By now you may have heard of the Wikipedia hoax perpetrated by Shane Fitzgerald, a sociology major at Dublin University. The soc student posted a falsified quotation on the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre, a French composer who passed away at the end of March.

MSNBC reported, “[Fitzgerald] said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news. His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked. The sociology major’s made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer’s death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote’s lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.”

Fitzgerald weighed in…

“I was really shocked at the results from the experiment,” Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.

“I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn’t come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up,” he said. “It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact.”

Read more.

The Chicago Tribune noted that the summer concert season is overwhelmingly dominated by 60-somethings. They cite the upcoming concerts in Chicago by Elton John (age 62), Billy Joel (age 60), and Crosby (67),  Stills (64), Nash (67) and Young (63). The Tribune also noted that Bob Dylan (age 68) celebrated a No. 1 album last week, and is about to embark on a tour with Willie Nelson (76) and John Mellencamp (57).

The paper reports,

This cataloging of rock’s geriatric movement is meant simply to point out what’s both obvious and startling: Rock’s biggest names have gotten old.

“I think all of us are pretty amazed at the lengths of the careers of the acts that pretty much defined rock ‘n’ roll,” said Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of the concert-industry trade publication Pollstar. “If you look at the ones that demand the highest prices, it’s all acts that date back to the ’60s and ’70s.”

A sociologist explains how these aging musicians are still able to rock…

How sustainable can this business be when so many key players could be cashing retirement checks?

Celia Berdes, a sociologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Buehler Center on Aging, Health & Society, thinks rockers who maintain a healthy lifestyle and diet can keep going for a while.

“In gerontology, we think that people can continue their level of activity and productivity well into their 70s,” she said, noting that guitarists probably maintain excellent dexterity thanks to the continual finger exercise. “The worry I would have for the rock musicians is they’ve burnt the candle. It’s possible they may be aging at a faster rate, particularly with regard to hearing.”

Singers go through other types of changes as well. Elton John’s voice is much deeper than it was in his ’70s heyday, and many older singers typically key down their songs to compensate for their range loss on the high end.

Read more.

Both ABC news and the New York Times ran stories over the weekend about the relationship between job loss and health. New research by sociologist Kate Strully, a sociologist at the State University of New York-Albany, examines unemployment data from 1991, 2001, and 2003 and finds that job loss is “linked to a higher risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, heart attack, diabetes or depression, even when the person finds a new job. Losing a job through no fault of one’s own, if a company shut down, for example, led to a 54 percent increase in that person reporting poor health.” 

She told ABC News:

“Jobs are so fundamental to who you are and where you fall into society,” said Kate Strully, an assistant professor in sociology at the State University of New York at Albany and the author of a new study. “In looking at what happens to people after they lose such a big component of their class position and social identity … [the study asked] did they lose their job because they were sick or did they get sick because they lost their job?”…

Still, Strully’s data is based on situations from the 1990s and early 2000s, when the economic climate was not as universally challenging as it is now. People who lost their jobs may have been in a better position to find alternate employment or receive financial help via credit, mortgages or family and friends.

“We were looking at a situation where the economy was better than now and there were still sizable health hazards associated with job loss,” Strully said. “Common sense suggests that the situation today for displaced workers is probably worse.”

The New York Times reported:

Workers who lost a job through no fault of their own, she found, were twice as likely to report developing a new ailment like high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease over the next year and a half, compared with people who were continuously employed. Interestingly, the risk was just as high for those who found new jobs quickly as it was for those who remained unemployed.

Though it has long been known that poor health and unemployment often go together, questions have lingered about whether unemployment leads to illness, or whether people in ill health are more likely to leave a job, be fired or be laid off. In an effort to sort out this chicken-or-egg problem, the new study looked specifically at people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own — for example, because of a plant or business closing. The author, Kate W. Strully, said she looked at situations in which people lost jobs for reasons that “shouldn’t have had anything to do with their health.”

Read more from ABC.

Read more from the New York Times. 

The Philadelphia Enquirer reports on new research out of the University of Chicago suggesting that “for older adults, feelings of loneliness can actually be detrimental to their health…  older adults who feel least-isolated are five times more likely to report very good health compared to their lonelier counterparts, regardless of actual social connectedness.”

One of the co-aduthors on the study is sociologist Linda Waite…

“The relationship between social disconnectedness and mental health appears to operate through feelings of loneliness and a perceived lack of social support,” says study co-author Linda Waite, a Professor in Sociology at the University of Chicago and a leading expert on aging.

The study:

Researchers measured the degree to which older adults were socially connected and socially active, as well as whether they feel lonely and expect family and friends to support them in need. The study found that older adults who feel most isolated reported 65 percent more depressive symptoms than those who feel less isolated, despite actual connectedness.

Waite told the Enquirer that the research suggests a need to better understand how adults cope with changing relationships, because older adults who are “able to withstand socially isolating experiences or adjust expectations” are more likely to stay healthy.

Read more.

The Houston Chronicle reported yesterday on the increasingly brazen tactics for crossing into the United States from Mexico. The Chronicle reports, “U.S. Border Patrol agent John Lopez has seen it all: Men hiding in tiny holes in the ground, in car trunks and behind seat backs. He’s even captured an illegal immigrant hiding in a suitcase. ‘You don’t expect to find someone in a suitcase. You never expect that,’ said Lopez, who is based in the Rio Grande Valley.”

These attempts to sneak people and drugs across the border are constantly changing and are often increasingly harmful to the immigrants, an alarming trend illustrated in several recent incidents.

• In Presidio County along the Texas-Mexico border, a man trained illegal immigrants who had just crossed the border to fake illnesses and call 911. Unwitting ambulance attendants took them to an Alpine hospital beyond the Border Patrol checkpoint near Marfa. The immigrants would refuse treatment and run away. Lionel Armendariz-Cabezuela, 38, was arrested in March and pled guilty to smuggling charges in the scheme.

• In the past few months, officials have intercepted three ultralight aircrafts attempting to smuggle drugs into the U.S. The small planes fly so low they evade radar and have been particularly active on the Arizona-Mexico border.

• In California, smugglers meticulously painted vehicles to resemble DHL package delivery trucks and a company contracted to help build the border fence. They used the vehicles to transport illegal immigrants to the U.S. in March and April. Some people in the construction company truck wore reflective vests and hard hats.

But the debate about reform versus enforcement is a complex one, and the Houston Chronicle calls upon sociologist Nestor Rodriguez, who has studied these migrants based at the University of Texas.

Immigrant rights advocates warn that it’s flawed and dangerous to put more focus on enforcement instead of reform. As it becomes more difficult to cross the border, people will take extreme risks, said Jennifer Allen, executive director of Arizona’s Border Action Network.

“People have to rely on smuggling networks. This means that smuggling networks continue to grow and become more costly, and they become more professionalized,” Allen said, adding that she expects smuggling to increase in remote areas.

Said Nestor Rodriguez, a sociology professor at the University of Texas: “What I have learned from talking with migrants is that smugglers try a variety of old and new approaches to cross the border, so I don’t think there is just one approach.”

And another sociologist weighs in…

Unless officials reform immigration laws, though, it doesn’t matter whether border officials step up enforcement, said David Spener, a sociology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio.

“If the past is prologue, this will just mean more danger for migrants and more risky crossings,” Spener said.

Read more.

Miller-McCune ran a story yesterday based on new research presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America this past weekend. Miller-McCune reports, “We’ve long known that high-pressure jobs can be hazardous to one’s health. New research suggests that, for working mothers [especially those who are less-educated], employment-related stress may also be detrimental to their children’s intellectual development.”

Sociologist Amy Hsin, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, and economist Christina Felfe at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, compared assessments of verbal skills of 5- to 12-year-olds with the jobs their mothers held. Those jobs were ranked in terms of stress, with both physical hazards and social pressures taken into account.

High-stress jobs for well-educated mothers included nursing and teaching. Those for less-well-educated mothers included factory work and housecleaning.

“For both less-educated and highly educated mothers, the degree of hazards or social stress experienced at work is negatively correlated with children’s language development,” Hsin reports. The researchers did not find that the stressed-out mothers spend fewer hours with their offspring.

“We find that total time (a mother spends with her child) and time spent on educational activities (i.e. playing, reading, arts and crafts, etc.) do not differ across work conditions,” Hsin said. “We speculate that the source of the problem is less about time per se than the type of interactions that are occurring during time spent together.

“When a woman comes home from a stressful day at work, she may be less patient, less responsive and talk less to her children. Or the type of conversation may be short or even dismissive rather than interactive and engaging.”

The researchers believe better access to intellectually enriching day care and preschool programs is a possible solution to this problem. “Providing affordable, high-quality day care is beneficial for mom, child and family,” Hsin said.

Read more.

Business Week ran a story over the weekend about how the economic meltdown is hitting male-dominated jobs, such as those in car manufacturing and finance, much harder than the service sector, where jobs are more often held by women. 

Good thing they call upon a sociologist to sort this out for their readers…

“In a society where services are becoming increasingly important, women quite simply have the better jobs,” says Hans Bertram, a sociologist at the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Bertram is not at all surprised by the fact that it is men who are worst affected by the crisis. “That was historically always the case, for example when you look at the collapse of the steel and coal industries in the Ruhr industrial region,” he says. Unemployment has always been a part of life in an industrialized country, and belongs to the rhythm of industrial society. “As long as someone is young and strong, he can make good money as a construction worker. But once you are 35 and your body won’t cooperate any more, there are fewer prospects,” Bertram explains.

He thinks it unlikely that, for example, former Opel workers will simply retrain to work in the service sector. “You can’t turn a steel worker into a call center agent,” he says. The service industry usually requires higher qualifications and these are not easily acquired later on in life, he explains.

“The change will only come with the generations,” Bertram says. “Perhaps young men will now more often decide against becoming a mechanic or a construction worker and instead opt to train as a nurse.”

Read more. 

Sociologists have been up in arms over a recent article in the Washington Post by sociologist Mark Regnerus, of the University of Texas at Austin, who claims that women should not delay in getting married.

Regnerus writes,

“Today, as ever, marriage wisely entered into remains good for the economy and the community, good for one’s personal well-being, good for wealth creation and, yes, good for the environment, too;” but that parents do teens a disservice when they “advise our children to complete their education before even contemplating marriage, to launch their careers and become financially independent.”

He also notes that,

“The average age of American men marrying for the first time is now 28. That’s up five full years since 1970 and the oldest average since the Census Bureau started keeping track. If men weren’t pulling women along with them on this upward swing, I wouldn’t be complaining. But women are now taking that first plunge into matrimony at an older age as well.”

Well, this erupted in the sociological blogosphere, specifically on Scatterplot. Shakha writes on Scatterplot,

What have we learned? That women are emotional beings bound by biology and objects of desirability of men. Men, by contrast, need to get good jobs. That may take a while. So men can and should be older than women (they work; women provide childen). “Society” does a disservice to men and women by encouraging them to marry older. You see, people should be married at younger ages because, “Marriage actually works best as a formative institution, not an institution you enter once you think you’re fully formed.”

This has all become very confusing. Apparently women can enter marriage earlier because they’re formed earlier; men are formed later. But marriage itself is not for people how are already formed. I’m lost.

Sociologist Andrew Cherlin published a rebuttal in the Washington Post the following day, entitled “Real Wedding Bell Woes.” He counters many of Regnerus’ claims, and offers additional commentary on the state of marriage in the United States.  Read here.

It seems that the debate about marriage rages on, even amongst sociologists…

The New York Times City Room ran a story about whether or not street vending could help alleviate New York City’s soaring unemployment rate. The article suggests that some members of the City Council as well as advocacy groups think that raising the cap on permits for street vendors might ease joblessness…

Michael Wells, co-director of the Street Vendor Project, said that the city needs to raise the number of permits to handle the surge of people who are looking to make a living. “People call because they have lost their jobs; people call because their husbands have lost their jobs; people call in anticipation of being laid off,” he said at a rally Tuesday morning on the steps of City Hall.

But he said he almost always told them that the chances of securing a legal vending permit was almost next to none. The number of New York street vending licenses for food and merchandise has been capped at fewer than 4,000 for decades — 853 general vending permits and 3,000 food permits citywide — though the Bloomberg administration introduced 1,000 new permits for fruit and vegetable vendors last year.

One sociologist weighs in…

The current set of caps was more or less put into place during the administration of Mayor Edward I. Koch, as part of an effort to clean up the streets, according to Prof. John Garber, a sociologist who has studied New York City street vending.

“They cut the number of vendors permits in half,” said Professor Garber, a who will soon be teaching at the University of Arkansas. “The number of vendors never decreased. The number of illegal vendors increased. It just forced the business of street vending to be illegal.”

“There is an erroneous theory that if you increase the number of street vendors’ permits you increase the number of vendors on the street,” Professor Garber said. “Street vending is bare-bones economics, supply and demand.” He added, “If there is no profit incentive, it doesn’t matter if they have a license or not, they are not going into street peddling.”

His research also found that vendors are often looking for other jobs while they are doing their selling on the street.

Sociologist Mitch Dunier comments on the opposition to street vending…

Opposition to broadening street vending permits comes from a number of directions, said Prof. Mitchell Duneier, a sociologist at Princeton who has also studied street vendors. Many people argue that street vending causes congestion on sidewalks and streets. In fact, the arrival of trucks as a means for delivery prompted a movement against street peddlers and their pushcarts because they “cluttered” the streets. “How much pedestrian congestion is a reasonable amount is frequently a cultural phenomenon of different neighborhoods,” he said. (Chinatown, for example, has a higher tolerance.)

Prof. Duneier added: “There has historically always been a give and take between the business community that is part of the formal economy and the informal economy. Businesspeople who pay rent and taxes are very, very skeptical.”

Garber suggests that this opposition is overstated…

Prof. Garber added that competition is overstated and that in fact, he saw many instances in which street vendor and store were more synergistic. Street vendors generally sell smaller-ticket items, while stores, because of their high-fixed costs for rent, generally try to sell higher-priced items.

“It’s fairly rare for street vendors to compete with store owners,” Professor Garber said. “The direct competition between the two is not really there realistically.” In fact, he noted that street vendors can be good for the city because they provide a sense of safety with vendors and create a urban feel and draw more foot traffic.

Read more.

An article in the Washington Post a few days ago discusses why Americans are leaving their churches. The answer is because of ‘gradual spiritual drift’ rather than disillusionment over church policy. The study offering these new insights illustrates how “spiritual attitudes are taking precedence over denominational traditions.”

About this new research:

The survey, by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, is the first large-scale study of the reasons Americans switch religious affiliations. Researchers found that more than half of people have done so at least once…

Almost three-quarters of Catholics and Protestants who are now unaffiliated with a religion said they had “just gradually drifted away” from their faith. And more than three-quarters of Catholics and half of Protestants currently unassociated with a faith said that over time, they stopped believing in their religion’s teachings.

Pew Forum senior fellow John C. Green said that result surprised researchers, who had expected policy disputes or disillusionment over internal scandals — such as the clergy sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church — to play more of a role in people’s decision to leave a faith. Among former Catholics who became Protestants, one in five cited the sex-abuse scandal as one of several reasons why they had left the church. But only a small percentage — 2 to 3 percent — cited it as the lone reason.

The sociological slant…

The results are a “big indictment” of organized religion, said Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and author of a book on evangelical leaders. “There is a huge, wide-open back door at most churches. Churches around the country may be able to attract people, but they can’t keep them.”

At the same time, the large and growing number of people who report having no religious affiliation are surprisingly open to religion, researchers said. Unlike the popular perception that many have embraced secularism, a significant percentage appeared simply to have put their religiosity on pause — having worshiped as part of at least one faith already, about three in 10 said they have just not yet found the right religion.

Read more.