This seems to be the best tool we've seen to track individuals who may be unaccounted for following Katrina.

Lycos: Katrina Missing Persons Site http://www.lycos.com/katrina/
With multiple small databases of survivors, we desperately needed one search engine that would search through all of them, and Lycos created one.  The site lists all the databases it searches through. If you're aware of others, please fill out Lycos' form to add them.

Originally found on TechnologyReview.com

On Negative Results

Posted by David Appell at August 30, 2005 08:48 AM in Biotechnology and Health Care.

“There's a very interesting article by John Ioannidis in PLoS Medicine,
the free online journal. Most current published research findings might
well be false, he says. There are several factors, and I think it's
worth presenting them in detail:

1. Many research studies are small, with only a few dozen participants.

2. In many scientific fields, the “effect sizes” (a measure of how
much a risk factor such as smoking increases a person’s risk of
disease, or how much a treatment is likely to improve a disease) are
small. Research findings are more likely true in scientific fields with
large effects, such as the impact of smoking on cancer, than in
scientific fields where postulated effects are small, such as genetic
risk factors for diseases where many different genes are involved in
causation. If the effect sizes are very small in a particular field,
says Ioannidis, it is “likely to be plagued by almost ubiquitous false
positive claims.

3. Financial and other interests and prejudices can also lead to untrue results.

4. “The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams
involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true,” which
may explain why we sometimes see “major excitement followed rapidly by
severe disappointments in fields that draw wide attention.”

“This
ought to be an eye-opener…. The solution? More publication of
preliminary findings, negative studies (which often suffer that fate of
the file-drawer effect),
confirmations, and refutations. PLoS says, “the editors encourage
authors to discuss biases, study limitations, and potential confounding
factors. We acknowledge that most studies published should be viewed as
hypothesis-generating, rather than conclusive.” And maybe this will
temper journalists' tendency to offer every new study as the Next Big
Thing.”

From Directions Magazine newsletters@directionsmag.com

Alleged Land Clearing by Arizona Land Developer Revealed with IKONOS Satellite Imagery

August 25, 2005

Company: Space Imaging
Industry: Satellite Image Data
Location: Denver, CO, United States of America

State of Arizona to Use Satellite Images
as Evidence in Lawsuit

DENVER,CO-– IKONOS satellite imagery has revealed alleged land
clearing by a developer in Arizona. The State of Arizona is suing the
Scottsdale developer for allegedly illegally bulldozing state and
private land known as La Osa Ranch located northwest of the town of
Marana, Arizona. Before-and-after satellite images of the area captured
by Space Imaging’s IKONOS satellite show certain changes to the
environment and will be used as evidence in the case. From a
423-mile-high orbit the satellite can see objects on the ground as
small as one meter in size.

Marana’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) department has been
collecting imagery for the last three years to map its expanding
boundaries, chart the town's recreational trail system and produce
three-dimensional views of proposed developments to provide citizens a
glimpse of what their neighborhoods will look like in the future. In
mid-2004, Chris Mack, Marana’s senior geographic information systems
specialist, discovered the imagery showed that the terrain had been
altered at La Osa Ranch. The satellite images captured the alleged land
clearing which included 700 acres over four miles from north to south. <more>

ADAM LIPTAK has a
piece
in this week's NYT Week in Review that is, we gather, a re-write of a
forthcoming article in The Georgetown Law Journal.  (We're not going
to bother with the link because the article isn't posted.)  In his
story, “If
the Law Is an Ass, the Law Professor Is a Donkey,“ Liptak writes, “The study…analyzes 11 years of records reflecting federal
campaign contributions by professors at the top 21 law schools as ranked by
U.S. News & World Report. 
    “Almost a third of these law
professors contribute to campaigns, but of them, the study finds,
81 percent who contributed $200 or more gave wholly or mostly to Democrats; 15
percent gave wholly or mostly to Republicans.The percentages of professors
contributing to Democrats were even more lopsided at some of the most
prestigious schools: 91 percent at Harvard, 92 at Yale, 94 at Stanford. At the
University of Virginia, on the other hand, contributions were about evenly
divided between the parties.”

Wait a minute.  Go back to the phrase
underlined above.  Two-thirds of the law professors, apparently,
didn't make any contributions at all.   So where's the story
here?  Take a look at the graph and let us know.

Call for papers

(This document
available at http://www.ver1point0.cjb.net/
)
(Please circulate)

Ver[1] 1.0
A workshop on public database verification for
journalists and social scientists

The Challenge: An
uncountable number of public agency databases have been created in the past 30
years.  More and more, public and
private decision-makers draw on this collected, digital data to make decisions
about everything from disciplining doctors to zoning decisions to law
enforcement to deciding who gets to vote. 
The often-unquestioned assumption is that the data, as found, analyzed
and presented by a government or quasi-government agency, is valid.  Increasingly, anecdotal evidence indicates
that data is riddled with serious errors. 
Often, if initial investigations indicate the data is too suspect — and
the cost to clean the data by hand or automatically too high — then good and
important analysis and investigations are put aside.

Focus: Participants in the
three-day workshop will explore developing statistical and other methodological
tools suitable for social scientists, biomedical and behavioral researchers,
journalists and other interested investigators to determine the veracity of
public records databases. 

·  Participants
will learn how reporters and public administrators discovered, analyzed,
verified and corrected public databases.

·   Participants
will learn how biomedical researchers, social scientists and investigators from
other disciplines cope with the record validation problem.

·   Participants,
in small-group breakout sessions, will develop first-phase experimental
strategies to ultimately measure the validity of databases. 

·    The
intent is to approach the problem of database veracity at a high theoretical
level while constantly keeping in mind the pragmatic needs of analysts.

Participants: By
invitation based on proposals for submitted papers and presentations.  Eight to ten journalists with track records
of high-concept involvement in analytic journalism and who have demonstrated
in-depth knowledge of database sciences will participate.  An equal number of participants will be
biomedical researchers, public administrators, data-mining experts, statisticians,
forensic accountants, computer scientists and social scientists interested in
the problem of database veracity.

Format: Mornings: Thirty-minute
presentations based on selected papers, followed by discussion.  Afternoons: three break-out groups focusing
on
(1) developing new statistical methods for DB verification;
(2) building a
flowchart/decision tree for the DB verification process;
(3) developing rules
for creation of a hierarchy of importance/significance of record elements, i.e.
variables, in common databases.

Submission process:

·    Send the following information for
proceedings committee review to Ver1papers@analyticjournalism.com by November 15, 2005: Please
include the title of the paper, author(s) name (only on title page), the
abstract or paper, contact name, address, city, state, zip, phone, and e-mail
address.

·   
Potential participants
are asked to submit a 300- to 500-word abstract of their proposed paper
including details on research questions and methodology.  Journalists’ papers may address their
experience with databases and how they discovered and solved particular
problems of data validity.  However, all
final papers, no longer than 3,500 words, are expected to be at least
semi-scholarly in format and follow the American
Psychological Association manuscript style. (Final papers shall be
submitted before the workshop.  All 20
papers will be published in downloadable and hard copy formats; the authors of
12 papers will be asked to make presentations at the workshop.)

·    Abstracts and papers must be
submitted in the .RTF (Rich Text File) format and attached to the submission
e-mail cover note. No other formats (.doc, .pdf, etc.) can be accepted.

·    If your abstract/paper is selected,
you will be notified by December 15, 2005.

·   
Participants will make
all their travel arrangements.  (Plan on
four-night stay at minimum).  [NB: To
reach Santa Fe, one flies to Albuquerque, then takes a one-hour shuttle van
(approx. $22 each way) to Santa Fe. 
Santa Fe’s altitude is 7,000+ feet. 
It often takes at least 24 hours for visitors from lower elevations to
adjust, so plan your hotel reservations accordingly.]

Deadlines:

·   Submission
of proposal: Nov. 15, 2005

·   Notification
of acceptance: Dec. 15, 2005

·   Submission
of final paper: March. 15, 2006

·   Presentations:
April 9-12, 2006

Coordinator: Institute for
Analytic Journalism (www.analyticjournalism.com)
Sponsors: IAJ and TBA

Dates: Sunday
evening through Wednesday evening, April 9-12, 2006

Location: Santa Fe, New Mexico USA.  Both
lodging and the workshop will be at the Inn of the Governors — www.innofthegovernors.com — in downtown
Santa Fe.   A block of rooms will be
available at $119+15% tax from Sunday, April 9 through Wed April 12, 2006.  Room rate includes breakfast, tea and sherry
in the afternoon and free parking.  All rooms
have, gratis, wireless Internet connections. Participants’ stay may be extended
at same workshop rate. 

Cost: $100 registration fee for all
participants; $500 for a limited number of observers.  Registration fee scholarships available for three graduate
students willing to serve as session recorders.

Contact: J. T. Johnson,
Inst. for Analytic Journalism
              tom@analyticjournalism.com or 505-577-6482

It's
taken an uncommonly long time, but IAJ co-director Steve Ross and his
co-investigators at The Euro RSCG Magnet firm have finally posted some
of the summary of their “Survey of Media.” 
Steve and Don Middleberg have been doing this for more than a decade,
first just in the U.S. and internationally for the past few years.



Some talking points:


* Media appear mixed about blogs’ role in journalism

Blogs have not yet infiltrated journalist reporting techniques but have become a source of information


* Recent media scandals have challenged media trust

New wave of high-profile journalist misdeeds are expected to take a heavy toll on the newsroom


* Corporate scandals continue to thwart corporate credibility

Journalists point to the lack of transparency for their loss in trust in corporations over the past year


* CEOs may be regaining some stature with the media

Journalists are more likely to turn to CEOs and consider their

performance in their reporting than in 2003

From Gary Price's Resource Shelf:



“Toxic Chemicals–United States–Databases

 Source: NLM  New Version of TOXMAP Available

 “TOXMAP is an interactive web site from the National Library of  Medicine that shows the amount and location of reported toxic  chemicals released into the environment on maps of the United States. TOXMAP allows users to visually explore information about releases of toxic chemicals by industrial facilities around the United States as reported annually to the Environmental Protection  Agency (EPA).”