephanie Brick notes that “knobs can be difficult to grip for someone with arthritis or who has limited mobility. Lever handles for doors and faucets, as well as pulls for cabinetry hardware instead of knobs, are a simple adaptation.” But at the same time as Brick’s article appeared, a Wall Street Journal “Mansion” section article addressed the damage pets can do to houses, including a $1.25 million Colorado home: “Another $1,000 was spent to replace door levers with doorknobs because the pups were sneaking into guest rooms and gobbling up things like vitamins.” Inclusive or not, no design is going to satisfy every customer.

In an overwhelming vote, the House of Representatives passed the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants, a bill to phase out the per country limits on employment-based immigrant visas (or green cards), which lead to legal permanent resident status. The Senate is working on its own version of the legislation. The per country limits provide that no single nation can receive more than 7 percent of the total green cards issued in a year (unless they would otherwise go unused).

Because Congress has failed to authorize enough green cards for workers hired by U.S. employers, a large backlog of applicants has developed. The largest employment-based backlog is in the second and third preference categories for employees of U.S. businesses with at least bachelor’s degree (i.e. EB2/EB3). As of May 2018, about 586,439 workers and their families were waiting for EB2/EB3 green cards, based on figures from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. This number includes an estimate of the spouses and children who are waiting with the workers.

The per country limits, however, cause this backlog to develop unevenly. They result in an inequity between the proportion of applicants from certain countries and the proportion of green cards that nationals of those countries receive. Figure 1 shows the estimated number of new applicants in 2018, the number of green cards issued by country of origin, and the backlog by country of origin. The fact that employers requested more than half of the green cards for Indians but Indians received just 13 percent of those issued has caused the backlog to develop almost exclusively for Indians.

The Indian backlog means that they carry almost the entire burden of the green card shortage. While they wait in line, nationals of other countries get to cut to the front of the line. Going forward, new EB2/EB3 applicants from India in 2019 will face astronomical wait times. At the current pace, it will take 49 years to process the Indian backlog—if people stick it out that long—and nearly 50,000 Indians would die before then. During that entire half century, other immigrants would keep bypassing Indians with almost no wait at all. Table 1 shows the projected wait times by country based on the current rate at which green cards are issued. 

The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act would phase out the per country limits for all employment-based immigrants, so that immigrants would receive green cards on a first-come, first-served basis without regard to birthplace. After a period of adjustment, the share of green cards that each nationality receives will equal the share of applicants from each country. But because such a large backlog of Indians, it will take several years to work through the backlog.

The House bill provides a three-year period in which new non-Indian, non-Chinese applicants would be guaranteed 15 percent, 10 percent, and 10 percent of the green cards issued in each year, respectively. Of the remainder during those years, Indians could use no more than 85 percent, leaving Chinese with the rest. Furthermore, any applicant who already had an approved employer petition prior to the bill’s enactment would be guaranteed to receive their green card not any later than when they would have otherwise received it.

Figure 2 projects how green cards will be awarded under the House version of the bill (H.R. 1044). The House bill would require a little less than 7 years to process the existing backlog of applicants and move onto new applicants. In addition to deaths (3,025), this estimate takes into account the rate of abandoned applications (about 4.75 percent annually) and the number of children (about 14,300) who will lose eligibility by turning 21 (i.e. aging out). Indians and Chinese will receive all green cards for just three years before the rest of the world returns in 2026. The distribution in 2027 will reflect the proportion of applicants applying in 2018–19 from each country. No one will receive any preference based on their birth country.

The Senate bill temporarily creates a new employment-based category for 7,200 immigrants working in “shortage occupations”—currently, the Department of Labor defines these as nurses and physical therapists—from 2020 to 2027. Sens. Rand Paul (R‑KY) and David Perdue (R‑GA) requested this change because the nursing industry can only access foreign workers by hiring them from abroad under a green card, while other industries can use temporary work visas like the H‑1B.

Although it solves the nursing problem, the Senate bill will take another year to process the existing backlog—a little less than 8 years. Figure 3 shows the distribution of green cards under the most recent Senate version of the bill.

In this version, the non-Chinese, non-Indians, non-shortage workers (i.e. “other” in Figure 3) would not receive any green cards for four years. Opponents of the legislation claim that this is unfair, yet new Indian applicants who applied in 2018–19 will not receive any green cards under the bill for almost eight years, and if the law isn’t passed, then they would face a half a century wait (ultimately, nearly half would give up before then).

The time it takes to process the backlog—7 or 8 years—will roughly approximate the processing time for new applicants from China and India in 2020. The rest of the world’s applicants will still receive a preference under the legislation for 2020 because they have a special set-aside for the first three years, guaranteeing their applicants some green cards even though they applied after Indians and Chinese. New Chinese applicants will receive green cards a little bit later than otherwise, but Chinese applicants in the backlog will receive them slightly faster on average due to the increase in green cards for them from 2020 to 2022 as shown in Figures 2 and 3.

The Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act will clearly leave an immigration system that is still broken. Congress authorizes far too few green cards. It should not count immigrant workers’ spouses and children against the cap for workers. The green card quota should be updated to account for economic growth since it was created (roughly double). It should exempt shortage occupations from the cap entirely. Sen. Rand Paul’s BELIEVE Act would fix those issues. Ultimately, the bill will not fix the entire immigration system, but it would accomplish its purpose: making the system fairer.