Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
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Question: A much e-mailed piece about pink-clad prisoners of the Maricopa County Jail was extracted from a July 2003 Associated Press offering about the Summer 2003 heat wave’s effect on the Phoenix area. Those few paragraphs devoted to describing the condition of the inmates held in that jail went on to be widely circulated on the Internet although they formed only the smallest portion of the original piece, an article that described the air’s heat creating turbulence for airplanes overhead, car windshields shattering or falling out, dogs burning their paws on the pavement, and candles melting indoors:  It’s even hotter than usual in Phoenix, the Associated Press reports: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts. On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks. “It feels like you are in a furnace,” said James Zanzo’t, an inmate who has lived in the tents for 1 1/2 years. “It’s inhumane.” Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, is not sympathetic. He said Wednesday that he told the inmates: “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your mouths. ” KIND OF PUTS THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE DOESN’T IT? A clue as to the ‘why’ of the selective quoting is contained in the tagline now often part of the forwards: “Kind of puts things in perspective doesn’t it?” Someone was struck by the comparison of the kvetching prisoners to the (presumed uncomplaining) troops serving in Iraq, and was moved to excerpt only that portion of the article to share with others. That the forward has proved as popular as it has shows the comparison resonates with a great many. The U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq may well be bona fide tough-as-nails servicemen, but at least in our mental image of them we also need them to be larger than life. We like to think of them as lantern-jawed heroes coolly dealing with the impossible situation that is Iraq without giving so much as a thought to their personal safety or even letting as little as a complaining word fall from their lips about the miserable conditions they must endure during that tour of duty. The juxtaposition of these brave soldiers to the societal dregs that wash up into a county jail is thus eminently satisfying to contemplate — it’s the comparison of giants to ants, working to exalt the one even as it makes the other look petty and small. Yet if the prisoners housed in Arizona’s Maricopa County tent city jails were complaining, they had some good reasons. At that facility the incarcerated were fed only two meals a day, with green bologna sometimes appearing on the menu. They were quartered in outdoor tents under sweltering conditions, and they slept on cots which lack pillows. They worked on chain gangs. And they wore pink underwear. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of the “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your mouths” quote, reveled in the sobriquet ‘America’s Toughest Sheriff.’ He enjoyed a very high voter approval rating for a time and had little trouble being re-elected to his post multiple times. He was a controversial figure, vilified by some and worshipped by others. In June 2004 the e-mailed excerpt from the July 2003 Associated Press article circulated anew on the Internet, this time prefaced as follows:  This is the way he is, and he has been re-elected several times … Sheriff Joe Arpaio (in Arizona) is doing it RIGHT!! : He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them. He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights. Cut off all but “G” movies. He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn’t get sued for discrimination. He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only let in the Disney channel and the weather channel. When asked why the weather channel he replied, so they will know how hot it’s gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs. He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value. When the inmates complained, he told them…. this is a good one……”This isn’t the Ritz/Carlton. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.” He bought Newt Gingrich’ lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place. You have to love this guy!! More on the AZ Sheriff … [at this point, the text quoted above was repeated]  With one exception (which could simply amount to no more than our not having yet found the right supporting articles), the claims made in the 2004 preface checked out. Sheriff Joe Arpaio did ban  smoking, coffee, pornographic magazines, movies, and unrestricted television in all his jails. Those incarcerated in his tent city jail did indeed work on chain gangs, pull weeds for the city and county, clear brush, and the like. In 1996 the Sheriff put the nation’s first female chain gang to work. Although the e-mailed account made it sound as if he did so out of fear of prosecution for discrimination, there was no such threat lurking in the background — he chose that course of action because it suited his beliefs: “I don’t believe in discrimination in my jail system. Crime knows no gender and neither should punishment,” he said. Regarding the claim about his airing a Newt Gingrich lecture series on the jail’s television system, in 1995 the controversial lawman used canteen funds to buy the Republican House speaker’s 10-part, $150 video lecture series with the intent of piping it into the inmates’ cells. When asked if he’d also be providing those in his charge with a lecture series done by a Democrat, he replied in the negative. “For one thing I don’t know of any,” he said. “And some people might say these guys already got enough of those ideas.” He was also proud of having lowered the cost of feeding inmates in his care. Though assorted news articles quoted slightly differing figures, a 40¢ per serving expenditure was the one most often touted. “It costs more to feed our police dogs than our inmates. The dogs never committed a crime, and they’re working for a living,” Arpaio said. In 1998 Arpaio instituted a policy of charging inmates for their meals, levying a dollar-a-day tariff against each of those incarcerated. In 1994 he banned coffee from the Maricopa County Jail, but he did so not because of its lack of nutritional value, but to protect inmates and guards from hot-coffee assaults by other inmates and to lower costs. (By eliminating the estimated 5,000 cups of coffee served daily for 5,400 inmates, it was expected the county would save $94,158 a year.) The one item we have yet to validate is the assertion that Arpaio deprived inmates of cable TV until discovery that such act was in violation of a federal court order. We’ve yet to locate this order or to confirm that television programming was ever denied those in his care. It is on record, however, that inmates in his charge view only selected programming, such as what’s on The Weather Channel. (“I think my chain gang deserves to know how hot it is when they hit the streets,” said Arpaio.) In September 2007 the following e-mail forwards about Sheriff Arpaio began to circulate:   Sheriff Joe is at it again. Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said “Okay.” The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who’d like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them placed in dog shows. The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Now he’s in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural that has a special hotline phone number painted on it, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn’t doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border. Although Sheriff Joe Arpaio did not (as implied above) take over the operations of the entire Maricopa County Animal Care & Control (MCACC) department, he was instrumental in the opening of the Maricopa Animal Safe Hospice (MASH), a no-kill animal shelter operated by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) in what was formerly Phoenix’s First Avenue Jail. The MASH is a facility dedicated to caring for rescued animals that have been abused or neglected (as well as temporarily caring for the pets of owners who have checked into domestic violence shelters):  Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s no-kill animal shelter, MASH, was created to house and care for animals that have been abused or neglected by their caretakers and rescued by the Animal Cruelty Investigative Unit. The purpose of the shelter is to provide a safe, healthy and healing shelter for these tragic animals, who must necessarily await the outcome of their owners’ cruelty cases in court. Hopefully, their ultimate outcome will be adoption into loving, permanent homes. The first shelter opened by Sheriff Arpaio is in the First Avenue Jail, located at First Avenue and Madison Street, Phoenix, Arizona. This 30-year-old jail previously held inmates, but was closed for repairs to plumbing in December 1999. Though no longer suitable for housing inmates, the jail looks like paradise to the four-footed victims now housed and recovering there. The MASH location in the First Avenue Jail is air-conditioned, and the cells have been reconditioned to comfortably house animals. In July 2007 Sheriff Arpaio launched a hot line for calling in tips and information about people living and working in Maricopa County illegally. Then in September 2007 he unveiled “moving billboards” in the form of four trucks and eight inmate passenger vans plastered with the hot line number and signs reading “Do Not Illegally Enter” and “Help Sheriff Joe Arpaio Fight Illegal Immigration and Trafficking.”  Critics contend that this move constitutes racial profiling; Sheriff Arpaio maintains that his signs say nothing about ethnic backgrounds: “It says illegal immigration and trafficking. I don’t care where they’re from.” Sheriff Arpaio finally stepped down after losing a re-election bid to Democrat Paul Penzone in 2016.

Answer: An Arizona sheriff dismissed prisoners' bellyaching about the heat by pointing out that soldiers serving in Iraq cope with similar conditions.


Question: The study evaluated the combined effect of six lifestyle habits on prostate cancer mortality. Those six factors were, as described in the journal article: “not currently smoking or quit 10 or more years ago, body mass index under 30 kg/m2, high vigorous physical activity, high intake of tomatoes and fatty fish, and low intake of processed meat.” It’s tough to put a price tag on those lifestyle choices. How much does “high vigorous physical activity” cost? How much does it cost to avoid eating processed meat? It would be easy to say this category doesn’t apply. But the release does address the issue, saying the study findings underscore “the ongoing need for more effective prevention measures and policies to increase exercise, improve diet quality and reduce tobacco use in our population….It takes co-operation and effort from multiple areas, like insurance companies, employers, policy makers and city planners, to figure out how to creatively support and encourage more exercise into most busy adults’ working day.” Recognizing the need for policies that support these lifestyle changes is important — and addresses the cost issue in a meaningful way. This is where things get a little tricky. The research described in this journal article looked at data from two different studies: the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS) and the Physicians’ Health Study (PHS). The HPFS tracked 42,701 men from 1986-2010. The PHS tracked 20,324 men from 1982-2010. The release (and journal article) explain that the researchers used the HPFS data to develop a “healthy lifestyle score,” and then applied that score to the men in the PHS to see if it predicted whether someone would contract a lethal form of prostate cancer. The researchers identified the number of lethal cases of prostate cancer in each group to calculate benefits. The release states: “Participants with 5 to 6 points [the highest scores] in the HPFS had a 68 percent decreased risk of lethal prostate cancer[,] and a 38 percent decreased risk was observed in the [PHS] for the same comparison.” Several points to make here. First, the ‘healthy’ group appeared to have been compared to the ‘least healthy’ group (score 0-1) and not all the other groups combined. This was noted in the published results but not mentioned in the release. That’s important. Second, the release does not note (but the journal article does) that the 38 percent decreased risk seen in the PHS was not found to be statistically significant. That’s also an important distinction. Third, this is the relative reduced risk, and doesn’t tell readers what the actual, absolute reduction of risk is. The release doesn’t address harms. But the lifestyle choices at issue here are (for the most part) so broadly defined that it would be difficult to say what the harms would be. What harms are associated with eating tomatoes, avoiding processed meats, or not smoking? We’ll rate this one not applicable. The release does a good job of explaining what is a somewhat complicated study design. The study is basically an analysis of data drawn from two large, previous studies — and the release describes the overall sample size, age range, and length of those two studies. But the language used to describe the results is inappropriate. Since this was an analysis of observational study data that’s unable to prove cause and effect, it’s misleading to use active verbs to describe the results. The release does this in several places: It’s more appropriate to state that these habits were “associated with” reduced risk — not that the habits “save lives” or “cut” risk. Another thing that’s not clearly explained to readers (as noted above) is what it means to develop a lifestyle scoring system based on one study’s data set, and then apply that scoring system to a second data set, when the results section is provided for both data sets. It’s confusing. We’d encourage public affairs specialists preparing news releases and reporters using them as their initial sources to focus more on the limitations of this type of research. Sometimes referred to as “data dredging,” it’s basically finding statistically significant results only by chance. In this case it’s a statistic of a statistic (up to 47% of cancer cases could be prevented with these lifestyle interventions). No disease mongering here. Funding sources were clearly identified, and there are no clear conflicts of interest. Things get tricky again here. As the release notes, most prostate cancers don’t metastasize and aren’t life threatening. But some do metastasize and can be fatal. Are there different types of prostate cancer, just like there are different types of flu? Are there genetic factors that affect risk? Readers would have benefited from that information. And we suppose that the release could have also mentioned other dietary or lifestyle factors that might help reduce risk that were not considered in the paper. However, the range of healthy behaviors discussed here is pretty broad, and it seems excessive to expect the release to address an entire laundry list of possibilities. We’ll give this a Satisfactory rating. The study was limited to a relatively high level income group and the interventions may not be attainable for all men, in all socioeconomic groups. Does partaking of vigorous physical exercise on a regular basis require access to a gym or just a high degree of motivation? Are tomatoes and fish attainable year round for all socioeconomic groups? The study addresses this to some extent when it says, “It takes co-operation and effort from multiple areas, like insurance companies, employers, policy makers and city planners, to figure out how to creatively support and encourage more exercise into most busy adults’ working day.” We’ll award a Satisfactory here. There are a lot — a lot — of papers out there on lifestyle choices and prostate cancer. In fact, the opening sentences in the abstract for the journal article says as much, while articulating what sets this research apart: “Several lifestyle factors have been associated with risk of lethal prostate cancer, but little is known about their combined effect. Our objective was to develop and apply a lifestyle score for prevention of lethal prostate cancer.” However, the release does not acknowledge all of the existing work on lifestyle and prostate cancer, and therefore fails to highlight how this paper fits into that broad body of work. Apart from the cause-and-effect statements addressed above, there is no unjustifiable language used here.

Answer: Working up a sweat may protect men from lethal prostate cancer


Question: The company declined to discuss details in the so-called  not approvable letter from the Food and Drug Administration. It  would not comment on whether the agency had asked for further  data or new clinical trials. The drug, which was expected to be called Cordaptive,  combines long-acting niacin with a new drug that prevents the  flushing side effect common to niacin — an uncomfortable  sensation of burning in the face and neck that leads many  patients to discontinue taking it. Analysts widely expected the drug to be approved,  especially after a committee of European regulators last week  recommended it be cleared for sale there. The rejection was another blow for Merck, whose share price  has fallen about 30 percent this year amid a controversy and  debate over the effectiveness of the cholesterol drugs its  sells in a joint venture with Schering-Plough Corp. The FDA decision should be a boon to Abbott Laboratories,  whose franchise of niacin-based cholesterol drugs would have  been in direct competition with Merck’s proposed new entry into  the lucrative market. Abbott shares rose 2.7 percent following the Merck news. Deutsche Bank analyst Barbara Ryan called the news a  disappointment. “We expected the drug to get approved,” she said. “It’s not  going to have any impact on the earnings outlook for this year,  but certainly as we go out in time they could have had an  important contribution from the drug.”    Merck said it would meet with the FDA to submit additional  information to enable the agency to further evaluate the  benefit/risk profile of the drug, which it has gone back to  calling MK-0524A after the FDA also rejected the prospective  brand name Cordaptive. “We firmly believe that MK-0524A provides physicians with  an important option to manage their patients’ cholesterol,”  Merck’s research chief Peter Kim said in a statement. The company said it did not yet know when a meeting with  FDA officials might take place. In clinical trials, the laropiprant component of the drug  demonstrated an ability to significantly reduce the flushing  effect of niacin. It had been hoped the combination would  enable patients to tolerate niacin at a dose that provides the  most therapeutic benefit. Despite the setback, Merck reaffirmed the 2008 forecast it  issued last week and reiterated confidence in meeting its goal  of double-digit annual earnings per share growth through 2010,  excluding certain items. Some analysts believed that Cordaptive and a planned  follow-up combination drug that also includes Merck’s bad  cholesterol lowering Zocor could eventually garner $1 billion  to $2 billion in annual sales. Merck shares fell to $39.40 in extended trading from their  New York Stock Exchange close at $41.44, while Abbott shares  climbed to $53 from the NYSE close at $51.61.

Answer:
Merck says FDA rejects its new cholesterol drug.