Why Santa Claus? Why a Mammogram, and not an MRI?
Obviously this is an extended metaphor, it might even qualify as an allegory. Santa Claus is a probably not real, he does not fly around the world in a reindeer-powered sleigh, and his progress on Christmas Eve is not accurately tracked by NOAA. NOAA does not track anything accurately, some might say.
Now, if Santa were a well-fed individual, subsisting on a circumpolar diet, with generous fat reserves in his chest, he might be susceptible to various cancers, including cancers traditionally associated with lady parts.
Santa has a problem, but he does not realize the extent of it. He feels that some thing is wrong. He is having hot flashes and violent temper tantrums, he has bouts of excessive weeping, and a pimple under his blouse that keeps erupting.
He has some free time, it is, after all, the slow part of his year; he has no urgent deliveries to make. So he goes for an unpleasant test. What he does not know, and what the technicians and scientists do not tell him is that, of the 1218 sensors in the machine, 365 of them don't work. That is 30%.
His mammogram looks rather like this, with the green bits being accurate reads, and the red clusters or dots being made-up data based on the surrounding areas.
Rather than repair the sensors, or invest in a new machine, the scientists simply calculate what the missing images ought to show, based on an average of the data shown from sensors fractions of an inch on either side of the dark area. Santa's problem might be existentially worse than the radiologist's reading suggests, or he might have much less of a problem.
What a great plot for a science fiction novel, if one were simply to extrapolate the scenario to something more important, such as a long distance assessment of whether or not Mars is habitable, or what lurks in the alleged water under the alleged ice on Europa, the so-called ice moon of Jupiter!
You would not believe that such a situation could be tolerated in a health care context, or in the arena of high level global policy making, but Katie Spence has reported on allegations by certified consulting meteorologist Lt. Col. John Shewchuk that data from non-existent temperature stations is informing our national obsession with flatulence (by the way, ants methane emissions are worse than cow farts, but almost no one talks about ants) and much more.
Moreover, if bugs fart copiously, why are we being encouraged to eat bugs instead of beef?
For edification and fun, I highly recommend an internet seach of bug farts. There are insects that use their flatus to stun and disable their prey, and beetles that --if swallowed whole-- can produce a fart deadly enough to make their predator retch them out to freedom.
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
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