Monday, April 29, 2019

How to Ruin Sex Research: Hysterical attacks on what is perceived as an opponent

How to Ruin Sex Research. J. Michael Bailey. Archives of Sexual Behavior, May 2019, Volume 48, Issue 4, pp 1007–1011. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-1420-y

On November 10, 2018, my graduate student, Kevin Hsu, gave an invited presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) in Montreal. The occasion was his receipt of the society’s annual “Ira and Harriet Reiss Theory Award” for “the best social science article, chapter, or book published in the previous year in which theoretical explanations of human sexual attitudes and behaviors are developed.” His paper was on gynandromorphophilic men, or men attracted to transwomen who have not had vaginoplasty but have penises (Hsu, Rosenthal, Miller, & Bailey, 2016).

According to numerous sources, the talk was interesting and the audience was interested. However, an attendee repeatedly and aggressively interrupted the presentation. This person, the psychologist Christine Milrod, is closely associated with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and with the position that more and younger persons should more easily obtain medical treatment to change their sexes (Milrod, 2014; Milrod & Karasic, 2017; 4thWaveNow, 2017). Milrod also strongly objects to the scientifically well-studied idea that gender dysphoria that begins after puberty in natal males is caused by autogynephilia, or a male’s sexual arousal by the fantasy of being a woman. Milrod was asked repeatedly by the audience and the moderator to let the presenter continue. Milrod failed to ask any questions during the period reserved for them.
SSSS officials and membership discussed the incident. On November 15, 2018 the SSSS Executive Committee sent a mass e-mail entitled “Important Message to SSSS Members & Annual Meeting Attendees.” The message expressed concern, not about Milrod’s behavior, but about Hsu’s presentation:

    The SSSS Executive Committee is aware of past and more recent incidents of language and behavior that has [sic] made transgender persons and other attendees feel unwelcome, unsupported, marginalized, or attacked at our Annual Meetings. We apologize. We want to assure all Members and attendees that we fully support you and stand with you. We are trans-allies.

Although I was shocked by the SSSS statement, I should not have been. It is emblematic of recent trends (Akresh & Villasenor, 2018). I believe it is also a terrible statement: poorly reasoned, cowardly, and exactly opposite of what it should have been. To the extent that the SSSS statement reflects the direction of that organization, SSSS is headed toward ruin, or at least ruin as an organization ostensibly supportive of scientific sex research.

In this Guest Editorial, I adopt the (hopefully) rhetorical assumption that the SSSS wants to ruin sex research, and offer advice—most of which the statement appears well on its way to enacting—about how to do so. Do not assume, however, that SSSS is uniquely swayed by the forces I identify and decry. They are also present, for example, in the International Academy of Sex Research, the organization associated with the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Indeed, they are ascendant in academia generally. I focus here on sex research, because that is what I know, and also because sex research is uniquely vulnerable right now.


Advocate for Marginalized Groups

Sex researchers often feel sympathy for marginalized groups, especially when the groups have been marginalized due to irrational intolerance of sexuality. I have sympathized with various marginalized groups throughout my career, starting with homosexual people (back when they were marginalized), then transsexuals, and recently pedophiles, among others.1
Members of sexually marginalized groups are human. This means that they will sometimes be tempted to make unreasonable demands on scientists and accusations against scientists who resist those demands. I have occasionally angered members of sexually marginalized groups. For example, during the 1990s some gay men disliked the idea that there is an association between homosexuality and gender nonconformity. I have devoted considerable effort to studying this association, which I now consider beyond reasonable doubt. I have written about autogynephilia—also beyond reasonable doubt and a common reason why Western natal males become transsexual (Lawrence, )—despite the livid reactions of some transsexuals. I have angered bisexual men by publishing research suggesting that some do not have bisexual arousal patterns (Rieger, Chivers, & Bailey, ), while conceding bisexual identity and behavior clearly exist.
I have offended sexually marginalized group by prioritizing the goals of sex research—putting forward plausible hypotheses, collecting and publishing data, drawing conclusions from data rather than my preferences, and making clear and correct arguments to the best of my abilities—over advocating for anyone, including marginalized groups. I have done so even when some groups insisted that my sex research harmed them. If I had prioritized advocacy, I likely would have refrained from conducting, or at least publishing, the offending research. That would have harmed sex research and would not have benefited the offended groups in any defensible way.
Thinking about groups can mislead one into ignoring important variation within groups. Many gay men embrace gender nonconformity—witness the success (twice) of the U.S. television show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.” And some—we do not know what proportion—of males who fantasize about being female not only admit their autogynephilia, they embrace it and express relief that they are not alone (Lawrence, ; Saotome-Westlake, ). Supporting transgender persons who oppose autogynephilia theory is failing to support (or more accurately silencing) those who support the theory. What to do? An advocate would go with the majority, I suppose, although it would be difficult to get an accurate survey count. A scientific sex researcher would open discussion, weigh in with knowledge and data, and feel no compunction. To the extent that some members of a marginalized group require that plausible or even factual ideas not be discussed, they need therapy more than advocacy.

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Full text at the link above.

Attack on capitalism in the defense of the equality/Nordic model of decriminalization of prostitution; no mention of male prostitution

Challenging the “Prostitution Problem”: Dissenting Voices, Sex Buyers, and the Myth of Neutrality in Prostitution Research. Maddy Coy, Cherry Smiley, Meagan Tyler. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Mar 26 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1381-6

This Commentary refers to the article available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-018-1276-6 ("The Prostitution Problem”: Claims, Evidence, and Policy Outcomes. Cecilia Benoit et al. Nov 29 2019)

All research and policymaking on the prostitution system is deliberated and decided in the shadows of fundamentally incompatible positions. We recognize these positions along broadly similar lines as Benoit, Smith, Jansson, Healey, and Magnuson (2018) (although, as we shall discuss, with crucial differences): to legitimate prostitution as a form of labor, or recognize it as a form of male violence against women and girls. Over the past decade, the latter approach has gained significant momentum. The Equality (or Nordic) Model, pioneered in Sweden in 1999, is now in place (with localized variations), in Norway and Iceland (2009), Canada (2014),1 Northern Ireland (2015), France (2016), and the Republic of Ireland (2017) (Bindel, 2017; Tyler et al., 2017). The decriminalization of selling sex, combined with provision of exiting support, criminalization of buying sex, and public education, is rooted in recognition not only that prostitution and trafficking for sexual exploitation are related systems of male violence against women, but that their very existence reflects and reproduces women’s inequality. Patriarchy, racism, and capitalism require a hierarchy of human value. Feminists who advocate for the abolition of prostitution do so from a position that seeks to end these hierarchies, to challenge male entitlement to profit from women’s bodies and Indigenous lands, and create a world where women and girls can live free from male violence or threat of male violence.

In contrast to the Equality/Nordic Model, older systems of legalization (as found in the Netherlands, Germany, and the Australian states of Queensland and Victoria) and total decriminalization (as found in New Zealand) are based around principles of harm reduction, rather than harm abolition. This leads us to ask: How much harm is acceptable for women to live with if harm reduction is the goal? And who decides this? (Graham, 2014). The underlying ideology of sex-as-work does not allow for a challenge to male entitlement or systems of patriarchy and racism, choosing instead to monetize them.

We start our response to Benoit et al. (2018) against this background. One of our concerns is their problematic conflation, and therefore obfuscation, of the Equality/Nordic Model with total criminalization (which largely emanates from archaic “decency,” public nuisance or “law and order” approaches that punish prostituted persons). These different approaches, with different philosophical underpinnings, are both categorized by Benoit et al. as “repressive.” There are deep divisions in academic and policy debates about prostitution, but to ignore or misrepresent the basis of differing positions generates more heat than light. Here, we suggest that Benoit et al. do not fully engage the ideological underpinnings of work that promotes total decriminalization and thus tend to overstate the claims of empirical support, while underestimating the possibility of transformational social change to challenge the sex industry on a more fundamental level. We also argue that the separation of gender and sex from “social inequalities” is misleading and confusing. Finally, we note key elements of research on systems of prostitution, in particular the racism inherent in prostitution and men’s entitlement to sex on demand that need to be engaged with further by those promoting total decriminalization.

The Myth of Neutrality in Prostitution Research

Indigenous, decolonizing, and feminist researchers have long claimed that no research is value-free. When Benoit et al. (2018) argue that “researchers ideological biases also weaken much of the scholarship on prostitution,” their argument assumes that viewing prostitution as harmful is a problematic value perspective, and that research that begins from a perspective of sex work-as-work does not have this “problem.” Indeed, the lopsided example provided does not account for the ways in which a sex work perspective diminishes or discounts the violent material realities and analyses of prostitution as shared by women who have survived it, an issue we return to below. As Boyle (2012) argued writing in response to Weitzer’s appraisal of feminist research on pornography: “Feminist researchers have long argued that ‘the appearance of objectivity’ is precisely that: an appearance… [t]o declare oneself ‘neutral’ on this issue is a politicized position in itself” (p. 507). It is impossible, even disingenuous, to claim that an epistemological starting point (even if unacknowledged) does not influence research design, sampling strategies, construction of interview guides, coding frameworks for analysis, and how data are presented in terms of the language used to describe the prostitution system and people involved in it (e.g., prostitution/sex work, prostituted women/sex workers, pimps/managers).

Gender and Social Inequalities: An Incoherent Conceptual Categorization

Benoit et al. (2018) argued that an analytic lens of gender as a hierarchy prevents comparison of the specific experiences of “men and trans people in prostitution studies.” Yet a gender analysis does not preclude exploring how gendered norms and practices are relevant here. It also holds in sight both sides of the prostitution system: that the overwhelming majority of those selling sex in prostitution are women and that men are overwhelmingly the purchasers of sex from all prostituted persons. The prostitution system is a “market for men” (O’Neill, 2001, p. 155), and it is misleading, at best, to ignore this fundamental structure. “Gender” is not synonymous with “women”; it involves engaging with practices of masculinity (rather than an essentialist biological sexual drive) in the motivations of men that pay for sex. As Waltman (2011) has noted in his important work on the Equality/Nordic Model in the context of Sweden: “the gender disparity in using and being used in prostitution is not complex and should be theoretically addressed—not evaded” (p. 455). We return to this point again later.

Furthermore, separating gender inequality from social inequalities is impossible. Gender only exists within the social: Gender is a set of practices that create a hierarchical social division between women and men based on embodied sex difference (Connell & Pearse, 2015). Oppression based on sex and enacted through gender is changed and deepened by intersections with race/ethnicity and class. That women’s lived experience varies by location within these social structures of inequality does not diminish a sex-based analysis that is particularly relevant to the commodification of (predominantly) female bodies in prostitution. As a conceptual framework then, it makes little sense to separate sex and gender from the category of “social inequalities.” Such a distinction serves to take gender out of the social and into the realm of individual morality. If Benoit et al.’s (2018) intention is to criticize perspectives that focus solely on “gender,” this is an important argument.

Women of color and Indigenous women have written and spoken powerfully about how sex industries are built on racism and histories of colonialism. For example, Carter (2004) has made critical connections between the prostitution of black women and slavery (see also Carter & Giobbe, 1999; Nelson, 1993); Butler (2015) has applied a critical race feminist perspective to prostitution and its impacts on women of color; Stark (2014), Smiley (2016), Farley, Lynne, and Cotton (2005), and Farley et al., (2011), among others, have examined the ways that the prostitution of Indigenous women and girls is also connected to ideologies and processes of colonization. Numerous individual women and feminist women’s groups outside of academia have also developed important analyses in regard to the foundational roles that racism and colonization play in the prostitution of women of color and Indigenous women.2 Intersecting with patriarchy and racism are the ways in which poverty funnels women into prostitution (e.g., Marttilla, 2008; Monroe, 2005). These are all crucial social contexts that are central to feminist analyses of the prostitution system.

So, framing analyses of prostitution as either about gender and sex, or about social inequalities, create a false separation that make it impossible to analyze gender as a social structure of inequality within white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.3 This ripples through Benoit et al.’s (2018) policy typology, where policy regimes that criminalize the purchase of sex on the grounds that prostitution is incompatible with women’s equality (Sweden) are conflated as “repressive” with locations where all or most aspects of prostitution are criminalized in a social nuisance/morality framework (the U.S.).

Dissenting Voices

Too often, women who have survived prostitution, and those currently in prostitution, are used to advocate for politicized positions. Here, questions of voice and perceived legitimacy become central: claims that only “sex workers” can speak frequently slides into only “current sex workers” and/or only those with a specific perspective. Benoit et al. (2018) fail to adequately address the material realities and analyses of those who are in prostitution or have survived prostitution that do not view prostitution as sex work and, instead, analyze their experiences as part of a continuum of male violence against women (e.g., Grootboom, 2018; Moran, 2013; Norma & Tankard-Reist, 2016; Sahu, Mondol, Khatoon, Chettry, & Khatoon, 2017; Stark, 2006). Just as there are women in prostitution who claim that sex work is work, there are women in, and exited from, prostitution who advocate for the Equality/Nordic Model. Given the centrality of “listening to sex workers” for arguments in support of total decriminalization, we must also consider how and why certain analyses are marginalized (Bindel, 2017; Tyler, 2016).

Further, stating that we must “listen to [only certain] sex workers” is problematic in that this way of working with women not only reinforces what Boyle terms “the myth of objectivity,” as if researchers are gathering information and analyzing it outside of their biases and positions. It also pressures women who may be involved in prostitution or who have exited prostitution to speak publicly about experiences they may not want to revisit in order to be deemed “legitimate” in discourses regarding prostitution. The realities of prostitution research are that there are many women who will not share their experiences or analyses because they choose not to and, in some cases, because they are no longer alive.

Feminist scholars who are critical of prostitution recognize that, as a result of many factors, women will have a wide variety of analyses of their experiences, and while it is not possible to critique a woman’s individual experience, it is possible to disagree and debate with a woman’s analysis of her experience. Being willing to challenge women’s analyses presumes that she is intelligent, capable, and articulate as opposed to a patronizing presumption of women as only capable of sharing experiences and/or unable to develop or further develop an analysis through discussion, debate, and disagreement. As we go on to discuss, it is also evident that the “listen to [certain] sex workers” approach ignores the voices of men who buy sex and men who profit from prostitution (Bindel, 2017). These men have much to say about the sex industry and what they think about “sex work” and those who do it.4
Men Who Buy Sex

Important and emerging research on “sex buyers” is not considered by Benoit et al. (2018) in their Target Article. Work on male sex buyers is imperative, not only because it has often been a neglected research area, but also because it breaks with older literature on prostitution which has tended to focus on the potential public health threats of women in prostitution (Farley & Kelly, 2000), and the dominance of more recent work on sexually transmitted infections. Across differing positions in prostitution research, emphasis has been placed on women, obscuring or rendering invisible the role of men who purchase sexual access to women in systems of prostitution. A growing number of studies are addressing this gap from a variety of perspectives (e.g., Bishop & Robinson, 1999; Coy, Horvath, & Kelly, 2007; Earle & Sharp, 2007; Holt & Blevins, 2007; Macleod, Farley, Anderson, & Golding, 2008; Milrod & Weitzer, 2012; Ondrasek, Rimnacova, & Kajanova, 2018; Williams, Lyons, & Ford, 2008; Yonkova & Keegan, 2014), including research that highlights objectification (Coy, 2008), men’s violence against women (Jovanovski & Tyler, 2018; Rosario-Sanchez, 2016; Tyler & Jovanovski, 2018), and the characteristics of men who purchase sex (Farley, Golding, Matthews, Malamuth, & Jarrett, 2017).

One of the most vital findings that research on male “sex buyers” demonstrates, whether or not it is critical of systems of prostitution overall, is that men’s demand for paid sexual access to women is socially constructed. The evidence base reveals that motivations for buying sex rely on notions of masculinity and sexual behavior. In turn, this means that men’s demand is not an immutable given that must be presumed or accepted as a starting point for addressing the harms of prostitution. The normalization of purchasing sexual access to women has especially harmful consequences for particular groups of marginalized women, as well as having broader effects on the status of women as a class. Directly addressing men’s demand in systems of prostitution, and how this affects the status of all women, is another area that requires further engagement from those advocating for the decriminalization of sex buying.

Links Between Prostitution and Trafficking

Finally, Benoit et al. (2018) briefly quote critical feminist analyses that draw parallels between prostitution and trafficking as evidence of conflation, and thus flatten these arguments. As Outshoorn (2004, p. 10) has noted, attempting to distinguish between prostitution and trafficking “is a move that de-genders, as the link to prostitution reminds us who is usually being trafficked, for whom and to what purposes.” Pointing out that the two phenomena are related, even “analogous,” is not the same as saying they are one and the same. While trafficking for sexual exploitation is a specific activity defined in international human rights instruments and translated into domestic law (Madden Dempsey, 2017), women are trafficked into existing prostitution markets. Turner (2012, p. 33) summarizes thus: “[i]f trafficking is the method and the means of delivery, prostitution is the end game… [p]rostitution, it seems, can be tolerated, but the means of delivering women into prostitution cannot.” European and international studies show that where prostitution markets expand in legalized policy regimes, inflows of trafficking are also larger (Cho, Dreher, & Neumayer, 2013; Jakobsson & Kotsadam, 2013). Taking these arguments and findings into account—and they are curiously omitted from Benoit et al.’s review—means thinking differently about the inseparability of prostitution and trafficking. Stating that prostitution and trafficking are two separate and distinct actions poses questions that do not have clear answers. For example, how does one differentiate between a woman who is a sex worker and a woman who is trafficked? Do we rely on her statement that she is there willingly, when we know that there are cases where women do not speak out of fear of retaliation? How, too, would we differentiate between sex buyers who purchase sex workers and those who buy trafficked women so that we make sure to stop the demand for sex trafficking, but not the demand for sex work? Studies show that some sex buyers neither know nor care if women have been coerced or trafficked (e.g., Yonkova & Keegan, 2014). In attempting to offer empirical support for how policy approaches can address women’s safety and the harms of prostitution, it is unhelpful to disregard the multilayered links between prostitution and trafficking.

Conclusion

There can be little doubt that the debates around prostitution research and policy will continue to be fractured for the foreseeable future. There is no hope for moving forward, however, if the aim continues to be a misleading and unattainable “objective” approach. We must acknowledge that there are multiple possible readings of the available evidence and that these occur through a particular lens. That those who argue for the complete decriminalization of the sex trade as a form of a labor—a model the sex industry businesses tend to prefer—come from a particular ideological position as do those researchers, like us, who argue for the Equality/Nordic Model based on the understanding that prostitution is both a cause and consequence of women’s unequal social, economic, and political status in relation to men.

One of the key, but often unacknowledged, differences between these two positions is that the first tends to accept male demand and the sex trade as inevitable; that there is something natural about its existence and that attempts to alter male demand are simply “repressive,” so the best way forward is to accept a level of harm and to minimize it within a broader system of prostitution. The approach that we share does not accept the inevitability of a sex trade and highlights prostitution as an abusive element of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, rooted in racism and colonization (Bhattacharya, 2016; Butler, 2015). From this vantage point, assuming that the demand for sexual access to women in the sex trade is socially constructed means it can be challenged and changed. As Miriam (2005, p. 2), drawing on Pateman, has noted: “the root question of an abolitionist approach to prostitution is not whether or not women ‘choose’ prostitution, but why men have the right to demand that women’s bodies are sold as commodities in the capitalist market.” The growing momentum of the Nordic/Equality/Nordic model shows that this question is one that policymakers are grappling with, and we contend that it should be considered, indeed centered, in any discussion of claims, evidence, and policy outcomes on prostitution.

Mating Strategies and the Masculinity Paradox: How Relationship Context, Relationship Status, and Sociosexuality Shape Women’s Preferences for Facial Masculinity and Beardedness

Mating Strategies and the Masculinity Paradox: How Relationship Context, Relationship Status, and Sociosexuality Shape Women’s Preferences for Facial Masculinity and Beardedness. Rebecca E. Stower et al. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Apr 23 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-1437-2

Abstract: According to the dual mating strategy model, in short-term mating contexts women should forego paternal investment qualities in favor of mates with well-developed secondary sexual characteristics and dominant behavioral displays. We tested whether this model explains variation in women’s preferences for facial masculinity and beardedness in male faces. Computer-generated composites that had been morphed to appear ± 50% masculine were rated by 671 heterosexual women (M age = 31.72 years, SD = 6.43) for attractiveness when considering them as a short-term partner, long-term partner, a co-parent, or a friend. They then completed the Revised Sociosexual Inventory (SOI-R) to determine their sexual openness on dimensions of desire, behavior, and attitudes. Results showed that women’s preferences were strongest for average facial masculinity, followed by masculinized faces, with feminized faces being least attractive. In contrast to past research, facial masculinity preferences were stronger when judging for co-parenting partners than for short-term mates. Facial masculinity preferences were also positively associated with behavioral SOI, negatively with desire, and were unrelated to global or attitudinal SOI. Women gave higher ratings for full beards than clean-shaven faces. Preferences for beards were higher for co-parenting and long-term relationships than short-term relationships, although these differences were not statistically significant. Preferences for facial hair were positively associated with global and attitudinal SOI, but were unrelated to behavioral SOI and desire. Although further replication is necessary, our findings indicate that sexual openness is associated with women’s preferences for men’s facial hair and suggest variation in the association between sociosexuality and women’s facial masculinity preferences.

Keywords: Facial attractiveness Masculinity Facial hair Sociosexuality

Persons With Severe Mental Illnesses and Sex Offenses: Recidivism After Prison Release

Persons With Severe Mental Illnesses and Sex Offenses: Recidivism After Prison Release. Gary S. Cuddeback et al. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, April 23, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X19842994

Abstract: Individuals who have committed sex offenses (ISOs) with severe mental illnesses are a complex population to serve and more research is needed to guide practice and policy, especially around community supervision, enrollment in Medicaid, housing, employment, criminal justice contacts, and reincarceration after prison reentry. To further the literature in this area, we used logistic regression to model recidivism and admissions to violator or prison facilities among 127 ISOs with severe mental illnesses and 2,935 people with severe mental illnesses who were incarcerated in prison for other crimes. Compared to prison releasees with severe mental illnesses who committed crimes other than sex offenses, prison releasees with severe mental illnesses who committed sex offenses were admitted to violator facilities at higher rates, when controlling for substance use, Medicaid enrollment, homelessness, and unemployment. Implications for practice, policy and research are discussed.

Keywords: sex offenders, severe mental illnesses, community supervision, recidivism

Energy drink consumption among German adolescents, and its prevalence, correlates, and predictors of initiation: The association between energy drinks & negative health and lifestyle outcomes and risky behaviors is concerning

Energy drink consumption among German adolescents: Prevalence, correlates, and predictors of initiation. Artur Galimov et al. Appetite, April 29 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2019.04.016

Abstract
Background: Energy drinks (EDs) have become popular worldwide. Despite growing concerns about negative health effects of ED, they are increasingly popular among adolescents, yet little is known about the context and patterns of ED use in adolescents.

Objective: This study examined the prevalence and correlates of ED use as well as initiation rates and predictors among German adolescents over a one-year period.

Design: A school-based longitudinal study of 6902 adolescents ages 9–19 years was conducted in 44 schools in six Federal states of Germany in 2016–2018. Demographics, ED use, drug use behavior, advertising exposure, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and community factors were assessed.

Results: Lifetime ED use was reported by 61.7% of the participants, while 21.4% reported past 30-day use. In two multilevel models, lifetime and past 30-day ED use were positively associated with male sex, older age, drug use, poor dietary habits, higher BMI, sensation seeking, worse school performance, and more frequent ad exposure (p < .01). One quarter of the non-users initiated ED use in 12 months. ED initiation was positively associated with male sex (AOR, 1.50 [95% CI, 1.11–2.03]), greater sensation seeking traits (AOR, 1.25 [95% CI, 1.08–1.43]), more frequent ED ad exposure (AOR, 1.31 [95% CI, 1.12–1.53]), and curiosity about trying EDs (AOR, 2.31 [95% CI, 1.74–3.07]), while inversely associated with better school performance (AOR, 0.84, [95% CI, 0.73–0.97]) and attending a gymnasium-type school (AOR, 0.69 [95% CI, 0.50–0.96]).

Conclusions: ED consumption is common among German adolescents. The association between EDs and negative health and lifestyle outcomes and risky behaviors is concerning. Parents, school officials, and healthcare providers should be aware of signs and consequences of excessive ED consumption and limit their use by adolescents. Adopting policies that limit the direct marketing to minors under the age of 18 years can be also beneficial in curbing this epidemic.

Null results of oxytocin and vasopressin administration across a range of social cognitive and behavioral paradigms: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial

Null results of oxytocin and vasopressin administration across a range of social cognitive and behavioral paradigms: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial. Benjamin A. Tabaka et al. Psychoneuroendocrinology, Apr 29 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2019.04.019

Highlights
•    Increasing evidence suggests null main effects for OT but less is known about AVP.
•    We found null main effects of OT and AVP on 18 dependent variables across 6 tasks.
•    We used equivalence and Bayesian testing to assess sensitivity to detect null effects.
•    Results suggest the limited main effects of OT on human social behavior extend to AVP.

Abstract: Research examining oxytocin and vasopressin in humans has the potential to elucidate neurobiological mechanisms underlying human sociality that have been previously unknown or not well characterized. A primary goal of this work is to increase our knowledge about neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders characterized by impairments in social cognition. However, years of research highlighting wide-ranging effects of, in particular, intranasal oxytocin administration have been tempered as the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and other disciplines have been addressing concerns over the reproducibility and validity of research findings. We present a series of behavioral tasks that were conducted using a randomized, double-blind, placebo controlled, between-subjects design, in which our research group found no main effects of oxytocin and vasopressin on a host of social outcomes. In addition to null hypothesis significance testing, we implemented equivalence testing and Bayesian hypothesis testing to examine the sensitivity of our findings. These analyses indicated that 47-83% of our results (depending on the method of post-hoc analysis) had enough sensitivity to detect the absence of a main effect. Our results add to evidence that intranasal oxytocin may have a more limited direct effect on human social processes than initially assumed and suggest that the direct effects of intranasal vasopressin may be similarly limited. Randomized controlled trial registration: NCT01680718.

How public opinion influences personal flashbulb memory formation

Talarico, J., Bohn, A., & Wessel, I. (2018). How public opinion influences personal flashbulb memory formation. Poster session presented at Autobiographical Memory and the Self, Aarhus, Denmark. https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/62392919/Talarico_Bohn_Wessel_2018_CON_AMORE_Conference.pdf

According to Berntsen’s (2009) model, an event’s relevance to one’s social group is a necessary (though not sufficient) criterion for flashbulb memory (FBM) formation. Relevance draws attention to the event, engenders appraisal processes that lead to emotional reactions, and encourages subsequent rehearsal within social groups. Moreover, the congruence of an event with one’s existing beliefs also influences FBM formation.Events that are congruent with current opinions should be more likely to result in FBM than events that are inconsistent with one’s beliefs. Perception of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of 11 March 2011 should differ along these dimensions among participants from European countries.

Check also Flashbulb memories. Roger Brown, James Kulik. Cognition, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1977, Pages 73-99. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/001002777790018X
Flashbulb Memories are memories for the circumstances in which one first learned of a very surprising and consequential (or emotionally arousing) event. Hearing the news that President John Kennedy had been shot is the prototype case. Almost everyone can remember, with an almost perceptual clarity, where he was when he heard, what he was doing at the time, who told him, what was the immediate aftermath, how he felt about it, and also one or more totally idiosyncratic and often trivial concomitants. The present paper reports a questionnaire inquiry into the determinants of such memories by asking about other assassinations, highly newsworthy events, and personally significant events. It is shown that while the Kennedy assassination created an extraordinarily powerful and widely shared flashbulb memory, it is not the only event that has created such memories. The principal two determinants appear to be a high level of surprise, a high level of consequentiality, or perhaps emotional arousal (assessed by both rating scales and ethnic group membership). If these two variables do not attain sufficiently high levels, no flashbulb memory occurs. If they do attain high levels, they seem, most directly, to affect the frequency of rehearsal, covert and overt, which, in turn, affects the degree of elaboration in the narrative of the memory that can be elicited experimentally. Parallels are made explicit between the behavioral theory and a less elaborated, speculative neuro-physiological theory of which R. B. Livingston (1967) is the proponent Finally, an argument is made that a permanent memory for incidental concomitants of a surprising and consequential (in the sense of biologically significant) event would have high selection value and so could account for the evolution of an innate base for such a memory mechanism.

Sunday, April 28, 2019

The positivity bias in future thinking serves a self-enhancement function and this bias likely represents a similar underlying motivational mechanism across different domains of future thinking, whether episodic or semantic

My future is brighter than yours: the positivity bias in episodic future thinking and future self-images. Sinué Salgado, Dorthe Berntsen. Psychological Research, April 29 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-019-01189-z

Abstract: Numerous studies on episodic future thinking have demonstrated that individuals perceive their future as more positive and idyllic than their past. It has been suggested that this positivity bias might serve a self-enhancement function. Yet, conflicting findings and lack of systematic studies on the generalizability of the phenomenon leave this interpretation uncertain. We provide the first systematic examination of the positivity bias across different domains and tasks of future thinking. First, we use the same tasks in two different domains of future thinking, representing an episodic (events) and a semantic dimension (self-images), respectively. Second, we use two different measures of positivity bias (i.e., frequency of positive versus negative instances and their distance from present). Third, we contrast each measure in each domain for events/self-images related to self versus an acquaintance. Experiments 1 and 2 showed a strong, general tendency for the generation of positive future events/self-images, but most pronounced for self, relative to an acquaintance. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that positive future events/self-images were dated closer to present, whereas negative ones were pushed further into the future, but only for self and not for an acquaintance. Our results support the idea that the positivity bias in future thinking serves a self-enhancement function and that this bias likely represents a similar underlying motivational mechanism across different domains of future thinking, whether episodic or semantic. The findings add to our understanding of the motivational functions served by different forms of future thoughts in relation to the self.

Exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people promotes prejudice which spreads across groups (towards a number of secondary outgroups like Asians, Arabs, Americans, Irish, Australians)

Exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories promotes prejudice which spreads across groups. Daniel Jolley, Rose Meleady, Karen M. Douglas. British Journal of Psychology, March 13 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12385

Abstract: This research experimentally examined the effects of exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories on prejudice and discrimination. Study 1 (N = 166) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories concerning immigrants to Britain from the European Union (vs. anti‐conspiracy material or a control) exacerbated prejudice towards this group. Study 2 (N = 173) found the same effect in a different intergroup context – exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people (vs. anti‐conspiracy material or a control) increased prejudice towards this group and reduced participants’ willingness to vote for a Jewish political candidate. Finally, Study 3 (N = 114) demonstrated that exposure to conspiracy theories about Jewish people not only increased prejudice towards this group but was indirectly associated with increased prejudice towards a number of secondary outgroups (e.g., Asians, Arabs, Americans, Irish, Australians). The current research suggests that conspiracy theories may have potentially damaging and widespread consequences for intergroup relations.

Background

Conspiracy theories explain the ultimate causes of significant events as the secret actions of malevolent groups, who cover up information to suit their own interests (e.g., Douglas, Sutton, & Cichocka, 2017; Goertzel, 1994; McCauley & Jacques, 1979). For example, popular conspiracy theories propose that climate change is a hoax orchestrated by the world's scientists to secure research funding, that Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered by members of the British government, and that Jewish people have a controlling and sinister influence over world affairs. A growing body of research suggests that conspiracy theories are popular (Oliver & Wood, 2014), that they are associated with a variety of psychological traits (e.g., Abalakina‐Paap, Stephan, Craig, & Gregory, 1999; Swami, Chamorro‐Premuzic, & Furnham, 2010), and that they have important political, social, and health‐related consequences (e.g., Jolley & Douglas, 2014a,b). In the current research, we focus on the consequences of conspiracy theories for relations between groups. We argue that exposure to intergroup conspiracy theories may be damaging not just because they serve to increase prejudice and discrimination towards the implicated group, but because this prejudice then has the potential to spread across multiple social outgroups.

The psychology of conspiracy theories

In recent years, psychologists have made significant progress in understanding why people believe conspiracy theories (see Douglas et al., 2017). Specifically, it seems that people often believe conspiracy theories in an effort to gain an accurate and consistent understanding of the world. For example, findings show that factors such as the need for cognitive closure (Marchlewska, Cichocka, & Kossowska, 2018), uncertainty (van Prooijen & Jostmann, 2013), and the tendency to search for patterns (van Prooijen, Douglas, & De Inocencio, 2018) are all associated with heightened conspiracy belief. Conspiracy theories, therefore, appear to provide answers when people want to know the truth about important events.

Research suggests that people might also believe conspiracy theories in an attempt to meet their personal needs for security and control. Along this vein, research has shown that people turn to conspiracy theories when they are anxious (Grzesiak‐Feldman, 2013), feel powerless (Abalakina‐Paap et al., 1999; van Prooijen & Acker, 2015; Whitson & Galinsky, 2008), or lack socio‐political control (Bruder, Haffke, Neave, Nouripanah, & Imhoff, 2013). Conspiracy theories may therefore allow people to feel that they are restoring a sense of control and security – they provide a means to reject information from officialdom and also allow people to feel that they possess an alternative account.

Finally, research suggests that there are also important social reasons to believe conspiracy theories. For instance, research has shown that conspiracy theories appeal more to narcissists (Cichocka, Marchlewska, & Golec de Zavala, 2016) and ‘losers’ of political processes (Uscinski & Parent, 2014), who are both arguably motivated to defend or restore their sense of self‐esteem or feeling of group worth. There is, therefore, a growing body of literature highlighting the psychological needs that appear to drive conspiracy belief (Douglas et al., 2017).
Consequences of conspiracy theories

Less is known about the consequences of conspiracy theories. Emerging findings suggests that conspiracy theories might have potentially serious social and political outcomes. For example, HIV‐related conspiracy beliefs amongst African American communities have been found to be associated with negative attitudes towards contraceptives and safe‐sex practices (e.g., Bogart & Thorburn, 2006; Hoyt et al., 2012). There is also evidence that exposure to conspiracy theories influences civic engagement. Specifically, Jolley and Douglas (2014a,b see also Douglas, Sutton, Jolley, & Wood, 2015) found that exposure to conspiracy theories makes people feel less inclined to vote, less inclined to reduce their carbon footprint, and less inclined towards vaccination. Also, conspiracy theories in the workplace have been linked with reduced job satisfaction and increased turnover intentions (Douglas & Leite, 2017; see also Van Prooijen & de Vries, 2016).

In the present research, we focus specifically on the consequences of conspiracy theories for intergroup relations. Initial findings hint at the negative consequences of exposure to conspiracy theories in this domain. For instance, in recent correlational research, belief in conspiracy theories about Jewish domination of the world has been found to be associated with anti‐Semitic attitudes (e.g., Golec de Zavala & Cichocka, 2012; Kofta & SÄ™dek, 2005). Similarly, Bilewicz, Winiewski, Kofta, and WĂłjcik (2013) reported that conspiracy stereotypes of Jewish people – which refer to social schemas of groups that typically view group members with ill intentions – are a strong predictor of discrimination towards Jewish people (e.g., favouring policies that prevent Jewish people from buying Polish land, see also Bilewicz & Krzeminski, 2010). These findings point to an association between conspiracy beliefs and prejudice towards an alleged conspiring outgroup.

The present research employed an experimental design to investigate the causal impact of conspiracy theories on intergroup prejudice. Correlational results cannot rule out the possibility that effects exist only because people who harbour high levels of prejudice are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories about the implicated group. Indeed, believing in conspiracy theories could be an avenue to express prejudice towards other social groups and help maintain self‐esteem (c.f. Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). On the other hand, it is plausible that exposure to conspiracy theories may increase prejudice towards the implicated group. Intergroup threat theory posits that threats to the ingroup promote negative evaluations of outgroups (Stephan & Stephan, 2000). A distinction can be made between realistic threat (perceived threat to ingroup welfare) and symbolic threat (perceived threat to ingroup values). The link between both types of threat and prejudice is well established. Conspiracy theories typify the outgroup as a collective conspirator that threatens the majority group's welfare or values (see Campion‐Vincent, 2005; Moscovici, 1987). Accordingly, the present research sought to explore the potential for exposure to outgroup conspiracy narratives to increase self‐reported prejudice towards these groups.

We also sought to extend the existing literature by examining whether the effects of conspiracy theories on intergroup attitudes extend beyond the group implicated in the conspiracy, to increase prejudice towards other, uninvolved outgroups. Attitudes towards particular objects can generalize to other related objects (e.g., Fazio, Eiser, & Shook, 2004; Walther, 2002). In the intergroup relations literature, research demonstrates that the attitudinal consequences of our encounters with outgroup members can generalize to the outgroup as a whole, and from there to other, secondary outgroups. This effect is known as a secondary transfer effect (Pettigrew, 2009). Positive contact with immigrants, for instance, has been shown to produce secondary reductions in prejudice towards homosexual people and homeless people (Pettigrew, 2009). Similarly, contact between Catholics and Protestants in northern Ireland has been shown to improve attitudes not just towards the religious outgroup, but also towards racial minority groups (Tausch et al., 2010). Effects emerge via a process of attitude generalization in which intergroup contact improves attitudes towards the primary outgroup, and these more positive attitudes then generalize to other, uninvolved outgroups (Pettigrew, 2009; Tausch et al., 2010). Emerging findings suggest that such attitude generalization effects also occur for negative intergroup encounters (Brylka, Jasinskaja‐Lahti, & Mähönen, 2016; Harwood, Paolini, Joyce, Rubin, & Arroyo, 2011).

When applied to the domain of conspiracy theories, we may observe a similar process in which exposure to conspiracy theories regarding one outgroup not only increases prejudice towards this group but this prejudice then spreads also towards other, uninvolved outgroups. Some initial correlational research provides initial support for this idea. For example, Kofta and SÄ™dek (2005) found that conspiracy stereotypes of Jewish people were a strong predictor of prejudices held towards Jewish, German, and Russian people. Swami (2012) also observed in a Malay sample that belief in Jewish conspiracy theories was negatively associated with attitudes towards Chinese people. However, as discussed by Swami (2012), it has been suggested that Jewish conspiracy theories in Malaysia reflect displaced resentment of Chinese people (Burhanuddin, 2007; Hadler, 2004; Siegel, 2000); thus, the reported link with Jewish conspiracy theories may be a mask for anti‐Chinese prejudice. The novelty of our approach lies in our experimental method, allowing us to isolate the causal impact of exposure to conspiracy theories relating to a given outgroup on prejudice towards both this outgroup and other, uninvolved outgroups.

Empirical examination of the replicability of associations between brain structure and psychological variables

Empirical examination of the replicability of associations between brain structure and psychological variables. Shahrzad Kharabian Masouleh et al. eLife 2019;8:e43464 doi: 10.7554/eLife.43464. https://elifesciences.org/articles/43464

Abstract: Linking interindividual differences in psychological phenotype to variations in brain structure is an old dream for psychology and a crucial question for cognitive neurosciences. Yet, replicability of the previously-reported ‘structural brain behavior’ (SBB)-associations has been questioned, recently. Here, we conducted an empirical investigation, assessing replicability of SBB among heathy adults. For a wide range of psychological measures, the replicability of associations with gray matter volume was assessed. Our results revealed that among healthy individuals 1) finding an association between performance at standard psychological tests and brain morphology is relatively unlikely 2) significant associations, found using an exploratory approach, have overestimated effect sizes and 3) can hardly be replicated in an independent sample. After considering factors such as sample size and comparing our findings with more replicable SBB-associations in a clinical cohort and replicable associations between brain structure and non-psychological phenotype, we discuss the potential causes and consequences of these findings.


eLife digest

All human brains share the same basic structure. But no two brains are exactly alike. Brain scans can reveal differences between people in the organization and activity of individual brain regions. Studies have suggested that these differences give rise to variation in personality, intelligence and even political preferences. But recent attempts to replicate some of these findings have failed, questioning the existence of such a direct link, specifically between brain structure and human behavior. This had led some disagreements whether there is a general replication crisis in psychology, or if the replication studies themselves are flawed.

Kharabian Masouleh et al. have now used brain scans from hundreds of healthy volunteers from an already available dataset to try to resolve the issue. The volunteers had previously completed several psychological tests. These measured cognitive and behavioral aspects such as attention, memory, anxiety and personality traits. Kharabian Masouleh et al. performed more than 10,000 analyzes on their dataset to look for relationships between brain structure and psychological traits. But the results revealed very few statistically significant relationships. Moreover, the relationships that were identified proved difficult to replicate in independent samples.

By contrast, the same analyzes demonstrated robust links between brain structure and memory in patients with Alzheimer's disease. They also showed connections between brain structure and non-psychological traits, such as age. This confirms that the analysis techniques do work. So why did the new study find so few relationships between brain structure and psychological traits, when so many links have been reported previously? One possibility is publication bias. Researchers and journals may be more likely to publish positive findings than negative ones.

Another factor could be that that most studies use too few participants to be able to reliably detect relationships between brain structure and behavior, and that studies with 200 to 300 participants are still too small. Therefore, future studies should use samples with many hundreds of participants, or more. This will be possible if more groups make their data available for others to analyze. Researchers and journals must also be more willing to publish negative findings. This will help provide an accurate view of relationships between brain structure and behavior.

GĂ©rard Araud, french Ambassador to the US, who is retiring: Why should you defend Montenegro? And what Trump is doing with China should have been done before

The French Ambassador Is Retiring Today. Here’s What He Really Thinks About Washington. Yara Baoumi. The Atlantic, Apr 19 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/conversation-outgoing-french-ambassador-gerard-araud/587458/
GĂ©rard Araud says that Trump is right about trade. Kushner is “extremely smart” but has “no guts.” And John Bolton’s not so bad, actually.

He also had a warning to anyone who assumes it will be “business as usual” once America’s Trump fever breaks. The idea that the Trump presidency is some sort of accident, he says, is a fantasy.

[...]

I don’t think that anything irreparable is happening in the U.S. I don’t know what would have happened in France if Marine Le Pen had been elected, because our institutions are much weaker.

Let’s look at the dogma of the previous period. For instance, free trade. It’s over. Trump is doing it in his own way. Brutal, a bit primitive, but in a sense he’s right. What he’s doing with China should have been done, maybe in a different way, but should have been done before. Trump has felt Americans’ fatigue, but [Barack] Obama also did. The role of the United States as a policeman of the world, it’s over. Obama started, Trump really pursued it. You saw it in Ukraine. You are seeing it every day in Syria. People here faint when you discuss NATO, but when he said, “Why should we defend Montenegro?,” it’s a genuine question. I know that people at Brookings or the Atlantic Council will faint again, but really yes, why, why should you?

These are the questions which are being put on the table in a brutal and a bit primitive way by Trump, but they are real questions.

Saturday, April 27, 2019

Despite the widespread belief that the moon impacts peoples’ mental health and subsequently psychiatric treatment, this study provides no evidence of our celestial neighbour influence

Is it the moon? Effects of the lunar cycle on psychiatric admissions, discharges and length of stay. Gupta Rahula, Nolan Daniele R., Bux Donald A., Schneeberger Andres R. Swiss Med Wkly. 2019;149:w20070. Apr 23 2019, https://doi.org/10.4414/smw.2019.20070

Summary
BACKGROUND: There is an ongoing debate concerning the connection between lunar cycle and psychiatric illness.

AIMS OF THE STUDY: The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the rates of admission to and discharge from psychiatric inpatient treatment, as well as the length of stay, in relation to the lunar cycle, including 20 different categories of phases of the moon.

METHODS: The data of 17,966 cases of people treated in an inpatient setting were analysed. Routine clinical data and data about admission and discharge were used. The lunar calendar was obtained from the website of the US Naval Observatory and was used to calculate the dates of the full moon according to the geographic location of the clinics. The clinics are located in the Canton Grisons in Switzerland. The following phases of the moon throughout the lunar cycle were defined: (a) full moon, (b) quarter waxing moon, (c) new moon, and (d) quarter waning moon. In addition, we coded one day and two days preceding every lunar phase as well as the two days following the respective phases of the moon.

RESULTS: The lunar cycles showed no connection with either admission or discharge rates of psychiatric inpatients, nor was there a relationship with the length of stay.

CONCLUSIONS: Despite the widespread belief that the moon impacts peoples’ mental health and subsequently psychiatric treatment, this study provides no evidence that our celestial neighbour influences our mental well-being.

Keywords: psychiatric illness, inpatient, hospitalisation, phases of the moon, full moon

Introduction

The belief that the moon influences human lives, emotions, and welfare is deeply anchored in human history, dating back to the ancient cultures of Assyria, Babylonia and Egypt [1, 2]. Medieval European mythology and superstition held that humans were transformed into werewolves or vampires under the influence of a full moon [3]. The antiquated and potentially offensive colloquial word “lunatic” derives from the Latin lunaticus (originally derived from Luna – moon), a term that originally referred mainly to epilepsy and madness, because those diseases were at one time thought to be caused by the moon [1].

To date, there is an ongoing debate concerning the connection between lunar cycle and psychiatric illness [4, 5]. The literature presents conflicting results, with the majority of studies showing no relationship between lunar cycle and either psychiatric admissions or emergency evaluations [6–9], psychiatric inpatient admissions [10], use of community psychiatry services [11, 12], violent behaviour [13–17], suicide [18, 19], or sleep disturbances [20, 21]. However, some studies do show relationships between the lunar cycle various psychiatric phenomena. For example, in a study of 17 healthy individuals Cajochen et al. [22] demonstrated under laboratory conditions that around the full moon, electroencephalogram (EEG) delta activity during non-REM sleep (an indicator of deep sleep) decreased by 30%, time to fall asleep increased by 5 minutes, and EEG-assessed total sleep duration was reduced by 20 minutes. These results presented a possible explanation for morning fatigue associated with a full moon [23]. In a prospective study involving 91 psychiatric inpatients, Calver et al. [4] observed an increase of violent and acute behavioural disturbances during the full moon among patients with severe forms of behavioural disturbance at admission. Another study, focused on gender differences regarding distress phone calls, showed that distress calls by women were more strongly linked to the lunar month than were those by men [24]. Family practitioners have also found a correlation between general practice consultation and the lunar cycle [25]. A large prospective case series of 2281 patients similarly showed an increase in frequency of outpatient psychiatric visits for non-affective psychosis during the full moon [26].

Parmar et al. [5] highlighted the importance of a clear operationalisation of the stages of the lunar cycle for scientific study; in their work, they observed significantly different outcomes regarding psychiatric emergency department presentations during different phases of the moon. Other authors have postulated associations, not only with the full moon, but also different lunar phases, showing sudden changes on the day of the full moon including crisis calls, suicide, and psychiatric admission rates as well as significant differences between the quarter waning and quarter waxing moon, including increases in homicides and crisis calls [27]. The authors presented positive findings regarding the relationship between lunar cycles and psychopathology, violence and admission to psychiatric institutions, highlighting the importance of using a more detailed approach than just the full moon. In addition, they suggest analyses should be stratified by gender and diagnostic categories.

People are overconfident about their attractiveness even at high stakes; do not provide honest face-to-face feedback to less attractive participants; and are more honest when feedback is anonymous

A must lie situation – avoiding giving negative feedback. Uri Gneezy, Christina Gravert, Silvia Saccardo, Franziska Tausche. Games and Economic Behavior, Volume 102, March 2017, Pages 445-454. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2017.01.008

Highlights
•    We examine under what conditions people provide accurate feedback to others.
•    People are overconfident about their attractiveness even at high stakes.
•    People do not provide honest face-to-face feedback to less attractive participants.
•    People are more honest when feedback is anonymous.

Abstract: We examine under what conditions people provide accurate feedback to others. We use feedback regarding attractiveness, a trait people care about, and for which objective information is hard to obtain. Our results show that people avoid giving accurate face-to-face feedback to less attractive individuals, even if lying in this context comes at a monetary cost to both the person who gives the feedback and the receiver. A substantial increase of these costs does not increase the accuracy of feedback. However, when feedback is provided anonymously, the aversion to giving negative feedback is reduced.

We find statistically significant gaps by race and ethnicity in interest rates, but are exactly offset by differences in discount points; we find no differences in total fees by race or ethnicity

Bhutta, Neil and Hizmo, Aurel, Do Minorities Pay More for Mortgages? (March 14, 2019). SSRN, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3352876

Abstract: We test for discrimination against minority borrowers in the prices charged by mortgage lenders. We construct a unique dataset of federally-guaranteed loans where we observe all three dimensions of a mortgage’s price: the interest rate, discount points, and fees. While we find statistically significant gaps by race and ethnicity in interest rates, these gaps are exactly offset by differences in discount points. We trace out point-rate price schedules and show that minorities and whites face identical schedules, but sort to different locations on the schedule. Such sorting likely reflects differences in liquidity or preferences, rather than lender steering. Indeed, we also provide evidence that lenders generate the same expected revenue from minorities and whites. Finally, we find no differences in total fees by race or ethnicity.

Keywords: Discrimination, Fair Lending, Mortgage, Points, Interest Rate, FHA, Consumer Protection, High-Cost Mortgage
JEL Classification: G21, G28

Neighborhoods in the Philippines pass anti-gossip ordinances

A Small Town Takes a Stand: It Banned Gossip. James Hookway. Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2019.
Neighborhoods in the Philippines pass anti-gossip ordinances; ‘you’d think people would have something better to do’.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-small-town-takes-a-stand-it-banned-gossip-11556204479

A three-hour drive north of the Philippine capital Manila, local leaders have drawn a line in the sand against a swelling tide of scuttlebutt and innuendo.

They outlawed gossip.

In a world awash with fake news and online rumors, more than half a dozen neighborhoods in Binalonan have introduced an anti-gossip ordinance to put an end to too much idle chitchat. Town Mayor Ramon Guico III says the worst time is during the summer, when the scorching heat pushes people to huddle beneath the broad branches of century-old acacia trees, sipping soft drinks or munching on snacks in the shade.

“That’s how it starts,” he complains.

The chin-wagging usually revolves around who might be cheating on their spouse or running up debts. Facebook and messaging apps worsened the problem, but Mr. Guico says the really damaging stuff is gossip— the sort of thing your mother might have warned you about...

The first offense starts with a fine of 500 pesos, or around $10, followed by an embarrassing afternoon spent picking up trash.

---
How many times has this happened in history? I bet that hundreds and hundreds.

Friday, April 26, 2019

People moralize the future more than the past partly to guide their choices & actions, such as by increasing their motivation to restrain selfish impulses & build long-term cooperative relationships with others

Moral self-judgment is stronger for future than past actions. Hallgeir SjĂĄstad, Roy F. Baumeister. Motivation and Emotion, Apr 26 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11031-019-09768-8

Abstract: When, if ever, would a person want to be held responsible for his or her choices? Across four studies (N = 915), people favored more extreme rewards and punishments for their future than their past actions. This included thinking that they should receive more blame and punishment for future misdeeds than for past ones, and more credit and reward for future good deeds than for past ones. The tendency to moralize the future more than the past was mediated by anticipating (one’s own) emotional reactions and concern about one’s reputation, which was stronger in the future as well. The findings fit the pragmatic view that people moralize the future partly to guide their choices and actions, such as by increasing their motivation to restrain selfish impulses and build long-term cooperative relationships with others. People typically believe that the future is open and changeable, while the past is not. We conclude that the psychology of moral accountability has a strong future component.

Keywords: Morality Self-judgment Prospection Emotion Reputation

Aaron Maté on the Russiagate and the Mueller probe

New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics. Aaron Maté. The Nation, Dec 28 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-elections-interference/

Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election.

Excerpts with no links:

The release of two Senate-commissioned reports has sparked a new round of panic about Russia manipulating a vulnerable American public on social media. Headlines warn that Russian trolls have tried to suppress the African-American vote, promote Green Party candidate Jill Stein, recruit “assets,” and “sow discord” or “hack the 2016 election” via sex-toy ads and PokĂ©mon Go. “The studies,” writes David Ignatius of The Washington Post, “describe a sophisticated, multilevel Russian effort to use every available tool of our open society to create resentment, mistrust and social disorder,” demonstrating that the Russians, “thanks to the Internet…seem to be perfecting these dark arts.” According to Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times, “it looks increasingly as though” Russian disinformation “changed the direction of American history” in the narrowly decided 2016 election, when “Russian trolling easily could have made the difference.”

The reports, from the University of Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Research Project and the firm New Knowledge, do provide the most thorough look at Russian social-media activity to date. With an abundance of data, charts, graphs, and tables, coupled with extensive qualitative analysis, the authors scrutinize the output of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) the Russian clickbait firm indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in February 2018. On every significant metric, it is difficult to square the data with the dramatic conclusions that have been drawn.

• 2016 Election Content: The most glaring data point is how minimally Russian social-media activity pertained to the 2016 campaign. The New Knowledge report acknowledges that evaluating IRA content “purely based on whether it definitively swung the election is too narrow a focus,” as the “explicitly political content was a small percentage.” To be exact, just “11% of the total content” attributed to the IRA and 33 percent of user engagement with it “was related to the election.” The IRA’s posts “were minimally about the candidates,” with “roughly 6% of tweets, 18% of Instagram posts, and 7% of Facebook posts” having “mentioned Trump or Clinton by name.”

• Scale: The researchers claim that “the scale of [the Russian] operation was unprecedented,” but they base that conclusion on dubious figures. They repeat the widespread claim that Russian posts “reached 126 million people on Facebook,” which is in fact a spin on Facebook’s own guess. “Our best estimate,” Facebook’s Colin Stretch testified to Congress in October 2017, “is that approximately 126 million people may have been served one of these [IRA] stories at some time during the two year period” between 2015 and 2017. According to Stretch, posts generated by suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook’s News Feed amounted to “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content.”

• Spending: Also hurting the case that the Russians reached a large number of Americans is that they spent such a microscopic amount of money to do it. Oxford puts the IRA’s Facebook spending between 2015 and 2017 at just $73,711. As was previously known, about $46,000 was spent on Russian-linked Facebook ads before the 2016 election. That amounts to about 0.05 percent of the $81 million spent on Facebook ads by the Clinton and Trump campaigns combined. A recent disclosure by Google that Russian-linked accounts spent $4,700 on platforms in 2016 only underscores how miniscule that spending was. The researchers also claim that the IRA’s “manipulation of American political discourse had a budget that exceeded $25 million USD.” But that number is based on a widely repeated error that mistakes the IRA’s spending on US-related activities for its parent project’s overall global budget, including domestic social-media activity in Russia.

• Sophistication: Another reason to question the operation’s sophistication can be found by simply looking at its offerings. The IRA’s most shared pre-election Facebook post was a cartoon of a gun-wielding Yosemite Sam. Over on Instagram, the best-received image urged users to give it a “Like” if they believe in Jesus. The top IRA post on Facebook before the election to mention Hillary Clinton was a conspiratorial screed about voter fraud. It’s telling that those who are so certain Russian social-media posts affected the 2016 election never cite the posts that they think actually helped achieve that end. The actual content of those posts might explain why.

• Covert or Clickbait Operation? Far from exposing a sophisticated propaganda campaign, the reports provide more evidence that the Russians were actually engaging in clickbait capitalism: targeting unique demographics like African Americans or evangelicals in a bid to attract large audiences for commercial purposes. Reporters who have profiled the IRA have commonly described it as “a social media marketing campaign.” Mueller’s indictment of the IRA disclosed that it sold “promotions and advertisements” on its pages that generally sold in the $25-$50 range. “This strategy,” Oxford observes, “is not an invention for politics and foreign intrigue, it is consistent with techniques used in digital marketing.” New Knowledge notes that the IRA even sold merchandise that “perhaps provided the IRA with a source of revenue,” hawking goods such as T-shirts, “LGBT-positive sex toys and many variants of triptych and 5-panel artwork featuring traditionally conservative, patriotic themes.”

• “Asset Development”: Lest one wonder how promoting sex toys might factor into a sophisticated influence campaign, the New Knowledge report claims that exploiting “sexual behavior” was a key component of the IRA’s “expansive” “human asset recruitment strategy” in the United States. “Recruiting an asset by exploiting a personal vulnerability,” the report explains, “is a timeless espionage practice.” The first example of this timeless espionage practice is of an ad featuring Jesus consoling a dejected young man by telling him: “Struggling with the addiction to masturbation? Reach out to me and we will beat it together.” It is unknown if this particular tactic brought any assets into the fold. But New Knowledge reports that there was “some success with several of these human-activation attempts.” That is correct: The IRA’s online trolls apparently succeeded in sparking protests in 2016, like several in Florida where “it’s unclear if anyone attended”; “no people showed up to at least one,” and “ragtag groups” showed up at others, including one where video footage captured a crowd of eight people. The most successful effort appears to have been in Houston, where Russian trolls allegedly organized dueling rallies pitting a dozen white supremacists against several dozen counter-protesters outside an Islamic center.   

Based on all of this data, we can draw this picture of Russian social-media activity: It was mostly unrelated to the 2016 election; microscopic in reach, engagement, and spending; and juvenile or absurd in its content. This leads to the inescapable conclusion, as the New Knowledge study acknowledges, that “the operation’s focus on elections was merely a small subset” of its activity. They qualify that “accurate” narrative by saying it “misses nuance and deserves more contextualization.” Alternatively, perhaps it deserves some minimal reflection that a juvenile social-media operation with such a small focus on elections is being widely portrayed as a seismic threat that may well have decided the 2016 contest.

Doing so leads us to conclusions that have nothing to do with Russian social-media activity, nor with the voters supposedly influenced by it. Take the widespread speculation that Russian social-media posts may have suppressed the black vote. That a Russian troll farm sought to deceive black audiences and other targeted demographics on social media is certainly contemptible. But in criticizing that effort there’s no reason to assume it was successful—and yet that’s exactly what the pundits did. “When you consider the narrow margins by which [Donald Trump] won [Michigan and Wisconsin], and poor minority turnout there, these Russian voter suppression efforts may have been decisive,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod commented. “Black voter turnout declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election,” The New York Times conspicuously notes, “but it is impossible to determine whether that was the result of the Russian campaign.”

That it is even considered possible that the Russian campaign impacted the black vote displays a rather stunning paternalism and condescension. Would Axelrod, Times reporters, or any of the others floating a similar scenario accept a suggestion that their own votes might be susceptible to silly social-media posts mostly unrelated to the election? If not, what does that tell us about their attitudes toward the people that they presume could be so vulnerable?

Entertaining the possibility that Russian social-media posts impacted the election outcome requires more than just a contemptuous view of average voters. It also requires the abandonment of elementary standards of logic, probability, and arithmetic. We now have corroboration of this judgment from an unlikely source. Just days after the New Knowledge report was released, The New York Times reported that the company had carried out “a secret experiment” in the 2017 Alabama Senate race. According to an internal document, New Knowledge used “many of the [Russian] tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections,” going so far as to stage an “elaborate ‘false flag’ operation” that promoted the idea that the Republican candidate, Roy Moore, was backed by Russian bots. The fallout from the operation has led Facebook to suspend the accounts of five people, including New Knowledge CEO Jonathon Morgan.

The Times discloses that the project had a budget of $100,000, but adds that it “was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race.” A Democratic operative concurs, telling the Times that “it was impossible that a $100,000 operation had an impact.”

The Alabama Senate race cost $51 million. If it was impossible for a $100,000 New Knowledge operation to affect a 2017 state election, then how could a comparable—perhaps even less expensive—Russian operation possibly impact a $2.4 billion US presidential election in 2016?

On top of straining credulity, fixating on barely detectable and trivial social-media content also downplays myriad serious issues. As the journalist Ari Berman has tirelessly pointed out, the 2016 election was “the first presidential contest in 50 years without the full protections of the [Voting Rights Act],” one that was conducted amid “the greatest rollback of voting rights since the act was passed” in 1965. Rather than ruminating over whether they were duped by Russian clickbait, reporters who have actually spoken to black Midwest voters have found that political disillusionment amid stagnant wages, high inequality, and pervasive police brutality led many to stay home.

And that leads us to perhaps a key reason why elites in particular are so fixated on the purported threat of Russian meddling: It deflects attention from their own failures, and the failings of the system that grants them status as elites. During the campaign, corporate media outlets handed Donald Trump billions of dollars worth of air time because, in the words of the now ousted CBS exec Les Moonves: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS…. The money’s rolling in and this is fun.” Not wanting to interrupt the fun, these outlets have every incentive to breathlessly cover Russiagate and amplify comparisons of stolen Democratic Party e-mails and Russian social-media posts to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Kristallnacht, and “cruise missiles.”

Having lost the presidential election to a reality TV host, the Democratic Party leadership is arguably the most incentivized to capitalize on the Russia panic. They continue to oblige. Like clockwork, former Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook seized on the new Senate studies to warn that “Russian operatives will try to divide Democrats again in the 2020 primary, making activists unwitting accomplices.” By “unwitting accomplices,” Mook is presumably referring to the progressive Democrats who have protested the DNC leadership’s collusion with the Clinton campaign and bias against Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary. Mook is following a now familiar Democratic playbook: blaming Russia for the consequences of the party elite’s own actions. When an uproar arose over Trump campaign data firm Cambridge Analytica in early 2018, Hillary Clinton was quoted posing what she dubbed the “real question”: “How did the Russians know how to target their messages so precisely to undecided voters in Wisconsin, or Michigan, or Pennsylvania?”

In fact, the Russians spent a grand total of $3,102 in these three states, with the majority of that paltry sum not even during the general election but during the primaries, and the majority of the ads were not even about candidates but about social issues. The total number of times ads were targeted at Wisconsin (54), Michigan (36), Pennsylvania (25) combined is less than the 152 times that ads were targeted at the blue state of New York. Wisconsin and Michigan also happen to be two states that Clinton infamously, and perilously, avoided visiting in the campaign’s final months.

The utility of Russia-baiting goes far beyond absolving elites of responsibility for their own failures. Hacked documents have recently revealed that a UK-government charity has waged a global propaganda operation in the name of “countering Russian disinformation.” The project, known as the Integrity Initiative, is run by military intelligence officials with funding from the British Foreign Office and other government sources, including the US State Department and NATO. It works closely with “clusters” of sympathetic journalists and academics across the West, and has already been outed for waging a social-media campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The group’s Twitter account promoted articles that painted Corbyn as a “useful idiot” in support of “the Kremlin cause”; criticized his communications director, Seumas Milne, for his alleged “work with the Kremlin agenda”; and said, “It’s time for the Corbyn left to confront its Putin problem.”

The Corbyn camp is far from the only progressive force to be targeted with this smear tactic. That it is revealed to be part of a Western government–backed operation is yet another reason to consider the fixation with Russian social-media activity in a new light. There is no indication that the disinformation spread by employees of a St. Petersburg troll farm has had a discernible impact on the US electorate. The barrage of claims to the contrary is but one element of an infinitely larger chorus from failed political elites, sketchy private firms, shadowy intelligence officials, and credulous media outlets that inculcates the Western public with fears of a Kremlin “sowing discord.” Given how divorced the prevailing alarm is from the actual facts—and the influence of those fueling it—we might ask ourselves whose disinformation is most worthy of concern.

Aaron Maté is a host/producer for The Real News.






Check also The Mueller Report Indicts the Trump-Russia Conspiracy Theory: The real Russiagate scandal is the damage it has to our democratic system and media. Aaron Maté. The Nation, Apr 26 2019, https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-trump-mueller-report-no-collusion/

For more than two years, leading US political and media voices promoted a narrative that Donald Trump conspired with or was compromised by the Kremlin, and that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would prove it. In the process, they overlooked countervailing evidence and diverted anti-Trump energies into fervent speculation and prolonged anticipation. So long as Mueller was on the case, it was possible to believe that “The Walls Are Closing In” on the traitor/puppet/asset in the White House.

The long-awaited completion of Mueller’s probe, and the release of his redacted report, reveals this narrative—and the expectations it fueled—to be unfounded. No American was indicted for conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Mueller’s report does lay out extensive evidence that Trump sought to impede the investigation, but he declined to issue a verdict on obstruction. By contrast, the report shows no evidence that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government’s alleged effort to defeat Hillary Clinton, and renders this conclusion: “Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the [Trump] Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.” As a result, Mueller’s report provides the reverse of what Russiagate promoters led their audiences to expect: Rather than detailing a sinister collusion plot with Russia, it presents what amounts to an extended indictment of the conspiracy theory itself.

1. Russiagate Without Russia

The most fundamental element of a conspiracy is contact between the two sides doing the conspiring. Hence, on the eve of the report’s release, The New York Times noted that among the “outstanding questions” that Mueller would answer were the nature of “contacts between Kremlin intermediaries and the Trump campaign.”

Mueller’s report does answer that question: There were effectively no “Kremlin intermediaries.” The report contains no evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign spoke to a Kremlin representative during the election outside of conversations with the Russian ambassador and a press-office assistant, both of which were ruled out as elements of a conspiracy (more on them later).

It should be no surprise then to learn, from Mueller, that when “Russian government officials and prominent Russian businessmen began trying to make inroads into the new administration” after Trump’s election victory, they did not know who to call. These powerful Russians, Mueller noted, “appeared not to have preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with senior officials around the President-Elect.” If top Russians did not have “preexisting contacts and struggled to connect with” the people that they supposedly conspired with, perhaps that is because they did not actually conspire.

To borrow a phrase from Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen, when it comes to the core question of contacts between Trump and the Russian government, we are left with a “Russiagate without Russia.” Instead we have a series of interactions where Trump associates speak with Russian nationals, people with ties to Russian nationals, or people who claim to have ties to the Russian government. But none of these “links,” “ties,” or associations ever entail a single member of the Trump campaign interacting with a Kremlin intermediary. They have nonetheless fueled a dogged media effort to track every known instance where someone in the Trump orbit interacted with “the Russians,” or someone who can be linked to them. There is nothing illegal or inherently suspect about speaking to a Russian national—but there is something xenophobic about implying so.

2. Russiagate’s Predicate Led Nowhere

The most glaring absence of a Kremlin intermediary comes in the case that ostensibly prompted the entire Trump-Russia investigation. During an April 2016 meeting in Rome, a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud reportedly informed Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos that “the Russians” had obtained “thousands of emails” containing “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. That information made its way to the FBI, which used it as a pretext to open the “Crossfire Hurricane” probe on July 31, 2016. Papadopoulos was later indicted for lying to FBI agents about the timing of his contacts with Mifsud. The case stoked speculation that Papadopoulos acted as an intermediary between Trump and Russia.

But Papadopoulos played no such role. And while the Mueller report says Papadopoulos “understood Mifsud to have substantial connections to high-level Russian government officials,” it never asserts that Mifsud actually had those connections. Since Mifsud’s suspected Russian connections were the purported predicate for the FBI’s initial Trump-Russia investigation, that is a conspicuous non-call. Another is the revelation from Mueller that Mifsud made false statements to FBI investigators when they interviewed him in February 2017—but yet, unlike Papadopoulos, Mifsud was not indicted. What is not a mystery is whether the supposed spark for the Russia collusion probe revealed collusion: It did not.

3. Sergey Kislyak Had “Brief and Non-Substantive” Interactions With the Trump Camp

Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak’s conversations with Trump campaign officials and associates during and after the 2016 election were the focus of intense controversy and speculation, leading to the recusal of Jeff Sessions, then attorney general, and to the indictment of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

After an exhaustive review, Mueller concluded that Kislyak’s interactions with Trump campaign officials at public events “were brief, public, and non-substantive.” As for Kislyak’s much–ballyhooed meeting which Sessions in September 2016, Mueller saw no reason to dispute that it “included any more than a passing mention of the presidential campaign.” When Kislyak spoke with other Trump aides after the August 2016 Republican National Convention, Mueller “did not identify evidence in those interactions of coordination between the Campaign and the Russian government.”

The same goes for Kislyak’s post-election conversations with Flynn. Mueller indicted Flynn for making “false statements and omissions” in an interview with the FBI about his contacts with Kislyak during the transition in December 2016. The prevailing supposition was that Flynn lied in order to hide from the FBI an election-related payoff or “quid pro quo” with the Kremlin. The report punctures that thesis by reaffirming the facts in Flynn’s indictment: What Flynn hid from agents was that he had “called Kislyak to request Russian restraint” in response to sanctions imposed by the outgoing Obama administration, and that Kislyak had agreed. Mueller ruled out the possibility that Flynn could have implicated Trump in anything criminal by noting the absence of evidence that Flynn “possessed information damaging to the President that would give the President a personal incentive to end the FBI’s inquiry into Flynn’s conduct.”

4. Trump Tower Moscow Had No Help From Moscow…

The November 2018 indictment of Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was widely seen as damning, possibly impeachment-worthy, for Trump. Cohen admitted to giving false written answers to Congress in a bid to downplay Trump’s personal knowledge of his company’s failed effort to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. To proponents of the collusion theory, Cohen’s admitted lies were proof that “Trump is compromised by Russia,” “full stop.”

But the Mueller report does not show any such compromise, and, in fact, shows there to be no Trump-Kremlin relationship. Cohen, the report notes, “requested [Kremlin] assistance in moving the project forward, both in securing land to build the project and with financing.” The request was evidently rejected. Elena Poliakova, the personal assistant to Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, spoke with Cohen by phone after he emailed her office for help. After their 20-minute call, the report says, “Cohen could not recall any direct follow-up from Poliakova or from any other representative of the Russian government, nor did the [Special Counsel’s] Office identify any evidence of direct follow-up.”

5. …and Trump Didn’t Ask Cohen to Lie About It

The Mueller report not only dispels the notion that Trump had secret dealings with the Kremlin over Trump Tower Moscow; it also rejects a related impeachment-level “bombshell.” In January, Buzzfeed News reported that Mueller had evidence that Trump “directed” Cohen to lie to Congress about the Moscow project. But according to Mueller, “the evidence available to us does not establish that the President directed or aided Cohen’s false testimony,” and that Cohen himself testified “that he and the President did not explicitly discuss whether Cohen’s testimony about the Trump Tower Moscow project would be or was false.” In a de-facto retraction, Buzzfeed updated its story with an acknowledgement of Mueller’s conclusion.

6. The Trump Tower Meeting Really Was Just a “Waste of Time”

The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower was widely dubbed the “Smoking Gun.” An email chain showed that Donald Trump Jr. welcomed an offer to accept compromising information about Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” But the pitch did not come from the meeting’s Russian participants, but instead from Rob Goldstone, a British music publicist acting on their behalf. Goldstone said that he invented “publicist puff” to secure the meeting, because in reality, as he told NPR, “I had no idea what I was talking about.”

Mueller noted that Trump Jr’s response “showed that the Campaign anticipated receiving information from Russia that could assist candidate Trump’s electoral prospects, but the Russian lawyer’s presentation did not provide such information [emphasis mine].” The report further recounts that during the meeting Jared Kushner texted then-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort that it was a “waste of time,” and requested that his assistants “call him to give him an excuse to leave.” Accordingly, when “Veselnitskaya made additional efforts to follow up on the meeting,” after the election, “the Trump Transition Team did not engage.”

7. Manafort Did Not Share Polling Data to Meddle in the US Election

In January, Mueller accused Manafort of lying to investigators about several matters, including sharing Trump polling data and discussing a Ukraine peace plan with his Ukrainian-Russian colleague, Konstantin Kilimnik, during the 2016 campaign. According to Mueller, the FBI “assesses” that Kilimnik has unspecified “ties to Russian intelligence.” To collusion proponents, the revelation was dubbed “the closest we’ve seen yet to real, live, actual collusion” and even the “Russian collusion smoking gun.”

Mueller, of course, reached a different conclusion: He “did not identify evidence of a connection between Manafort’s sharing polling data and Russia’s interference in the election,” and moreover, “did not establish that Manafort otherwise coordinated with the Russian government on its election-interference efforts.” Mueller noted that he “could not reliably determine Manafort’s purpose in sharing” the polling data, but also acknowledged (and bolstered) the explanation of his star witness, Rick Gates, that Manafort was motivated by proving his financial value to former and future clients.

Mueller also gave us new reasons to doubt the assertions that Kilimnik himself is a Russian intelligence asset or spy. First, Mueller did not join media pundits in asserting such about Kilimnik. Second, to support his vague contention that Kilimnik has, according to the FBI, “ties to Russian intelligence,” Mueller offered up a list of “pieces of the Office’s Evidence” that contains no direct evidence. For his part, Kilimnik has repeatedly stated that he has no such ties, and recently told The Washington Post that Mueller never attempted to interview him.

8. The Steele Dossier Was Fiction

The Steele dossier—a collection of Democratic National Committee-funded opposition research alleging a high-level Trump-Russia criminal relationship—played a critical role in the Russiagate saga. The FBI relied on it for leads and evidentiary material in its investigation of the Trump campaign ties to Russia, and prominent politicians, pundits, and media outlets promoted it as credible.

The Mueller report, The New York Times noted last week, has “underscored what had grown clearer for months… some of the most sensational claims in the dossier appeared to be false, and others were impossible to prove.” Steele reported that low-level Trump aide Carter Page was offered a 19 percent stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft if he could get Trump to lift Western sanctions. In October 2016 the FBI, citing the Steele dossier, told the FISA court that it “believes that [Russia’s] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with” the Trump campaign. The Mueller report though could “not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”

The Steele dossier claimed that Michael Cohen visited Prague to meet Russian agents in the summer of 2016. In April 2018, McClatchy reported to much fanfare that Mueller’s team has “has evidence” that placed Cohen in Prague during the period in question. Cohen later denied the claim under oath, and Mueller agreed, noting that Cohen “never traveled to Prague.”

After reports emerged in August 2016 that the Trump campaign had rejected an amendment to the Republican National Committee platform that called for arming Ukraine, Steele claimed that it was the result of a quid pro quo. The Mueller report “did not establish that” the rejection of the Ukraine amendment was “undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia.”

9. The Trump Campaign Had No Secret Channel to WikiLeaks

In January, veteran Republican operative and conspiracy theorist Roger Stone caused a stir when he was indicted for lying to Congress about his efforts to make contact with WikiLeaks. But Mueller’s indictment actually showed that Stone had no communications with WikiLeaks before the election and no privileged information about its releases. Most significantly, it revealed that Trump officials were trying to learn about the WikiLeaks releases through Stone—a fact that underscored that the Trump campaign neither worked with WikiLeaks nor had advance knowledge of its email dumps.

Mueller’s final report does nothing to alter that picture. Its sections on Stone are heavily redacted, owing to Stone’s pending trial. But they do make clear that Mueller conducted an extensive search to establish a tie between WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign, and Stone—and came up empty. New reporting from The Washington Post underscores just how far, and how farcically, their efforts went. The Mueller team devoted time and energy to determine whether far-right conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, best known for promoting the false claim that Barack Obama was born outside the United States, served as a link between Stone and WikiLeaks. Mueller’s prosecutors “spent weeks coaxing, cajoling and admonishing the conspiracy theorist, as they pressed him to stick to facts and not reconstruct stories,” the Post reports. “At times, they had debated the nature of memory itself.” It is unsurprising that this led Mueller’s prosecutors to ultimately declare, according to Corsi’s attorney, “We can’t use any of this.”

10. There Was No Cover-Up

The release of Mueller report does not just dispel the conspiracy theories that have engulfed political and media circles for two years; it puts to rest the prevailing one of recent weeks that Attorney General William Barr engaged in a cover-up. According to the dominant narrative, Barr was somehow concealing Mueller’s damning evidence, and Mueller, even more improbably, was staying silent.

One could argue that Barr’s summary downplays the obstruction findings, though it accurately relays that Mueller’s report does “not exonerate” Trump. It was Mueller’s decision to leave the verdict on obstruction to Barr and make clear that if Congress disagrees, it has the power to indict Trump on its own. Mueller’s office assisted with Barr’s redactions, which proved to be, as Barr had pledged, extremely limited. Despite containing numerous embarrassing details about Trump, no executive privilege was invoked to censor the report’s contents.

In the end, Mueller’s report shows that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative embraced and evangelized by the US political and media establishment to be a work of fiction. The American public was presented with a far different picture because leading pundits, outlets, and politicians ignored the countervailing facts and promoted maximalist interpretations of the remaining ones. Anonymous officials also leaked explosive yet uncorroborated claims, leaving behind many stories that were subsequently discredited, retracted, or remain unconfirmed to this day.

It is too early to assess the damage that influential Russiagate promoters have done to their own reputations; to public confidence in our democratic system and media; and to the prospects of defeating Trump, who always stood to benefit if the all-consuming conspiracy theory ultimately collapsed. With Mueller’s report, the collapse has now arrived, and the scale of the wreckage may prove to be the ultimate Russiagate scandal.