An interesting short film have nothing to do with book ... very popular on China internet.
http://media.chinabroadcast.cn/chi/net_radio/entertainment/el060106001.wmv
《一個饅頭引發的血案》：年度最紅名詞誕生記
新華網 （ 2006-01-13 09:55:54 ）
來源： 國際先驅導報
當年趙本山讓“馬甲”成了網路別名的代稱，今年，一個饅頭所引發的一場萬眾矚目的血案，使得“饅頭”成為了年終網路關注的焦點當年，趙本山一句“脫了馬甲照樣認識你”讓“馬甲”二字成為特定稱謂，作為當年的最紅名詞火了一整年，甚至直到如今還是網路別名的代稱；而如今，在網路江湖中，網友們盛傳著的今年的最火名詞無疑將是“饅頭”。
《無極》剛剛“轟轟烈烈”地在全國公映時，就有看完此片的網友在網上發貼稱：“這個《無極》不如改名叫‘饅頭’吧，所有情節居然是由一個饅頭引出的。”此話一出，眾人紛紛跟帖，表示贊同。估計大家是有料事如神的本領，當時就預感到了“饅頭”將要走紅——這不，新年過了才沒幾天，一個名為《一個饅頭引發的血案》的網路視頻短片就在網路上迅速火爆。
該短片以《無極》為藍本，極盡搞笑之能事。短片的作者署名為“胡戈製作”，大概20分鐘左右，基本上都是剪輯《無極》的電影片段重新編輯而成，畫面製作還算精良，人物配音都模仿片中人的口氣，難得的是，配音者連普通話都說得很不錯，看得出“制片人”花了不少心思。
目前在GOOGLE上進行精確搜索“一個饅頭引發的血案”能夠搜出近萬條記錄——要知道這可是長達九個字的超級精確搜索啊！從搜索結果來看，大部分網路社區和論壇都轉載過這個短片，甚至很多博客也對此片紛紛轉載，我也曾在QQ上接到消息，是網友發來的此片的地址鏈結，這些都充分說明瞭網友對此片的熱愛之情。
這個短片在開始前首先打出字幕“以下看到的東西純屬本人自娛自樂，內容純屬虛構，全是瞎編亂造的”的字樣，然後套用央視品牌欄目《法制在線》節目的形式展開整個故事。整個短片圖文並茂，配樂也搭配得恰到好處，其中到處是精彩之筆——比如深受眾人追捧的“張傾城作為圓環套圓環娛樂城名模，每天工作就是不斷地穿衣服和脫衣服”一段，一邊配上張柏芝在《無極》中迅速穿衣脫衣、穿衣再脫衣的畫面，一邊配上楊鈺瑩的《茶山情歌》，令人噴飯。還有被網友譽為最經典的“張昆侖自首”“張昆侖與郎隊長的同性戀情”“滿神牌喱水廣告”等片段，都令人爆笑到肚痛。
就在大家笑到一片燦爛不亦樂乎的時候，竟然有好事者去諮詢律師此種改編行為是否合法，於是，就有很不解風情的資深律師聲稱該短片侵犯了《無極》的作品完整權。於是，短片的作者胡戈發佈了一個聲明，稱自己“做這個東西純粹是為了個人自娛自樂，同時也是為了練習視頻處理技術……我並沒有四處傳播這個作品。只是由於網友們的相互傳遞，這個作品才慢慢流傳開來……現在網上四處流傳這個東西，這種現象並非是本人的初衷。我的網站的論壇原本是設計成給極少數視頻編輯愛好者進行技術交流的，現在竟然變成了‘饅頭’愛好者的天地。”
這個小小的插曲並沒有打消“饅頭粉”們的積極性，該短片依然從一個QQ流傳到另一個QQ，繼續在網路世界裏迅速躥紅，同時也把“饅頭”二字炒熱了。就在剛才，還有網友發帖子，義正詞嚴地在宣佈：眾所周知，最近有一部電影叫《無極》，遭到大家的口誅筆伐，當然這跟咱饅頭沒關係，但後來，居然有無聊群眾把電影斷章取義地演繹成《一個饅頭引發的血案》，這是對我們饅頭聲譽的嚴重誣衊，是對饅頭家族內部事務的粗暴干涉，我代表饅頭提出強烈抗議——我們饅頭並非引起謝無歡同學人性扭曲的根源，陳滿神女士利用饅頭引誘張傾城小姐的做法是極端無恥的行為，謝無歡同學珍藏的饅頭已經明顯過了保質期……我們饅頭保留採取進一步行動的權利！看來，本年度，饅頭想不紅都不行了……
星期六, 1月 28, 2006
星期五, 12月 23, 2005
Confessions of Economic Hitman
花了幾天看完了的感覺,是外界好像過譽了這本書.這本以揭發美國如何官商勾結,去把第3世界變成美國的附庸國的暢銷書,在美國國際聲望低落兼WTO剛開完會的當下,確實一度令我引頸以待.
作者作為參與者的夫子自道,事實增加了本書的吸引力,可是他提的例子,其實語言學大師兼反美頭號知識份子noam chomsky,早在幾本書內狂鬧過,這書唯一的特點,是他自己是過來人,是幫凶,但講他良心發現的篇幅實在太多,佢一次次講自己因為錢而再埋沒良心,又要靠一個又一個的情人點醒,直到911才下定決心出版此書,雖說是題材敏感有一定危險性,但佢經歷的冷戰時代已過了十多年,總覺得這本書也有點將過氣題材標尾會最後括番筆之嫌疑,抹不去這點假惺惺的感覺.
這本書的最大貢獻,是描寫美國是如何官商勾結,去虐待第三世界,不過作者只是一家工程公司的經濟師,所以若你以為會看到很多黑幕的話,恐怕你會失望.同時,情節又實在太似小說,太多幾十年前的對話,若作者沒有寫日記的習慣,很難想像會有這樣好的記憶.
再者,書中末段講較近期的事件,作者已沒有參與其中,只能以旁觀者或業界的身份來評論,但正如作者所講,他是一個只懂經濟一鱗半爪,而對數學統計絕非專家的「首席經濟師」,所以其觀點未見有獨到之處,所以到書末的內容已跌volt.
總括來講,這本書的題材在很多書已出現過,這本只是多了一點揭密味道而已,有興趣的看也無妨,但不算佳作.
星期四, 12月 15, 2005
Don't trust medical research without scrutiny
天下烏鴉一樣黑,香港的生命科技公司早前不也被人踢爆了嗎.
Ghost Story
At Medical Journals, WritersPaid by Industry Play Big Role
Articles Appear Under NameOf Academic Researchers,But They Often Get Help
J&J Receives a Positive 'Spin'
By ANNA WILDE MATHEWS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 13, 2005; Page A1
In 2001, the American Journal of Kidney Diseases published an article that touted the use of synthetic vitamin D. Its author was listed as Alex J. Brown, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
But recently, that same article was featured as a work sample by a different person: Michael Anello, a free-lance medical writer, who posted a summary of it on his Web site. Mr. Anello says he was hired to write the article by a communications firm working for Abbott Laboratories, which makes a version of the vitamin D product. Dr. Brown agrees he got help in writing but says he redid part of the draft.
It's an example of an open secret in medicine: Many of the articles that appear in scientific journals under the bylines of prominent academics are actually written by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies. These seemingly objective articles, which doctors around the world use to guide their care of patients, are often part of a marketing campaign by companies to promote a product or play up the condition it treats.
A HIDDEN ROLE?
Now questions about the practice are mounting as medical journals face unprecedented scrutiny of their role as gatekeeper for scientific information. Last week, the New England Journal of Medicine admitted that a 2000 article it published highlighting the advantages of Merck & Co.'s Vioxx painkiller omitted information about heart attacks among patients taking the drug. The journal has said the deletions were made by someone working from a Merck computer. Merck says the heart attacks happened after the study's cutoff date and it did nothing wrong.
The Annals of Internal Medicine tightened its policies on writer disclosure this year after a University of Arizona professor listed as the lead author of a Vioxx article in 2003 said he had little to do with the research in it.
The practice of letting ghostwriters hired by communications firms draft journal articles -- sometimes with acknowledgment, often without -- has served many parties well. Academic scientists can more easily pile up high-profile publications, the main currency of advancement. Journal editors get clearly written articles that look authoritative because of their well-credentialed authors.
Increasingly, though, editors and some academics are stepping forward to criticize the practice, saying it could hurt patients by giving doctors biased information. "Scientific research is not public relations," says Robert Califf, vice chancellor of clinical research at Duke University Medical Center. "If you're a firm hired by a company trying to sell a product, it's an entirely different thing than having an open mind for scientific inquiry. ...What would happen to a PR firm that wrote a paper that said this product stinks? Do you think their contract would be renewed?"
Drug companies say they're providing a service to busy academic researchers, some of whom may not be skilled writers. The companies say they don't intend for their ghostwriters to bias the tone of articles that appear under the researchers' names.
Authors "have to sign off on everything," says Mark Horn, a Pfizer Inc. medical director. "This is properly viewed as a way to more efficiently make the transition from raw data to finished manuscript." Professors who get writing help generally say they give the writers input and check the work carefully.
The criticism of ghostwriting is one of several issues that have put scientific journals on the defensive. Even journal editors acknowledge they have sometimes done a poor job of detecting when articles cherry-pick favorable data to promote a particular drug or treatment. Some health insurers have stopped taking what they read in the journals on faith and are employing analysts to scrutinize articles for negative data that are buried.
It's hard to say how widespread ghostwriting is. An analysis presented at a medical-journal conference in September found that just 10% of articles on studies sponsored by the drug industry that appeared in top medical journals disclosed help from a medical writer. Often the help isn't disclosed. An informal poll of 71 free-lance medical writers by the American Medical Writers Association found that 80% had written at least one manuscript that didn't mention their contributions.
In the case of the vitamin D article, Dr. Brown says Abbott asked him to write it but he didn't have time. He had written an earlier article on the subject. "They said they would have one of their people write it, update my old review article and I would check it," he recalls. Mr. Anello, a Milwaukee writer who studied biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, says he wrote the new article. "I've done a lot of ghostwriting jobs," he says, adding that sometimes he works closely with the named authors. (See related document excerpts.)
Dr. Brown says he had to rewrite "at least 30% to 40%" of Mr. Anello's draft. In retrospect, he says, he probably should have asked Abbott who Mr. Anello was and "if that person should be acknowledged." Abbott said the article's content was "under the complete discretion" of Dr. Brown and didn't discuss details. The journal's managing editor declined to comment because the journal is under new management.
Following questions from The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Anello removed the article summary from his Web site. Until recently, his online bibliography listed other scientific publications he has written under others' bylines that have yet to be published. The byline on one was "author to be named."
Medical writers frequently have scientific backgrounds. Some work for universities, drug companies or medical-communications firms, while others are free-lancers who typically get $90 to $120 an hour. A communications firm may charge $30,000 or more to have a team of writers, editors and graphic designers put together an article. Some of these firms are part of larger companies in publishing and advertising such as Thomson Corp. and Reed Elsevier PLC.
Elsevier's Excerpta Medica unit helps clients craft publications for prestigious scientific journals. Elsevier itself publishes many such journals, most notably The Lancet. Excerpta Medica says on its Web site that its relationship with its corporate parent's journals "allows us access to editors and editorial boards." (See related excerpt.)
But Sabine Kleinert, an executive editor at The Lancet, says she has never worked with Excerpta Medica and rejects articles that have a marketing spin. "Promotion has a different goal than publishing a legitimate research study," says Dr. Kleinert. She suspects companies sometimes influence medical writers "to write it up in a certain way to make a product sound more efficacious than it is."
A 1999 document that turned up in a lawsuit describes Pfizer's publications strategy for its antidepressant Zoloft. The document, prepared by a unit of ad giant WPP Group, includes 81 different articles proposed for journals. They would promote the drug's use in conditions from panic disorder to pedophilia. (See related excerpt.)
Author 'to Be Determined'
For some articles, the name of the author was listed as "TBD," or "to be determined," even though the article or a draft was listed as already completed. Several of the listed articles ultimately ran in scientific publications -- including one in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association -- without disclosing the role of outside writers.
In a statement responding to questions from The Wall Street Journal, Pfizer said agencies sometimes "pull together first draft manuscripts" based on information provided by researchers who will serve as authors. It says the academics who were later given credit as lead authors of the "TBD" articles were instrumental in designing the studies that the articles described. The lead authors said they had input into the drafts and approved the final papers.
In recent years, more journal editors have begun demanding that academic authors of studies explain their exact roles and disclose any work by medical writers. The editors say the writers can perform a valuable role so long as it's disclosed to readers.
Writers agree -- and the American Medical Writers Association is pressing for greater acknowledgment of its members' work. But some medical writers say they fear articles with full disclosure are likely to get bounced. Editors "say they want disclosure, but if you do it, they scream, 'ghostwriter!' " says Art Gertel, who oversees medical writing at Beardsworth Consulting Group in Flemington, N.J. "Despite the cries for transparency, the journal editors still feel that there's an element of corruption if a medical writer is paid by a drug company."
Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor in chief, says even a conscientious journal can only go so far in policing academics. "I don't give lie-detector tests to people," Dr. DeAngelis says.
BMJ, a British medical journal, has one of the toughest disclosure policies, but it can get misled. Last year, a note at the end of a BMJ article on painkillers and asthma said the article was "conceived and initiated" by its three academic authors. Lead author Christine Jenkins "performed the analysis and drafted the paper," the note said, adding that the work wasn't funded by a drug company. Dr. Jenkins is a senior researcher at Australia's Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, which has ties to the University of Sydney. (See related excerpts.)
In fact, a medical writer paid by GlaxoSmithKline PLC helped draft the manuscript, the drug company confirms. The analysis was almost identical to an earlier, unpublished one that the company says was "initiated" by that writer. Both analyses concluded that acetaminophen or Tylenol (sold under a different name by GlaxoSmithKline in Britain) was safer for asthma patients than aspirin or other painkillers. (See related excerpts.)
Dr. Jenkins says the structure of her work was "suggested" by the company version but she and the other authors did their own analysis. Dr. Jenkins says she personally "wrote a very large chunk" of the BMJ article and worked closely with the writer. Dr. Jenkins and GlaxoSmithKline declined to give the writer's name.
Dr. Jenkins says she didn't know that the company paid the writer. GlaxoSmithKline didn't pay Dr. Jenkins for the BMJ article, but the company previously paid her to speak at a conference and has given a major grant to the Woolcock Institute.
In a statement, GlaxoSmithKline says the paper "should have disclosed the involvement of a medical writer compensated by GSK." The company says it "regards the omission as a lapse on the part of GSK."
Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor, says Dr. Jenkins "should have declared the involvement of the medical writer." Dr. Godlee says the journal will print papers that involve a medical writer, but she believes "the actual authors have to be incredibly closely involved."
When articles are ghostwritten by someone paid by a company, the big question is whether the article gets slanted. That's what one former free-lance medical writer alleges she was told to do by a company hired by Johnson & Johnson.
Instruction Sheet
Susanna Dodgson, who holds a doctorate in physiology, says she was hired in 2002 by Excerpta Medica, the Elsevier medical-communications firm, to write an article about J&J's anemia drug Eprex. A J&J unit had sponsored a study measuring whether Eprex patients could do well taking the drug only once a week. The company was facing competition from a rival drug sold by Amgen Inc. that could be given once a week or less.
Dr. Dodgson says she was given an instruction sheet directing her to emphasize the "main message of the study" -- that 79.3% of people with anemia had done well on a once-a-week Eprex dose. In fact, only 63.2% of patients responded well as defined by the original study protocol, according to a report she was provided. That report said the study's goal "could not be reached." Both the instruction sheet and the report were viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The higher figure Dr. Dodgson was asked to highlight used a broader definition of success and excluded patients who dropped out of the trial or didn't adhere to all its rules.
The instructions noted that some patients on large doses didn't seem to do well with the once-weekly administration but warned that this point "has not been discussed with marketing and is not definitive!"
The Eprex study appeared last year in the journal Clinical Nephrology, highlighting the 79.3% figure without mentioning the lower one. The article didn't acknowledge Dr. Dodgson or Excerpta Medica. Dr. Dodgson, who now teaches medical writing at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, says she didn't like the Eprex assignment "but I had to earn a living."
The listed lead author, Paul Barré of McGill University in Montreal, says Excerpta Medica did "a lot of the scutwork" but he had "complete freedom" to change its drafts. Dr. Barré says he helped design the study and enroll patients in it. In statements, J&J and Excerpta Medica offered similar explanations of the process. J&J says it regularly uses outside firms "to expedite the development of independent, peer-reviewed publications."
A J&J spokesman said he wasn't familiar with the details of the instruction sheet and referred questions about the highlighted data to Dr. Barré, who said he never interacted with J&J's marketing department and doesn't believe the article was biased. He said the higher figure was "more representative" because those patients followed the study's rules. "Without wanting to distort data, you always want to put the spin that's more positive for the article," Dr. Barré says. "You're more likely to get it published."
Hartmut Malluche, an editor of Clinical Nephrology, declined to comment on details of the article. The journal doesn't require authors to disclose the role of medical writers. But after hearing Dr. Dodgson's story, Dr. Malluche said he would suggest changing the policy. "It's not good if the company has control over the article," he says.
Some academics are protesting ghostwriting. Adriane Fugh-Berman, an associate professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, says she received an email last year from a company hired by drug maker AstraZeneca PLC. The email offered her the chance to get credit for writing an article. "... [W]e will forward you a draft for your input so that you would need only to review and then advise us of any changes required," it said.
She says she was shown a draft but declined the offer. Then the Journal of General Internal Medicine asked her to peer-review a version of the same article, submitted by a different researcher. She decided to go public, and wrote about her experience in the journal.
AstraZeneca and the communications firm say it was all a mistake. Dr. Fugh-Berman should have been shown a different article from the one she was later asked to peer-review, they say. The article for peer review was in fact written by the author who submitted it to the journal, they say. AstraZeneca says it "does not support the practice of ghostwriting" and always discloses any support it gives to academic authors.
John Farrar, a pain expert at the University of Pennsylvania, says he once turned down a company's offer to give him a ghostwritten draft about a study on which he had worked. "They said, 'That's unusual,' " Dr. Farrar recalls. He wanted to write the manuscript himself because "you can put your spin on it. ...The way it is written -- the way it's structured -- is yours."
Ghost Story
At Medical Journals, WritersPaid by Industry Play Big Role
Articles Appear Under NameOf Academic Researchers,But They Often Get Help
J&J Receives a Positive 'Spin'
By ANNA WILDE MATHEWS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
December 13, 2005; Page A1
In 2001, the American Journal of Kidney Diseases published an article that touted the use of synthetic vitamin D. Its author was listed as Alex J. Brown, an associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
But recently, that same article was featured as a work sample by a different person: Michael Anello, a free-lance medical writer, who posted a summary of it on his Web site. Mr. Anello says he was hired to write the article by a communications firm working for Abbott Laboratories, which makes a version of the vitamin D product. Dr. Brown agrees he got help in writing but says he redid part of the draft.
It's an example of an open secret in medicine: Many of the articles that appear in scientific journals under the bylines of prominent academics are actually written by ghostwriters in the pay of drug companies. These seemingly objective articles, which doctors around the world use to guide their care of patients, are often part of a marketing campaign by companies to promote a product or play up the condition it treats.
A HIDDEN ROLE?
Now questions about the practice are mounting as medical journals face unprecedented scrutiny of their role as gatekeeper for scientific information. Last week, the New England Journal of Medicine admitted that a 2000 article it published highlighting the advantages of Merck & Co.'s Vioxx painkiller omitted information about heart attacks among patients taking the drug. The journal has said the deletions were made by someone working from a Merck computer. Merck says the heart attacks happened after the study's cutoff date and it did nothing wrong.
The Annals of Internal Medicine tightened its policies on writer disclosure this year after a University of Arizona professor listed as the lead author of a Vioxx article in 2003 said he had little to do with the research in it.
The practice of letting ghostwriters hired by communications firms draft journal articles -- sometimes with acknowledgment, often without -- has served many parties well. Academic scientists can more easily pile up high-profile publications, the main currency of advancement. Journal editors get clearly written articles that look authoritative because of their well-credentialed authors.
Increasingly, though, editors and some academics are stepping forward to criticize the practice, saying it could hurt patients by giving doctors biased information. "Scientific research is not public relations," says Robert Califf, vice chancellor of clinical research at Duke University Medical Center. "If you're a firm hired by a company trying to sell a product, it's an entirely different thing than having an open mind for scientific inquiry. ...What would happen to a PR firm that wrote a paper that said this product stinks? Do you think their contract would be renewed?"
Drug companies say they're providing a service to busy academic researchers, some of whom may not be skilled writers. The companies say they don't intend for their ghostwriters to bias the tone of articles that appear under the researchers' names.
Authors "have to sign off on everything," says Mark Horn, a Pfizer Inc. medical director. "This is properly viewed as a way to more efficiently make the transition from raw data to finished manuscript." Professors who get writing help generally say they give the writers input and check the work carefully.
The criticism of ghostwriting is one of several issues that have put scientific journals on the defensive. Even journal editors acknowledge they have sometimes done a poor job of detecting when articles cherry-pick favorable data to promote a particular drug or treatment. Some health insurers have stopped taking what they read in the journals on faith and are employing analysts to scrutinize articles for negative data that are buried.It's hard to say how widespread ghostwriting is. An analysis presented at a medical-journal conference in September found that just 10% of articles on studies sponsored by the drug industry that appeared in top medical journals disclosed help from a medical writer. Often the help isn't disclosed. An informal poll of 71 free-lance medical writers by the American Medical Writers Association found that 80% had written at least one manuscript that didn't mention their contributions.
In the case of the vitamin D article, Dr. Brown says Abbott asked him to write it but he didn't have time. He had written an earlier article on the subject. "They said they would have one of their people write it, update my old review article and I would check it," he recalls. Mr. Anello, a Milwaukee writer who studied biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, says he wrote the new article. "I've done a lot of ghostwriting jobs," he says, adding that sometimes he works closely with the named authors. (See related document excerpts.)
Dr. Brown says he had to rewrite "at least 30% to 40%" of Mr. Anello's draft. In retrospect, he says, he probably should have asked Abbott who Mr. Anello was and "if that person should be acknowledged." Abbott said the article's content was "under the complete discretion" of Dr. Brown and didn't discuss details. The journal's managing editor declined to comment because the journal is under new management.
Following questions from The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Anello removed the article summary from his Web site. Until recently, his online bibliography listed other scientific publications he has written under others' bylines that have yet to be published. The byline on one was "author to be named."
Medical writers frequently have scientific backgrounds. Some work for universities, drug companies or medical-communications firms, while others are free-lancers who typically get $90 to $120 an hour. A communications firm may charge $30,000 or more to have a team of writers, editors and graphic designers put together an article. Some of these firms are part of larger companies in publishing and advertising such as Thomson Corp. and Reed Elsevier PLC.
Elsevier's Excerpta Medica unit helps clients craft publications for prestigious scientific journals. Elsevier itself publishes many such journals, most notably The Lancet. Excerpta Medica says on its Web site that its relationship with its corporate parent's journals "allows us access to editors and editorial boards." (See related excerpt.)
But Sabine Kleinert, an executive editor at The Lancet, says she has never worked with Excerpta Medica and rejects articles that have a marketing spin. "Promotion has a different goal than publishing a legitimate research study," says Dr. Kleinert. She suspects companies sometimes influence medical writers "to write it up in a certain way to make a product sound more efficacious than it is."
A 1999 document that turned up in a lawsuit describes Pfizer's publications strategy for its antidepressant Zoloft. The document, prepared by a unit of ad giant WPP Group, includes 81 different articles proposed for journals. They would promote the drug's use in conditions from panic disorder to pedophilia. (See related excerpt.)
Author 'to Be Determined'
For some articles, the name of the author was listed as "TBD," or "to be determined," even though the article or a draft was listed as already completed. Several of the listed articles ultimately ran in scientific publications -- including one in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association -- without disclosing the role of outside writers.
In a statement responding to questions from The Wall Street Journal, Pfizer said agencies sometimes "pull together first draft manuscripts" based on information provided by researchers who will serve as authors. It says the academics who were later given credit as lead authors of the "TBD" articles were instrumental in designing the studies that the articles described. The lead authors said they had input into the drafts and approved the final papers.
In recent years, more journal editors have begun demanding that academic authors of studies explain their exact roles and disclose any work by medical writers. The editors say the writers can perform a valuable role so long as it's disclosed to readers.
Writers agree -- and the American Medical Writers Association is pressing for greater acknowledgment of its members' work. But some medical writers say they fear articles with full disclosure are likely to get bounced. Editors "say they want disclosure, but if you do it, they scream, 'ghostwriter!' " says Art Gertel, who oversees medical writing at Beardsworth Consulting Group in Flemington, N.J. "Despite the cries for transparency, the journal editors still feel that there's an element of corruption if a medical writer is paid by a drug company."
Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA's editor in chief, says even a conscientious journal can only go so far in policing academics. "I don't give lie-detector tests to people," Dr. DeAngelis says.
BMJ, a British medical journal, has one of the toughest disclosure policies, but it can get misled. Last year, a note at the end of a BMJ article on painkillers and asthma said the article was "conceived and initiated" by its three academic authors. Lead author Christine Jenkins "performed the analysis and drafted the paper," the note said, adding that the work wasn't funded by a drug company. Dr. Jenkins is a senior researcher at Australia's Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, which has ties to the University of Sydney. (See related excerpts.)
In fact, a medical writer paid by GlaxoSmithKline PLC helped draft the manuscript, the drug company confirms. The analysis was almost identical to an earlier, unpublished one that the company says was "initiated" by that writer. Both analyses concluded that acetaminophen or Tylenol (sold under a different name by GlaxoSmithKline in Britain) was safer for asthma patients than aspirin or other painkillers. (See related excerpts.)
Dr. Jenkins says the structure of her work was "suggested" by the company version but she and the other authors did their own analysis. Dr. Jenkins says she personally "wrote a very large chunk" of the BMJ article and worked closely with the writer. Dr. Jenkins and GlaxoSmithKline declined to give the writer's name.
Dr. Jenkins says she didn't know that the company paid the writer. GlaxoSmithKline didn't pay Dr. Jenkins for the BMJ article, but the company previously paid her to speak at a conference and has given a major grant to the Woolcock Institute.
In a statement, GlaxoSmithKline says the paper "should have disclosed the involvement of a medical writer compensated by GSK." The company says it "regards the omission as a lapse on the part of GSK."
Fiona Godlee, BMJ's editor, says Dr. Jenkins "should have declared the involvement of the medical writer." Dr. Godlee says the journal will print papers that involve a medical writer, but she believes "the actual authors have to be incredibly closely involved."
When articles are ghostwritten by someone paid by a company, the big question is whether the article gets slanted. That's what one former free-lance medical writer alleges she was told to do by a company hired by Johnson & Johnson.
Instruction Sheet
Susanna Dodgson, who holds a doctorate in physiology, says she was hired in 2002 by Excerpta Medica, the Elsevier medical-communications firm, to write an article about J&J's anemia drug Eprex. A J&J unit had sponsored a study measuring whether Eprex patients could do well taking the drug only once a week. The company was facing competition from a rival drug sold by Amgen Inc. that could be given once a week or less.
Dr. Dodgson says she was given an instruction sheet directing her to emphasize the "main message of the study" -- that 79.3% of people with anemia had done well on a once-a-week Eprex dose. In fact, only 63.2% of patients responded well as defined by the original study protocol, according to a report she was provided. That report said the study's goal "could not be reached." Both the instruction sheet and the report were viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The higher figure Dr. Dodgson was asked to highlight used a broader definition of success and excluded patients who dropped out of the trial or didn't adhere to all its rules.
The instructions noted that some patients on large doses didn't seem to do well with the once-weekly administration but warned that this point "has not been discussed with marketing and is not definitive!"
The Eprex study appeared last year in the journal Clinical Nephrology, highlighting the 79.3% figure without mentioning the lower one. The article didn't acknowledge Dr. Dodgson or Excerpta Medica. Dr. Dodgson, who now teaches medical writing at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, says she didn't like the Eprex assignment "but I had to earn a living."
The listed lead author, Paul Barré of McGill University in Montreal, says Excerpta Medica did "a lot of the scutwork" but he had "complete freedom" to change its drafts. Dr. Barré says he helped design the study and enroll patients in it. In statements, J&J and Excerpta Medica offered similar explanations of the process. J&J says it regularly uses outside firms "to expedite the development of independent, peer-reviewed publications."
A J&J spokesman said he wasn't familiar with the details of the instruction sheet and referred questions about the highlighted data to Dr. Barré, who said he never interacted with J&J's marketing department and doesn't believe the article was biased. He said the higher figure was "more representative" because those patients followed the study's rules. "Without wanting to distort data, you always want to put the spin that's more positive for the article," Dr. Barré says. "You're more likely to get it published."
Hartmut Malluche, an editor of Clinical Nephrology, declined to comment on details of the article. The journal doesn't require authors to disclose the role of medical writers. But after hearing Dr. Dodgson's story, Dr. Malluche said he would suggest changing the policy. "It's not good if the company has control over the article," he says.
Some academics are protesting ghostwriting. Adriane Fugh-Berman, an associate professor at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, says she received an email last year from a company hired by drug maker AstraZeneca PLC. The email offered her the chance to get credit for writing an article. "... [W]e will forward you a draft for your input so that you would need only to review and then advise us of any changes required," it said.
She says she was shown a draft but declined the offer. Then the Journal of General Internal Medicine asked her to peer-review a version of the same article, submitted by a different researcher. She decided to go public, and wrote about her experience in the journal.
AstraZeneca and the communications firm say it was all a mistake. Dr. Fugh-Berman should have been shown a different article from the one she was later asked to peer-review, they say. The article for peer review was in fact written by the author who submitted it to the journal, they say. AstraZeneca says it "does not support the practice of ghostwriting" and always discloses any support it gives to academic authors.
John Farrar, a pain expert at the University of Pennsylvania, says he once turned down a company's offer to give him a ghostwritten draft about a study on which he had worked. "They said, 'That's unusual,' " Dr. Farrar recalls. He wanted to write the manuscript himself because "you can put your spin on it. ...The way it is written -- the way it's structured -- is yours."
星期三, 12月 07, 2005
Journalism Primers: Covering Oil: A Reporter's Guide to Energy and Development
Trying to find Joseph Stiglitz's new book 'Fair trade for all', but stumble upon this freebie instead. Sound interesting
Journalism Primers: Covering Oil: A Reporter's Guide to Energy and Development
OSI and IPD
Aug 04, 2005
For the vast majority of people in most resource-rich countries, natural wealth does not translate into prosperity, but instead leads to environmental and economic devastation, and hampers democratic reform.Only an informed public can hold leaders to account. Yet local reporting often overlooks the legal, economic, and environmental implications of resource extraction.
Covering Oil: A Reporter's Guide to Energy and Development, a collaborative work of the Open Society Institute's Revenue Watch program and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, aims to encourage rigorous reporting on these issues by providing practical information about the petroleum industry and the impact of resource wealth on a producing country."Journalists can play a crucial role in educating people in resource-rich countries on how the petroleum industry affects their lives," said Julie McCarthy, the acting director of Revenue Watch. "But those reporters need access to information in order to know what questions to ask."The guidebook comes out of a series of organized workshops for journalists in the oil-exporting countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria, during which participants expressed a need for more information to help them understand the issues surrounding resource exploitation.
In response to these consultative workshops, Covering Oil outlines the fundamentals of petroleum contracts, provides a glossary of relevant economic theory, and presents case studies of major public policy issues.Covering Oil is the second in a series of Revenue Watch guidebooks targeting different audiences involved in the promotion of transparency and democratic accountability. The first, Follow the Money: A Guide to Monitoring Budgets and Oil and Gas Revenues, was aimed at nongovernmental organizations. Both reports can be found at: www.revenuewatch.org
Journalism Primers: Covering Oil: A Reporter's Guide to Energy and Development
OSI and IPD
Aug 04, 2005
For the vast majority of people in most resource-rich countries, natural wealth does not translate into prosperity, but instead leads to environmental and economic devastation, and hampers democratic reform.Only an informed public can hold leaders to account. Yet local reporting often overlooks the legal, economic, and environmental implications of resource extraction.
Covering Oil: A Reporter's Guide to Energy and Development, a collaborative work of the Open Society Institute's Revenue Watch program and the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, aims to encourage rigorous reporting on these issues by providing practical information about the petroleum industry and the impact of resource wealth on a producing country."Journalists can play a crucial role in educating people in resource-rich countries on how the petroleum industry affects their lives," said Julie McCarthy, the acting director of Revenue Watch. "But those reporters need access to information in order to know what questions to ask."The guidebook comes out of a series of organized workshops for journalists in the oil-exporting countries of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria, during which participants expressed a need for more information to help them understand the issues surrounding resource exploitation.
In response to these consultative workshops, Covering Oil outlines the fundamentals of petroleum contracts, provides a glossary of relevant economic theory, and presents case studies of major public policy issues.Covering Oil is the second in a series of Revenue Watch guidebooks targeting different audiences involved in the promotion of transparency and democratic accountability. The first, Follow the Money: A Guide to Monitoring Budgets and Oil and Gas Revenues, was aimed at nongovernmental organizations. Both reports can be found at: www.revenuewatch.org
星期五, 11月 18, 2005
Mourning the management guru
Peter Drucker
Trusting the teacher in the grey-flannel suit
Nov 17th 2005
From The Economist print edition
The one management thinker every educated person should read
ON NOVEMBER 11th, a few days short of his 96th birthday, Peter Drucker died. The most important management thinker of the past century, he wrote about 40 books (the last, “The Effective Executive in Action” will be published in January) and thousands of articles. He was a guru to the world's corporate elite, not just in his native Europe and his adoptive America, but also in Japan and the developing world (one devoted South Korean businessman even changed his first name to Mr Drucker). And he never rested in his mission to persuade the world that management matters—that, in his own rather portentous formula, “Management is the organ of institutions...the organ that converts a mob into an organisation, and human efforts into performance.”
Did he succeed? The range of his influence was extraordinary. George Bush is a devotee of Mr Drucker's idea of “management by objectives”. (“I had read Peter Drucker,” Karl Rove once told the Atlantic Monthly, “but I'd never seen Drucker until I saw Bush in action.”) Newt Gingrich mentions him in almost every speech. Mr Drucker helped to inspire privatisation—an idea that in the 1980s galvanised Britain's sclerotic economy.
He changed the course of thousands of businesses. He spawned two huge revolutions at General Electric—first when GE followed the radical decentralisation he preached in the 1950s, and again in the 1980s when Jack Welch rebuilt the company around Mr Drucker's belief that it should be first or second in a line of business, or else get out. Yet Mr Drucker is also cited as a muse by both the Salvation Army and the modern mega-church movement. Wherever people grapple with tricky management problems, from big organisations to small ones, from the public sector to the private, and increasingly in the voluntary sector, you can find Mr Drucker's fingerprints.
This is not to say that Mr Drucker was invariably right—or even always sensible. He was given to making sweeping statements that sometimes turned out to be nonsense. He argued, for example, that the great American research universities are “failures” that would soon become “relics”—odd for a man who made so much of the knowledge economy. He was slow to shift his attention from big firms to entrepreneurial start-ups. But he was much more often right than wrong. And even when he was wrong he had a way of being thought-provoking.
The man who became famous as an American management thinker was really a Viennese Jewish intellectual. The author of this article once visited him in his home in Claremont, California—a modest affair when set beside the mansions of most management gurus. His choice of a restaurant for lunch was more modest still. But as Mr Drucker talked it was easy to forget about the giant plastic wagon wheels that decorated the walls or even the execrable food. He talked with his deep, heavy Teutonic accent about meeting Sigmund Freud (as a boy), John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig Wittgenstein (as a student at Cambridge). He said that he liked to keep his mind fresh by taking up a new subject every three or four years (he was heavily immersed in early medieval Paris at the time). The overall effect was rather like listening to Isaiah Berlin channelled by Henry Kissinger.
Mr Drucker was born in 1909 in the Austrian upper middle class—his father was a government official—and educated in Vienna and Germany. He earned a doctorate in international and public law from Frankfurt university in 1931. In normal times this would have led to a distinguished, if predictable, academic career. But those were not normal times—and Mr Drucker was not a man to bow down to the confines of academic disciplines. He spent his 20s trying to avoid Adolf Hitler and drifting among a number of jobs, including banking, consultancy, academic law and journalism (his journalistic career included a spell as the acting editor of a women's page).
Along the way, he became increasingly convinced that the best hope for saving civilisation from barbarism lay in the humdrum science of management. He was too sensitive to the thinness of the crust of civilisation to share the classic liberal faith in the market, but too clear-sighted to embrace the growing fashion for big-government solutions. The man in the grey-flannel suit held out more hope for mankind than either the hidden hand or the gentleman in Whitehall.
He finally found a home in American academia, teaching politics, philosophy and economics. But it was not exactly a happy home. His first two books—“The End of Economic Man” (1939) and “The Future of Industrial Man” (1942)—had their admirers, including Winston Churchill, but they annoyed academic critics by ranging so widely over so many different subjects. This might have sealed his fate as just another discontented academic maverick. But “The Future of Industrial Man” attracted the attention of General Motors—then the world's biggest company—with its passionate insistence that companies had a social dimension as well as an economic purpose.
The car company invited Mr Drucker to paint its portrait—and offered him unique access to GMers from Alfred Sloan down. The resulting book—“The Concept of the Corporation”—changed the young man's life. The book not only became an instant bestseller, in Japan as well as in America, remaining in print ever since. It also helped to create a management fashion for decentralisation. By the 1980s, about three-quarters of American companies had adopted a decentralised model. Mr Drucker later boasted that the book “had an immediate impact on American business, on public service institutions, on government agencies—and none on General Motors.” Mr Drucker the management guru had been born.
Knowledge workers
The two most interesting arguments in “The Concept of the Corporation” actually had little to do with the decentralisation fad. They were to dominate his work.
The first had to do with “empowering” workers. Mr Drucker believed in treating workers as resources rather than just as costs. He was a harsh critic of the assembly-line system of production that then dominated the manufacturing sector—partly because assembly lines moved at the speed of the slowest and partly because they failed to engage the creativity of individual workers. He was equally scathing of managers who simply regarded companies as a way of generating short-term profits. In the late 1990s he turned into one of America's leading critics of soaring executive pay, warning that “in the next economic downturn, there will be an outbreak of bitterness and contempt for the super-corporate chieftains who pay themselves millions.”
The second argument had to do with the rise of knowledge workers. Mr Drucker argued that the world is moving from an “economy of goods” to an economy of “knowledge”—and from a society dominated by an industrial proletariat to one dominated by brain workers. He insisted that this had profound implications for both managers and politicians. Managers had to stop treating workers like cogs in a huge inhuman machine—the idea at the heart of Frederick Taylor's stopwatch management—and start treating them as brain workers. In turn, politicians had to realise that knowledge, and hence education, was the single most important resource for any advanced society.
Yet Mr Drucker also thought that this economy had implications for knowledge workers themselves. They had to come to terms with the fact that they were neither “bosses” nor “workers”, but something in between: entrepreneurs who had responsibility for developing their most important resource, brainpower, and who also needed to take more control of their own careers, including their pension plans.
All this sounds as if Mr Drucker was an exponent of the airy-fairy human-relations school of management. But there was also a “hard” side to his work. Mr Drucker was responsible for inventing one of the rational school of management's most successful products—“management by objectives” (this is the one that Mr Bush still follows).
In one of his most substantial works, “The Practice of Management” (1954), he emphasised the importance of managers and corporations setting clear long-term objectives and then translating those long-term objectives into more immediate goals. He argued that firms should have an elite corps of general managers, who set these long-term objectives, and then a group of more specialised managers.
For his critics (who had a point), this was a retreat from his earlier emphasis on the soft side of management. For Mr Drucker it was all perfectly consistent: if you rely too much on empowerment you risk anarchy, whereas if you rely too much on command-and-control you sacrifice creativity. The trick is for managers to set long-term goals, but then allow their employees to work out ways of achieving those goals.
From early on, Mr Drucker tried to apply his interest in management in a universal way. For instance, he realised that America has no monopoly on management wisdom. This might not sound like much of an insight today, in the light of the Asian miracles. But in 1950s America—when most American managers dismissed Japan as a maker of cheap knickknacks and the rest of Asia as an irrelevance—it was a revelation.
Mr Drucker used his newfound fame in Japan to flesh out his suspicion that Japan was turning itself into an economic powerhouse. (As a sideline he managed to develop a fine collection of Japanese art.) He wrote extensively about Japanese management techniques long before they became popular in America in the 1980s. But he also exported many American techniques to a country that was desperate to learn from Uncle Sam.
More than just a business thinker
If Mr Drucker helped make management a global industry, he also helped push it beyond its business base. He was emphatically a management thinker, not just a business one. He believed that management is “the defining organ of all modern institutions”, not just corporations; and the management school that bears his name at Claremont College recruits a third of its students from outside the business world.
In the public sector, as well as championing privatisation, he helped to inspire the reinventing-government movement that Al Gore promoted with some success in the 1990s. That movement has gone into eclipse at the federal level, but is still forging ahead in some states, such as Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney, the governor, is a powerful supporter.
Some of Mr Drucker's most innovative work was with voluntary and religious institutions (indeed, Mr Bush singled out his contribution to civil institutions when he awarded him the presidential medal of freedom three years ago). Mr Drucker told his clients, who included the American Red Cross and the Girl Scouts of America, that they needed to think more like businesses—albeit businesses that dealt in “changed lives” rather than in maximising profits. Their donors, he warned, would increasingly judge them not on the goodness of their intentions, but on the basis of their results.
One perhaps unexpected example of Druckerism is the modern mega-church movement. He suggested to evangelical pastors that they create a more customer-friendly environment (hold back on the overt religious symbolism and provide plenty of facilities). Bill Hybels, the pastor of the 17,000-strong Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, has a quotation from Mr Drucker hanging outside his office: “What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?”
Mr Drucker went further than just applying business techniques to managing voluntary organisations. He believed that such entities have many lessons to teach business corporations. They are often much better at engaging the enthusiasm of their volunteers—and they are also better at turning their “customers” into “marketers” for their organisation. These days, business organisations have as much to learn from churches as churches have to learn from them.
What he got wrong
There are three persistent criticisms of Mr Drucker's work. The first is that he was never as good on small organisations—particularly entrepreneurial start-ups—as he was on big ones. “The Concept of the Corporation” was in many ways a fanfare to big organisations: “We know today that in modern industrial production, particularly in modern mass production,” Mr Drucker opined, “the small unit is not only inefficient, it cannot produce at all.” The book helped to launch the “big organisation boom” that dominated business thinking for the next 20 years.
The second criticism is that Mr Drucker's enthusiasm for management by objectives helped to lead business down a dead end. Most of today's best organisations have abandoned this idea—at least in the mechanistic form that it rapidly assumed. They prefer to allow ideas—including ideas for long-term strategies—to bubble up from the bottom and middle of the organisations rather than being imposed from on high. And they tend to eschew the complex management structures of the management-by-objectives era. The reason is that top management is often cut off from the people who know both their markets and their products best (a criticism that certainly rings true in Mr Bush's White House, though that is another story).
Third, Mr Drucker is criticised for being a maverick in the management world—and a maverick who has increasingly been left behind by the increasing rigour of his chosen field. He taught in tiny Claremont rather than at Harvard or Stanford. He never grappled with the rigours of quantitative techniques. There is no single area of academic management theory that he made his own—as Michael Porter did with strategy and Theodore Levitt did with marketing. He would throw out a highly provocative idea—such as the idea that the West has entered a post-capitalist society, thanks to the importance of pension funds—without really clarifying his terms or tying up his arguments.
There is some truth in the first two arguments. Mr Drucker never wrote anything as good as “The Concept of the Corporation” on entrepreneurial start-ups. This is odd, given his personality: this prophet of the “age of organisations” was a quintessential individualist who was happiest ploughing his own furrow. (One of his favourite sayings was, “One either meets or one works.”) It is also remarkable since he spent so much of his life in southern California—a hotbed of individualism and entrepreneurialism that helped to produce the small-business revolution of the 1980s. Mr Drucker's work on management by objectives sits uneasily with his earlier (and later) writing on the importance of knowledge workers and self-directed teams.
But the third argument—that he was too much of a maverick—is both short-sighted and unfair. It is short-sighted because it ignores Mr Drucker's pioneering role in creating the modern profession of management. He produced one of the first systematic studies of a big company. He pioneered the idea that ideas can help galvanise companies. And he helped to make management fashionable with a constant stream of popular writing. It may be over-egging things to claim that Mr Drucker was “the man who invented management”. But he certainly made a unique contribution to the development of the subject.
It is true that he cannot be put into any neat academic pigeonhole: he liked to refer to himself as a “social ecologist” rather than a management theorist, still less a management guru (he once quipped that journalists use the word “guru” only because “charlatan” is too long for a headline). It is true that he eschewed the system-building of some of his fellow academics. And he preferred reading Jane Austen to doing multivariate analysis.
But system-building often produces castles in the air rather than enduring insights. (It is notable that Mr Drucker's most systematic work—on management by objectives—has lasted least well.) Mr Drucker made up for his lack of system with a stream of insights on an extraordinary range of subjects: he was one of the first people to predict, back in the 1950s, that computers would revolutionise business, for example. His reading of history enabled him to see through the fog that clouds less learned minds: he liked to puncture breathless talk of the new age of globalisation by pointing out that companies such as Fiat (founded in 1899) and Siemens (founded in 1847) produced more abroad than at home almost as soon as they got off the ground.
These days management theory is increasingly dominated by academic clones who produce papers on minute subjects in unreadable prose. That certainly does not apply to a man who claimed that the academic course that most influenced him was on, of all things, admiralty law.
The legacy
The biggest problem with evaluating Mr Drucker's influence is that so many of his ideas have passed into conventional wisdom—in other words, that he is the victim of his own success. His writings on the importance of knowledge workers and empowerment may sound a little banal today. But they certainly weren't banal when he first dreamed them up in the 1940s, or when they were first put in to practice in the Anglo-Saxon world in the 1980s. Remember the way that many British bosses scoffed when Japanese carmakers set up factories in Britain and told their Geordie workers that they had to think as well as rivet, weld and hammer?
Moreover, Mr Drucker continued to produce new ideas up until his 90s. His work on the management of voluntary organisations—particularly religious organisations—remained at the cutting edge. America's business academics have only just begun to look seriously at the organisational transformation that he helped to pioneer.
Mr Drucker has a way of getting the last word. Richard Nixon once began a pep talk to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare with a side-swipe at him. “Mr Drucker says that modern government can do only two things well: wage war and inflate the currency. It's the aim of my administration to prove Mr Drucker wrong.” In retrospect, Mr Nixon failed even at those potentially achievable tasks.
Asked which management books he paid attention to, Bill Gates once replied, “Well, Drucker of course,” before citing a few lesser mortals. Management theory has not evolved into the world's most rigorous or enticing intellectual discipline. But in Peter Drucker it at least found a champion whom every educated person should take the trouble to read.
Trusting the teacher in the grey-flannel suit
Nov 17th 2005
From The Economist print edition
The one management thinker every educated person should read
ON NOVEMBER 11th, a few days short of his 96th birthday, Peter Drucker died. The most important management thinker of the past century, he wrote about 40 books (the last, “The Effective Executive in Action” will be published in January) and thousands of articles. He was a guru to the world's corporate elite, not just in his native Europe and his adoptive America, but also in Japan and the developing world (one devoted South Korean businessman even changed his first name to Mr Drucker). And he never rested in his mission to persuade the world that management matters—that, in his own rather portentous formula, “Management is the organ of institutions...the organ that converts a mob into an organisation, and human efforts into performance.”
Did he succeed? The range of his influence was extraordinary. George Bush is a devotee of Mr Drucker's idea of “management by objectives”. (“I had read Peter Drucker,” Karl Rove once told the Atlantic Monthly, “but I'd never seen Drucker until I saw Bush in action.”) Newt Gingrich mentions him in almost every speech. Mr Drucker helped to inspire privatisation—an idea that in the 1980s galvanised Britain's sclerotic economy.
He changed the course of thousands of businesses. He spawned two huge revolutions at General Electric—first when GE followed the radical decentralisation he preached in the 1950s, and again in the 1980s when Jack Welch rebuilt the company around Mr Drucker's belief that it should be first or second in a line of business, or else get out. Yet Mr Drucker is also cited as a muse by both the Salvation Army and the modern mega-church movement. Wherever people grapple with tricky management problems, from big organisations to small ones, from the public sector to the private, and increasingly in the voluntary sector, you can find Mr Drucker's fingerprints.
This is not to say that Mr Drucker was invariably right—or even always sensible. He was given to making sweeping statements that sometimes turned out to be nonsense. He argued, for example, that the great American research universities are “failures” that would soon become “relics”—odd for a man who made so much of the knowledge economy. He was slow to shift his attention from big firms to entrepreneurial start-ups. But he was much more often right than wrong. And even when he was wrong he had a way of being thought-provoking.
The man who became famous as an American management thinker was really a Viennese Jewish intellectual. The author of this article once visited him in his home in Claremont, California—a modest affair when set beside the mansions of most management gurus. His choice of a restaurant for lunch was more modest still. But as Mr Drucker talked it was easy to forget about the giant plastic wagon wheels that decorated the walls or even the execrable food. He talked with his deep, heavy Teutonic accent about meeting Sigmund Freud (as a boy), John Maynard Keynes and Ludwig Wittgenstein (as a student at Cambridge). He said that he liked to keep his mind fresh by taking up a new subject every three or four years (he was heavily immersed in early medieval Paris at the time). The overall effect was rather like listening to Isaiah Berlin channelled by Henry Kissinger.
Mr Drucker was born in 1909 in the Austrian upper middle class—his father was a government official—and educated in Vienna and Germany. He earned a doctorate in international and public law from Frankfurt university in 1931. In normal times this would have led to a distinguished, if predictable, academic career. But those were not normal times—and Mr Drucker was not a man to bow down to the confines of academic disciplines. He spent his 20s trying to avoid Adolf Hitler and drifting among a number of jobs, including banking, consultancy, academic law and journalism (his journalistic career included a spell as the acting editor of a women's page).
Along the way, he became increasingly convinced that the best hope for saving civilisation from barbarism lay in the humdrum science of management. He was too sensitive to the thinness of the crust of civilisation to share the classic liberal faith in the market, but too clear-sighted to embrace the growing fashion for big-government solutions. The man in the grey-flannel suit held out more hope for mankind than either the hidden hand or the gentleman in Whitehall.
He finally found a home in American academia, teaching politics, philosophy and economics. But it was not exactly a happy home. His first two books—“The End of Economic Man” (1939) and “The Future of Industrial Man” (1942)—had their admirers, including Winston Churchill, but they annoyed academic critics by ranging so widely over so many different subjects. This might have sealed his fate as just another discontented academic maverick. But “The Future of Industrial Man” attracted the attention of General Motors—then the world's biggest company—with its passionate insistence that companies had a social dimension as well as an economic purpose.
The car company invited Mr Drucker to paint its portrait—and offered him unique access to GMers from Alfred Sloan down. The resulting book—“The Concept of the Corporation”—changed the young man's life. The book not only became an instant bestseller, in Japan as well as in America, remaining in print ever since. It also helped to create a management fashion for decentralisation. By the 1980s, about three-quarters of American companies had adopted a decentralised model. Mr Drucker later boasted that the book “had an immediate impact on American business, on public service institutions, on government agencies—and none on General Motors.” Mr Drucker the management guru had been born.
Knowledge workers
The two most interesting arguments in “The Concept of the Corporation” actually had little to do with the decentralisation fad. They were to dominate his work.
The first had to do with “empowering” workers. Mr Drucker believed in treating workers as resources rather than just as costs. He was a harsh critic of the assembly-line system of production that then dominated the manufacturing sector—partly because assembly lines moved at the speed of the slowest and partly because they failed to engage the creativity of individual workers. He was equally scathing of managers who simply regarded companies as a way of generating short-term profits. In the late 1990s he turned into one of America's leading critics of soaring executive pay, warning that “in the next economic downturn, there will be an outbreak of bitterness and contempt for the super-corporate chieftains who pay themselves millions.”
The second argument had to do with the rise of knowledge workers. Mr Drucker argued that the world is moving from an “economy of goods” to an economy of “knowledge”—and from a society dominated by an industrial proletariat to one dominated by brain workers. He insisted that this had profound implications for both managers and politicians. Managers had to stop treating workers like cogs in a huge inhuman machine—the idea at the heart of Frederick Taylor's stopwatch management—and start treating them as brain workers. In turn, politicians had to realise that knowledge, and hence education, was the single most important resource for any advanced society.
Yet Mr Drucker also thought that this economy had implications for knowledge workers themselves. They had to come to terms with the fact that they were neither “bosses” nor “workers”, but something in between: entrepreneurs who had responsibility for developing their most important resource, brainpower, and who also needed to take more control of their own careers, including their pension plans.
All this sounds as if Mr Drucker was an exponent of the airy-fairy human-relations school of management. But there was also a “hard” side to his work. Mr Drucker was responsible for inventing one of the rational school of management's most successful products—“management by objectives” (this is the one that Mr Bush still follows).
In one of his most substantial works, “The Practice of Management” (1954), he emphasised the importance of managers and corporations setting clear long-term objectives and then translating those long-term objectives into more immediate goals. He argued that firms should have an elite corps of general managers, who set these long-term objectives, and then a group of more specialised managers.
For his critics (who had a point), this was a retreat from his earlier emphasis on the soft side of management. For Mr Drucker it was all perfectly consistent: if you rely too much on empowerment you risk anarchy, whereas if you rely too much on command-and-control you sacrifice creativity. The trick is for managers to set long-term goals, but then allow their employees to work out ways of achieving those goals.
From early on, Mr Drucker tried to apply his interest in management in a universal way. For instance, he realised that America has no monopoly on management wisdom. This might not sound like much of an insight today, in the light of the Asian miracles. But in 1950s America—when most American managers dismissed Japan as a maker of cheap knickknacks and the rest of Asia as an irrelevance—it was a revelation.
Mr Drucker used his newfound fame in Japan to flesh out his suspicion that Japan was turning itself into an economic powerhouse. (As a sideline he managed to develop a fine collection of Japanese art.) He wrote extensively about Japanese management techniques long before they became popular in America in the 1980s. But he also exported many American techniques to a country that was desperate to learn from Uncle Sam.
More than just a business thinker
If Mr Drucker helped make management a global industry, he also helped push it beyond its business base. He was emphatically a management thinker, not just a business one. He believed that management is “the defining organ of all modern institutions”, not just corporations; and the management school that bears his name at Claremont College recruits a third of its students from outside the business world.
In the public sector, as well as championing privatisation, he helped to inspire the reinventing-government movement that Al Gore promoted with some success in the 1990s. That movement has gone into eclipse at the federal level, but is still forging ahead in some states, such as Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney, the governor, is a powerful supporter.
Some of Mr Drucker's most innovative work was with voluntary and religious institutions (indeed, Mr Bush singled out his contribution to civil institutions when he awarded him the presidential medal of freedom three years ago). Mr Drucker told his clients, who included the American Red Cross and the Girl Scouts of America, that they needed to think more like businesses—albeit businesses that dealt in “changed lives” rather than in maximising profits. Their donors, he warned, would increasingly judge them not on the goodness of their intentions, but on the basis of their results.
One perhaps unexpected example of Druckerism is the modern mega-church movement. He suggested to evangelical pastors that they create a more customer-friendly environment (hold back on the overt religious symbolism and provide plenty of facilities). Bill Hybels, the pastor of the 17,000-strong Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, has a quotation from Mr Drucker hanging outside his office: “What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?”
Mr Drucker went further than just applying business techniques to managing voluntary organisations. He believed that such entities have many lessons to teach business corporations. They are often much better at engaging the enthusiasm of their volunteers—and they are also better at turning their “customers” into “marketers” for their organisation. These days, business organisations have as much to learn from churches as churches have to learn from them.
What he got wrong
There are three persistent criticisms of Mr Drucker's work. The first is that he was never as good on small organisations—particularly entrepreneurial start-ups—as he was on big ones. “The Concept of the Corporation” was in many ways a fanfare to big organisations: “We know today that in modern industrial production, particularly in modern mass production,” Mr Drucker opined, “the small unit is not only inefficient, it cannot produce at all.” The book helped to launch the “big organisation boom” that dominated business thinking for the next 20 years.
The second criticism is that Mr Drucker's enthusiasm for management by objectives helped to lead business down a dead end. Most of today's best organisations have abandoned this idea—at least in the mechanistic form that it rapidly assumed. They prefer to allow ideas—including ideas for long-term strategies—to bubble up from the bottom and middle of the organisations rather than being imposed from on high. And they tend to eschew the complex management structures of the management-by-objectives era. The reason is that top management is often cut off from the people who know both their markets and their products best (a criticism that certainly rings true in Mr Bush's White House, though that is another story).
Third, Mr Drucker is criticised for being a maverick in the management world—and a maverick who has increasingly been left behind by the increasing rigour of his chosen field. He taught in tiny Claremont rather than at Harvard or Stanford. He never grappled with the rigours of quantitative techniques. There is no single area of academic management theory that he made his own—as Michael Porter did with strategy and Theodore Levitt did with marketing. He would throw out a highly provocative idea—such as the idea that the West has entered a post-capitalist society, thanks to the importance of pension funds—without really clarifying his terms or tying up his arguments.
There is some truth in the first two arguments. Mr Drucker never wrote anything as good as “The Concept of the Corporation” on entrepreneurial start-ups. This is odd, given his personality: this prophet of the “age of organisations” was a quintessential individualist who was happiest ploughing his own furrow. (One of his favourite sayings was, “One either meets or one works.”) It is also remarkable since he spent so much of his life in southern California—a hotbed of individualism and entrepreneurialism that helped to produce the small-business revolution of the 1980s. Mr Drucker's work on management by objectives sits uneasily with his earlier (and later) writing on the importance of knowledge workers and self-directed teams.
But the third argument—that he was too much of a maverick—is both short-sighted and unfair. It is short-sighted because it ignores Mr Drucker's pioneering role in creating the modern profession of management. He produced one of the first systematic studies of a big company. He pioneered the idea that ideas can help galvanise companies. And he helped to make management fashionable with a constant stream of popular writing. It may be over-egging things to claim that Mr Drucker was “the man who invented management”. But he certainly made a unique contribution to the development of the subject.
It is true that he cannot be put into any neat academic pigeonhole: he liked to refer to himself as a “social ecologist” rather than a management theorist, still less a management guru (he once quipped that journalists use the word “guru” only because “charlatan” is too long for a headline). It is true that he eschewed the system-building of some of his fellow academics. And he preferred reading Jane Austen to doing multivariate analysis.
But system-building often produces castles in the air rather than enduring insights. (It is notable that Mr Drucker's most systematic work—on management by objectives—has lasted least well.) Mr Drucker made up for his lack of system with a stream of insights on an extraordinary range of subjects: he was one of the first people to predict, back in the 1950s, that computers would revolutionise business, for example. His reading of history enabled him to see through the fog that clouds less learned minds: he liked to puncture breathless talk of the new age of globalisation by pointing out that companies such as Fiat (founded in 1899) and Siemens (founded in 1847) produced more abroad than at home almost as soon as they got off the ground.
These days management theory is increasingly dominated by academic clones who produce papers on minute subjects in unreadable prose. That certainly does not apply to a man who claimed that the academic course that most influenced him was on, of all things, admiralty law.
The legacy
The biggest problem with evaluating Mr Drucker's influence is that so many of his ideas have passed into conventional wisdom—in other words, that he is the victim of his own success. His writings on the importance of knowledge workers and empowerment may sound a little banal today. But they certainly weren't banal when he first dreamed them up in the 1940s, or when they were first put in to practice in the Anglo-Saxon world in the 1980s. Remember the way that many British bosses scoffed when Japanese carmakers set up factories in Britain and told their Geordie workers that they had to think as well as rivet, weld and hammer?
Moreover, Mr Drucker continued to produce new ideas up until his 90s. His work on the management of voluntary organisations—particularly religious organisations—remained at the cutting edge. America's business academics have only just begun to look seriously at the organisational transformation that he helped to pioneer.
Mr Drucker has a way of getting the last word. Richard Nixon once began a pep talk to the Department of Health, Education and Welfare with a side-swipe at him. “Mr Drucker says that modern government can do only two things well: wage war and inflate the currency. It's the aim of my administration to prove Mr Drucker wrong.” In retrospect, Mr Nixon failed even at those potentially achievable tasks.
Asked which management books he paid attention to, Bill Gates once replied, “Well, Drucker of course,” before citing a few lesser mortals. Management theory has not evolved into the world's most rigorous or enticing intellectual discipline. But in Peter Drucker it at least found a champion whom every educated person should take the trouble to read.
星期六, 11月 12, 2005
Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The Architect Of George W. Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs
"Who run this place? The anatomy of Britain in the 21st century" by Anthony Sampson is good. It provides a good description of UK political landscape.
I'm reading "Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The Architect Of George W. Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs" by Carl M. Cannon, Lou Dubose, Jan Reid. Interesting reading.
Karl Roves is THE campaign manager of G.W.Bush since his Texas years. I was surprised that Texas was dominated by Democratic Party years ago. It was Karl who sensed the return of conservatism in Texas general public and brought Republican back.
The book includes a lot of interesting stories about how Karl spinned and destroyed all the Democratic Party stars. Lot of dirty tricks involved. That's why politicians from both parties fear and hate Karl. Let see if Karl can survive the CIA leak scandal.
My recent reading is focus on valuation and PRC accounting stuffs. Too boring to introduce those books here. But I did watch an interesting dvd called "The Corporation" recently (http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php?page_id=2). The film is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan.
Modern corporation is highly influential to our society and everyday life. Corporation is like the middle age Church, modern CEO is like the Cardinal. From legislation to war, corporate shapes domestic and international politic. Despite all the scandals, executives are still highly respectable and influential, generally speaking.Corporation exists to create profit and bears no moral obligation. Although they are also part of the political system and are subjected to other political balancing forces. However, since corporation controls enormous resources that make them the dominate power in modern society.
As Gabriel Herbas (Prof. of Economics, State University, Bolivia) said in the film, "Our governments, sadly, are just puppets for these companies." Sam Gibara (Chairman, former CEO Goodyear Tire) also admitted that "Corporations today have more power than governments."
Even in a system like US that emphasis balance of power, corporation is still highly dominate. Not to say how powerful corporation is in developing countries that put GDP growth above everything else.
Corporation affects our environment, our social value and our way of life. (how long our work hours is ?; how "corporate ladder" divided people into different "class"; how advertising and media shaping consumption behavior & what does "good life" means; how media corporation control our information/news flow; how "corporate mission" brainwash their employees … etc)
Although “The Corporation” is a bit too“Michael Moore” and a bit too angry, it does provides a wider prospective to the issue. The Corporation includes forty interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore, Hank McKinnell (CEO Pfizer Inc.), Sir Mark Moody-Stuart (Former Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell), Andrea Finger (Spokesperson for Disney-built town of Celebration), Peter Drucker, Elaine Bernard (Executive Director, Trade Union Program, Harvard) …etc (interviewee list : http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php?page_id=3)
Highly recommended to all of us.
===============================================
More about Karl Rove .............
Karl Rove
Senior adviser and deputy chief of staff
Date of birth: Dec. 25, 1950
Karl Rove is a man of many nicknames. He is the "Architect" of Bush's victories; he is "Bush's Brain." The president alternately calls him "Boy Genius" or "Turd Blossom," a Texas phrase describing a flower that grows in manure. He is the mastermind of the White House, the instigator-in-chief responsible for a series of policies and political maneuvers aimed first at getting his boss re-elected, and now at creating a permanent Republican majority.
In the first term, Rove was Bush's senior political adviser, officially in charge of strategic planning and political affairs. In early 2005, Bush also made him deputy chief of staff, so he now officially coordinates the policies of the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council and the Homeland Security Council. The result is that Rove is the poster child for how politics and policy have merged in the Bush White House.
Traditionally, governing is a considerably different matter than running for office, where winning is everything. Not so with Rove. If he eventually starts losing, he could end up taking the blame for creating a divisive presidency, aimed more at achieving partisan goals than the common good. But if he keeps winning, he will be a kingmaker even as his boss becomes a lame duck -- and his legacy could be a GOP that is indeed the ruling party for decades to come.
‧ The Architect, PBS's Frontline, April 2005 (Includes priceless video, at the 4:45 mark, of a young Karl Rove lecturing Dan Rather about the importance of voter registration in the 1972 Nixon campaign.)
‧ With Bush Re-elected, Rove Turns to Policy, New York Times, March 28, 2005
‧ The Karl Rove Ascension, washingtonpost.com, Feb. 9, 2005
‧ Barbara Walters's Most Fascinating People, ABC News, Dec. 8, 2004
‧ The Many Faces of Karl Rove, washingtonpost.com, Nov. 8, 2004
‧ The Controller, New Yorker, May 12, 2003
‧ Rove's Way, New York Times Magazine, Oct. 20, 2002
‧ Official Bio
===========================================
P.S. : Mike, please contact Daisy for the "Fraud Examination", W.Steven Albreecht (translated version).
星期日, 11月 06, 2005
買到停不到手
這兩天新增書債8本
what went wrong? by Bernard Lewis 中東歷史大師講為何伊斯蘭同西方國家咁多仇口
Conundrum by Jan Morris 著名旅遊作家夫子自道,講自己變性的心路歷程
The invisible continent by Kenichi Ohmae 策略大師的舊作,講新經濟下的企業生存之道,貪其名氣而買,可能有排都唔睇
who run this place? The anatomy of britain in the 21st century by Anthony Sampson 老牌英國記者教你睇英國政壇、企業有乜問題
系統的哲學 by 金觀濤 - 其哲學思想的集大成
神話簡史 by Karen Armstrong 神的歷史的作者,對這類題材駕輕就熟
睡眠與做夢 by Jacob Empson 睡眠科學面面觀
上了建築旅行的癮 by 陳世良 台灣建築師講世界名建築,相文都好似幾得
what went wrong? by Bernard Lewis 中東歷史大師講為何伊斯蘭同西方國家咁多仇口
Conundrum by Jan Morris 著名旅遊作家夫子自道,講自己變性的心路歷程
The invisible continent by Kenichi Ohmae 策略大師的舊作,講新經濟下的企業生存之道,貪其名氣而買,可能有排都唔睇
who run this place? The anatomy of britain in the 21st century by Anthony Sampson 老牌英國記者教你睇英國政壇、企業有乜問題
系統的哲學 by 金觀濤 - 其哲學思想的集大成
神話簡史 by Karen Armstrong 神的歷史的作者,對這類題材駕輕就熟
睡眠與做夢 by Jacob Empson 睡眠科學面面觀
上了建築旅行的癮 by 陳世良 台灣建築師講世界名建築,相文都好似幾得
星期五, 10月 28, 2005
童年的消逝
雖然本身從事媒體行業,但很少看關於媒體分析的書,可是對於已故媒體分析家Neil Postman的書,卻一直情有獨鐘.Postman很喜歡探討電視文化對社會造成的衝擊,但路數卻很廣泛,把史料、人類學與社會學等學科結合,往往給他扭出新的花樣.「童年的消逝(The Disappearance of Childhood)」正是這樣一部趣味盎然的示範作.
與歷史上大部份概念一樣，童年本身也非想當然的產物，原來有其演變的過程．在更早的年代裏，因為醫療知識與技術的不足，兒童隨時有可能會夭折，再加上成人都已經自顧不暇，因此，童年這個概念是不存在的．那個時代的孩子，一旦脫離襁褓階段，他們的穿著、說話與工作內容，就與成人無異，更沒有何謂「兒童不宜」的概念。那是一個沒有童年的時代。
Postman認為，童年概念的出現，始於印刷術發明之後，因為印刷術使得知識能夠流通，也使得越來越多的人能夠識字，但是這許多識字的人口中，並不包括兒童。因為了解文字的能力，包含了解抽象符號背後的意義，還要有解碼與轉換意義的能力，這些都不是經驗不足的兒童所能操作的，因此，印刷術使得兒童與成人之間的界線變得十分鮮明，童年作為過渡至識字前的狀態因而得到確立。也就是從這個時候開始，兒童的教育、成長、福利問題逐漸成為成人所關切的重要議題。
可是隨著電視的出現，卻導致童年的消逝。因為當書籍是唯一知識管道的來源時，成人可以對資訊加以分門別類，讓孩子在心智成熟之前，過濾一些他不應該、不適宜知道的知識。但是電視的出現，粉碎了成人壟斷知識的權力。因為理解影像遠較辨識符號容易，是孩子在很小的時候便發展完成的能力。因此，在孩子學習閱讀文字之前，電視早已用更強勢的影像語言，教會孩子該知道以及不該知道的事。
也因此在電視出現之後，兒童說話越來越老氣橫秋，像「殘酷一叮」捧紅了舉手投足唱歌談吐學足大人的莫生，對大人的權威越來越不屑一顧，反而成人卻有越來越孩子氣的跡象，童年因此正式消亡。
雖然Postman沒有為如何保存「童年」提供答案，但卻給予讀者一個愉快的閱讀經驗，那種半帶戲謔的筆觸，令人頗有點遊車河般的暢快．補充一句，筆者看的是中譯本，但譯本相當不俗，幾乎沒有翻譯的痕跡．
筆者去年也看過Postman的另一著作「娛樂至死(Amusing ourselves to death)」，同樣串嘴，講即食娛樂文化如何令人活在赫胥黎的美麗新世界(Brave New World)而不自知，有時間再推介．
星期一, 10月 17, 2005
Investment Fables
Apple上周公布業績理想,但股價不升反跌,原因是市場原來的估計更高,這是投資增長股的陷阱之一:如何知道自己的買入價不是反映了過高的增長?著名財經教授Aswath Damodaran的" Investment Fables "
高息股一定好?
低PE股一定跑贏?
股價低過帳面值是否就是買入訊號?
抑或是盈利穩定、明星公司值得追捧?
相反理論的往績又如何?
諸如此類的十數條問題,是經紀成日掛在口邊的廉價意見,但實情是否一定得,定係好似秋官效應咁,是講講下當真的效應?這本書的目的,就是解釋為何有人覺得這些投資招數掂,實証及最新的財務學研究結果如何,如果真係值得跟,又有乜野要注意的事項.好似市帳率低,是因為隻股平,還是因為其股本回報率低、增長低定係風險大(即股本成本高)?
本書不是一味拆檔那一類,相反它其實認可一些策略,而且會教你如何按圖索驥來揀股.全書只有很少公式,當然有少少底子會較易讀,但作者就每條問題均會把你當門外漢地來說明,故此很易入口,是坊間少有地結合學術及實戰的一本書.
筆者是趁三聯減價時買的,一百四十多塊的hard cover,感覺相當抵,尤其是筆者上次買Damodaran的估值聖經"Investment Valuation"時,花了四百多元呢!
星期一, 10月 10, 2005
The elusive quest for growth
若果說End of Poverty是一個樂觀經濟學家向貧窮開戰的宣言,那麼”The elusive quest for growth”可說是另一極端,作者William Easterly是紐約大學經濟系教授,曾在世界銀行工作了十多年的時間,他的名氣自然及不上Jeffrey Sachs,但對第三世界貧窮問題及各種藥方效力的了解,卻是不容置疑的.本書在02年初版時,確曾掀起了不少爭論,直到最近”經濟學人”雜誌依舊找其評論這方面的問題.
他在書中引述了不少調查及數據,力陳我們現在所做的一切,包括提供投資援助、改善教育、協助節育、貸款及寬免債務,最後均無補於事.他曾把這些研究向世銀匯報,結果被開除了.
Easterly認為,假若不把對人的激勵放在扶貧措施的核心,只會白花資源,淪為貪官污吏的囊中之物.本書的最大敗筆,就在於沒有為如何就這個誘因機制給出具體建議.
儘管如此,但這本書一樣精闢易讀,一樣多具體例子第一身體驗,只是多了點懷疑及批判,少了點對烏托邦的嚮往,但可能更腳踏實地一點也說不定.總括而言,若看End of Poverty覺得津津有味的話,這本書也不會令你失望.
星期一, 9月 26, 2005
Hot commodities
看到Daisy的首度登場,令人鼓舞.今次介紹的是Jim Roger的Hot Commodities. Jim Roger其人其事不用我多說吧,這本已是04年出版的書,今時今日看更覺仿如隔世.這本恰稱dummies guide to commodities,沒有複雜難明的分析,講的是投資入門,及各種商品的未來供求因素.筆者兩天已了結此書,易入口之餘,卻會感到不夠喉,不過作者有江湖地位加上遠見,確實具備一定的流行元素.
不要以為看後能對寫新聞有很大幫助,但作為入門書也無不可.Roger在書中給出的主要訊息如下:
商品與股市correlation夠低
商品價格可以在經濟差時依然發圍
直接買商品比買商品股要好及簡單
石油、咖啡、糖、铅、黃金 -->掂
今次商品大牛市將歷時10年,但當中會有反覆
若要延伸閱讀,可以看末日博士更早寫成的Tomorrow's Gold,里昂當年幫他出版送給客戶,當時麥嘉華已大聲疾呼要買原材料,不過這本書較為概念性,不少篇幅讓麥嘉華賣弄博學,叫筆者看了好幾十頁奧國學派熊彼德的經濟學說仍未入到正題,結果半途而廢久久未重看,或許日後有機會補看後會覺得值得一書.
星期三, 9月 14, 2005
The Book of Bunny Suicides, Return of the Bunny Suicides
香港人成天把「想死、想死」掛在嘴邊,尋死率好似全球第一,不妨把這個話題戲謔一番,也好化解化解怨氣.在網上看到有人介紹這套漫畫書,看了幾頁,已喜歡上了.死,原來也可以很有趣.
星期日, 9月 11, 2005
統計/調查泛濫
近幾年新聞鍾意用很多調查或統計,又話全港有幾多十萬人有呢隻病,又話香港自殺率全球第幾高,又話市民普遍認為要幾多千萬元才夠退休,一直對這些所謂調查抱有懷疑,看了think3介紹的numbers guys專欄,覺得香港為何一直缺少這類肯反省統計泛濫現象的文章,揭破一些有商業或政治企圖,搏宣傳或怪力亂神的統計.
其實即使一些有standing的機構,或大學所作的調查,準確性也大有疑問,傳媒一方面在提供這些資訊作為談資之餘,也是否能容納多些獨立批判的空間?
介紹一段值得一讀的文章,若對統計誤用有興趣,可參看think3早前介紹的書list.
Scientific accuracy
...and statistics
Sep 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition
Just how reliable are scientific papers?
THEODORE STURGEON, an American science-fiction writer, once observed that “95% of everything is crap”. John Ioannidis, a Greek epidemiologist, would not go that far. His benchmark is 50%. But that figure, he thinks, is a fair estimate of the proportion of scientific papers that eventually turn out to be wrong.
Dr Ioannidis, who works at the University of Ioannina, in northern Greece, makes his claim in PLoS Medicine, an online journal published by the Public Library of Science. His thesis that many scientific papers come to false conclusions is not new. Science is a Darwinian process that proceeds as much by refutation as by publication. But until recently no one has tried to quantify the matter.
Dr Ioannidis began by looking at specific studies, in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July. He examined 49 research articles printed in widely read medical journals between 1990 and 2003. Each of these articles had been cited by other scientists in their own papers 1,000 times or more. However, 14 of them—almost a third—were later refuted by other work.
Some of the refuted studies looked into whether hormone-replacement therapy was safe for women (it was, then it wasn't), whether vitamin E increased coronary health (it did, then it didn't), and whether stents are more effective than balloon angioplasty for coronary-artery disease (they are, but not nearly as much as was thought).
Having established the reality of his point, he then designed a mathematical model that tried to take into account and quantify sources of error. Again, these are well known in the field.
One is an unsophisticated reliance on “statistical significance”. To qualify as statistically significant a result has, by convention, to have odds longer than one in 20 of being the result of chance. But, as Dr Ioannidis points out, adhering to this standard means that simply examining 20 different hypotheses at random is likely to give you one statistically significant result. In fields where thousands of possibilities have to be examined, such as the search for genes that contribute to a particular disease, many seemingly meaningful results are bound to be wrong just by chance.
Other factors that contribute to false results are small sample sizes, studies that show weak effects (such as a drug which works only on a small number of patients) and poorly designed studies that allow the researchers to fish among their data until they find some kind of effect, regardless of what they started out trying to prove. Researcher bias, due either to clinging tenaciously to a pet theory, or to financial interests, can also skew results.
When Dr Ioannidis ran the numbers through his model, he concluded that even a large, well-designed study with little researcher bias has only an 85% chance of being right. An underpowered, poorly performed drug trial with researcher bias has but a 17% chance of producing true conclusions. Overall, more than half of all published research is probably wrong.
It should be noted that Dr Ioannidis's study suffers from its own particular bias. Important as medical science is, it is not the be-all and end-all of research. The physical sciences, with more certain theoretical foundations and well-defined methods and endpoints, probably do better than medicine. Still, he makes a good point—and one that lay readers of scientific results, including those reported in this newspaper, would do well to bear in mind. Which leaves just one question: is there a less than even chance that Dr Iaonnidis's paper itself is wrong?
其實即使一些有standing的機構,或大學所作的調查,準確性也大有疑問,傳媒一方面在提供這些資訊作為談資之餘,也是否能容納多些獨立批判的空間?
介紹一段值得一讀的文章,若對統計誤用有興趣,可參看think3早前介紹的書list.
Scientific accuracy
...and statistics
Sep 1st 2005
From The Economist print edition
Just how reliable are scientific papers?
THEODORE STURGEON, an American science-fiction writer, once observed that “95% of everything is crap”. John Ioannidis, a Greek epidemiologist, would not go that far. His benchmark is 50%. But that figure, he thinks, is a fair estimate of the proportion of scientific papers that eventually turn out to be wrong.
Dr Ioannidis, who works at the University of Ioannina, in northern Greece, makes his claim in PLoS Medicine, an online journal published by the Public Library of Science. His thesis that many scientific papers come to false conclusions is not new. Science is a Darwinian process that proceeds as much by refutation as by publication. But until recently no one has tried to quantify the matter.
Dr Ioannidis began by looking at specific studies, in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July. He examined 49 research articles printed in widely read medical journals between 1990 and 2003. Each of these articles had been cited by other scientists in their own papers 1,000 times or more. However, 14 of them—almost a third—were later refuted by other work.
Some of the refuted studies looked into whether hormone-replacement therapy was safe for women (it was, then it wasn't), whether vitamin E increased coronary health (it did, then it didn't), and whether stents are more effective than balloon angioplasty for coronary-artery disease (they are, but not nearly as much as was thought).
Having established the reality of his point, he then designed a mathematical model that tried to take into account and quantify sources of error. Again, these are well known in the field.
One is an unsophisticated reliance on “statistical significance”. To qualify as statistically significant a result has, by convention, to have odds longer than one in 20 of being the result of chance. But, as Dr Ioannidis points out, adhering to this standard means that simply examining 20 different hypotheses at random is likely to give you one statistically significant result. In fields where thousands of possibilities have to be examined, such as the search for genes that contribute to a particular disease, many seemingly meaningful results are bound to be wrong just by chance.
Other factors that contribute to false results are small sample sizes, studies that show weak effects (such as a drug which works only on a small number of patients) and poorly designed studies that allow the researchers to fish among their data until they find some kind of effect, regardless of what they started out trying to prove. Researcher bias, due either to clinging tenaciously to a pet theory, or to financial interests, can also skew results.
When Dr Ioannidis ran the numbers through his model, he concluded that even a large, well-designed study with little researcher bias has only an 85% chance of being right. An underpowered, poorly performed drug trial with researcher bias has but a 17% chance of producing true conclusions. Overall, more than half of all published research is probably wrong.
It should be noted that Dr Ioannidis's study suffers from its own particular bias. Important as medical science is, it is not the be-all and end-all of research. The physical sciences, with more certain theoretical foundations and well-defined methods and endpoints, probably do better than medicine. Still, he makes a good point—and one that lay readers of scientific results, including those reported in this newspaper, would do well to bear in mind. Which leaves just one question: is there a less than even chance that Dr Iaonnidis's paper itself is wrong?
星期六, 9月 10, 2005
星期五, 9月 09, 2005
iPod & Flat World
iPod : "Designed by Apple in California, Made in China."
To be precise, iPod is designed in Cal., it's components are manufactured in Asia, then iPod is assembled in China and is being sold globally.
During my visit to US in March 05, I attended New York Times' columnist Thomas L. Friedman's lecture on his new book -- "The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" (published on 5 April).
He outlined his new book in his lecture, and I chatted with him briefly after the lecture. His book is about "Outsourcing" and "Globalization".
Chatted with audiences and people I met over the trip, I found
Friedman is an excellent speaker, respond from audience was great. I found the talk interesting too, but I was not as "surprised" and "shocked" as other US audience.
Friedman uses the "The World is Flat" as a metaphor for the fact that "the global playing field is being leveled". The book is about how the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization.
"Well, what is so new about this ?" I thought.
Perhaps, Hong Kong have located at the very front-line of globalization, we have experienced "outsourcing" for too long. Losing manufacturing jobs to workers in China have been the trend since early 1980's, losing call-center jobs to China have been the trend since early 1990's.
I joined the drink section of a group of audience after the seminar. I found there are plenty mis-conceptions on international trading relationship between US and China. The common mistake is mis-focus on US-China trade deficit figure, and forget the reality is a multi-countries trade & division of labor network.
Indeed, there has been a structural change in US-China-Asia trade relationship since mid 90's.
In old days, Asia directly export to US. However, in recent years China emerged as the final assemble centre for Asia's goods (ie. triangular relationship: Asia countries(raw material/technology/components) => china(assemble/manufacture) =>US(sale & marketing).
China becomes the launching-platform of manufacture products. US import from China is mostly a substitution of US import from other Asia (including Japan and Korea) countries (Graphic Source: The Economic Report To President 2005).
Cos, advanced countries like Japan / Korea / US / European have focus on highest - valued components (e.g. design & manufacturing of semi-conductor, DRAM, LCD screen) and shifted the lowest-end manufacturing / final assemble process to their factories in China.
The name-tag "Made In China" has lost its meaning.
In fact, China's semi-finished products and raw material import have been the driver of economic growth in Asia and Latin America. Thankfully, this process (a) bring a lot of employment opportunity to developing countries, (b) pull developed Asian-countries (eg Japan, Korea) out of recession.
Moreover, US multi-national corp (MNC) have extracted huge benefit in the process. US MNC focus on the most high-value added end -- R&D on one end and Sales & Marketing on the other end -- and cut the largest slice of the profit.
For example, US consumer may be surprised by finding their Compac notebook computer is actually assembled in Shanghai, however, this doesn't change the fact that (a) US consumer enjoy the same notebook computer at lower price that otherwise, (b) the notebook is shipped by
Fedex, (c) most of the profit generated from this purchase actually go to Compac / Fedex and their shareholders.
Another example is : when US consumer buy a pair of hottest Nike shoes for $150 (or buy a pair of less fashionable Nike at $35), the factory in China only receive $1.00 per pair of shoe no matter how much the retail price is, and the $149 (or $34) go to Nike's profit, marketing firm, TV, billboard, Micheal Jordon, Walmart / other shoe-chain stores, employees and shareholders in these companies -- who are mainly US citizens. The same pair of Nike shoes also "export" to countries all over the world under the name-tag of "Made in China" and most of the profit go into Nike shareholders' pocket.
A lot of US MNC have seized the opportunity and transformed themselves into the champion of globalization -- Walmart, Nike, Starbuck, Intel, Apple, Compac, Dell, UPS, Fedex
.... etc.
Of course, there are always winner and loser in every new-mega trend – in this case, low-end manufacturing job loss in US and SE Asia countries have lost out. However, no one can reverse the trend and it is not for the benefit of anybody to do so.
Related Article : 日本與中韓台〝技術戰爭〞開打，優勢能撐幾年？
Ipod Nano launching event
If only a press conference can be as funny as this one, our lives would be happier - Ipod Nano launching event - a great product with a great presentation, you are not going to miss it. Here are the link:
http://stream.apple.akadns.net/
星期三, 9月 07, 2005
Watch a clever comedy .....
After a long exhausted day, reading becomes mission impossible. Watch a clever comedy or drama could be the best way to relax before bed.
After chewing up classic comedy “Yes Minister” & “Yes Prime Minister”, I just finished another almost equally sweetly ironic and witty BBC comedy – “Absolute Power - Welcome to the world of public relations”.
Absolute Power originally debuted on BBC Radio 4 in January 2000. Series One: 5 Jan-9 Feb 2000, Series Two: 30 Jan-6 Mar 2001, Series Three: 1 Jan-29 Jan 2003, Series 4: 5 Feb-26 Feb 2004.
Full of smart dialogues, laugh out loud guaranteed.
Absolute Power
Absolute Power originally debuted on BBC Radio 4 in January 2000. Series One: 5 Jan-9 Feb 2000, Series Two: 30 Jan-6 Mar 2001, Series Three: 1 Jan-29 Jan 2003, Series 4: 5 Feb-26 Feb 2004.
Full of smart dialogues, laugh out loud guaranteed.
Absolute Power
UK, BBC, Sitcom, colour, 2002
Starring: Stephen Fry, John Bird, Zoe Telford
Prentiss and McCabe are an unscrupulous pair who run the blue chip PR agency Prentiss McCabe. Dealing with commercial as well as personal PR, their remit covers everything from political communications to celebrity media relations. Their manipulation skills are tested to the full as they frequently find that their work brings them into conflict with political parties, newspaper editors and celebrities.
A satirical comedy about a world in which style triumphs over substance, tabloids are the new judge and jury and where five minutes of fame is considered a long term career.
More than I can read too .....
Books to man is like shoes to woman, we always buy more than we can read and wear.
Politic:
- The New Prince, Dick Morris
- Feeding The Beast : The White House Versus the Press, Kenneth T. Walsh
- The White House Staff – Inside West Wing and Beyond, Bradley H. Patterson Jr
- Electing The President 2000 – The Insiders’ View – Election strategy from those who made it., Kathleen Hall Jamieson & Paul Waldman
- Polling Matters – Why Leaders Must Listen to Wisdom of the People, Frank Newport
- The Prime Minister and Cabinet Government, Neil McNaughton
- Empire – How British Made The Modern World, Niall Ferguson
- The House of Rothschild – Money’s Prophets 1798-1848, Niall Ferguson
- The House of Rothschild – The World’s Banker 1849-1998, Niall Ferguson
- What If? – Robert Cowley (Chinese translated version)
- 晚清報業史, 陳玉申
- 北京的莫理循–Translated from “Morrison of Peking” by Cyril Pearl [George Ernest Morrison 在1897年以英國《泰晤士報》駐清記者身份來華, 親身採訪維新運動、義和團、滿清覆亡、民國成立等巨變, 更在1912年起為袁世凱政治願問. “Morrison of Peking”是澳洲作家Cyril Pearl據Morrison的日記及書信編寫, 於1967年出版的傳記. ]
- 日本近代史, 林明德
- 日本現代史, 許介鱗
- The Working Poor – Invisible in
- Critial Mass – How one thing leads to another, Philip Ball
- 行為經濟學 – 理論與應用, 復旦大學
- Gambling Wizards – Conversations with the World’s Greatest Gamblers, Richard W. Munchkin (Chinese translated version)
- Poker nation – A High-Stakes, Low-Life Adventure into the Heart of a Gambling Country, by Andy Bellin (Chinese translated version)
- Hold’em Poker, by David Sklansky
- Small Stakes Hold’em, by David Sklansky
- Professional Blackjack, by Stanford Wong
PS: Shall we hold a gathering for members to know each other?
WSJ column "The Numbers Guys"
I enjoy reading WSJ column "The Numbers Guys" a lot. The column examines numbers and statistics in the news, business, politics and health. Some numbers are flat-out wrong, misleading or biased. Others are valid and useful, helping us to make informed decisions.
The column is wrote by Carl Bialik, a former technology reporter for the Online Journal, is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has long had an interest in looking at the way numbers are used, and abused, in the news, business and politics. Carl has a degree in mathematics and physics from Yale University.
He published his reading list in WSJ a month ago, I think it is worth to take a look.
Think3 (7-sep-05)
------------------------------------------------------
The column is wrote by Carl Bialik, a former technology reporter for the Online Journal, is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, N.Y. He has long had an interest in looking at the way numbers are used, and abused, in the news, business and politics. Carl has a degree in mathematics and physics from Yale University.
He published his reading list in WSJ a month ago, I think it is worth to take a look.
Think3 (7-sep-05)
------------------------------------------------------
Carl's Reading List
August 19, 2005 6:56 a.m.
I have enjoyed reading several books recently on the use and misuse of numbers. Joel Best, a University of Delaware sociology professor, has written two books exposing the subtle choices people make when creating statistics, and the big effects these choices can have. Dr. Best followed up "Damned Lies and Statistics" with "More Damned Lies and Statistics." (The titles play off a famous quote attributed to 19th century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.")
In "Tainted Truth," Wall Street Journal reporter Cynthia Crossen exposes the interest groups behind sponsored market research, advertising and, more troublingly, academic and scientific studies.
"Innumeracy," by Temple University math professor John Allen Paulos, explains why his title subject -- the equivalent of illiteracy for numbers -- is widespread and dangerous for society. He followed that book with "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper," a quirky tour of a standard broadsheet that mixes critiques of numerical misuse with other musings.
Jonathan Koomey distills a career's worth of experience as an energy scientist into "Turning Numbers Into Knowledge." Part III is most germane to this column, with tips on assessing others' numbers and graphs -- plus a gem of a two-page chapter reminding readers that "numbers aren't everything."
The Statistical Assessment Service, a non-profit watchdog group, takes a very modern approach. Articles and shorter posts at Stats.org pick apart misuse of numbers by the media, researchers and industry groups.
And the classic in the genre, Darrell Huff's "How to Lie With Statistics," just turned 50 but is still very relevant. Plus, it's a fun read.
上星期又發書瘟,一口氣買了近10本書,唔知幾時才看得完
書債:
帝國的悲哀 by Chalmers Johnson
New Ideas from Dead Economists by Todp Buchholz 中文版
I Think, Therefore I Laugh by John Allen Paulos
Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis
More What If? Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been edited by Robert Cowley
The Unholy War: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-semitism by David Kertzer
The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen
An Anatomy of Terror by Andrew Sinclair
帝國的悲哀 by Chalmers Johnson
New Ideas from Dead Economists by Todp Buchholz 中文版
I Think, Therefore I Laugh by John Allen Paulos
Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks
Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture by Apostolos Doxiadis
More What If? Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been edited by Robert Cowley
The Unholy War: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-semitism by David Kertzer
The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen
An Anatomy of Terror by Andrew Sinclair
訂閱：
文章 (Atom)