A mathematical tool is offered to evaluate the likelihood, in light of the Breitbart disclosure, that Mr. Obama was born in the United States.
How ought one evaluate the evidentiary significance of the 1991 literary agency promotional booklet claiming that their client Barack Obama was born in Kenya?
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Those who are unfamiliar with Bayes' theorem may be interested to know that is has wide application in sciences including biology, physics, criminology, and much else besides. With apologies to those already comfortable with the theorem, let us begin considering the impact of the booklet with respect to judgments regarding Mr. Obama's birthplace by considering that aspect of the theorem known as the "prior probability."
What Bayes' theorem does is allow one to calculate the probability of an event by adding new information to the information one begins with. In Bayesian analysis, the information one begins with is called the "prior probability." This prior probability is then "updated" with additional information. In our analysis, the update consists in information contained in the promotional booklet. The prior probability can be specified in several ways; essentially, though, it is the probability that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya irrespective of the booklet.
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What then shall we say about the prior probability p(A) that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya? There are many who take themselves to be certain that he was born in Hawaii. It is reasonable to ask such persons what, if anything, in life is truly certain. It is also reasonable to point out that such persons are also saying that there is no evidence that could possibly come to light that would prompt them to change their minds. Is that a reasonable position to hold?
Probably not, so all else equal, it is rational to exclude such persons from the discussion (and they probably have not read this far anyway).
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At this point, reasonable people will ask themselves just how compelling they think the evidence favorable to Mr. Obama is. Many will find it extremely compelling. If you're one of them, can you, at least approximately, quantify your judgment?
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To do this, Bayes' Theorem directs us to compare the probability that the promotional booklet says Mr. Obama was born in Kenya under the supposition that he really was born in Kenya (p (B/A)) with the probability that the promotional booklet says Mr. Obama was born in Kenya given that he was born in the United States (p (B/-A)), and then view this comparison in light of the prior.
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So, unless we can say Kenya was unusual from a probabilistic standpoint in connection with the representations of literary agents and/or that literary agencies have become less reliable over time, we can frame the immediate inquiry as: how likely is it that an autobiographical client's literary agency will correctly state that they were born in the country they were in fact born in?
I daresay they will be accurate in the above sense 9999 times out of 10000, and even that strikes the present writer as rather, shall we say, "unappreciative" of the accuracy of literary agents. That is, when they choose to specify a place of birth for an autobiographical client, they almost always get it right, do they not?
Let us identify a probability of .9999 as the likelihood that the booklet would say Mr. Obama was born in Kenya under the supposition that he was born in Kenya.
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To be exact, Mr. Obama's campaign says that "the mistake in the pamphlet was 'nothing more than a fact-checking error' by the agent [Ms. Gonderich]."
This echoes quite well Ms. Gonderich's statement that "[t]his was nothing more than a fact checking error by me -- an agency assistant at the time. There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. Mr. Obama never suggested in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii."
So Ms. Goderich did not receive information that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya from Mr. Obama. Perhaps, then, Ms. Goderich declared that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya as a result of some stray rumor, or perhaps Ms. Goderich for some unknown reason inferred that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya because his father was? What else could account for a literary agent's (and one responsible for an autobiography, at that) mistaken assumption that someone born in the United States was born in Kenya if the agent was not led to the conclusion in one way or another?
How likely is it that a random error like the one asserted by Mr. Obama's campaign and Ms. Goderich explains the mistake of stating that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya if in fact he was born in the United States?
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.... and, lastly, if you once again set the probability that the booklet would say he was from Kenya if he in fact was at .9999, your updated probability that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya is an astonishing .502, or 50.2%, as anyone who consults Bayes' Theorem can confirm for themselves. Thus, the booklet information would prompt you to move from judging that Mr. Obama is about as likely to have been born in Kenya as the Colts are to win the Super Bowl next year to concluding that Mr. Obama is more likely than not to have been born in Kenya.
Paradoxically, if you believe the Obama campaign, and therefore Ms. Goderich's statement that Mr. Obama never suggested in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii, under Bayes' Theorem it becomes more likely, not less likely, that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya.
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It follows under the supposition of intentional misrepresentation that if one wishes to make a rational case for the belief that the promotional booklet's declaration that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya has nothing much to do with the likelihood that he really was, one should either provide good reasons for thinking that Mr. Obama had good reasons to misrepresent his place of birth, but only to his literary agency, or make a reasonable attempt to locate another document -- itself obviously not dispositive of the issue and also independent of literary agency processes -- paradoxically indicating that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya.
That is, if Mr. Obama did, contrary to his campaign's current statement, intentionally misrepresent his place of birth to his literary agent but did not have good reasons to restrict his misrepresentation to just his literary agent, do we not have reason to expect that there are other documents, independent of literary agency processes, that indicate a Kenyan birth?
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If one believes the Obama campaign, then, if one is to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Obama is more likely than not to have been born in Kenya and at the same time be reasonable, one should provide reason for believing at least one of the following three things, and even then things will depend on probabilities assigned to remaining items, if any:
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Is the birther position at present unreasonable? Surely not; in fact, it may well be the most reasonable position to adopt even if you still think you had very good reasons to the contrary in advance of the promotional booklet's release.
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Finally, the reason why evidence that disfavors Obama was not included in the article is that the case conservatives make is even stronger if it can win even when it makes serious concessions to the other side, right?
Jason Kissner Ph.D., J.D. is associate professor of criminology, California State University, Fresno.