Commencement and Confirmation Bias at Hillsdale College

I didn’t want to write this post. In this blog, I have tried to steer clear of criticizing particular people and institutions and to focus on explaining the data. However, this weekend something I found very concerning happened in my former home of Hillsdale, and after urging from my wife, I have decided to address it.

Background

As many of you know, I spent the last four years as a professor at Hillsdale College. This institution is located in a small town of around 8000 people in southern Michigan. Hillsdale College was supposed to hold commencement on May 9. At the time, the governor had declared a state of emergency and Michigan was experiencing an average of 550 new COVID cases per day. As a result, large gatherings were prohibited, and the college decided to postpone.

Fast forward two months and after cases reached a low in mid-June, they have been rising again reaching an average of 710 per day. As I discussed in my last post, deaths are likely to follow. In response, the governor of Michigan has again declared a state of emergency and large gatherings are again prohibited. How did Hillsdale College respond? By holding an in-person commencement yesterday on July 18 anyway. I have not seen the final attendance numbers, but this event was expected to draw over 2000 people including many from out of state (69% of the students are from outside of Michigan), temporarily increasing the population of the city by over 25%.

I find this troubling for a few reasons:

1. I still have many friends who live in the Hillsdale community, some of whom work at the college. I worry that the large influx of visitors could reignite the local transmission of the virus after weeks of little activity.

2. I know many people look to Hillsdale College for leadership on political issues. I worry about the precedent that this sets for other conservatives who now see a respected institution of higher learning that shares their values disregarding public health guidelines and downplaying the need for continued caution.

3. The way the decision to hold an in-person commencement was presented suggests that it took place in consultation with epidemiologists and with their blessing. However, a closer examination of the facts suggests that this is not really what happened. I fear that this may give others the impression that most experts believe these sorts of gatherings are safe when that couldn't be further from the truth.

Now, let me be clear: this is not sour grapes. I left Hillsdale on good terms and for reasons that had nothing to do with politics or COVID-19, and I have very fond memories of my time there. I also know many wonderful students who graduated yesterday. Their accomplishments deserve to be celebrated. (If any of you are reading this, congratulations! I am so proud of you all. I expect you to go on to do great things. I’m sorry your college career had to end this way.)

Motivation

No, the reason I am writing this is because I care about Hillsdale and the people in its sphere of influence. I have carefully examined the college's public statements as well as the campus-wide emails that I still receive, and I am shocked and disappointed by their justifications. I am not here to litigate the legality of such an event. I will let the attorney general of Michigan, who called the event illegal, and the counsel for the college and local prosecutor who disagreed sort that out. I am also not here to argue why the holding such an event was unwise. I will leave that to the health experts such as the Hillsdale County health officer who said:

"The individuals that do come to visit the community will not just be at the commencement ceremony. They will be staying in hotels and eating in restaurants. So the larger community is put at potential increased risk because of the large number of individuals coming from outside of town."

However, I do think it worth considering how one should approach decisions like this one in the midst of a pandemic, and I am extremely disappointed by the example that Hillsdale College's actions set. This started with their infamous coronavirus symposium which I addressed in an earlier post. This disappointment has intensified as a result of the confounding reasoning and blatant confirmation bias that appear to have gone into justifying an in-person commencement this weekend. I hope that I am wrong. If someone still affiliated with Hillsdale College's has relevant information that I missed, I will gladly add it to this post or even take it down if appropriate. However, the public information surrounding this event suggests that the college has prioritized the continuation of its traditions over the health and well-being of its students, employees, and especially its community. In this post, I would like to look at some of these statements to show why I believe they paint a picture of intellectual and social irresponsibility that I hope others will not emulate.

Hillsdale College's statement

To start, let’s look at the introduction to the press release by the college where announced its plans to hold commencement in person this weekend:

“Hillsdale College has vigorously planned for many months how to hold its annual Commencement and has taken all practical precautions to ensure a safe event,” said Rich Péwé, Chief Administrative Officer at Hillsdale College. “We are especially grateful to the health experts who have consulted with us throughout our preparations.”

In addition to consulting with health officials, city officials, state government, and law enforcement officials, the College also sought the expertise of four highly qualified epidemiologists: Scott Atlas, Jayanta Bhattacharya, Daniel Halperin, and Joseph Eisenberg.

Now, let me say that I consider Rich Péwé a friend (and an excellent basketball player). My intention is not to critique him or any particular person. I don’t know who made the final decisions on this event. But, I do have the press release (you can read the rest here) and it makes me very concerned about the welfare of a town and an institution that mean a great deal to me. It appears that this decision was fraught with confirmation bias and a determination to proceed with the event as planned regardless of the circumstances.

Assessment

The first thing that jumped out at me upon reading this press release and watching parts of the live-stream of the event was that the college did try to go about holding the in-person event in the safest way possible. The event was held outdoors, and as best I could tell from the video feed, people were socially distanced and wearing masks for the most part, with the handshakes with each graduate serving as a notable exception. So, if you are going to hold a large gathering in the midst of a global pandemic, this was the way to do it. But should you hold such an event in the first place? Particularly when doing so means drawing thousands of visitors to a small town with a relatively small number of hotels and restaurants?

Before I get to that, there is more good news! They spoke to epidemiologists! So, maybe the experts thought it was OK, or at least that is what I thought until I looked more closely at the names and qualifications of the experts and noticed some red flags. First off, there are plenty of experts in epidemiology at nearby institutions, but Hillsdale College spoke to two "experts" affiliated with Stanford University, one from the University of North Carolina and only one from the University of Michigan which is just down the road. Secondly, three of the four experts (the one from University of Michigan was the exception) had research interests that seemed to have more to do with economics and policy than epidemiology proper. That seemed odd until I checked out these experts' public statements on COVID-19. Then it all made sense.

The first expert, Scott Atlas, has medical expertise but does not specialize in epidemiology at all. His bio suggests that he is affiliated with a conservative think tank called the Hoover Institute that I learned of back in late March when it published a controversial piece by a lawyer named Richard Epstein, who was a fellow at the institute. His piece touted a so-called model (of his own creation) that predicted that COVID would cause only 500 US deaths (at the time there had been around 35,000 cases and only 47 deaths). This was later revised to predict 2500 deaths (I have no word on whether that prediction still stands). Atlas was not involved in that study, but it gives you a sense of his institution's leanings. He focuses mostly on economics and policies related to medicine, so his specialties are tangential at best. He also seems to be a contrarian on most COVID issues as evidenced by the dozens of interviews linked to from his website calling the response to COVID panic, arguing against social distancing orders, etc. His justification for supporting the event was:

“with appropriate social distancing, adequate hygiene and available sanitization, and in-advance guidelines for high risk individuals, the graduation event planned by Hillsdale College is safe and introduces no serious risk for students, teachers, and families attending the event.”

It is interesting that he makes no mention of the workers in local restaurants, hotels, gas stations, etc. who would likely come into contact with these guests in situations without those measures in place. It is also unclear where handshakes with every graduate fit into "appropriate social distancing".

The second expert, Jayanta Bhattacharya, also seems to focus on economics and policy. He is also the author of various op-eds and a highly controversial antibody study that claimed that there were up to 85 times as many COVID cases as had been documented suggesting that the virus was actually much milder than people realized. The methodology of this study was heavily criticized by statisticians who pointed out that the evidence presented in the paper was consistent with a much lower prevalence (due to the false positive rate) and that the study was therefore inconclusive. There was also controversy over questionable recruiting practices for the participants in the study (including emails by this individual’s spouse). The paper later had to be revised significantly to back off of the original claims.

Bhattacharya’s explanation for why the event should proceed was the following:

“If the private benefits of the event are important enough relative to the public health risks and care is taken by event organizers to minimize those risks by adhering to the extent possible to safe practice guidelines promulgated by public health authorities, then the event should receive approval by public health experts.”

Is he saying that if you want to hold an event that poses some public health risks badly enough and you try to be careful, then you should be allowed to do it?

I am less familiar with the third expert, but he seems to have a similar mindset to the first two. He has written both op-eds and articles that argue against school closures, the “six foot rule”, lock-downs, etc. He argued that it was OK because

“The infection risk from simply walking past someone or briefly exchanging hugs is extremely low.”

This, of course, does not address what the guests do during the rest of their visit to Hillsdale.

The final epidemiologist, Joseph Eisenberg, seems to have the most relevant qualifications: he actually appears to study epidemiology, and he has more conventional views on COVID. He is also quoted in a recent interview saying:

"Given that they want to do this, they are being thoughtful about how to do it safely… Whether or not it is a good idea in the first place is another question. It is dependent on what is happening in the state. In the context of (Michigan) seeing rising cases right now, one wants to be more cautious."

Interestingly, the first sentence from this quote was included in Hillsdale College’s press release. The other part was omitted.

I think his comments are particularly instructive. They suggest that Hillsdale College did not ask whether holding in person commencement was a good idea, but rather decided they were going to do it and then asked how to do that as safely as possible.

So, to sum up, yes, technically Hillsdale College spoke to experts. However, this process involved picking three individuals with unorthodox views on the pandemic who had repeatedly downplayed its severity (Hillsdale College had to go to all the way to Stanford and UNC to find them) and who were very likely to endorse the decision to hold the event and only one mainstream epidemiologist (from the University of Michigan) who suggested it was not a good idea and whose advice about whether to hold the event was disregarded. Does that sound like the sort of process one makes when genuinely seeking wisdom and truth in a complex situation?

Turning to the legal wrangling, I found that, in another press release, the college’s general counsel states:

“This is not an act of defiance—this is totally legal, because this is a core First Amendment expressive activity, the governor’s own guidance and the FAQs tell us that it is appropriate for us to be able to hold such an event as this if we follow leading medical guidelines. We’re not only following those guidelines—we’re exceeding them.”

In other words, his argument is that commencement is not a gathering (which would be prohibited under the governor's executive order) but rather an expression of free speech (which is protected by the constitution). He elaborated in a message to the Governor’s office saying that the Governor has already

“in fact [spoken] on the applicability of the Governor’s lockdown orders to expressive assemblies, having announced its (correct) position that recent, spontaneous protests are constitutionally protected and therefore not forbidden.”

In other words, he is saying that if protests are OK, then commencement is OK. It seems like an interesting argument to make given that plenty of institutions have managed to exercise their right to free speech through virtual commencements, but suppose we grant the premise that commencement is legal because it is actually a form of protest. Does that still make this a good idea?

On this point, I will turn to Scott Atlas, one of the experts that Hillsdale College consulted. In a recent interview with Fox News, he said the following:

“They [the rises in cases] correlate mainly to two things -- the big thousands and thousands of people with protesting, sharing megaphones, screaming. That's a setup to spread cases, and also when you look at the analysis of the border counties, there's a tremendous amount of cases coming over the border and exchanging with families in the northern Mexico states."

Setting aside the confusing comments about the border (the biggest spikes have been in Florida, where is its border with Mexico again?), he claims that large protests are one of the main drivers in the recent spikes. [Note: I have seen no evidence to support either of his claims, but I intend to look into them at some point.] Now, a commencement address does not have screaming or shared megaphones, but it does have singing and shared microphones and handshakes which pose the same risks. Given that Hillsdale itself compared the event to a protest, according to his reasoning, this is the type of event that drives COVID spikes. If that is true, then I ask again, why would you decide this is a good idea?

In a video message for the incoming class, the president of Hillsdale College encapsulated his reasons for deciding to hold in-person classes in the fall (and I suspect that the same reasons applied to commencement). These reasons can be summarized as follows: because this is what we always do. You can read the full transcript below and judge for yourself.

Conclusions

So, putting this all together this is what Hillsdale College’s recent statements seem to suggest:

1. Hillsdale College wanted to hold an in-person commencement because it has always done so.

2. It believes it should be allowed to continue doing so.

3. It found some legal loopholes (including a local sheriff and prosecutor who had no interest in enforcing the governor’s orders) to justify its legality.

4. It found some carefully chosen experts to endorse the decision.

5. It dismissed the concerns of experts who did not agree.

6. It pressed on despite the fact that experts (including some who supported the event) believed that these types of events were a high risk for causing spikes in COVID-19 cases.

Am I missing something here? I sincerely hope that there is more to this story. I don't think that institutions like Hillsdale College owe the public an explanation for every decision that they make. However, we are in the midst of a crisis where 140,000 people have already died nationwide due to this virus, including 25 in Hillsdale county. Many more have been hospitalized and things seem to be getting worse and not better. Under the circumstances, I think it is appropriate to offer an explanation to those whose lives are affected by decisions like this one, such as the members of the community and those whose names and reputations are linked to this institution. Unfortunately, it appears that the college decided to press on with this event without addressing why it was important to do so in this particular way and despite the health risk to the community. They did so with the stated justification that the experts said it was OK (which was emphasized in their press release), without acknowledging that those were hand-picked experts and that one of them even considered the gathering to be reckless. That seems selfish and dishonest.

In this midst of this pandemic, there are some activities that must go on. We need to be able to buy food, to pay our bills, to exercise, to get medical treatment, to continue to educate our children, to continue to worship together and to have some forms of human contact. These things are essential and as such we need to figure out how to do them safely under the circumstances. However, there are other things that are enjoyable but non-essential. Commencement is a celebration. It is an important part of the life of a college, but is it essential that it be held in-person? Is it essential that it takes place in July amidst rising case numbers? If not, then it makes sense to consider carefully and thoughtfully whether it is wise to continue holding these types of events in-person or whether there are alternative ways to enjoy them.

The most concerning thing about the college's statements is that they seem to focus exclusively on whether the college COULD hold such an event while ignoring whether they SHOULD, particularly at that time and place. I hope that they thought long and hard about this whether this was wise, but their public statements suggest that they simply decided to do what they wanted and then sought ways to rationalize it. Seeking out evidence and advice that supports your preconceived notions and dismissing all that doesn't is not honest inquiry; it is confirmation bias.

I hope that by pointing this out, this post might help others avoid this sort of flawed reasoning when considering how to proceed in the fall. I also hope that those who read this post will know better than to follow Hillsdale College's example under the guise of "the experts said it was OK". There are no easy answers when deciding how to live amidst this pandemic. That is why objectively examining the facts and being honest with others and with ourselves is essential.

Although I have my concerns about the final decision, I don't know for sure if it was safe or unsafe to hold an in-person commencement, not does it matter what I think. But I do know this: If you want to make an informed decision, then you should actually consult a representative group of experts instead of cherry-picking the ones that you know ahead of time are inclined to agree with you. Hillsdale College claims to be an institution concerned with the pursuit of truth, but if this is what that pursuit looks like these days, then that is a troubling indeed. The Hillsdale community, the Hillsdale College faculty and staff and the graduates of the class of 2020 deserve better.

PS. In case anyone is wondering how I can be confident that having 3 out of the 4 epidemiologists support a gathering like this is evidence of a biased selection process, consider this: A survey by the New York Times asked 511 epidemiologists which activities they expected to resume before the end of the summer. Only 17% expressed a willingness to attend weddings or funerals, 14% expressed a willingness to hug or shake hands with friends and just 3% expressed a willingness to attend concerts or plays. Unsurprisingly, they did not include a question about graduations, but if anything one would expect the proportion willing to attend graduations to be lower than the one for weddings or funerals. If those numbers are correct, then what are the odds that an unbiased selection process would end up with a sample in which three out of the four epidemiologists were comfortable with commencement? Well, if you use the numbers for concerts and plays you find that the odds of that happening by chance are around 0.01%. If you use the number for handshakes you get 1.0% and if you use the numbers for weddings and concerts you get 1.7%. Even if you think all those numbers are low and you take the upper end of the 95% confidence interval for the percentage comfortable with weddings and funerals (20.5%), you end up with a probability below 3%. In statistics, we would call this statistically significant evidence against the null hypothesis. In layman's turns, this means that it is extremely unlikely (the chances are somewhere between 1 in 34 and 1 in 10000) that you would end up with a result like this by chance. Its also worth mentioning that this survey took place in late May/early June when both cases and deaths were falling nationwide and the number of new cases added each day were about 1/3 of what they are today (deaths were about the same). So, if anything these probabilities would be lower if you interviewed the experts today.

PPS. Here is the transcript of Hillsdale College President, Larry Arnn's response to questions about in-person classes in a video to the incoming freshman class. Judge for yourself if I have mischaracterized his stated reasons:

“Well of course we are going to have college and I am going to give you the reasons. There are several and they are very powerful reasons. And the first one is: this is what we do. When you come here you are going to meet the challenge of learning what things are in reality, any fundamental thing. That word fundamental, it means down at the foundation. We are humans. What does that mean to be human? It means we were meant to work. We will starve if we don’t. Also by our work we shape our characters and inform our intellects. And so, we are supposed to be about our work. I am astonished that there is this abstraction called the economy and the thought is that we can turn it off and turn it on at will because that is not how it works. We have to live. We are beings in motion with a contemplative side. This is what we do. We have been doing it for 175 years. We are going to keep doing it. And, of course in the 175 years, there have been many obstacles, the civil war. Right over there is our war memorial statue from that war. We had a big part in that war, and all the big wars, and the great depression. And we weathered those and we are going to weather this, in fact, we are going to weather this easier than those.

The second thing is this thing we do is beautiful. That word beautiful is a big word. It is, in certain classic works, a perfection of the word good. And the good is the being of anything, what it is. You are going to find out what you are. You are going to approach the study of that and every fundamental thing as if there is a reality. And that is a very strange thing to do because what colleges teach today is things are just whatever you make of them. You should recreate yourself and be your own God. Well we don’t think we are actually going to get to do that. Because here we, the bipeds with a rational soul. What is that? How does that work? And to learn that. Of course, we are going to get back together and do that. And if by some wicked chance, the law doesn’t let us do it, then we won’t. I don’t think that is going to happen, but if that does happen we are going to find a way to turn that to good, just like we found a way this time. So, look around here. I look forward to seeing you on August 23rd.”

You can watch the full video here: https://www.hillsdale.edu/admissions-aid/admitted-students/