Re: “Pay equity ‘scientism,’ ” William Watson, Junk Science Week, June 15
The millions of Canadian women being paid less than men doing work of equal value share little of William Watson’s faith in the free market’s ability to address pay equity. Behind the condescending attempts at being clever, Prof. Watson’s arguments fail to give any real solutions for women waiting to achieve basic equality.
Women workers in Canada face a myriad of systemic problems and discrimination in the workplace that perpetuate inequality. Simply telling these women to get a better job does nothing to help ensure the work of women is equally valued, day to day, and throughout careers.
One way or another — through legal action, political action, and collective bargaining — CUPE will continue working for a more fair and equal society. The true “piece of junk” are attitudes that tolerate women being second-class citizens and second-class workers.
Paul Moist, national president, Canadian Union of Public Employees, Ottawa
In Ontario, female workers earn, on average 28% less in wages than male workers, based on full-time, full year wages (Statistics Canada, 2006). It is in society’s interest to try to minimize this gap, given that women now make up almost half of available labour and talent pool; undervaluing their contribution to the workforce therefore hurts the economy. More women are working outside the home, making a critical contribution to their families economic security. Lower income families and single mother households in particular are dependent on the income earned by working women.
There are many factors that contribute to the wage gap and governments use many tools to address this problem. These could take the form of programs to increase daycare spaces, encourage women to enter non-traditional fields of work where the rate of pay may be higher, and having laws that deal with discrimination. No one program will succeed in eliminating the wage gap until everyone — governments, employers, employees and unions work together to change patterns of behaviour that created the problem in the first place.
The Pay Equity Act, along with the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Employment Standards Act, deal with many aspects of gender discrimination in the workplace. The purpose of the Pay Equity Act is to redress systemic gender discrimination that may be present in workplace compensation practices. This is done by having employers compare jobs traditionally done by women to jobs traditionally done by men in their establishments and adjust the job rates for employees in the female job classes to the rates of employees in comparable male job classes, based on skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
Emanuela Heyninck, Hon. BA, LLB, Commissioner, Pay Equity Commission, Toronto
No paradox
Re: “The obesity paradox,” Lawrence Solomon, Junk Science Week, June 16
Junk Science Week at the National Post has been both enlightening and entertaining. That is, until Lawrence Solomon’s submission. In presenting the hypothesis that having multiple heart-disease risk factors at your first hospitalization for heart attack may increase your chances of survival, Solomon uses a bit of junk science himself.
A repeated point of ridicule during the week was how some activists use a single study from which to draw profound conclusions and dangerous policies. And yet, Solomon has no problem suggesting that people should do what it takes to get themselves diabetes and high blood pressure based upon a small set of numbers in a sole study. And even from this limited data he omits salient details. In particular, the group with zero risk factors had an average age of 71.5, while the group with five factors averaged 56.7. Personally, I’m happy to continue my zero-risk-factor lifestyle if it means putting off my first heart attack by 15 years.
Matthew Lohbihler, Markham, Ont.
This column reports on a large study that appears to show an inverse association between the number of risk factors and morbidity with first myocardial infarction. The result is counterintuitive, even paradoxical, for the patients with the fewest risk factors appear to have a greatest chance of dying. I wonder however, if those patients with the fewest risk factors were actually reporting their first heart attacks, or if they had ignored prior ones. If you have no risk factors such as smoking, obesity and diabetes, it is hard to believe you are actually having a heart attack when you get chest pain. Denial is a classic symptom. However, if you are half-expecting one because of your lifestyle, you might be more likely to get yourself to the emergency ward the first time it happens and get treatment that will prevent further heart attacks. If so, obesity doesn’t protect you, it just makes you wary.
R. Osczevski, Newmarket, Ont.
Climate models
Re: “Climate models fail reality test,” Ross McKitrick, June 14
Don’t blame the climate models, which have done a phenomenal job in doing what they were designed to do, which is to produce better and more accurate weather forecasts based on weather satellite data. General circulation models were never designed to produce temperature predictions extending beyond a few weeks, so it is the fraudulent use of these models to produce the basis for the climate-change scam that is really at fault for the failed reality tests.
The fraud started with the claim in the Hansen et al. 1981 paper claiming, “The most sophisticated models suggest a mean warming of 2C to 3.5C for a doubling of the CO2 concentration from 300 to 600 ppm [parts per million]” — something that the climate models are completely incapable of predicting.
In the three decades since this paper was published, CO2 emissions have increased by 57.1%, but the same satellites that provide the data for the climate models also show that there has been zero detectable enhancement of the greenhouse effect from this 30-year increase in CO2 emissions, proving conclusively that the climate models were fraudulently used by the IPCC to fabricate a global-warming crisis where none was even physically possible.
Norm Kalmanovitch, Calgary
CT scans
Re: “CT the real risk,” Ruth Kava, June 13
Your articles on junk science are a great way of exposing misinformation. Did your June 13 article suggesting that CT scans are the real risk in breast cancer ironically introduce junk science?
In your Nov 5, 2010 issue you reported Dr. Christine Berg of the U.S. National Cancer Institute as saying, “This is the first time we have seen clear evidence of a significant reduction in lung cancer mortality with a screening test.” And your frequent writer, Lawrence Solomon, summarized by saying, “CT scans not only catch tumours early, allowing for early treatment; CT scans may prevent tumours as well.”
Don Lawson, Oakville, Ont.
There are limits
Re: “2052? More Like 2084,” Peter Foster, June 13
Your junk science material makes an excellent read, particularly Peter Foster’s comments. Yes, the fear-mongering that he so accurately exposes is based on bad science. However, realistically, there are “limits to growth.”
The U.S. and Canadian economies have grown by a compounded 3.25% over the last 50 years, which means that GDP has increased five-fold. If this same growth continues, by 2060 another multiple of five means these economies will be 25 times their level of a century earlier.
To illustrate the impossibility of this, in 1960 the U.S. had recovered from a terrible war on two fronts, helped to rebuild Europe and Japan, was building the Interstate system, and was gearing up to put someone on the moon. By 2060, just a 2% growth in GDP will be half that of the entire already-impressive economy of a century earlier.
This does not lead to any doomsday scenario, but minimal growth along with stable economies may become the desirable order of the day. After all, in absolute terms a 5% level of economic growth in 1960 is equal to a 1% increase in 2012!!
Maurice Hladik, Ottawa
Common sense
First, let me let you know, I am a fan of June Science Week. I have been a subscriber to the National Post since inception and was a casual reader. Junk Science Week got me hooked! Now I read the whole paper. As an agricultural scientist (retired), I am a common-sense kind of guy, I find that the paper reflects my views, and I frequently send articles to my friends.
“As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as he walks along the road, the fool lacks [common] sense and shows everyone how stupid he is” — Ecclesiastes 10: 1-3.
Kind of defines junk science, and maybe even politics.
Elmer Stobbe, retired professor, University of Manitoba
Canadian National Occupational Classification
Pay Equity Commission
US – Standard Occupational Classification
FP Letters to the Editor: Junk attitudes toward women
Re: “Pay equity ‘scientism,’ ” William Watson, Junk Science Week, June 15
The millions of Canadian women being paid less than men doing work of equal value share little of William Watson’s faith in the free market’s ability to address pay equity. Behind the condescending attempts at being clever, Prof. Watson’s arguments fail to give any real solutions for women waiting to achieve basic equality.
Women workers in Canada face a myriad of systemic problems and discrimination in the workplace that perpetuate inequality. Simply telling these women to get a better job does nothing to help ensure the work of women is equally valued, day to day, and throughout careers.
One way or another — through legal action, political action, and collective bargaining — CUPE will continue working for a more fair and equal society. The true “piece of junk” are attitudes that tolerate women being second-class citizens and second-class workers.
Paul Moist, national president, Canadian Union of Public Employees, Ottawa
In Ontario, female workers earn, on average 28% less in wages than male workers, based on full-time, full year wages (Statistics Canada, 2006). It is in society’s interest to try to minimize this gap, given that women now make up almost half of available labour and talent pool; undervaluing their contribution to the workforce therefore hurts the economy. More women are working outside the home, making a critical contribution to their families economic security. Lower income families and single mother households in particular are dependent on the income earned by working women.
There are many factors that contribute to the wage gap and governments use many tools to address this problem. These could take the form of programs to increase daycare spaces, encourage women to enter non-traditional fields of work where the rate of pay may be higher, and having laws that deal with discrimination. No one program will succeed in eliminating the wage gap until everyone — governments, employers, employees and unions work together to change patterns of behaviour that created the problem in the first place.
The Pay Equity Act, along with the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Employment Standards Act, deal with many aspects of gender discrimination in the workplace. The purpose of the Pay Equity Act is to redress systemic gender discrimination that may be present in workplace compensation practices. This is done by having employers compare jobs traditionally done by women to jobs traditionally done by men in their establishments and adjust the job rates for employees in the female job classes to the rates of employees in comparable male job classes, based on skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions.
Emanuela Heyninck, Hon. BA, LLB, Commissioner, Pay Equity Commission, Toronto
No paradox
Re: “The obesity paradox,” Lawrence Solomon, Junk Science Week, June 16
Junk Science Week at the National Post has been both enlightening and entertaining. That is, until Lawrence Solomon’s submission. In presenting the hypothesis that having multiple heart-disease risk factors at your first hospitalization for heart attack may increase your chances of survival, Solomon uses a bit of junk science himself.
A repeated point of ridicule during the week was how some activists use a single study from which to draw profound conclusions and dangerous policies. And yet, Solomon has no problem suggesting that people should do what it takes to get themselves diabetes and high blood pressure based upon a small set of numbers in a sole study. And even from this limited data he omits salient details. In particular, the group with zero risk factors had an average age of 71.5, while the group with five factors averaged 56.7. Personally, I’m happy to continue my zero-risk-factor lifestyle if it means putting off my first heart attack by 15 years.
Matthew Lohbihler, Markham, Ont.
This column reports on a large study that appears to show an inverse association between the number of risk factors and morbidity with first myocardial infarction. The result is counterintuitive, even paradoxical, for the patients with the fewest risk factors appear to have a greatest chance of dying. I wonder however, if those patients with the fewest risk factors were actually reporting their first heart attacks, or if they had ignored prior ones. If you have no risk factors such as smoking, obesity and diabetes, it is hard to believe you are actually having a heart attack when you get chest pain. Denial is a classic symptom. However, if you are half-expecting one because of your lifestyle, you might be more likely to get yourself to the emergency ward the first time it happens and get treatment that will prevent further heart attacks. If so, obesity doesn’t protect you, it just makes you wary.
R. Osczevski, Newmarket, Ont.
Climate models
Re: “Climate models fail reality test,” Ross McKitrick, June 14
Don’t blame the climate models, which have done a phenomenal job in doing what they were designed to do, which is to produce better and more accurate weather forecasts based on weather satellite data. General circulation models were never designed to produce temperature predictions extending beyond a few weeks, so it is the fraudulent use of these models to produce the basis for the climate-change scam that is really at fault for the failed reality tests.
The fraud started with the claim in the Hansen et al. 1981 paper claiming, “The most sophisticated models suggest a mean warming of 2C to 3.5C for a doubling of the CO2 concentration from 300 to 600 ppm [parts per million]” — something that the climate models are completely incapable of predicting.
In the three decades since this paper was published, CO2 emissions have increased by 57.1%, but the same satellites that provide the data for the climate models also show that there has been zero detectable enhancement of the greenhouse effect from this 30-year increase in CO2 emissions, proving conclusively that the climate models were fraudulently used by the IPCC to fabricate a global-warming crisis where none was even physically possible.
Norm Kalmanovitch, Calgary
CT scans
Re: “CT the real risk,” Ruth Kava, June 13
Your articles on junk science are a great way of exposing misinformation. Did your June 13 article suggesting that CT scans are the real risk in breast cancer ironically introduce junk science?
In your Nov 5, 2010 issue you reported Dr. Christine Berg of the U.S. National Cancer Institute as saying, “This is the first time we have seen clear evidence of a significant reduction in lung cancer mortality with a screening test.” And your frequent writer, Lawrence Solomon, summarized by saying, “CT scans not only catch tumours early, allowing for early treatment; CT scans may prevent tumours as well.”
Don Lawson, Oakville, Ont.
There are limits
Re: “2052? More Like 2084,” Peter Foster, June 13
Your junk science material makes an excellent read, particularly Peter Foster’s comments. Yes, the fear-mongering that he so accurately exposes is based on bad science. However, realistically, there are “limits to growth.”
The U.S. and Canadian economies have grown by a compounded 3.25% over the last 50 years, which means that GDP has increased five-fold. If this same growth continues, by 2060 another multiple of five means these economies will be 25 times their level of a century earlier.
To illustrate the impossibility of this, in 1960 the U.S. had recovered from a terrible war on two fronts, helped to rebuild Europe and Japan, was building the Interstate system, and was gearing up to put someone on the moon. By 2060, just a 2% growth in GDP will be half that of the entire already-impressive economy of a century earlier.
This does not lead to any doomsday scenario, but minimal growth along with stable economies may become the desirable order of the day. After all, in absolute terms a 5% level of economic growth in 1960 is equal to a 1% increase in 2012!!
Maurice Hladik, Ottawa
Common sense
First, let me let you know, I am a fan of June Science Week. I have been a subscriber to the National Post since inception and was a casual reader. Junk Science Week got me hooked! Now I read the whole paper. As an agricultural scientist (retired), I am a common-sense kind of guy, I find that the paper reflects my views, and I frequently send articles to my friends.
“As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor. The heart of the wise inclines to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. Even as he walks along the road, the fool lacks [common] sense and shows everyone how stupid he is” — Ecclesiastes 10: 1-3.
Kind of defines junk science, and maybe even politics.
Elmer Stobbe, retired professor, University of Manitoba