- You might have heard that according to the result of a new measurement the proton is some percent smaller than previously thought. Chad Orzel has an excellent post explaining what this means and doesn't mean.
- Spiegel Online has an interesting article on Norway's experience with compulsory women quotas on company boards. My experience with compulsory women quotas as been very unconvincing. What happened is exactly what you can read in the article what Norwegians were afraid would happen before the law was introduced in 2004: you were forced to take women who were either unqualified or incompetent or both. Amazingly enough it seems the Norwegian's experience has been mostly positive and, despite the outcries before the introduction of the law, after it became a matter of fact there haven't been complaints about it. I think the relevant difference to the cases I have witnessed is the availability of qualified women in the pool. In the situations I saw, there were simply way to many (we're talking a factor 10 below the quota that had to be achieved). As it seems from the article, Norwegian companies however had no problems finding qualified female board members. In any case, this outcome was unexpected to me and gave me something to think about.
- The Globe and Mail reports on a forum banning anonymity and forcing users to use real names instead. That in itself isn't so interesting, more interesting is that they dubbed it "the latest sign that online anonymity is falling out of favour with many companies." I'm not at all sure it's really necessary to force people to use their real names, I think pseudonymes will do as well as long as they have a value for the user, but I am happy to hear that the anonymity disease on the internet seems to have been recognized for what it is: sickening. I'm thus wondering what change we'll see coming in the soon future.
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Friday, July 09, 2010
This and That
42 comments:
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I think the board member quotas results could have something to do with Peter's Principle: "All new members in a hierarchical organization climb the hierarchy until they reach their level of maximum incompetence."
ReplyDeleteConsider this paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455
In their agent-based simulations, they found not only that this principle can be true, but that amazingly (and hilariously) two strategies worked better at improving a company's efficiency: promoting members AT RANDOM, and alternately promoting the best and THE WORST members at their current position!
This is not to suggest that the women promoted to the boards of these companies are incompetent, but their degree of competence and success may have little to no bearing on their skill as board members. The situations you experienced probably involved positions that required a great deal more specialized skill than being a board member does!
Interesting :-)
ReplyDeleteSo maybe we should then better hand out grants at random? Or indeed to the worst people? That would open a whole new problem: how does one find the most badly qualified people?
In any case, I'm just kidding here, I think it depends, as you say, greatly on the situation you are dealing with what sort of selection procedure (or quota) works well or doesn't. Best,
B.
So why does a muon see a different proton interior than an electron?
ReplyDelete...we're talking a factor 10 below the quota that had to be achieved...
ReplyDeleteInteresting aspect, I don't remember that this one has ever been mentioned in recent discussions in Germany; the topic is en vogue here right now after Telekom, one of the major telecommunication companies, pledged to introduce a quota (for reasons I do not know).
The problem with not introducing a quota is this: If you work for a company that employs mostly white, male academics between 25 and 45 years, for example, it is a risk for you to hire someone who does not fit the pattern: If he/she does not perform well, then your boss will criticize you (explicitly or implicitly) for hiring someone "who did not fit in from the very first moment". (There is a proverb for the other way 'round:"No one gets fired for buying IBM.").
In such a situation a quota may be the only way to break the vicious circle.
But of course you cannot force all companies to hire 40% female engineers if only 5% of the graduates are female :-)
Another quota scheme, in Indian villages with a positive effect.
ReplyDeleteMy ability to do back-of-the-envelope estimates is down to zero. But I assume weak interaction effects between the muon and constituent quarks of the proton is way too small to account for the effect.
ReplyDeleteHow about "backreaction"? Simply having a negative charged particle in the proton might subtly shift its quarks? Again, I'm unable to estimate it.
From Chad: "the proton is around 10^(-15) meters across, while the electron orbits are around 10^(-10) meters across." Nominal ratio of orbital to particle diameter is 100,000.
ReplyDeleteElectron/muon mass ratio is 4.836x10^(-3). Then orbital to proton diameter ratio of 484 - and smaller still for special relativity and nominal orbital velocity (free muon vs. bound muon half-lives).
The s-orbital is spherical with an antinode at the proton's center. The p-orbital is a dumbbell with a node at the proton's center.
Electron-tauon mass ratio is 2.876x10^(-4), then 28.7 orbital to proton diameter ratio. Muon half-life = 2.2x19^(-6) seconds, tauon's 2.9x10^(–13) seconds. Pity.
Sorry I didn't have time to read all the comments but I note and query: isn't the size of the proton more than an abstraction about things like Lamb shift would show, in the sense of being somewhat literally for packing purposes such as density of neutron stars? (And to a more subtle extent, cross-section for absorptions etc?) It is at least somewhat like the effective physical radii of atoms and molecules, no?
ReplyDelete/*...the anonymity disease on the internet seems to have been recognized for what it is: sickening..*/
ReplyDeleteInternet has been started & promoted as an anonymous public network - or not?
/*..so why does a muon see a different proton interior than an electron?..*/
ReplyDeleteBecause the effect, which served for finding of deuterium in 1932 wasn't considered:
http://www.marts100.com/deuterium.htm
I don't think it's so much that a muon sees a "different" interior, but rather it spends more time in the interior, because its wavefunction is confined closer to the proton. It's thus a more sensitive probe of the interior.
ReplyDeleteDear Arun,
ReplyDeleteSo why does a muon see a different proton interior than an electron?
As Uncle Al and Alex Small point out, the overlap of the lepton S wave with the proton compared to the overlap of the P wave with the proton (a difference which enters Lamb shift) is larger for the muon than for the electron because the muon wave functions are more compact...
I am not sure if any weak charge effects have been considered in the calculations...
Simply having a negative charged particle in the proton might subtly shift its quarks? Again, I'm unable to estimate it.
Good point. No idea how in detail the proton wave function, or more accurately the mess of quarks and gluons, enters the calculations...
Actually, for the calculation of the rms proton charge radius from the measured Lamb shift, the paper uses a relation of the form
Delta E_Lamb = A + B r² + C r³,
where the coefficients A, B, and C involve heavy QED calculations. This is explained in the freely available supplement to the paper (PDF), which gives plenty of references, but is not that specific about what is taken into in the calculations and what might be missing.
Remembering the long discussions about the muon g-2 anomaly and the 3 sigma discrepancy to calculations, there might indeed be some interesting new physics be hidden in connection with the muon.
But on the other hand, in the muon g-2, there has also been a long discussion about the "correct" calculation, so perhaps this large discrepancy in the rms charge radius we seem to have now is not the last word on these matters?
Cheers, Stefan
Hi Stefan,
ReplyDeleteSo why does a muon see a different proton interior than an electron?
As Uncle Al and Alex Small point out, the overlap of the lepton S wave with the proton compared to the overlap of the P wave with the proton (a difference which enters Lamb shift) is larger for the muon than for the electron because the muon wave functions are more compact...
Yes, I gathered that from Chad Orzel's post. But presumably whatever proton charge distribution is assumed in the electron-proton calculation doesn't work with the muon. So, somehow the muon is visiting a different proton interior - either electromagnetically or otherwise.
Very intriguing result, makes me wish I was still in physics and able to calculate.
Best,
-Arun
Dear Arun,
ReplyDeleteSimply having a negative charged particle in the proton might subtly shift its quarks.
That's an interesting point indeed. Stefan and I we guessed around yesterday what might be the reason for this discrepancy, but we were mostly wondering if not there's some subtle correction from the g-2 (as Stefan said above) that is larger than thought. It just crossed my mind because there's been some discussion around the calculation. In any case, we didn't have the paper (can't access journals from home) so were just poking in the dark, I have not the faintest clue about the size of any of these effects. I guess it's something we'll hear more about in the next months which is fun because there's a lot of physics in there. Best,
B.
Hi Zephir,
ReplyDelete"Internet has been started & promoted as an anonymous public network - or not?"
What's the point? It sucks and evidently doesn't work well. That something started with a mistake doesn't mean that mistake has to be kept forever. Learning from mistakes and all, is about time. Btw, Jaron Lanier recently wrote a book that picks up some of these topics: You are not a gadget, he probably says it better than I. He calls it "lock in" when features of the first software that later are recognized to be not ideal never get changed because of the effort. In any case, I haven't finished the book and I'll admit I'm not too enchanted about it, but it's definitely interesting. Best,
B.
Hi Tim,
ReplyDeleteThe problem with not introducing a quota is this: If you work for a company that employs mostly white, male academics between 25 and 45 years, for example, it is a risk for you to hire someone who does not fit the pattern: If he/she does not perform well, then your boss will criticize you (explicitly or implicitly) for hiring someone "who did not fit in from the very first moment".
That's quite sad actually. In any case, I think there's basically two questions in these quota discussion that always come back.
One is what's the percentage one should aim at. There's often talk about some 'natural' percentage and it's typically supposed to be at 50%. I have a few problems with that notion. Most important, I don't think it's well-defined to begin with. Why is the present percentage not natural? This would lead you to consider what environmental aspects you find distorting, but that's another point (see below). Then, I think it's plausible that some liking/disliking of certain skills/topics is indeed hardwired and just different for men/women, so aiming at 50% no matter what is not the thing to do. Finally, social influence is arguably 'natural.' If somebody doesn't feel well working in a field that's not male or female enough for him or her, that's sad, but for all I'm concerned a perfectly valid reason and I don't think it's justified forcing people against that.
Second, since I therefore think the talk about a 'natural' percentage is unjustified if you fix some percentage by hand, the only thing you can do to arrive there is to make the circumstances as 'natural' as possible. One aspect of this is obviously not introducing artificial biases in education and working against the issues that you mentioned that a woman wouldn't be hired just because she's a woman etc.
Now the question is then whether a compulsory quota is a way to take the hurdle over the bias, no matter whether the quota is actually the final 'natural' percentage. What I mean is, maybe one can consider it some kind of an estimate, make it compulsory, and once the glass is broken, you can leave things happen more naturally? This then would open the question what would happen if the Norwegians now dropped the compulsory quota.
Thing is, I've heard a few times now that the only procedures that actually worked to alleviate point 2 were in fact not voluntary, but top-down, compulsory, etc. On the other hand, that sort of thing to do is in introducing a bias to work against a perceived bias, which is why I'm opposed to it you could say out of principle. Trying to get these things together now I'm wondering if instead of considering compulsory quotas and the like a final solution, one should maybe just consider it some activation energy.
Best,
B.
Oops, weird, trying to publish a comment I get an error message, but the comment appears anyway. Somebody else has the same problem?
ReplyDelete/* it sucks and evidently doesn't work well. */
ReplyDeleteIt works well in the same way, like the public crowd of people at street, where nobody wears a label with number or name, well, like at the Nazi concentration camp.
You Germans are still liking social order too much. It's in your blood, just admit it...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn addition the requirement of non-anonymous Internet is simply a nonsense, because it's too easy to fake identity on the web in various ways.
ReplyDeleteMy very private criterion of meaningfulness of some particular rule is, how easily such rule could be forced and checked for violation.
And if You don't like just the business oriented spam, You can be perfectly sure, at non-anonymous internet such spam would be even more targeted, effective and therefore more widespread, than before. It's apparent from Facebook, which can serve as a prototype of such "non-anonymous" social network (which is still voluntary hopefully and full of anonymous fake identities from business area).
Hi Zephir,
ReplyDelete"It works well in the same way, like the public crowd of people at street, where nobody wears a label with number or name, well, like at the Nazi concentration camp.
You Germans are still liking social order too much. It's in your blood, just admit it..."
Your atyle of argumentation is incredibly bad. A public crowd in the street is not anonymous, you can identify people by their faces very well, as I'm sure you have noticed. You might also have noticed that there are laws prohibiting wearing masks etc at demonstrations and the like, and why do you think that is? Besides that, people who can actually see each other exchange much more information than those who can only interact through the written word, thus both situations are not comparable anyway. So what were you trying to say again?
As a matter of fact I do like social order. My doc didn't find any in my blood picture though. In any case, Lanier is as un-German as on can possibly be, so another failed "argument" of yours. Why don't you do everybody here the favor and think before you type?
"In addition the requirement of non-anonymous Internet is simply a nonsense, because it's too easy to fake identity on the web in various ways."
It's easy as long as you make it easy. Didn't I just provide an example that companies are making it less easy?
The problem of spam has a different root altogether. Besides that, if you'd actually read what I wrote, I said it's unnecessary people use their real name, and I certainly didn't say users should be forced to offer their private data on a silver tablet. You see, I'm much too German for that.
Best,
B.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Bee,
ReplyDeleteI would agree anonymity seldom has any benefit, whether it manifests in the cyber world or in our everyday one. I’m reminded of the happenings here two weeks ago during the G20 conference, when black hooded men and women smashed windows, threw fire bombs and torched police cars with having anonymity not serve to bring more justice for all, yet rather have them avoid its consequences. It’s beyond me how the rights of the individual can be thought able to beincreased by denying being represented as one.
Best,
Phil
Hi Phil,
ReplyDeleteGosh, really, was it that bad? I only skimmed over the news that week, so must have missed it. Well, anyway, anonymity does have its place, and in some occasions it is necessary. These are typically cases when necessary information would not be provided by a person if their identity becomes known, because they have to be afraid they will face harm of one or the other sort. Typical example would be the person working in a company who wants to report there's something fishy going on. In any case, thing is, anonymity should be an option where it is really necessary but not the default where it is entirely unnecessary.
It is an interesting question if, had people who set the basis for the first internet designs thought about this issue, would they have had enough evidence or research to figure out how things would develop. It's not at all clear to me. I mean it's one thing to say now, okay, it's shit, let's change it. It's another thing to ask if they could have known from the beginning. I guess that there was to a certain extend the expectation that people would just be well-behaved, polite and respectful to each other. As in fact most people are in daily life. But was there any knowing how people behave without face to face contact when they have the possibility that their identity will never be revealed? Best,
B.
The article on quotas is just an empty propaganda piece, there is no evaluation of the effect of the reform on company performance, on their international competitiveness, on the family structure on the child bearing, on general happiness of the sexes, or on anything for that matter.
ReplyDeleteThe only supposed indication of the "positive" outcome of the reform mentioned is that six years later people gave up complaining about it. Wow, now that's an impressive achievement worth replicating, the rest of Europe should implement similar laws ASAP so we can all give up complaining about them in six years.
Hi Bee,
ReplyDeleteIt was pretty bad, especially for a place many people think of as being Toronto the Good. Fortunately no one was killed and I would call that more resultant of good luck then good planning. In total almost 1000 people were arrested yet only about 150 charged in the end. It’s created a lot of call for inquiry in regard to the police and governments actions and plans. The truth of it being on the civilian front only the hooded people were the vandals with having the peaceful protesters become endangered by their actions.
I acknowledge that sadly anonymity still is required at times, yet it’s more indicative of justice not being what it should be as to have people fear it not enough to protect them in such circumstances. Actually in a truly just system the right to face your accuser is as necessary as any. There is a lot of talk these days as for the need for greater transparency at all levels and I for one agree that as being a goal that’s worth supporting. For me In the end the need for anonymity only shows as to how far we still have to go to become a truly just and advanced society rather than a measure of having attained one.
Best,
Phil
Hi Tspin,
ReplyDeleteThe article is a summary of a study by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung that summarizes data they've gathered, as you'll find mentioned in the first paragraphs. The authors of the study are careful not to jump to conclusions about economic performance at this point because it's been a too recent change, but maybe at least have a look at the summary of the study before you claim it's an "empty propaganda piece." Best,
B.
/*..Your style of argumentation is incredibly bad..*/
ReplyDeleteSuch logical fallacy just says: "I strongly disagree with you" - nothing more, nothing less...
/*.. you can identify people by their faces very well, as I'm sure you have noticed .. */
You can RECOGNIZE them only - it's a difference. I.e. recognize in the same way, like when they're using nick-names. BTW The making of photos of people at public places for purpose of their later identification is illegal in many countries.
/*..people who can actually see each other exchange much more information than those who can only interact through the written word..*/
Only at the case of positive relations - at the case of negative attitude the volume of information is actually lowered, no matter of its relevance for subject.
BTW Your arguments sound pretty naive for me as a justification for prohibition of anonymity at the Internet. Your stance plays well with your attempts to censor my posts just at the moment, when I'm linking some private sources - the anonymity prohibition is just a censorship at different level. You're actually don't want to know, what all these annoying people are - you just want to shut up their mouths more effectively.
It means, your intention isn't to increase an informational flux, but exactly the opposite.
I'm I right?
I said the article is an empty propaganda piece not the study, I haven't read the study, the summary makes it clear it contains no real data supporting the reform.
ReplyDeleteIn any case other countries would be smart to wait until the data on the economic and social impacts of the reform are available before trying to replicate it.
The idea that current system is bad just because the proportion of women is not 50% everywhere is patently absurd. Forcing 50% is certainly not justice, for example if there are five times more men then women engineers forcing a company to hire 50% women engineers is a gross injustice towards men engineers and is certain to lead to women being picked over better qualified men degrading the workforce performance overall. The same holds true for women dominated jobs where forcing 50% men would be equally stupid and counterproductive.
And of course, general lack of anonymity is dangerous for subjects.
ReplyDeleteWithout anonymity I could track every your movement, i.e. your hobby, personal interests or deviations, exact time when you're posting on the web, when you have vacations, when your home is empty or where I can find your children unprotected - and to sell this information to other people.
Hi Zephir,
ReplyDelete"/*..Your style of argumentation is incredibly bad..*/
Such logical fallacy just says: "I strongly disagree with you" - nothing more, nothing less...
There is nothing logically wrong with this sentence since it doesn't contain any logical conclusion, and besides this I have explained in detail why your argumentation is wrong: You either address issues that were not raised to begin with or pull up reasons that are completely irrelevant.
"I.e. recognize in the same way, like when they're using nick-names"
And people change their faces like they change their nicknames, I see.
"BTW Your arguments sound pretty naive for me as a justification for prohibition of anonymity at the Internet."
Possibly because I never said that anonymity should be prohibited?
"Your stance plays well with your attempts to censor my posts just at the moment, when I'm linking some private sources - the anonymity prohibition is just a censorship at different level. You're actually don't want to know, what all these annoying people are - you just want to shut up their mouths more effectively."
As a matter of fact, yes, I want everybody to shut up who has nothing to say. Your repeated complaint that I delete posts with self-advertisements are pathetic.
"It means, your intention isn't to increase an informational flux, but exactly the opposite."
My intention is to increase the signal to noise ration, and that goes both ways by raising the signal and lowering the noise. Best,
B.
Hi Zephir,
ReplyDelete"Without anonymity I could track every your movement, i.e. your hobby, personal interests or deviations, exact time when you're posting on the web, when you have vacations, when your home is empty or where I can find your children unprotected - and to sell this information to other people."
Haven't I already told you above that anonymity and privacy rights are not the same thing? Why do you repeat irrelevant and misleading claims. It's called a red herring fallacy and is a waste of time, mine and our readers.
Best,
B.
Hi Tspin,
ReplyDelete"I said the article is an empty propaganda piece not the study, I haven't read the study, the summary makes it clear it contains no real data supporting the reform."
It's also called confirmation bias.
"The idea that current system is bad just because the proportion of women is not 50% everywhere is patently absurd."
Indeed it is. Maybe read what I wrote in my post or my reply to Tim above before you assign opinions to me that I don't hold. Best,
B.
...one should maybe just consider it some activation energy.
ReplyDeleteI like that idea! That certainly wraps up your second point.
But the time interval that is needed for the reaction to become self sustaining is very hard to estimate, it certainly may take more than one generation (think about racism in the USA).
If somebody doesn't feel well working in a field that's not male or female enough for him or her, that's sad, but for all I'm concerned a perfectly valid reason and I don't think it's justified forcing people against that.
Yes, that's one of the counterarguments. What's typically female or male is an open question, and the "natural" percentage a part of an ideology.
Clearly the parents alone cannot raise their children without gender specific influence from their environment. There are couples that tried, only to find out that their little girls wanted dolls and pink clothes, and their boys guns and blue clothes. Which does not prove that these wishes are innate, of course: Surely the children observed other children behaving this way, no matter what their parents told them.
There is an interesting scientist who specializes in gender specific communication styles, see:
Deborah Tannen: Women and Men in Conversation. (The "female" communication style as characterized by Tannen seems to constitute a disadvantage in the hard sciences, IMHO).
BTW: How do archaeologists and anthropologists know that men hunted and women stayed at the cave caring for the children? As a wise chief I would choose 70% men and 30% women for the hunt, because the 30% most athletic women are certainly more able to run for the mammoth than the 30% least athletic men.
Haven't I already told you above that anonymity and privacy rights are not the same thing?
ReplyDeleteOf course they're not, these things are contradicted naturally. You cannot restrict anonymity without threatening the privacy of subjects and vice-versa.
Hi Zephir,
ReplyDelete"Of course they're not, these things are contradicted naturally. You cannot restrict anonymity without threatening the privacy of subjects and vice-versa."
There's many layers to privacy. First, I wrote explicitly that I think to alleviate the problem it is not even necessary that people use their real name. I think it is sufficient that they use a pseudonym that takes effort to obtain and maintain, and that makes it, if necessary, possible to track them back.
Second, what you were writing above is that if people were no longer able to write and comment anonymously, it would imply that one
"could track every your movement, i.e. your hobby, personal interests or deviations, exact time when you're posting on the web, when you have vacations, when your home is empty or where I can find your children unprotected - and to sell this information to other people."
Which is of course nonsense. That I am not writing this blog anonymously does not even mean you know exactly when I'm writing my posts to begin with. Neither did I ever hint at allowing people to sell data about others' internet behavior. That's all about privacy rights. You are here clearly trying to make an argument by deviating from the topic. It's not constructive. Best,
B.
Hi Tim,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reference, I'll check this out. On this note, SciAm had an interesting special issue in May titled His Brain, Her Brain, that summarized some studies on gender differences both in adults and childrens. Some of the articles I found quite interesting, though some I found not too well backed up by studies. Basically, researchers are still trying to disentangle what's genetic and what's environmental, and they are getting better at that, but it seems pretty clear that there are genetic differences. One thing I recall was for example that as young children, boys tend to be more physically active than girls. In any case, I think the best we can do is to give everybody the possibility to live up to their talents, no matter whether that agrees with our idea of what's natural or politically correct. The question is of course what's the best way to do that. I have no good answer to that, but I think it's good that it's on people's minds because that's where change starts. Best,
B.
There is an interesting scientist who specializes in gender specific communication styles, see:
ReplyDeleteDeborah Tannen: Women and Men in Conversation. (The "female" communication style as characterized by Tannen seems to constitute a disadvantage in the hard sciences, IMHO).
That is a very good book, and one of the trifecta of books I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in Gender Studies, which means everyone IMO. I specialized in the field in the 1990's, the decade the once poo-pooed field (due to its previous lack of data) came into its own.
The other books are Anatomy of Love by Rutgers Social Anthropologist Helen Fisher, and The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.
I have always felt that Scandinavia and Holland are the most advanced countries, socially. Just because something works in those places doesn't mean it will translate well elsewhere. Eventually though, it seems in retrospect that the Dutchies and the Norse were right. Cultures take time to shift. We're a nutty species. Wonderfully so, for the most part.
Hi Bee,
ReplyDeleteIn some respects I feel bad for those like Zephir, as there characters seems consistent with so many today who yearn to be recognized in the hope of being held in esteem and yet resultant of being extremely cynical about the world as to be so apprehensive to even have it to be possible. I guess what I'm suggesting is there is more disadvantage to anonymity then there is advantage and then perhaps we should extend them some sympathy despite not being capable of empathizing with them. To place a metaphysical perspective to all this is to note there is a distinction to be made between chance and possibility that's not the same as between potential and observable outcome.
Best,
Phil
It isn't just a matter of male v. female brains and thinking styles as such or as pertains to work styles, there is a "feminist" approach to science as well. See for example Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
ReplyDelete"The quota has been successful and has gained broad acceptance. "
ReplyDelete(from the article)
That's certainly not the story I've heard. Sure, the quota got filled but not always with high quality women.
Moreover, they had to recruit from the other Nordic countries to meet it, ie expanding the field from a 5M population to a 25M population.
(Of course, some high quality women got their break because of the quota. That effect shouldn't be discounted, either.)
PS: Could you cut off the wind god's audience supply, please?
Bee: "It's also called confirmation bias."
ReplyDeleteNo, it's an objective fact that there is no solid arguments for the reform (by which I mean meaningful evaluation of economic performance or social impact) in the summary. This objective fact coupled with the attempts at persuading the reader that the reform is a good thing since people gave up complaining about it six years later is the basis for my description of the article.
It's also an objective fact that if a summary of a report doesn't contain solid arguments then the report on which it is based doesn't contain them either (unless the author of the summary is an idiot), which is why I didn't fell like reading the report. So I don't see where confirmation bias plays a significant role in what I wrote.
Bee: "Indeed it is. Maybe read what I wrote in my post or my reply to Tim above before you assign opinions to me that I don't hold."
I didn't assign this opinion to you, it's an undertone of the article.