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Legal restrictions have lowered Americans' exposure to certain toxic substances such as lead and cigarette smoke, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But dozens of other potentially dangerous chemicals -- from pesticides to the fragrances in cosmetics -- appear to be nearly ubiquitous in Americans' bloodstreams, the agency found.

We at EPIC have posted a page on Flash cookies (officially known as "local shared objects"). You can stop people from tracking you by:

The official way to address Flash cookies is to change your settings by visiting this Macromedia web page. One trick is that you can lower the allowed storage area to just 0kb. This will cause a box to appear whenever a website tries to set a Flash cookie.

Users can get rid of the current Flash cookies and their tracking information simply going to the correct folder (see below) and deleting them. The Flash cookies are organized in folders according to the site that placed them, so users can choose which objects to keep.

Flash cookies are stored in a special directory depending on the operating system on the client machine. They are arranged in directories according to the site that placed them on the computer (look for a file with a .SOL extension):

* Windows C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player
* Macintosh OSX /Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player
* GNU-Linux ~/.macromedia

Firefox users can use Objection, a recently developed extension that adds a LSO deletion tool to Firefox preferences.

The good news about this problem is that Macromedia doesn't like the fact that advertisers are trying to use Flash in this fashion. And, the advertisers claiming that Flash can be used for tracking appear to be inflating the capabilities of the Flash cookie.

After playing a portion of the videotape to the jury, W. Mark Lanier, a lawyer for plaintiffs in the case, asked Dr. Nancy Santanello, a senior Merck scientist, why Merck had told its sales representatives that Vioxx did not cause heart attacks or raise blood pressure.

Dr. Santanello responded that at the time the training video was made, Merck did not know if Vioxx raised the risk of heart attacks. In addition, the tape does not show the actress actually denying that Vioxx raises blood pressure, Dr. Santanello said.

Instead, the actress merely sidesteps the issue, she said. Dr. Santanello's response appeared to take the jury aback.

"Is that how you train people to sell your product?" Mr. Lanier said.

Merck made the videotape in 2000, as it struggled to increase Vioxx sales despite concerns by doctors and independent scientists that the drug might damage the heart.

Merck stopped selling Vioxx last September after a clinical trial showed patients taking Vioxx had a substantially higher risk of heart attacks and strokes than those taking a placebo.

...Telemarketing groups are quietly mounting a campaign that would open the door to a floodgate of new calls, EPIC says, pointing to a series of requests filed with the FCC, essentially asking the agency to invalidate state laws regulating the practice.

Now my favorite part of the article is where Sullivan quotes the Sports Authority's lawyer, Bill Raney:

Bill Raney, a telecommunications lawyer who defends companies against Do Not Call lawsuits, said...consumers are not complaining about them [telemarketing calls]...

Consumers aren't complaining? How does he explain this (PDF)? Raney's own petition was sparked by a compliant filed by the State of Florida!

Looks like a complaint to me!

• Telemarketers are trying to force New Jersey, Indiana, and Wisconsin to recognize the "established business relationship" exception. This loophole to the Do-Not-Call Registry allows companies to contact their current customers. While that may sound reasonable, the devil is in the details: If you make any purchase, no matter how small, or request any information from a business, you have created an "established business relationship." In the case of purchases, the business may call you over the next 18 months; if you merely requested information, they may call for 3 months. This means that merely buying a cup of coffee create a "relationship" that would allow the coffee shop to call you, even if you are on the Do-Not-Call Registry.
• Telemarketers are also trying to force North Dakota and Florida to recognize the ability of a telemarketer to send "pre-recorded voice" messages. In this marketing technique, a computer is programmed to call thousands of people and play a recorded message. Telemarketers add "ums" and background noises to the recorded message to fool the listener into thinking that the call is from a live person. Unlike live telemarketing, pre-recorded voice requires the Sports Authority and the banks to use fewer resources, allowing them to initiate millions of calls a day.

"neutralize.xls" That's awesome!

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The questioning of a Merck & Co. scientist at the first wrongful-death Vioxx trial turned contentious yesterday as a plaintiff's attorney showed the jury documents about a Merck plan to "neutralize" doctors who had raised concerns about Vioxx's safety.

[...]

Yesterday, in a Texas state court, Mr. Lanier introduced an internal Merck email from July 23, 1999, that listed 36 physicians "to neutralize," along with "recommended tactics." The physicians were influential in their communities and were high prescribers, and they had been favoring painkillers other than Vioxx. "I thought you should be aware of our most challenging (and also most vocal) national and regional physicians," the email said. Among some of the recommended plans to "neutralize" the physicians was offering one of the physicians a "weekend consultants' meeting in an elegant location (New York, Hawaii) or a 5-day International Meeting with the top thought leaders on pain management."

Nancy Santanello, a Merck research executive who was on the stand all day to defend the Whitehouse Station, N.J., company, disagreed with Mr. Lanier's contention that the document illustrated inappropriately aggressive behavior. "Sir, I don't think this is in any way being sinister," she said. She explained that it was nothing more than a plan to educate these physicians about the Vioxx data available to them.

In a 2001 letter to doctors, Merck seriously understated the heart risks faced by patients taking its painkiller Vioxx, according to evidence presented Tuesday in the first Vioxx lawsuit to reach trial.

In the letter, Merck reported that patients taking Vioxx in the largest clinical trial of the drug ever, only 0.5 percent had incurred "cardiovascular events," or heart and circulation problems. That would mean only about 20 patients among the more than 4,000 who took Vioxx during the study.

But in fact, 14.6 percent of the Vioxx patients - or 590 people - had cardiovascular troubles while taking the drug, according to Merck's own report on the study to federal regulators. And 2.5 percent, or 101 people, had serious problems, like heart attacks.

Merck sent the letter to thousands of doctors, including in April 2001 to Dr. Brent Wallace, who had prescribed Vioxx to Robert Ernst. Mr. Ernst, who was 59, died suddenly in May 2001 after taking Vioxx for eight months, and his family is suing Merck, claiming the drug caused his death.

Fortunately from the point of view of the companies funding these trials—but unfortunately for the credibility of the journals who publish them—these trials rarely produce results that are unfavourable to the companies' products [7,8]. Paula Rochon and others examined in 1994 all the trials funded by manufacturers of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for arthritis that they could find [7]. They found 56 trials, and not one of the published trials presented results that were unfavourable to the company that sponsored the trial. Every trial showed the company's drug to be as good as or better than the comparison treatment.

By 2003 it was possible to do a systematic review of 30 studies comparing the outcomes of studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry with those of studies funded from other sources [8]. Some 16 of the studies looked at clinical trials or meta-analyses, and 13 had outcomes favourable to the sponsoring companies. Overall, studies funded by a company were four times more likely to have results favourable to the company than studies funded from other sources. In the case of the five studies that looked at economic evaluations, the results were favourable to the sponsoring company in every case.

Anyway, Knowledge @ Wharton is running a shallow critique of a recent paper (PDF) by Professor Joe Turow of Annenberg on price discrimination.

Turow's paper received a lot of attention because most people don't know about "first degree" price discrimination, a practice where a company can determine the maximum that an individual is willing to pay for a product, and engage in "dynamic" pricing. This enables sellers to hawk the same products at the same time to different people at different prices. Turow's report showed that consumers object to price discrimination. The report also found that the respondents incorrectly believe that "stores cannot charge them different prices based on what they know about them."

The Wharton response reads like a press release, it employs fallacious arguments, and arguments that one normally finds in industry briefing materials, such as the argument that discriminatory pricing is here to stay, so consumers should just get used to it. I could go on. Here's my reply to the professors.

Dear Professors Hochs, Fader, & Zhang,

I came across the Knowledge @ Wharton press release, and wanted to suggest a closer read of Professor Turow's paper. Turow specifically discussed the difference between senior citizen discounts and what has been labeled as "first degree" price discrimination. The report recognizes the social utility of the former, and asks hard questions about the latter.

The report is online at:

http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/04_info_society/Turow_APPC_Report_WEB_FINAL.pdf

Allow me to make a few more comments:

To be sure, not all pricing strategies are permissible. Collusion by competitors in an industry to fix prices violates the law, as does the use of race or gender to target customers for different prices or other discriminatory treatment. In addition, if retailers use dynamic pricing in such a way that it angers customers, they can erode customer loyalty, spark a backlash and lose business.

The concern here is that discriminatory pricing based on personal information may not intend to discriminate on race, sex, or age, but it might have that effect. (Direct marketers' segmentation categories smack of racial, class, sex, and age divides.) There also is a concern among some that it will result in poorer people paying more for products.

Turow's work builds upon a number of studies that question whether first degree price discrimination benefits consumers. Many of these studies have found that companies that rely upon personal data to make pricing decisions end up charging consumer more. Even the Wall Street Journal found that supermarkets without loyalty cards had significantly lower prices than stores in the same area with loyalty cards.

"Dynamic pricing has always been with us,

and

There is nothing really new here,

and

Most observers agree that consumers will have to become accustomed to flexible pricing because it is here to stay.

Argumentum ad antiquitatem...

The point of this paper was to measure consumer attitudes about these practices and to inform the public about them. At some level, the paper demonstrates how out of touch the direct marketing industry is with Americans' values. It is an industry that values secrecy, and when a light is shined on the industry, legislators start drafting laws. If it is here to stay, it may be subject to transparency requirements; assurances that it does not have a discriminatory impact on race, sex, or age; or other regulation.

Companies will try it, and some will do it stupidly. But some will do it well and find ways to keep customers locked in and keep revenue flowing in."

In a way, this comment recognizes the fear of consumers--that they would be locked in to a retailer. What happened to competing on the basis of having the best product at the lowest price?

Retailers are frustrated by price shoppers, so they're trying to figure out ways to trap people into paying more (read DMNews, the proponents of these pricing mechanisms discuss getting people to pay more by enticing them into loyalty programs). The point of these practices is to exercise more power over the consumer, so images of "big brother-style" (strawman argument) retailers, while extreme, are on some level appropriate.

Regards,
Chris Hoofnagle

Credit card marketers sent out a record 1.4 billion direct mail offers during the first quarter, up 11% over last year, according to Synovate.

[...]

With the record high mail volumes, the response rates to credit card offers reached a record low of 0.4 percent.

John M. Harris / Associated Press

Chris Jay Hoofnagle, director of the West Coast office of Electronic Privacy Information Center, says "Google is becoming one of the largest privacy risks on the Internet."

TiVo, based in Alviso, Calif., announced plans to insert symbols that identify advertisers during commercial breaks, making them more visible even when a customer is fast forwarding through them. Advertisers who sponsor TiVo's "ad tags" can include additional graphics, such as their corporate logos, to the pop-ups. Moreover, the pop-up tags now will be able to lead viewers to additional content, such as infomercials, movie trailers and even mailings.

The company said General Motors Corp. and the WB Television Network will be the first to use the new features. Starting this week, TiVo users who see GM's commercials for OnStar, GMC, Chevrolet or Saturn will see a branded pop-up tag that leads them to special promotional footage or lets them request additional information directly from GM. Viewers who want to follow through won't need to press more than a few buttons or type in their addresses or phone numbers since TiVo already has them on file and can supply them to GM.

OK, so you’re thinking that maybe a certain dead celebrity is just the thing to help your upcoming advertising campaign really cut through the clutter. But how can you be sure that sufficient numbers of your target audience actually recognize or even like the deceased entertainer you plan to bring back to life via digital magic?

[...]

To assess the potential "fit" and marketability of...deceased celebrities as contemporary product icons, Marketing Evaluations now calculates every two years what it calls its “Dead Q” scores, measuring the current consumer appeal of 150 deceased performers.

Top ranking dead celebrities

In its latest 2005 Dead Q tallies, Lucille Ball, Bob Hope and John Wayne top the list of the public’s favorite dead celebrities. Although Elvis was Forbes’ top-earning dead celebrity, he ranks at No. 12 on the Dead Q list. Also among the top 15 are Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn and the Three Stooges.

Two recent deaths made this year’s Dead Q list: Johnny Carson, who is ranked No. 7, died Jan. 23, and John Ritter, who is ranked No. 8, died Sept. 11, 2003.

Marketing Evaluations extracts its data from the responses of 1,453 adults who replied to a mailed questionnaire asking whether they recognized a celebrity’s name, and then whether they’d rank that particular celebrity as being among their “favorites.” The respondents were taken from a national sample of approximately 2,500 people who agreed to participate in the company’s national consumer panel.

Cat Hoarding Not Highly Unusual

Caching pets is a national phenomenon, scientists say, but a Fairfax case might be a regional record.

While the FTC is cowed by breathless and improbable claims of direct marketers who suggest that third-party advertising cookies help consumers avoid irrelevant ads, Mossberg cuts through the crap. For instance, in today's Journal, Mossberg argues that third party cookies, small text files often used to identify a computer, are spyware:

Some tracking-cookie purveyors say their cookies aren't really spyware because they aren't full-fledged programs and they aren't as outrageous as spyware programs like "key loggers," which record and report every keystroke you enter. Others argue that the companies don't collect personally identifiable data, only aggregate data from many users. To me, tracking cookies clearly meet the obvious definition of spyware.

Rather than trying to legitimize tracking cookies with pressure and marketing campaigns, I suggest that, if they really believe tracking cookies are legitimate, the companies that use them simply go straight. They should ask a user's permission to install the cookies, pointing out whatever user benefits they believe the cookies provide. They might even offer users compensation for allowing tracking cookies on their machines.

Until that happens, here is my advice: If you don't like the idea of tracking cookies, run an antispyware program that detects and removes them, along with all the other indefensible computer code some companies think they have the right to install. After all, it is your computer.

...WOMMA [Word of Mouth Marketing Association] released, as part of a 226-page book, a terminological framework for discussing the trade. Put simply, it's a way of describing the processes by which viral ideas spread that WOMMA hopes will become standard.

At the center of this new framework is the WOM Unit. That's a media-neutral way of referring to a consumer comment. As the book has it, "If a company purchases an ad, it's an ad. If people talk about the ad, it's a WOM Unit." WOMMA provides a host of ways to describe a particular WOM Unit -- whether it's on message or timely, positive or negative. It also includes "depth" -- which evaluates the "richness" or amount of information available in a WOM Unit "assuming that these aspects increase message persuasiveness." That means, a video e-mail would be deeper than, say, a text message.

CHICAGO---Marketers should keep in mind that the 9/11 generation, or children born after 2001, will be conformists as they grow older, said a speaker at yesterday's NCDM conference.

[...]

During their formative years, this generation is being over-protected: at home because of the rash of kidnappings and Amber Alerts; at school because of Columbine-type incidences; and in society because of terrorism.

"An overprotected generation tends to be risk-averse and therefore conformists as adults," said Fishman, who also offered her interpretation of the other generations. They include:

GI generation (those born between 1901 and 1924): This group is up to date, is literate and respects old ways and old values.

Silent generation (1925-42): This group is made up of vital, active people, and marketers should always focus on "lifestyle and lifestage, never age." Fishman said members of this group value the opinions of experts and "it's now-or-never time to indulge." She also said they like to help others, particularly their grandchildren.

Baby boomers (1943-60): This group loves values, cares about the environment, distrusts authority and wants to be in control. Its members think they will be young forever, are nostalgic, spend money more than save it and love to learn -- but they want the information in short takes. She also said they have an overwhelming sense of entitlement.

Generation X (1961-81): Generation Xers demand an honest, straight-forward approach. No other generation is so market savvy. Xers have been shopping all their lives -- on television, on the Internet and at the mall. They expect you to deliver on your marketing promises "Burn them once, lose them forever," Fishman warned.

Generation Y (1982-2000): Influenced by their brand-conscious boomer parents, this group is attracted to brands at an early age and remains loyal. A brand name means a company stands behind its product, the product is of a certain quality and it will be recognized by their peers.

There is a training guide for “Champion Selling (massive PDF). This 75 page guide tells the trainer how to manipulate a group of people who presumably have a decent amount of intelligence with silly motivational techniques. Man, I’m glad I don’t work for a company that abuses its employees through motivational training.

And this manual (massive PDF) is a detailed role-playing guide to help Merck people sell drugs to everyone in a hospital—the nurses, pharmacists, different specialist doctors, etc.

Looking over these documents, it makes one wonder about the role of marketing in promoting drugs. Imagine if this effort were expended on actually doing science to develop new drugs instead?

According to our friend Bernie Sanders, “[m]ost major drug companies pocket far more in pure profit and spend more on advertising than they spend on research and development.” Imagine how much this adds to the price of drugs, and more importantly, how much it affects Doctors’ advice:

-AstraZeneca (producer of Tamoxifen): In FY1999 AstraZeneca reported spending only 16%, ($2.4 billion) on research and development. In comparison, it reported pocketing more than 24% ($3.69 billion) in beforetax profits while spending more than 31% ($4.8 billion) on marketing and administration. -Merck and Pfizer spent just 11.2% of its revenues on R&D in 1997 on R&D. At the same time, these companies pocketed 18.6% in pure profit and spent 28.9% on advertising (Sager/Socolar study, Boston University)

I read in the Washington Post last week that some manufacturers incorporated the flag some time ago (RCA), while others simply removed the digital outs (Phillips). In most cases, the manufacturers' websites do not speak to the copy protection issue, and the issue is at a level of detail that most salespeople can't answer it.

I wrote to Panasonic a week ago, asking about digital outs and the broadcast flag. Here is their response. To their credit, they answered in a timely fashion and didn’t try to upsell me with some BS, but their televisions have the Flag:

Dear MR HOOF

Thank you for your inquiry regarding the Panasonic PT50DL54. We apologize
for the delay in providing you a reply to your inquiry, and we hope that
this delay has not caused you any inconvenience. The PT50DL54 does not
meet the requirements you have listed. All Panasonic HDTV televisions will
have HDCP (High Definition Copy Production). The PT50DL54 does not have
digital audio and video outputs.

Thank You,
Panasonic Consumer Support

One major problem in the Privacy Act area is that agencies use the "routine use" exception to allow information sharing. The idea is that the Privacy Act shouldn't prohibit ordinary use of data in government database, which on its face is reasonable. But the agencies have abused the exception, and now assert a series of "routine uses" over every database.

In this case, DOD has applied its "Blanket Routine Uses" to the lactation database. This means that information from the lactation database can be transferred to others for the following reasons:

#Law enforcement.
#To other agencies when DOD requesting information in order to engage in hiring and firing decisions.
#To other agencies when requested for a variety of government decision making.
#To Congress in response to Member inquiries.
#To foreign law enforcement.
#To state and local taxing authorities.
#To the Office of Personnel Management for pay, leave, and benefits administration.
#To the Department of Justice for litigation.
#To military banking facilities.
#To the General Services Administration for records management inspections.
#To the National Archives and Records Administration.
#To the Merit Systems Protection Board.
#To almost any entity for national security purposes.

Don't you feel safer?

Read more privacy at Technorati.

I've written a positive argument directed at liberals for a new form of progressive federalism or "Blue states rights" based upon scientific evidence that proves liberal policies have actually been more successful on a state level. My approach is to consider empirical differences between the states by compiling publicly available information into maps which demonstrate that Blue states are actually far better at serving their citizens' needs than the Red states. These maps are the centerpiece of my argument, and synthesize the vast amount of information on effects of governance into evidence for progressive policy on a local level.

New York Daily News Walter Karl New Select Description: This file contains names of subscribers to the New York Daily News, which long has served as the main news source for New Yorkers throughout the region. It offers the No. 1 source for news, sports, entertainment, gossip, investigative reporting and movie and theater reviews. The Sunday issue offers special sections including NOW!, which is an entertainment and lifestyle magazine. These individuals responded to a direct mail solicitation for home delivery. The majority prepaid for their subscriptions. The average age is 40, and 56 percent are male. The average income is $43,000. Selects: 185,144 active subscribers, quarterly hotline, contest entrants, quarterly expires, paid, demographic and lifestyle enhancements, business address, credit cards, change of address, renewals, new to file, gender, state, SCF and ZIP Contact: your list broker or Walter Karl, 1 Blue Hill Plaza, Pearl River, NY 10965 Phone: 845/620-0700; Fax: 845/620-1885 E-mail: maureen.northey@walterkarl.infousa.com

U.S. colleges and universities awarded 16,141 degrees to economics majors in the 2003-2004 academic year, up nearly 40% from five years earlier, according to John J. Siegfried, an economics professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., who tracks 272 colleges and universities around the country for the Journal of Economic Education.

Seeking to grab a bigger share of consumers' business by becoming a powerhouse in credit cards, the Bank of America Corporation announced plans yesterday to acquire the card giant MBNA for $35 billion in cash and stock.

[...]

"The one thing that made our partnership an easy choice is the convenience and reach of Bank of America," Bruce L. Hammonds, MBNA's chief executive, said in announcing the deal in New York yesterday.

[...]

Under the deal, Mr. Hammonds will become the head of Bank of America's credit card operations. It will mean a very rich payday: he could receive some $154.5 million even before he starts, according to Brian Foley, an executive-compensation consultant in White Plains. Mr. Hammonds can expect about $19.5 million in severance pay, assuming that the deal prompts a change-in-control agreement with MBNA, based in Wilmington, Del.