Musings: By Definition, Flawed

Kauai Councilman Gary Hooser would have gotten a much better response to his survey if he'd asked the one question that so many voters want to hear:

Would you like me to go away and STFU?

Curious, his sudden interest in what voters want, now that he's facing defeat. Most politicians seek such guidance at the beginning of their term, so they can avoid debacles like introducing a fireplace ban.

As Hooser careens toward the likely loss of his Council seat, he's taken to mad pandering:

Except Coco Palms, two Coconut Coast resorts and the Hanamaululu project are already approved. So what's he gonna stop? The construction of single family homes? That should go over swell with the building trades that employ so many on Kauai.

Then there was this:

What's sad is that Hooser's “understanding” of the leash law was wrong, and he knew it, hence the wink-wink. 

But then, dats Da Hoos. He attacks people who actually are following the law, like seed farmers, while he picks and chooses which ones he wants to obey.

And really, Gary? The Kauai shelter has 100 dogs desperate for adoption, and you buy one from a breeder — that clipped its ears, no less? So much for leading by good example.

Still, realizing he could possibly snag a vote or two from even this manini issue, he posts (and acknowledges he knew he was breaking the law):

"The rest of us?" Uh, it's not like Hooser has any special privileges here. But yes, let's waste more Council time on the going-nowhere small stuff while ignoring the really big problems. 

Ever get the feeling he thrives on conflict and drama?

Well, if he gets re-elected, there's more of it coming:

Returning to Hooser's hypocrisy, and his “do as I say, not as I do” mentality, remember how he got all huhu over what he perceived — mistakenly — as a seed industry voting bloc?

But when the Hawaii Center for Food Safety Action Fund endorsed the “true food” bloc — four of them graduates of Hooser's HAPA Kuleana Academy and two of them HAPA board members — well, whattya know, there's Hooser, hustling for it:

Take a gander at the questions driving these endorsements if you still think Hooser and his cronies aren't a one-trick anti-GMO/anti-pesticide pony.

And WTF do any of these people know about food, "true" or otherwise, save for how to eat it and malign those who produce it by other than organic means? 

Meanwhile, Hooser makes like blocs were non-existent in Hawaii political history prior to 2014, when the dastardly seed companies introduced the practice specifically to get him:

I guess he plum forgot his own exhortations on the topic in 2014:

In related news, Dr. Lee Evslin took to the opinion pages of The Garden Island to try and convince folks that his recommendations in the Joint Fact-Finding on pesticides are legit:

In our study of the international scientific literature, we found that pesticides are associated with at least 20 medical conditions (pages 59-60 of the report). We then attempted to determine how many of those 20 conditions had available medical data that we could be used to compare the Westside with the rest of the island and state.

I wonder, didn't Dr. Evslin read the public comments submitted on the draft JFF report? Like the one from Dr. F. DeWolfe Miller, Professor of Epidemiology at the John A. Burns School of Medicine:

These recommendations were clearly made without professional epidemiological consultation and are typical of many other communities in the US and elsewhere in the world who have tried to link various health outcomes to some geographic marker as a proxy for some kind of potential environmental hazard. There is an abundance of literature on this subject.  An example of a local study is by Kirkham.

Linking health outcomes (cancer/BD) to zip codes is not recommended for two reasons. One is statistical. There will not be enough events per zip code to reach “statistical significance”, especially in Kauai.  In spite of this, there seems to be an irrational obsession with using zip codes for various useless data mining endeavors.

Even if statistical significance could be achieved, zip codes are not exposures. They are zip codes. Exposure to environmental hazards — in this case pesticides — has to be demonstrated and linked directly and quantitatively to an individual or individuals.

Linking cancer, birth defects or other health outcomes geographically is called by epidemiologists  “ecologic study designs”. Inferring the results from ecologic studies, i.e. from groups (zip codes for example) to individuals is termed an “ecological fallacy” and is by definition, flawed.

So give it up, already.