Medical intervention is not always the answer to mental health issues

by Frank Furedi

 The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has just been published and the contents of this book should really be of interest to you. The DSM is not simply a medical handbook that provides a list of conditions worthy of the diagnosis of mental illness. It is also a secular bible that instructs people how to make sense of their predicament through the language of medicine.

With every edition of the DSM, the number of conditions diagnosed as a problem suitable for psychiatric intervention expands. You, dear reader, may be suffering from a mental illness that you never knew existed. So if like me you really get angry now and then, the DSM suggests that you may be suffering from “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder”. Or if you have the occasional senior moment, you may well be afflicted with the new diagnosis of “mild neurocognitive disorder”. And if you really feel anxious and scared about experiencing pain and discomfort, you may have “somatic symptom disorder”.

The eccentric loner, the shy stranger lacking in social skills, the naughty child, anyone who eats too much or the sexually confused teenager have all become candidates for the psychiatrist’s couch. What’s important about the DSM is that it provides a language and narrative through which the problems of existence become medicalised. And in a world where a medical diagnosis represents a claim for resources, what the DSM says really matters. The verdict of the DSM not only affects insurance and drug companies interested in their bottom line but also anxious parents who rely on a diagnosis to gain special help for their child.

Not surprisingly, the latest edition of the DSM has become a subject of controversy. Different groups of medics and psychiatrists have questioned the scientific reliability of some of the new diagnostic categories. Some have queried the dropping of the category of Asperger’s syndromeand the decision to include it under a general autism diagnosis. Others argue that the psychiatric lobby has become a captive of the pharmaceutical industry. But what is not at issue is the ethos of medicalisation promoted through this influential manual.

The term medicalisation refers to the cultural process through which a range of human experience is reinterpreted through the language of medicine. In recent decades, many everyday experiences have become redefined as issues of health that require medical intervention. Through reinterpreting existential problems such as loneliness, shyness, fear, anxiety, loss of control or grief as medical ones, the meaning people attach to them fundamentally alters.

Medical problems require treatment and rely on professional intervention to cure the patient’s illness. But why should grief or shyness or even anger be treated as a disease? And why should professionals possess a monopoly on how to interpret the pain and disappointment that people experience at different stages of their lives? The real threat posed by the expansion of mental health diagnosis is that it takes away from people the confidence that they need to make sense and give meaning to their personal experience.

The problem is not that professional advice is always misguided, but that it short-circuits the process through which people can learn how to deal with problems through their own experience. Intuition and insight gained from experience are continually compromised by professional knowledge. This has the unintentional consequence of estranging people from their own feelings and instincts since such reactions require the affirmation of the expert. In such circumstances, people’s capacity to handle relationships and to have confidence in their relationships diminishes further. In turn, this creates new opportunities for professional intervention in everyday life.

The manner in which emotional problems have become diagnosed as a form of disorder raises questions about the ability of the individual to deal with disappointment, misfortune, adversity or even the challenge of everyday life. And, sadly, when people are continually invited to make sense of their troubles through the medium of therapeutics, it severely undermines their resilience.

Once the diagnosis of illness is systematically offered as an interpretative guide for making sense of distress, people are far more likely to perceive themselves as ill. That is one reason why in Western society the number of people diagnosed as suffering from mental illness has risen exponentially. The explanation for this trend lies not in the fields of epidemiology, but in the realm of culture that invites people to classify themselves as infirm.

Recently, the British Psychological Society’s division of clinical psychology has attacked the psychiatric profession for offering a biomedical model for understanding mental distress. But its criticism was not directed at the ethos of medicalisation as such, but only at the tendency to associate mental illness with biological causes. What it offered was an alternative model of medicalisation – one where mental illness was represented as the outcome of social and psychological cause. It seems that medicalisation has become so deeply entrenched that even critics of the DSM accept its premise.

The problems of life can be painful. But this experience of existential agony must not be rebranded as an illness. Medicalisation empties experience of its creative content and assigns human beings the status of permanent patients. The promiscuous expansion of diagnosis also trivialises mental illness. Learning to distinguish between normal suffering and illness is a mark of a mature and confident culture.

Frank Furedi is a sociologist whose books include ‘Therapy Culture’

The Smith/Klein/Kalecki Theory of Austerity

by Paul Krugman

Noah Smith recently offered an interesting take on the real reasons austerity garners so much support from elites, no matter how badly it fails in practice. Elites, he argues, see economic distress as an opportunity to push through “reforms” — which basically means changes they want, which may or may not actually serve the interest of promoting economic growth — and oppose any policies that might mitigate crisis without the need for these changes:

I conjecture that “austerians” are concerned that anti-recessionary macro policy will allow a country to “muddle through” a crisis without improving its institutions. In other words, they fear that a successful stimulus would be wasting a good crisis.

…

If people really do think that the danger of stimulus is not that it might fail, but that it might succeed, they need to say so. Only then, I believe, can we have an optimal public discussion about costs and benefits.

As he notes, the day after he wrote that post, Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post made exactly that argument for austerity.

What Smith didn’t note, somewhat surprisingly, is that his argument is very close to Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, with its argument that elites systematically exploit disasters to push through neoliberal policies even if these policies are essentially irrelevant to the sources of disaster. I have to admit that I was predisposed to dislike Klein’s book when it came out, probably out of professional turf-defending and whatever — but her thesis really helps explain a lot about what’s going on in Europe in particular.

And the lineage goes back even further. Two and a half years ago Mike Konczal reminded us of a classic 1943 (!) essay by Michal Kalecki, who suggested that business interests hate Keynesian economics because they fear that it might work — and in so doing mean that politicians would no longer have to abase themselves before businessmen in the name of preserving confidence. This is pretty close to the argument that we must have austerity, because stimulus might remove the incentive for structural reform that, you guessed it, gives businesses the confidence they need before deigning to produce recovery.

And sure enough, in my inbox this morning I see a piece more or less deploring the early signs of success for Abenomics: Abenomics is working — but it had better not work too well. Because if it works, how will we get structural reform?

So one way to see the drive for austerity is as an application of a sort of reverse Hippocratic oath: “First, do nothing to mitigate harm”. For the people must suffer if neoliberal reforms are to prosper.

Depression and physical decline: why retirement can seriously damage your health

Retirement can cause a drastic decline in health, according to a study released today.

Research found that both mental and physical health can suffer, said the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Age Endeavour Fellowship, who claim the Government should help people work longer and raise the state pension ages.

The study - Work Longer, Live Healthier: The Relationship Between Economic Activity, Health And Government Policy - shows there is a small boost in health immediately after retirement but that, over the longer term, there is a significant deterioration.

It suggests retirement increases the likelihood of suffering from clinical depression by 40% and the chance of having at least one diagnosed physical condition by about 60%. The probability of taking medication for such a condition rises by about 60% as well, according to the findings. People who are retired are 40% less likely than others to describe themselves as being in very good or excellent health.

The length of time spent in retirement can also cause further disadvantages, the study found.

It concluded that, for men and women alike, "there seem to exist longer-term health benefits of employment among older people".

Its authors said: "This, in turn, indicates that politicians do not face a trade-off between improving the health of the older population, increasing economic growth, decreasing health spending among the elderly and producing solvent pension systems.

"The policy implication is that impediments to continuing paid word in old age should be decreased. This does not necessarily mean that people should be expected to work full-time until they die, but rather that public policy should remove the strong financial incentives to retire at earlier ages."

Philip Booth, editorial and programme director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: "Over several decades, governments have failed to deal with the 'demographic time bomb'.

"There is now general agreement that state pension ages should be raised. The Government should take firmer action here and also deregulate labour markets. Working longer will not only be an economic necessity, it also helps people to live healthier lives."

Edward Datnow, chairman of the Age Endeavour Fellowship, said: "In highlighting the positive link between work and health in old age, this research is a wake-up call for the UK's extensive and well-funded retirement lobbies.

"More emphasis needs to be given to ways of enabling a work-life balance beyond today's normal retirement age with legislative discouragements to extending working life being replaced with incentives. There should be no 'normal' retirement age in future.

"More employers need to consider how they will capitalise on Britain's untapped grey potential and those seeking to retire should think very hard about whether it is their best option."

How Nawaz Sharif beat Imran Khan .....

  

The results of the Pakistan elections are in – but how did a former exile win the vote? By promising airports to people who can't afford bicycles, says novelist Mohammed Hanif

• 
• • Mohammed Hanif
  • The Guardian, Monday 13 May 2013 19.00 BST

Here's a little fairytale from Pakistan. Fourteen years ago a wise man ruled the country. He enjoyed the support of his people. But some of his treacherous generals thought he wasn't that smart. One night he was held at gunpoint, handcuffed, put in a dark dungeon, sentenced to life imprisonment. But then a little miracle happened; he, along with his family and servants, was put on a royal plane and exiled to Saudi Arabia, that fancy retirement home for the world's unwanted Muslim leaders.

Two days ago that same man stood on a balcony in Lahore, thanked Allah and said: Nawaz Sharif forgives them all.

But wait, if it was a real fairytale, Imran Khan would have won the election instead, right? Can't Pakistani voters tell between a world-famous, world cup-winning, charismatic leaderand a mere politician who refers to himself in the third person?

Why didn't Imran Khan win?

 Imran Khan in hospital after a fall at a campaign rally. Photograph: HO/AFP

Well he has, sort of. But not in the way he would have liked. Visiting foreign journalists have profiled Imran Khan more than they have profiled any living thing in this part of the world. If all the world's magazine editors were allowed to vote for Imran Khan he would be the prime minister of half the English-speaking world. If Imran Khan had contested in west London he would have won hands-down. But since this is Pakistan, he has won in Peshawar and two other cities. His party is set to form a government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, that north-western frontier province of Pakistan which Khan's profile writers never fail to remind us is the province that borders Afghanistan and the tribal areas that the world is so scared of. Or as some others never fail to remind the world: the land of the fierce pathans.

It's true that Khan ran a fierce, bloody-minded campaign, drawing huge crowds. When his campaign culminated in a televised tumble from a stage, during a public rally, the whole nation held its breath. Khan galvanised not only Pakistan's parasitical upper classes but also found support among the country's young men and women of all ages; basically the kind of people who use the words politics and politician as common insults. He inspired drawing-room revolutionaries to go out and stand in the blistering heat for hours on end to vote for him. For a few months he made politics hip in Pakistan. Partly, he was relying on votes from Pakistan's posh locales. He probably forgot that there was a slight problem there: not enough posh locales in Pakistan. There were kids who flew in from Chicago, from Birmingham to vote for him. Again, there are not enough Pakistani kids living and studying in Chicago and Birmingham. He appealed to the educated middle classes but Pakistan's main problem is that there aren't enough educated urban middle-class citizens in the country.

And the masses, it appears, were not really clamouring for a revolution but for electricity.

From the gossip columns of British tabloids to massive political rallies across Pakistan, Khan has been on a meaningful journey. In his campaign speeches, his blatantly Blairite message of New Pakistan did appeal to people but he really tested his supporters' attention span when he started to lecture them about how the Scandinavian welfare state model is borrowed from the early days of the Islamic empire in Arabia. Amateur historians have never fared well in Pakistani politics. Or anywhere else. Khan promised to turn Pakistan into Sweden, Norway or any one of those countries where everyone is blond and pays tax. His opponents promised Dubai – where everyone is either a bonded labourer or a property speculator and no one pays taxes – and won.

It's a bit of a fairytale that Khan, whose message was directed at educated urban voters, has found supporters in the north-western frontier province that profile writers must remind us is largely tribal and the front line of the world's war on terror. Khan has led a popular campaign against drone attacks. He has promised that he will shoot down drones, look Americans in the eye, sit down with the Taliban over a cup of qahwa and sort this mess out.

So we finally have someone who feels at home in Mayfair as well as Peshawar. He finally has the chance to rule Peshawar. Slight problem: as he speaks no Pashto, the language of the Pathans. But his first fight will be against American drones hovering in the sky. And drones speak no Pashto either. If Khan can win this match, he can challenge Nawaz Sharif in the next elections.

Is this Nawaz Sharif man for real?

 Nawaz Sharif at a campaign rally in Liaquat Bagh, Pakistan. Photograph: T. MUGHAL/EPA

Hasn't he been tried before? Twice? It seems voters in the largest province of Pakistani Punjab just can't have enough of this guy. At every campaign stop, Sharif reminded his supporters of two of his biggest achievements: I built the motorway, I built the bomb. He did build Pakistan's first motorway. And despite several phone calls from the then American president Bill Clinton and other world leaders and offers of million of dollars in aid, Sharif did go ahead and order six nuclear explosions in response to India's five. And then he thought that now that both countries have the bomb he could go ahead and be friends with India. While he was making history hosting the Indian prime minister in the historic city of Lahore, his generals were busy elsewhere repeating history on the mountains of Kargil. In a misadventure typical of Pakistani generals, they occupied the abandoned posts and then pretended that these were mujahideen fighting India and not regular Pakistan army soldiers.

When India reacted with overwhelming force and a diplomatic offensive, Sharif pleaded ignorance and rushed off to Washington to bail out the army and his own government. President Clinton praised his diplomatic skills and the crisis was resolved briefly. When, months later he tried to fire his handpicked army chief General Pervez Musharraf, the architect of the Kargil fiasco, a bunch of army officers put their guns to Sharif's head. Handcuffed, jailed, sentenced to life imprisonment, in the end Sharif was saved by his powerful friends in Saudi Arabia. A royal jet flew him, his family and his servants to a palace in Saudi Arabia. An exile in Saudi Arabia for Muslim rulers is generally considered a permanent retirement home where you get closer to Allah and atone for past sins. Sharif must be the only politician in exile in Saudi Arabia who not only managed to survive this holy exile but in the process got a hair transplant and managed to hold on to his political base in Pakistan.

Many of his political opponents say that if Sharif wasn't from the dominant province Punjab, where most of the army elite comes from, if he didn't represent the trading and business classes of Punjab, he would still be begging forgiveness for his sins in Saudi. But he returned just before the last elections and has been behaving like a statesman. A very rich statesman.

It has yet to be proven whether eight years of exile in Saudi Arabia can make anyone wiser but it has never made anybody poorer. Sharif was rich before he got into politics, then he became fabulously rich. Even in exile the Saudis gave him a palace and, on his return, a fleet of bulletproof limousines. His campaign proved that poor people don't really vote for somebody who understands poverty, or wants to do anything about it. People have voted him in because he talks money, talks about spending money, talks about opening a bank on every village street and who doesn't like that? He has promised motorway connections and airports to towns so small that they still don't have a proper bus station. Poor people, who couldn't afford a bicycle at the time of the elections, like to be promised an airport. You never know when you might need it.

In his five years' rule in Punjab, Sharif's party has had one policy about the Pakistani Taliban who have been wreaking havoc in parts of Pakistan: please go and do your business elsewhere. And they have generally obliged. But now that he is set to rule all of Pakistan, what's he going to tell them?

Have we defeated the Taliban or sent them a friend request?

 A voter displays her inked thumb after marking her ballot paper at a polling station in Karachi. Photograph: Athar Hussain/REUTERS

When Pakistan decided to throw itself an election party, the first ones to arrive were the Taliban. They weren't really interested in the party because they keep reminding us that elections are un-Islamic and a major sin on a par with educating girls. But they were interested in watching what party games were played and who got to play them. They decided that the three political parties that had ruled Pakistan for the past five years and taken a clear stand against the Taliban would be targeted. And the Taliban started their own campaign, targeting candidates and their supporters with bomb attacks and drive-by shootings. In one case, a candidate in Karachi was shot as he came out of a mosque. Along with his six-year-old son. The election campaign across Pakistan looked like this: some parties held huge rallies, in a carnival-type atmosphere with live tigers and massive music systems. Other candidates sneaked from one little corner meeting to another trying to remind people of their heroic stand against the Taliban. Many of the candidates were never seen in public. Many journalists refused to visit them because they were sitting targets. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the public face of the ruling People's party, could only deliver a couple of video messages from Dubai.

The other parties, the ones who were allowed to campaign freely, were grateful in their silence. When we look at the election results we must not forget that while the Pakistani Taliban didn't contest the elections as a political party, they did see themselves as kingmakers. In Pakistan's liberal media the Taliban are often described as brutes with an endless bloodlust. But by making allies and choosing partners they have demonstrated that they are at least as canny as the average campaigning politician.

But in the end the Taliban failed to deliver the kind of devastation they had promised. They managed to kill about 130 people in eight weeks. In the past they have achieved that kind of number in a single day. Also, 60% of Pakistanis who came out to vote seem to be politely disagreeing with the Taliban by saying that there is nothing un-Islamic about standing in a queue and stamping a ballot paper.

The Taliban's real success is that they bet on the winners. They promised not to attack Khan and Sharif's parties. And these parties will be in power. But the Taliban have never contested an election before. And they are soon to find out that politicians never keep the promises they make during the heat of the campaign.

Why does this election mean nothing for Farzana Majeed?

 Pakistani voters line up at a polling station in Karachi. Photograph: Athar Hussain/Reuters

Three weeks before the elections, a 27-year-old biochemistry graduate stood outside Karachi Press club. Farzana Majeed and a couple of dozen young people carried pictures of Zakir Majeed, a literature student who was abducted by Pakistan's military intelligence four years ago and since then has become one of the hundreds of missing Baloch people, mostly young, political activists. Their mutilated, tortured bodies turn up on the roadsidewith sickening regularity. The Pakistani media, otherwise quite noisy about every subject under the sun, stay quiet. None of the political parties campaigning in recent elections uttered a word about Zakir Majeed or hundreds of other people languishing in military-run dungeons. Why? Because it's a security issue. A militant separatist movement in parts of Balochistan means that the rest of Pakistan sees it as an enemy. The protesters distributed pamphlets encouraging the fellow Balochs not to participate in the elections. The voter turn out in Baloch areas in Balochistan has been less than 10%. No political party in the country had the heart to go and ask Farzana Majeed or thousands of other families to vote. Farzana is a polite, articulate person but mention the word elections and she is likely to wave her missing brother's picture in front of you. And just like Pakistan's last political government, the new one also doesn't want to see this picture.

So what happens to the federation?

 Watching the election results come in, in a teashop in Lahore. Photograph: Damir Sagolj/REUTERS

Who needs a federation when you can have so much more fun doing things your own way. So in the post-election Pakistan, Khan will rule the north and shoot down American drones while discussing Scandinavian social welfare models with the Taliban. Sharif will rule in Punjab and the centre, try to do business with India and build more motorways all the while looking over his shoulder for generals looking at him. In the south, Bhutto's decimated People's party will keep ruling and keep saying that folks up north are stealing its water, destroying its social welfare programmes and secular legacy. And, in Balochistan, Farzana Majeed will keep waving her missing brother's picture.

Do these bits add up to a country? They do, if you are sitting in Islamabad and showing off your nuclear weapons to the world or planning a motorway to central Asia. But if you are an old woman waiting for her 2,000-rupee welfare cheque or a student activist in a military dungeon waiting for your next interrogation session, you are not likely to dream of motorways and new airports.

Pakistan as a federation has gone through its first rite of passage: handover of power from one elected civilian setup to another. It took Pakistan 67 years to get here. Let us not forget that the reasons that caused this delay haven't disappeared.

Mohammed Hanif is BBC Urdu's special correspondent based in Karachi. He is the author of A Case of Exploding Mangoes and Our Lady of Alice Bhatti

Oxford University won't take funding from tobacco companies. But Shell's OK

If scholars don't take an ethical stance against corporate money, where's the moral check on power?

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 14 May 2013

Those in the strongest position to challenge climate change are instead lending it their ‘moral prestige'. Illustration by Daniel Pudles

In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published a piercing attack on the intellectuals of his day. They should, he argued in La Trahison des Clercs (the treason of the scholars), act as a check on popular passions. Civilisation, he claimed, is possible only if intellectuals stand in opposition to the demands of political "realism" by upholding universal principles. "Thanks to the scholars," he said, "humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honoured good." Europe might have been lying in the gutter, but it was looking at the stars.

But those ideals, Benda argued, had been lost. Europe was now lying in the gutter, looking into the gutter. The "immense majority" of intellectuals, artists and clergy had joined "the chorus of hatreds": nationalism, racism, the worship of power and war. In doing so, they justified and magnified political passions. Across Europe, scholars on both the left and the right had become "ready to support in their own countries the most flagrant injustices", to abandon universal principles in favour of national exceptionalism and to proclaim "the supreme morality of violence". He quoted the French anarcho-syndicalist Georges Sorel, who eulogised "the superb blond beast wandering in search of prey and carnage".

The result of this intellectual support for domination, Benda argued, was that there was now no moral check on the pursuit of self-interest. Rather than forming a bulwark against popular delusions, Europe's thinkers turned them into doctrines. With remarkable foresight, Benda predicted that this would lead inexorably to "the greatest and most perfect war ever seen in the world". This war would be genocidal in intent, and would not be stopped by any treaties or institutions. In 1927, these were bold claims.

I'm not suggesting an equivalence between those times and these. I'm summarising Benda to highlight a general principle: the need for a disinterested class of intellectuals which acts as a counterweight to prevailing mores. Racism, nationalism and war are only three of the many hazards to which society is exposed if that challenge should fail: if, that is, most scholars side with the soldiers or the sellers.

Today the dominant forces have changed. Now the weak state, not the strong state, is fetishised by those in power, who insist that its functions be devolved to "the market", meaning corporations and the very rich. Economic growth and the forces that drive it, whether they enhance or harm people's lives, are venerated. And too many scholars seem prepared to support the new dispensation.

Two weeks ago I castigated the new chief scientist, Sir Mark Walport, for misinforming the public about risk, making unscientific and emotionally manipulative claims and indulging in scaremongering and wild exaggeration in defence of the government's position. Since then I have seen his first speech in his new role and realised that the problem runs deeper than I thought.

Speaking at the Centre for Science and Policy at Cambridge University, Walport maintained that scientific advisers had five main functions, and the first of these was "ensuring that scientific knowledge translates to economic growth". No statement could more clearly reveal what Benda called the "assimilation" of the intellectual. As if to drive the point home, the press release summarising his speech revealed that the centre is sponsored, among others, by BAE Systems, BP and Lloyd's.

Last week, two days before CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, Oxford University opened a new geoscience laboratory named after its sponsor, Shell. Among its roles is helping to find and develop new sources of fossil fuel.

This is one of many such collaborations. Last year, for instance, BP announced that it will spend £60m on research at Manchester University partly to help it drill deeper for oil. In the United States and Canada, universities go further: David Lynch, dean of engineering at the University of Alberta, appears in advertisements by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, whose purpose is to justify and normalise tar sands extraction.

As the campaign group People and Planet points out, universities help provide fossil fuel corporations not only with expertise but also with a "social licence to operate". Climate change is one of the great moral issues of our age, but the scholars in the strongest position to challenge the industry responsible are, instead, lending it what Benda calls their "moral prestige". Neoliberal economists, imperialist historians, war-mongering philosophers, pliable chief scientists, compromised energy researchers: all are propelling us into the arms of power.

In 1998, the vice-chancellors of the UK's universities decided that they would no longer take money for cancer research from tobacco firms. Over the past few days I have asked the Shell professor of earth sciences at Oxford, the university itself and the umbrella bodyUniversities UK to explain the ethical difference between taking tobacco money for cancer research and taking fossil fuel money for energy research. None of these great heads, despite my repeated attempts to engage them, were prepared even to attempt an answer.

So perhaps this is where hope lies: unlike Benda's scholars, these people have not yet developed a justifying ideology which permits them to excuse or glorify the compromises they have made with power. Perhaps we have not yet abandoned the redeeming hypocrisy of what Benda called "honouring good".

A Saudi, a pressure cooker and the FBI…

Ali Khan Mahmudabad
14 May 2013, 09:34 PM IST

 

 

What do you get when you put a Saudi student, the FBI and a ‘bullet coloured’ pressure cooker together? Kabsah! Talal al-Rouqi, an Arab student in Michigan had cooked his favourite rice and meat dish, Kabsah (also know as Mandi) and was walking over to share it with his other Arab friend when a neighbor spotted him strolling in public with a ‘bullet coloured’ pressure cooker. Naturally, worried about the swarthy looking young man’s intentions, especially given the Tsarnaev brother’s use of the pressure cooker as a bomb container, the conscious citizen decided to report the incident to the FBI. Armed agents surrounded the Al-Rouqi’s apartment, asked to enter the premises and then quizzed him on his sojourn of two days earlier. Al-Rouqi explained that he was merely cooking dinner and sharing it with a friend. I am sure if he had not been so nervous, as he admitted to the Saudi newspaper ‘Ukaz, he would have offered to cook a pot so that they could take it, though obviously the public parading of the pressure cooker would risk upsetting passers-by. When leaving al-Rouqi’s apartment the FBI officer present turned to him and said ‘you need to be more careful moving around with such things, Sir.’ Of course, calling him Sir makes it alright. Next they will be telling Arabs to be careful when appearing in public, just in case someone gets upset.

In another incident a Saudi man who was being held for irregularities to do with his passport was also quizzed and detained for bringing two pressure cookers from Saudi Arabia for his nephew. The nephew had complained the ones in America are cheap, break easily and generally don’t do a good job. He helpfully also added that in case he did want to create an improvised device he would not try and import an authentic Saudi pressure cooker rather than use the cheap western ones which are widely available. 

Obviously, the threat from an ‘Ay-Rab’ pressure cooker is much greater than one sold in the U.S. of A. Incidentally, the international transport of pressure cookers is becoming quite a serious issue. An Indian friend in Cambridge wanted to bring a pressure cooker from India to cook daal but was wisely advised against it by his friends. Having read the news of the Saudi student he seems very relieved. In an unexpected twist, the import of pressure cookers to America from abroad by visiting aliens, in the rest of the world also known as tourists, might actually be a very real need because in the aftermath of the Boston bombings, Williams-Sonoma, a home furnishing chain, temporarily pulled pressure cooker stocks from their shops.

Now that carrying everyday items is a sign of being a potential suspect, especially if one has too much melanin (even though the Tsarnaev brothers looked more Caucasian than anything else), I have some advice for brown people and in particular Muslims in America. Please be more careful about using your cycles in public because they have steel ball bearings. If you want to hang a painting on your wall please do not go out and buy nails but rather ask someone else to buy them for you. In general avoid hardware stores because Muslims only ever go there to shop for improvised explosive devices. Your trip to fix the barbecue might result in the whole area being shut down. Never ever carry a bag or rucksack in public unless it is made of completely transparent material. Please carry pocket watches or a sun-dial as the digital watches most people wear could be construed to be timers. Most importantly, only use plastic boxes to carry food to friend’s houses. And before I forget, a quick disclaimer: I typed all this on a samurai-sword coloured computer. I know, I know! I will get a white one soon.

While pressure cookers are causing such angst, in America it is still be possible for people to go out and buy pistols, guns, sniper rifles and even automatic weapons over the counter. The day the war on pressure cookers was being conducted in Michigan, an average of 8 children and 75 adults would have died because of gun related crimes. Zero American citizens died that day because of terrorism. We are told about the war on terror everyday but then where is the war on guns? The war on poverty? The war on diseases? The war on road accidents? The war on obeisity? The war on smoking? The answer probably lies in the fact that all these problems need care, investment and money to be spent on them but do not provide a way of making money.

What matters: leadership, data analysis, culture

Three factors that can play an important role in a team's success

Ed Smith

May 15, 2013

 

	Rajasthan Royals are an example of a cricket team that underspends and overachieves © BCCI  Enlarge
Related Links Ed Smith : It's not about selection or tactics, silly

A writer yearns to have intelligent readers who engage with his ideas. Then you realise that they are examining your logic with an uncomfortably forensic eye.

Two weeks ago I argued that all students of sport need to understand randomness. That the familiar talking points of selection and tactics are lazily thrown around to explain events they often do not influence. That understanding the "causes" of why things happen in sport is very difficult.

Enter Kieran McMaster, a statistician and ESPNcricinfo reader. He asks how I can explain the evolution of the Spain football team and the All Blacks rugby squad, teams that not only win but also drive forward the evolution of their sport. Surely that is evidence of tactical supremacy? Moreover, his question gained added weight thanks to a random external event: the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson. How can I square my scepticism about the short-term influence of tactics and selection with the consistent and relentless success of Sir Alex, who manipulated the levers of management so shrewdly?

Here goes.

I certainly do believe in leadership. It is obviously true that some captains and coaches make a sustained difference. Warren Gatland has transformed the Welsh rugby team from romantic underachievers to pragmatic winners. Jose Mourinho wins something wherever he goes. The pattern of success is too consistent to be explained by randomness. One out of one might be dumb luck. But it is much more likely to be skill than luck if a coach has a long sequence of different winning teams.

It is equally true that there aren't many coaches and captains in this elite category, certainly fewer than there are teams that need managers. Great coaches are incredibly rare. So clubs that continually chop and change managers, searching for the right "chemistry" (usually a euphemism) are usually taking an ill-judged risk. It is a statistical fact that changing the manager, on average, makes no difference at all to the performance of the team. It is, however, always expensive and usually distracting. Most teams would be better advised to invest in youth coaching and infrastructure rather than another round of sackings at the top.

Consider the following logic. If every club sacked its coach on the basis that they were searching for Sir Alex Ferguson, at the end of the process there would still only be one club with Sir Alex Ferguson, and dozens of disappointed teams, because there can only ever be one manager who is the best in the world. Sometimes it's better to work with what you've got rather than chase fantasies.

Secondly, I acknowledge that teams can gain a competitive advantage through smarter, clearer use of data and statistics. We all know about Moneyball and the Oakland A's. Cricket has a more current example: the Rajasthan Royals. They underspend and overachieve. And, like the A's, they use data to study how games are really won, instead of just recycling clichés. According to Raghu Iyer, the Royals' CEO, their strategy is not to buy famous players but to "out-think the opposition" at the player auction.

Thirdly, I believe in the power of culture. The recurrent success of some national sides cannot be explained by random cycles of dominance. Some sporting cultures achieve success because they get more things right, from grass roots to World Cup final. The All Blacks play a wonderful brand of total rugby. They rely on skills developed throughout New Zealand's rugby culture. In Dunedin this March, during rain delays in the cricket Test match between England and New Zealand, I watched Otago practise on the adjacent rugby ground. Everyone can pass, everyone has awareness, there are no donkeys and no under-skilled thugs.

	The serious analyst of sport runs into difficulties when he argues that "an Australian would never have dropped that catch because they're tougher over there", or "India lost the match because they should have picked X"

Something similar can be said about Spanish football. Only once have I succumbed to a satirical rant on Twitter. It was during the European Cup final of 2012. In the lead- up to the match, we had to endure ill-informed punditry about how Spain's refusal to pick "an outright striker" was a negative move, how they played a cautious game based on control of the ball rather than dynamic sweeping moves, how rival teams ought to do this and ought to do that, as though opponents hadn't already tried everything and simply lost. Basically there was a widespread reluctance to admit that Spain had developed a systemic solution to playing a better, more modern brand of football. This struck me as both insane and ungracious.

In the 14th minute, Cesc Fabregas, an attacking midfielder who was playing instead of the lamentably absent "outright striker", scored a typically classy goal. The goal revealed the interaction of control, technique, movement, intelligence and team work - a microcosm of Spanish footballing philosophy. Spain went on to win 4-0, and this columnist could not resist a series of sarcastic tweets about "boring Spain", "stupid selection", "wrong-headed tactics" and so on.

But I'm not certain, returning to our original question, that the influence of national sporting culture should be filed under the heading "tactics". It is more a case of philosophy culminating in elite expression. Put differently: if Spain had been instructed by their manager to play a violent, low-skill form of football in that final, I doubt they could have done so. So deeply ingrained is their approach that it has become second nature, not really a "tactic" at all.

I thrill to all three of these methods of gaining an edge in sport: through leadership, via analysis, and through culture.

However, and here is the crucial point, not everything that happens on the sports pitch can be explained in terms of leadership and strategy, or even culture (though the influence of culture is so subtle that it's impossible to measure).

This is especially true over the short term. The serious analyst of sport runs into difficulties when he argues that "an Australian would never have dropped that catch because they're tougher over there", or "India lost the match because they should have picked X", or "imagine how good we'd be if we changed the captain". Above all, my scepticism about causes kicks in when a match is lost and a media inquest begins into everything that immediately preceded the defeat, as though the former inevitably led to the latter.

In sport, as in life, I believe in the capacity of innovation, strategy and intelligence to make a difference over the long term. But that faith can coexist with the right to challenge the retrofitting of today's causes to suit yesterday's events.

You can be a short-term sceptic and still a long-term optimist.