Category Archives: Science-general

If Only Certain Journalists Could Be so Persuasive

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Warm spring weather and global warming: If only scientists could be so persuasive

Gah. What an unconvincing piece of tripe, which is too bad, because the message itself has a lot of merit.

It’s true that the recent warm winter weather has softened the American public’s stance on global warming, and that a colder winter has/will make them more reluctant to accept. This shows the lack of scientific literacy, in the form of a basic scientific disconnect between weather and climate, that the average person has. It’s also true that scientists should do more in the form of outreach. It’s too bad the article doesn’t connect how the latter would affect the former.

Generally, those who know the most about climate – and other important scientific fields – are locked up in their university ivory towers and conference rooms, speaking a language only they can understand.

And they speak mostly to each other, not to the general public, policymakers, or business people – not to those who can actually make things happen.

This is dangerous. We live in an age when scientific issues permeate our social, economic, and political culture. People must be educated about science and the scientific process if we are to make rational and informed decisions that affect our future. Indeed, a well functioning democracy requires it.

But instead, the relative absence of academics and academic scholarship in the public discourse creates a vacuum into which uninformed, wrong, and downright destructive viewpoints get voiced and take hold.

There are several scientists who are quite vocal in explaining climate change. And what do they get for their trouble? The get verbally attacked and threatened with violence, they get their emails hacked, and the people who have already decided that global warming is a fraud or hoax go right on believing so. The denialist camp can trot out a few “experts” to counter anything that is said in support of climate change, and the discussion is couched in language that subverts the process of science (such as the implication that having any level of uncertainty is a failure, or that because we don’t know everything that we know nothing) The press is complicit in this when they present a false balance to the story by presenting both sides of the issue, giving the impression that the scientists are split equally.

Scientific literacy through general education is another requirement that scientists can’t directly affect, either. You can lead a horse to water, and all that — if you don’t speak the language, any effort to explain details is wasted, but that’s not to say that the attempts aren’t being made. A big problem here is that the average (scientifically illiterate) person can’t tell if it’s shit or shinola — they see or hear some word salad and they think it’s the real deal. And they aren’t motivated to go and learn anything. That, however, is one avenue where outreach can help — getting people excited about science, and getting them to want to become literate.

Which means that people have to make an effort to meet scientists halfway, and improving that requires a very broad effort. It’s not something you can simply blame on scientists residing in their “ivory towers”. But that’s an uphill battle, because if parents don’t value education and scientific literacy, it probably means their kids won’t get the exposure that they need.

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Stephen Colbert Johnson was RIGHT

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Stephen Colbert, Scientific Pioneer

Since it was first coined by Stephen Colbert in 2005, the term has taken on a massive life of its own–coming to mean, in its broadest sense, the problem of people making up their own reality, one just “truthy” enough that they actually believe it.

Frankly, though, most of us only have a “truthy” sense of what “truthiness” actually meant in its original formulation.

That’s why, when I went back and re-watched the original Colbert truthiness segment, I was so stunned. After a year spent researching the psychology of the right for my book The Republican Brain, Colbert’s words took on dramatic new meaning for me. Frankly, it now seems to me that in some ways, Colbert was ahead of the science on this matter–anticipating much of what we are only now coming to know.

…

What does this mean? Simply put, Colbert may have been much more right than he knew in 2005.

More right than he knew? I think Colbert would insist that he was exactly as right as he thought he was.

Do You Have My Back?

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This tweet by @johnroderick is funny but also something I find to be antagonistic, especially when taken in the context of several tweets along the same lines. (Could be it’s the wrong time of day, I need food, or my caffeine levels are wrong, or just that the snark is strong in this one, but…)

Look, nerds, I appreciate you like Star Wars and everything, but WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT GRAVITY IS! #GoBackToDoingScience

Or maybe it’s really just the time of the season, what with all of the politics in the air, and most of it smelling rather foul to me, because of the anti-science taint to it. Science just doesn’t seem to sit well with those on the far right, but this rejection of science is without much thought or true conviction. If one were to really distrust science, one would not be using GPS, which relies on relativity. Or go get a flu shot, as the recurring danger from the flu is a product of evolution. Or get any prescription medications and its oh-so-sciency double-blind testing. Or take advantage a whole host of other improvements that science has afforded us. (The fact that @johnroderick is interested in the nature of gravity probably mean he’s not in that group, but still … Sending us nerds of to do science for him?)

So this whole “get back to doing science” kind of hits me where I live. I’ve seen budgetary fallout from recent events, and I know I’m not alone in that regard. But I also know that a tweet is not a substitute for actual action or activism. I’m a scientist. So I want to know: Do you have my back?

Are you going to fund me? That is, do you recognize the value of research so that you won’t complain that some fraction of a penny from your tax dollar goes to funding science? And that scientists — not politicians, nor religious leaders, nor fat, lying and/or bald pundits, nor even the general public — decide what constitutes good science? You won’t sulk if the results aren’t what you or your ideology want them to be? You won’t pout when the bulk of basic research doesn’t pan out, because investigating the unknown means you — by definition — don’t know what you will find?

If you really want nerds to get back to doing science, provide us with the atmosphere for doing science. Throw those bums who make it unduly difficult to do science out of office. The ones who raise decidedly non-scientific (or unscientific) objections to science. Who wouldn’t know science if it bit them on the ass and said, “I’m science!” The ones in the pocket of anti-science industries. The ones that muffle scientists whose results are inconvenient. Throw them out.

If you want us nerds to do science, you have to let us do science. Otherwise, go do it yourself.

Networking

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On Networking: A rant.

Ok, then! I am told to go up to the people I am interested in meeting, and INTRODUCE MYSELF! We all have name tags! I’m sure it’ll be fine! And I’ll just go up and say who I work for and drop some pithy comment that they will think is totally cool and in line with current perspectives on the field. Then I will smoothly invite them to my poster.

Except it doesn’t go like that at all. You go up to the person you want to meet at a conference or seminar? They WILL be talking to someone else. You can hover and looking annoying or weird, or try to butt in without interrupting and look annoying and weird. They will give you a sideways look to inquire WHY you are interrupting, and inform you with that look that you are annoying and weird.

I have no answers for this. When I was in grad school, I went to a conference or two with my prof, and he was really bad at introducing me/us to people he knew. He was just starting out, so I couldn’t drop his name when I was at a conference alone — few people knew him. So I really developed no contacts in grad school. I, too, felt the awkwardness of trying to introduce myself (and try not to forget that now that I’m in a more senior situation). My best progress was made at conferences where I gave a talk, because there were a few people who would come up to me afterwards to discuss details, and you have an excuse to talk to others who spoke in the same session, because they are now quite likely to know who you are and should be working in similar fields if you are speaking in the same session.

In my current job, there was a deliberate attempt to have me give talks at conferences when I first started, to give me exposure, and so that people would identify me as being with our group. That’s part of a much better atmosphere of having colleagues who introduce me to people they know.

There’s also part of networking where the people come to you — lab visits and seminars/colloquia, where you can have your professor make the introductions. Once you’ve done that, the second meeting (perhaps at a conference) is easier, since you can mention that you’ve already met and remind them of the circumstances. Even if they don’t remember, you’ve still gotten yourself into a conversation.

This

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THIS is why we invest in science. This.

There is no way you could’ve predicted beforehand that investing in NASA would have led to the creation of this specific innovation in life-saving technology. But it’s a rock-solid guarantee that investing in science always leads to innovations that have far-ranging and critical benefits to our lives.

This is true of all science. There is no way to know, ahead of time, what discoveries will be made in basic research, whether applied research will yield a useable result, or what other applications other smart people will find from such discoveries. The principle of unintended consequences isn’t always a negative.

Science research is an investment. Short-changing is short-sighted.

A Conjuror Makes a Great Companion

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Why Magicians Are a Scientist’s Best Friend

[I]t is long overdue that my peers in the conjuring profession try to take a more active role in the elimination of nonsense science by joining forces with scientists, and that scientists be open to the proposition.

Please bear with me while I offer you a peek behind the curtain, a cursory glance at what we magicians are — and aren’t. First, we’re entertainers, actors, showbiz people who have as our primary objective the delight of our audiences. We’re deceivers, yes, taking on roles and characters to express our art, just as any actor does.

Stop Deifying Peer Review

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Stop deifying “peer review” of journal publications

I would like to add my two cents now – focusing on the exalted status some give to peer reviewed journal articles. I have three main concerns with this attitude which can be summarized as follows
1. Peer review is not magic
2. Peer review is not binary
3. Peer review is not static.

In general discussion, a peer-reviewed article is often a better citation than a mainstream/pop-sci article, but one has to acknowledge that peer-review simply means that some professionals have looked at it and found no (obvious) errors in the work. Mistakes can be made, things can be overlooked. Even without that, peer-review doesn’t mean the results are true. The full process of scientific inquiry means others have to replicate the work somehow, if it’s experiment, or test the work, if it’s theory. As the article says, this is a continual process, and as I’ve said before, every experiment is a test of the principles that underlie it.

Writing About Science, When You’re Not A Scientist

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The Promise & Pitfalls of Public Outreach Part 2: Writing About Science, When You’re Not A Scientist

I’m often surprised by how much scientists think the general public knows about their fields of study. For example, a researcher I was interviewing recently said “Surely most people know what tissue engineering is?” Actually, I think most people probably have no idea what tissue engineering is. We have to explain it to them.

What is This 'Science' of Which You Speak?

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Trials and errors: Why science is failing us

This assumption — that understanding a system’s constituent parts means we also understand the causes within the system — is not limited to the pharmaceutical industry or even to biology. It defines modern science. In general, we believe that the so-called problem of causation can be cured by more information. Scientists refer to this process as reductionism. By breaking down a process, we can see how everything fits together; the complex mystery is distilled into a list of ingredients.

There’s quite a bit that bothers me about this article. There are elements of truth to some of the critique, but the extrapolation doesn’t work. There’s no denying that reductionism is present and prevalent in science, but science is also pragmatic. You use the approach that works, up to the point that it doesn’t work. Scientists are aware of nonlinear phenomena, of chaos, of complexity in systems with multiple variables and also that correlation and causation aren’t the same thing — you may still have to look for an underlying cause.

The example of the red and blue ball film seems to me to be an example of people applying basic model — we expect things to be causal. We notice deviations from natural motion in animations, and it bother us a bit. We interpret data in the context of the science we know. The discovery here is that the animations are not reflecting reality. You recognize that (or not) and proceed. So it seems to me that this was more of a psychological/cognition test than a critique of science.

Another issue is using medical research as a proxy for all of science; there’s a lot of medical advice that seems to be based on conventional wisdom — a physician finds something that works, and that becomes a treatment, but while there’s plenty of science in medicine, it is not the best example of science in action.

The study concluded that, in most cases, “the discovery of a bulge or protrusion on an MRI scan in a patient with low back pain may frequently be coincidental”.

This is not the way things are supposed to work. We assume that more information will make it easier to find the cause, that seeing the soft tissue of the back will reveal the source of the pain, or at least some useful correlations.

My strong objection here is that this is exactly the way science is supposed to work. You have some data and you formulate a hypothesis and you check it. You have more information, but that new information is finding out that you were wrong. This doesn’t invalidate the method — it vindicates it!

The real story here is that complex science is hard to do. Research is full of false leads and blind alleys (and metaphors for such things) and subtle interactions. There are limitations in looking for correlations, but we are limited to piecing together what we are able to observe in finding out the underlying rules of nature. That’s science. As we learn more, it’s getting harder to push the boundaries. But if it’s failing us, what’s the alternative?