Category Archives: Science-general

Avoiding the Hobgoblins

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and the foolish consistency they represent.

Flying Flux: The Dullness of Details

I think it behooves writers to make technical documentation fun by embedding a few surprises here and there for the unsuspecting reader. Just like how chip designers used to embed artwork in their chips (I’ve done so myself), writers of technical documents should try to slip in a bit of flowery language from time to time.

For example, let’s look at the following sentence:

Original: Jitter degradation is most sensitive to supply noise between 20 MHz to 80 MHz.

[…]

Simile: The 20-80 MHz supply noise’s effect on the clock edges’ accuracy is like a well-endowed woman doing jumping jacks.

Not Quite the Red Badge of Courage

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Via the Heisenbergian one, I discover the Science Scout Merit Badges

The “I blog about science” badge. Obviously
The “science deprives me of my bed” badge (LEVEL II) Two week at Cornell’s Nanofabrication Lab (NNF)
The “broken heart for science” badge I just had to go to grad school …
The “non-explainer” badge (LEVEL I) My mom still introduces me as a nuclear physicist
The “what I do for science dictates my having to wash my hands before I use the toilet” badge. On occasion …
The “works with acids” badge. HF scares me, but I used it at the NNF
The “I’ve set fire to stuff” badge (LEVEL III) ’nuff said
The “experienced with electrical shock” badge (LEVEL III) I remember “locating” the 400V leads to the piezo stack on the confocal cavity while adjusting some optics
The “I’ve done science with no conceivable practical application” badge. TRIUMF
The “I work with way too much radioactivity, and yet still no discernable superpowers yet” badge. TRIUMF again, and time in 5 nuclear power plants while in the navy
The “has frozen stuff just to see what happens” badge (LEVEL III) Ah, the joys of Liquid nitrogen
The “destroyer of quackery” badge. Got my start at talk.origins on USENET
The “inappropriate nocturnal use of lab equipment in the name of alternative science experimentation / communication” badge. If you’ve got it, use it!

Let's Teach Adults, Too

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How to Teach a Child to Argue

And let’s face it: Our culture has lost the ability to usefully disagree. Most Americans seem to avoid argument. But this has produced passive aggression and groupthink in the office, red and blue states, and families unable to discuss things as simple as what to watch on television. Rhetoric doesn’t turn kids into back-sassers; it makes them think about other points of view.

I had long equated arguing with fighting, but in rhetoric they are very different things. An argument is good; a fight is not. Whereas the goal of a fight is to dominate your opponent, in an argument you succeed when you bring your audience over to your side. A dispute over territory in the backseat of a car qualifies as an argument, for example, in the unlikely event that one child attempts to persuade his audience rather than slug it.

Teaching kids how to argue properly presumes that the parents know how to argue, which I don’t think is generally the case. But that’s a rant for another post.

Honor thy Scientists?

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why you should honor thy scientists

[I]t’s not just zealots who will equate scientific methodology with theistic dogmatism. In an attempt to appear completely objective and beyond any charge of bias, some writers will give equal importance to every opinion with seemingly no regard for whether it’s right or wrong. They think that by giving a biologist who’s life was spent researching evolution and a random televangelist the same weight in their articles will make them insightful reporters who diligently consider every side of a story. But the truth is that not everything you hear is accurate and if you’re reporting an incorrect assumption without actually doing your homework and noting that it’s wrong, you’re not an objective reporter or analyst. You’re a scribe afraid of being called biased.

Not-so-Great Expectations

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Gendered expectations in teaching

[T]he expectations of how a male versus female instructor will behave are actually quite different. One of the papers I read discussed the fact that they interviewed students after they filled out evaluations (where a male versus a female teacher were rated and came out the same, quantitatively). It turns out that while the teachers were rated the same, the students have obvious differences in expectations. It came out that female instructors were available outside of class for more time than male instructors, but that they were still viewed as not being sufficiently accessible outside of class. In other words, students expected that female instructors should be willing to put in more time outside of class to help students in order to rate as well as male instructors who put in less time. If you think about the implications, it basically means that women will often have to do more work to get the same ratings.

Evidence of Things Not Seen

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Until you do a CAT scan.

NYT: Autopsies of War Dead Reveal Ways to Save Others

Col. Howard T. Harcke, a 71-year-old Marine Corps radiologist who delayed retirement to read CT scans at Dover, noticed something peculiar in late 2005. The emergency treatment for a collapsed lung involves inserting a needle and tube into the chest cavity to relieve pressure and allow the lung to reinflate. But in one case, Colonel Harcke could see from a scan that the tube was too short to reach the chest cavity. Then he saw another case, and another, and half a dozen more.

In an interview, Colonel Harcke said it was impossible to tell whether anyone had died because the tubes were too short; all had other severe injuries. But a collapsed lung can be life-threatening, so proper treatment is essential.

Colonel Harcke pulled 100 scans from the archives and used them to calculate the average thickness of the chest wall in American troops; he found that the standard tubing, five centimeters long, was too short for 50 percent of the troops. If the tubing was lengthened to eight centimeters, it would be long enough for 99 percent.

“Soldiers are bigger and stronger now,” Colonel Harcke said.

The findings were presented to the Army Surgeon General, who in August 2006 ordered that the kits given to combat medics be changed to include only the longer tubing.

This reminds me of a story, possibly apocryphal, of a study done in WWII. The army wanted more armor on bombers to protect them, but needed to be selective about where it was placed, lest the speed and/or range suffer too much. And they didn’t really want to take planes in production to test them, since they were all needed in battle. So some people analyzed the damage pattern of planes that returned from missions. They assumed that anti-aircraft bursts were basically random, so the pattern of damage from returning aircraft indicated non-critical harm, and were areas that didn’t need reinforcing — it was the gaps in the pattern which indicated the fatal hits. and that was where additional armor would do the most good.

Harrison Wasn't a Solo Artist?

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‘Lone’ longitude genius may have had help

The story of John Harrison the “lone genius” who solved the problem of finding longitude at sea is in urgent need of a rewrite.

Discoveries made during repairs to Harrison’s first successful “sea clock” – completed in 1735 – suggest that others contributed to his pioneering timepieces. “Harrison is always cast as a self-taught lone genius pitted against the establishment. The truth is, that is a great over-simplification,” says horologist Jonathan Betts of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London.

I think the idea that equating “lone genius” with “never talked to anyone about their work” is quite a reach. It’s been a while since I read Longitude, but I don’t recall having the impression that Harrison never sought out others to learn things. At what point are you no longer working alone? If you have a bottle-washer? If you don’t smelt your own brass?

A Great Un-Idea

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Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine

Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine is ready to receive manuscripts on all aspects of unexpected, controversial, provocative and/or negative results/conclusions in the context of current tenets, providing scientists and physicians with responsible and balanced information to support informed experimental and clinical decisions.

One of the reasons that the popular press report studies that have come out with surprising, but ultimately wrong, results is that you’re going to get that 3-sigma outlier 5% of the time, and without a baseline of null results you might assume that the outlier is, in fact, typical. It’s only after the “Cold Poison Good for You!” headline that it’s worthwhile to publicize the contrary (and expected) result. And who would have published that study, before now?