Hyperskepticism on public radio
Apparently, if you're a smug white radio "journalist" who wants to prove that the U.S. was wrong in 1981 to accuse the Soviets of selling chemical weapons to the communist states in Laos and Cambodia, despite many refugees' reports of deadly "yellow rain" coming out of the sky, you don't interview and grill former members of the Reagan administration, or maybe some former Soviets who were involved.
You harangue, mock, and otherwise belittle a survivor of communist persecution of the Hmong who is telling you, yes, those were deadly chemicals showered upon him and his relatives and friends, not bee shit. Because SCIENCE™!
I don't think I have the stomach to listen to the interview. I have been reading the comments on the Radiolab site here, here, and here, the last link being that to a self-serving fauxpology by co-host Jad Abumrad.
What I am gathering is that Hmong author Kao Kalia Yang and her uncle, Eng Yang, appeared on Radiolab, led to believe they would be discussing their people's genocide at the hands of the Laotian government.
Instead, they were belligerently cross-examined by co-host Robert Krulwich over whether what fell from the sky was a chemical weapon or just bee excrement. (Note that the Hmong are traditionally beekeepers; Eng should know what bee shit looks like.)
This blogger paraphrases Eng as saying, "The first time I saw [the yellow substance], I was called by my friends and ran over the hill and I saw people dying horribly, everything it touched died, animals died, people died on the spot and died later." Krulwich called this eyewitness account "hearsay," because it contradicts the assertions of, I quote, a "Harvard professor." Also, if you're in the middle of a war zone and people are dying all around you, you should make sure to look up into the sky and ascertain whether the planes trying to kill you are the source of the yellow rain, because some asshole might grill you about it decades later.
Krulwich bullied both Eng and Kalia to the point of emotional breakdown, then complained that Kalia was "monopolizing the interview" with her tearful rebuttal. His response to her request for a transcript was, "You're going to need a court order for that." The overall treatment of the Yangs on Radiolab implied that they are "primitive people who can barely tell their a$$ from their elbow;" the hosts did not even acknowledge that Kao Kalia Yang is a professional writer. And the interview ended with the hosts giggling about "bee poop."
This commenter is precisely right: "Wow. Next time why don't you get a Holocaust survivor on the show and then ambush him with Fred Leuchter's claims that the gas chambers were just showers."
Worse, it sounds as though the final edits of the show did a serious disservice to the Yangs. Kalia's husband Aaron Hokanson, a PhD candidate in culture and teaching, writes of having witnessed the phone interview. "I observed and listened to the two hours of mistreatment that resulted in the emotional response that was heard on this program." He makes a convincing case that Krulwich and his co-host weren't interested in Eng's actual experiences or his knowledge of bees, because those contradict what a Harvard professor claims, and the interview was edited to make Eng sound "nothing like Eng, but everything like the stereotypes of an old man who 'doesn't know better.'"
(Note: I do not agree with Hokanson's assertion that science should always respect "indigenous wisdom." Sometimes the latter is quite wrong.)
"Diane in Minnesota," who is evidently part of the Hmong community, has left multiple comments validating Hokanson's claims about the bad-faith editing. Most of the interview with Eng was edited out; most of what was kept involved Kalia's interpretation, making the accusation that she "monopolized" the interview even more disingenuous. Deleted were Eng's repeated insistences in Hmong that "he knows what bee fecal matter looks like and the substance was not bee feces. The editors are counting on you to not understand Hmong so their pre-conceived and pre-packaged story can be neatly delivered to you."
There is more condemnation from an anthropologist and from "a scientist, doctor and engineer who has worked most of his professional career in humanitarian emergencies." A social-science researcher writes of power differentials and ethical obligations. For my money, this comment from another Hmong-American is the best summary:What you don't understand is that we are used to being told that our experiences don't matter, that the tens of thousands of lives that were lost in that ugly war were just collateral damage in a geopolitical showdown. The truth is that you Radiolab have been given this incredible gift to explore life's mysteries, and you squandered it.
Naturally, the segment has its defenders, such as this one fulminating about "victimhood" allegedly "giv[ing] one the right to change REALITY," this one professing disturbance at "the degree to which Kalia defended her clearly irrational beliefs. She did so to the point of tears, and that, to me, is truly frightening"; and this one asking, "Am I alone in thinking that just because someone squirts some tears, it doesn't make them correct?"
As has been the case in certain other controversies, the firestorm does not boil down strictly to insensitivity but to a disregard of actual facts for the sake of narrative, reframed as "objectivity."
Paul Hillmer, a Twin Cities historian and author of A People's History of the Hmong, chimes in to point out that another "Harvard-educated scientist" found fault with Matthew Meselson's bee-excrement theory. Because that scientist works for the State Department, he could not be named or interviewed. Radiolab producer Pat Walters, replying to Hillmer's "very testy email," used this as an excuse not to present that scientist's findings. Hillmer:Apparently, unless someone could spoon-feed the information to them on tape, they felt no obligation to represent their very credible findings in some other way.... Pat, Jad, and Robert knew about this person's work and simply chose not to include it, not because it was flat-earther anti-rationalist claptrap, but because it didn't fit into their pre-conceived, subjective narrative. What's empirical about that?
In fact, Meselson himself wrote in 1986 thatthe absence of positive results is not necessarily incompatible with positive findings from other samples. While our results are negative, the MoD's view is that, from epidemiological evidence, chemical warfare attacks probably did take place in Southeast Asia, although we cannot identify the chemical warfare agent nor do we know who the supplier might be.
Note also:Lost in the heated scientific debate over the U.S. government's myotoxin allegations was an early consensus among miltary analysts that some type of chemical warfare was taking place in Laos and Cambodia in violation of international law. As [U.S. State Department official] Gary Crocker pointed out during a State Department briefing in November 1982, "We have seen some symptoms in Laos and Kampuchea that don't fit with trichothecene toxins, so there are other things [that have not been identified]."
Diane in Minnesota adds,The MN lab cited in the story was recently shut down because of poor facility upkeep and shoddy work--that was missing from the story. Additionally, there are American soldiers who are suffering from the effects of Yellow Rain but none was interviewed for this story. Nor was there a presentation of studies done by the VA about Yellow Rain.
Additionally, PubMed has many studies on yellow rain; and documentarian Rebecca Sommer's interviews of Hmong refugees, many of them obviously injured or deformed, are disturbing and convincing.
What's particularly ironic is that this segment was supposed to be about "Truth," with Krulwich positioned as The Brave Truth Seeker, harping on the moral wrongness of Cold Warriors exploiting the yellow-rain story. Or, as this commenter puts it, "the pursuit of truth as a philosophical concept."
Rather funny that Krulwich and Abumrad never mention their disgraced ex-colleague Jonah Lehrer.
BTW, Krulwich has a big banner of dancing bees on his Facebook. Classy.
Abumrad has written of the importance of "selectively tun[ing] out listeners" when they're outraged. It's possible that bigger fish at WNYC will listen to the complaints.
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1890304.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.
You harangue, mock, and otherwise belittle a survivor of communist persecution of the Hmong who is telling you, yes, those were deadly chemicals showered upon him and his relatives and friends, not bee shit. Because SCIENCE™!
I don't think I have the stomach to listen to the interview. I have been reading the comments on the Radiolab site here, here, and here, the last link being that to a self-serving fauxpology by co-host Jad Abumrad.
What I am gathering is that Hmong author Kao Kalia Yang and her uncle, Eng Yang, appeared on Radiolab, led to believe they would be discussing their people's genocide at the hands of the Laotian government.
Instead, they were belligerently cross-examined by co-host Robert Krulwich over whether what fell from the sky was a chemical weapon or just bee excrement. (Note that the Hmong are traditionally beekeepers; Eng should know what bee shit looks like.)
This blogger paraphrases Eng as saying, "The first time I saw [the yellow substance], I was called by my friends and ran over the hill and I saw people dying horribly, everything it touched died, animals died, people died on the spot and died later." Krulwich called this eyewitness account "hearsay," because it contradicts the assertions of, I quote, a "Harvard professor." Also, if you're in the middle of a war zone and people are dying all around you, you should make sure to look up into the sky and ascertain whether the planes trying to kill you are the source of the yellow rain, because some asshole might grill you about it decades later.
Krulwich bullied both Eng and Kalia to the point of emotional breakdown, then complained that Kalia was "monopolizing the interview" with her tearful rebuttal. His response to her request for a transcript was, "You're going to need a court order for that." The overall treatment of the Yangs on Radiolab implied that they are "primitive people who can barely tell their a$$ from their elbow;" the hosts did not even acknowledge that Kao Kalia Yang is a professional writer. And the interview ended with the hosts giggling about "bee poop."
This commenter is precisely right: "Wow. Next time why don't you get a Holocaust survivor on the show and then ambush him with Fred Leuchter's claims that the gas chambers were just showers."
Worse, it sounds as though the final edits of the show did a serious disservice to the Yangs. Kalia's husband Aaron Hokanson, a PhD candidate in culture and teaching, writes of having witnessed the phone interview. "I observed and listened to the two hours of mistreatment that resulted in the emotional response that was heard on this program." He makes a convincing case that Krulwich and his co-host weren't interested in Eng's actual experiences or his knowledge of bees, because those contradict what a Harvard professor claims, and the interview was edited to make Eng sound "nothing like Eng, but everything like the stereotypes of an old man who 'doesn't know better.'"
(Note: I do not agree with Hokanson's assertion that science should always respect "indigenous wisdom." Sometimes the latter is quite wrong.)
"Diane in Minnesota," who is evidently part of the Hmong community, has left multiple comments validating Hokanson's claims about the bad-faith editing. Most of the interview with Eng was edited out; most of what was kept involved Kalia's interpretation, making the accusation that she "monopolized" the interview even more disingenuous. Deleted were Eng's repeated insistences in Hmong that "he knows what bee fecal matter looks like and the substance was not bee feces. The editors are counting on you to not understand Hmong so their pre-conceived and pre-packaged story can be neatly delivered to you."
There is more condemnation from an anthropologist and from "a scientist, doctor and engineer who has worked most of his professional career in humanitarian emergencies." A social-science researcher writes of power differentials and ethical obligations. For my money, this comment from another Hmong-American is the best summary:What you don't understand is that we are used to being told that our experiences don't matter, that the tens of thousands of lives that were lost in that ugly war were just collateral damage in a geopolitical showdown. The truth is that you Radiolab have been given this incredible gift to explore life's mysteries, and you squandered it.
Naturally, the segment has its defenders, such as this one fulminating about "victimhood" allegedly "giv[ing] one the right to change REALITY," this one professing disturbance at "the degree to which Kalia defended her clearly irrational beliefs. She did so to the point of tears, and that, to me, is truly frightening"; and this one asking, "Am I alone in thinking that just because someone squirts some tears, it doesn't make them correct?"
As has been the case in certain other controversies, the firestorm does not boil down strictly to insensitivity but to a disregard of actual facts for the sake of narrative, reframed as "objectivity."
Paul Hillmer, a Twin Cities historian and author of A People's History of the Hmong, chimes in to point out that another "Harvard-educated scientist" found fault with Matthew Meselson's bee-excrement theory. Because that scientist works for the State Department, he could not be named or interviewed. Radiolab producer Pat Walters, replying to Hillmer's "very testy email," used this as an excuse not to present that scientist's findings. Hillmer:Apparently, unless someone could spoon-feed the information to them on tape, they felt no obligation to represent their very credible findings in some other way.... Pat, Jad, and Robert knew about this person's work and simply chose not to include it, not because it was flat-earther anti-rationalist claptrap, but because it didn't fit into their pre-conceived, subjective narrative. What's empirical about that?
In fact, Meselson himself wrote in 1986 thatthe absence of positive results is not necessarily incompatible with positive findings from other samples. While our results are negative, the MoD's view is that, from epidemiological evidence, chemical warfare attacks probably did take place in Southeast Asia, although we cannot identify the chemical warfare agent nor do we know who the supplier might be.
Note also:Lost in the heated scientific debate over the U.S. government's myotoxin allegations was an early consensus among miltary analysts that some type of chemical warfare was taking place in Laos and Cambodia in violation of international law. As [U.S. State Department official] Gary Crocker pointed out during a State Department briefing in November 1982, "We have seen some symptoms in Laos and Kampuchea that don't fit with trichothecene toxins, so there are other things [that have not been identified]."
Diane in Minnesota adds,The MN lab cited in the story was recently shut down because of poor facility upkeep and shoddy work--that was missing from the story. Additionally, there are American soldiers who are suffering from the effects of Yellow Rain but none was interviewed for this story. Nor was there a presentation of studies done by the VA about Yellow Rain.
Additionally, PubMed has many studies on yellow rain; and documentarian Rebecca Sommer's interviews of Hmong refugees, many of them obviously injured or deformed, are disturbing and convincing.
What's particularly ironic is that this segment was supposed to be about "Truth," with Krulwich positioned as The Brave Truth Seeker, harping on the moral wrongness of Cold Warriors exploiting the yellow-rain story. Or, as this commenter puts it, "the pursuit of truth as a philosophical concept."
Rather funny that Krulwich and Abumrad never mention their disgraced ex-colleague Jonah Lehrer.
BTW, Krulwich has a big banner of dancing bees on his Facebook. Classy.
Abumrad has written of the importance of "selectively tun[ing] out listeners" when they're outraged. It's possible that bigger fish at WNYC will listen to the complaints.
Unlocked.
This entry was originally posted at http://ms-daisy-cutter.dreamwidth.org/1890304.html. Please comment there using either your DW account or OpenID.