tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59307587188480404282024-02-07T21:57:04.005-08:00How Do We KnowReflections on Scientific Thinking with Stories, History and Philosophy.stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-86431347611595321772021-02-27T07:16:00.011-08:002021-02-27T08:15:46.383-08:00 Saturday, February 27, 2021 Virologist Maurice Hilleman and His Vaccines<p>I recently listened to the Radio Lab podcast below about Maurice Hilleman. If you don't recognize the name, he was credited with creating vaccines for 9 diseases and saving around 8 million people EVERY YEAR, enough to actually add TEN years to Human life expectancy globally, one science writer said. Many think he was the most important scientist in medicine in the 20th Century. And behind his achievements is an interesting character, a personal story.</p><p>What caught my attention was the gap between his accomplishments, the impact and relevance of his work, and his apparent lack of prominence in public memory. I had never even heard of him. I thought that was kind of amazing, especially with recent attention on virology and vaccines. Was I just ignorant (a real possibility)? Or is he relatively unknown?</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a name='more'></a></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtE415SiXtg6sbC4_jBneQtf4StJSW9gp1lq6o2m2PpfuseKqMCKJOgS5Nu3ZavJ8iIFlDxESa4IHnGgnbQaYwgmhw_5A9nTNPLGi3zK8MbwUZ4VFiZ_E-tq7VCVT_pbnhZZJ48DNnyvub/s424/science-hilleman-maurice-light-blue.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="290" data-original-width="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtE415SiXtg6sbC4_jBneQtf4StJSW9gp1lq6o2m2PpfuseKqMCKJOgS5Nu3ZavJ8iIFlDxESa4IHnGgnbQaYwgmhw_5A9nTNPLGi3zK8MbwUZ4VFiZ_E-tq7VCVT_pbnhZZJ48DNnyvub/s320/science-hilleman-maurice-light-blue.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />I love stories of science like this. He was clearly driven, with a reputation at work for being a pretty demanding taskmaster. Amongst other researchers, he reportedly swore quite a lot and resisted some kind of “sensitivity training course” offered at Merck, one colleague remembered, dismissing it as tantamount to “parochial school." On the other hand, at home, he was apparently a gentle and loving father and husband. He clearly had a huge ego. But that was not the point. Outside of virology and infectious disease circles, he didn’t really seek attention or promote himself. He was motivated by the science itself, rewards that were intrinsic to the work he did. Perhaps that’s why he’s not better known.<p></p><p>At the end of an astounding career he once said, “Looking back over one’s lifetime you say, ‘Gee, what have I done? Have I done enough for the world to justify having been here?’ You know, that’s a big worry for people from Montana at least.” </p><p>His wife Lorainne explained in the film linked below, “ 'The world should be better for you having been in it,' he always said. Everybody should make some kind of contribution, no matter how small.” </p><p>Hilleman continued, “There’s a great joy in being useful. That’s the satisfaction that you get out of it. Other than that, it’s about the quest for science and winning the battle against these DAMN bugs, you know? That’s the scientists’ war. And when there’s a spin-off to help Mankind? Fine. I like that.”</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXCz4mOES5QRlUdEF1smOB8BwHymyUeCl0ieb_FrESM9XD_rxAQKb2af9pX0DY8to7dGE2_lIYXnPhMqcvkuWNSEloUKPusaXD6rpnuAJ4ssSFU9QfoZev4bJERgScN0c9tHKDkpiZeIUV/s356/science-hilleman-maurice-portrait.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="267" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXCz4mOES5QRlUdEF1smOB8BwHymyUeCl0ieb_FrESM9XD_rxAQKb2af9pX0DY8to7dGE2_lIYXnPhMqcvkuWNSEloUKPusaXD6rpnuAJ4ssSFU9QfoZev4bJERgScN0c9tHKDkpiZeIUV/s320/science-hilleman-maurice-portrait.jpg" /></a></div><br />I like that too. We could use a dose of that “right stuff” for the American psyche these days.<p></p><p>If you'd like to learn more, here is the <a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/great_vaccinator" target="_blank">Radio Lab podcast</a>. Naturally, if you don’t listen to any else, listen to this one; Jad Abumrad is just a phenomenal science writer and producer. Phenomenal.</p><p>There is a <a href="https://vimeo.com/ondemand/hilleman" target="_blank">film</a> you can rent but I didn't watch it yet.</p><p>Here are a couple of bios from <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC557162/" target="_blank">NIH</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Hilleman" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> and a <a href="https://hillemanfilm.com/dr-hilleman" target="_blank">website for the film</a>.</p><p>There is also a decent, short, <a href="https://vimeo.com/357673419" target="_blank">free film about him on Vimeo</a>.</p><p>The Radio Lab podcast mentioned <a href="https://vaccinemakers.org/resources/videos-animations" target="_blank">this site about vaccine "makers"</a> too, which has a lot of material on the science of vaccines and vaccine development as well.</p><p>Finally, I found <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3cszmv5" target="_blank">this audio about Hilleman</a> from the BBC while I was trolling for info about Hilleman on This Week in Virology (TWiV). (Side note: <a href="https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/" target="_blank">TWiV</a> is another awesome, awesome podcast chock full of real scientists talking about their actual work in virology amidst the pandemic.)</p>stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-20004474031617731152019-06-26T07:37:00.000-07:002019-06-26T07:38:04.090-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Here is an <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/smartphones-arent-making-millennials-grow-horns-heres-how-to-spot-a-bad-study?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=newshour" target="_blank">excellent article from PBS</a> on the bogus study behind the rumor that millennials are "growing horns" from cell phone use. It is worth reading the whole thing. But these are the highlighted flaws in the study:<br />
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<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>The study doesn’t actually measure cellphone usage. It relies on interviews and self-reported usage.</li>
<li>The findings mean nothing for the general population because the sample is biased. If you haven't been careful about who you are studying and how that <i>specific</i> population represents the <i>general </i>population, you can only draw conclusions about the individuals you studied.</li>
<li>What they measured was a bone spur, not a horn. A horn is made of keratin. And even more importantly, they do not really discuss how important the finding is. Apparently most bone spurs cannot even be felt and many disappear on their own.</li>
<li>Raw data measuring bone spurs on all of the subjects was not provided. Like so many other imaging studies, reducing complex images to a "score" is hard to do and their methodology needs to be considered.</li>
<li>The study claims males have more of these bone spurs, but doesn’t back it up.</li>
<li>The study also fails to make a clear connection to millennials.</li>
</ol>
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Other than these flaws, however, it was fine science. (Nod to Mark Twain).<br />
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The best part of the article, however, is how the media got this wrong in the first place... and really explains why this is so important. It's a 5 minute read and highly worthwhile.<br />
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-4910772413818549962018-10-25T08:37:00.001-07:002018-10-25T11:38:37.031-07:00Life Cycle of Personal Data and the Personal Dataome<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Caleb Scharf has written a pretty interesting essay entitled "<a href="http://nautil.us/issue/65/in-plain-sight/the-selfish-dataome" target="_blank">The Selfish Dataome</a>" in the October issue of <a href="http://nautil.us/" target="_blank">Nautilus</a>. In it he suggests that there is a systemic relationship between the data we produce and the lives we live. He observes that, as we live, we produce data. </span></span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It's expensive. And there's a lot of it. </span></span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">How does it affect us? </span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I</span></span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">s it worth it? How would we know? He asks the question: "</span></span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Does the data we produce serve us, or vice versa?"</span><br />
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<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Interesting. Reminiscent of "The Selfish Gene". Perhaps our bodies, families and societies are only here to propagate our data as we are to propagate our genes?</span><br />
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<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this is silly. It's a system with feedback, not a linear process. The lives we live produce data; and t</span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">he data we produce surely affect the lives we live. And of course, the system encompassing ourselves and our data is evolving. I'd be happier with a question that's not binary (does the data serve us or visa versa) but one that examines the lifecycle of the data, it's relationship with people, and acknowledges the cost as well as the value of the process.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But his argument is flawed for many other reasons, not the least of which is that he's looking at the example of Shakespeare's life as an example. </span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Shakespeare is the exception to the rule. </span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps he should have examined instead the data produced by Shakespeare's grammar school teachers, all of whom surely produced written documents but none of which have survived. Their dataomes have vanished, all by themselves. And by and large, it seems to me, these creative and destructive forces are in balance, limited absolutely by human cognitive bandwidth because there's only so much data we can afford to pay attention to. </span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">And attention is the key: without continuous attention, we surely don't maintain the storage media. </span><span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Consider his paper example. Apparently it takes five grams of high quality coal to produce a single page of paper. (That is an awesome statistic, by the way). </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But that's not all: unless the printed page is buried in a desert cave, it needs to be REPRINTED every hundred years or so because the medium won't last. In fact, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">every medium has its lifespan. And when it dies, well, it's gone. The chain of custody is broken. The data is lost.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I think the real question he's asking, though, is why do we REPRINT some documents and how do we know THAT is worth it? </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once again, it seems to me that there is a natural balance. When the information serves us, we allocate the resources. When it doesn't, well, we don't. And it dies.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Low cost digital storage for most of us is neither a problem nor a solution: it's irrelevant. Ironically, low cost digital media is likely to endure LESS time than paper. 500 years from now most of our data will be like the documents of Shakespeare's teachers. It will be gone forever, digital storage media notwithstanding. In fact, unless it appears to have some value to someone, society decides NOT to spend the energy to maintain it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But here Caleb has missed three HUGE additional pieces of the puzzle, other kinds of maintenance that also require resources. </span><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">From a maintenance POV there's the additional burden of maintaining access and retrieval methods. Paper books are stored, accessed and retrieved in the context of a library. Only some documents are filed. And that is expensive. We decide as a society what is (and what is not) organized. Most data that is not curated is lost simply because the media is not maintained in a library. And this also is a factor in balancing the flows of information that are produced and are lost. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Furthermore, for digital documents, there is another level of maintenance to the 'library'. We also need to maintain software that manages that storage, retrieval and visualization. In Stewart Brand's "<a href="http://longnow.org/clock/" target="_blank">Clock of the Long Now</a>" these factors are also considered. In effect, we'll need to periodically load digital documents that are encoded by one generation of software and "translated" or re-encoded in the next generation. A vast majority of digital data will be lost when there are no longer processors and apps that can read them. This is another kind of 'natural death' that balances the creation of data with its demise.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But there's a third kind of natural death that is based on social and cultural context needed to interpret information. Without institutional knowledge and context preserved in living human beings, we won't be able to understand or utilize data even when it has been preserved on some medium, organized accessed, retrieved and visualized. We can still read Shakespeare today not only because his work is continuously reprinted on a massive scale, but also because we crank out dozens of PhDs every year and hundreds of thousands of high school and college undergrads who read him. The energy to maintain all of THIS infrastructure is vast and absolutely necessary. It's such a huge commitment of resources that will NEVER be allocated to maintain most of our personal data. Absent this level of institutional attention, most of the data we produce will be lost, as it was in pre-historical and pre-literate societies. Even if we had documents produced by Shakespeare's grammar school teachers, would we know enough about the grammar school of his day to interpret them? Unless we decide as a society to preserve that context, those documents are essentially lost to us as well.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #2a2e2e; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Caleb's essay is interesting and his question is a good one, but in my view this is not a problem at all. We produce a huge amount of data that will not be carried forward forever. Instead it will die a 'natural' death when critical links on the chain of custody are lost: integrity of the medium, maintenance of access and visualization methods, or the preservation of cultural context. Personal data has a life cycle, that cycle includes a natural death, and for most of us it will be limited to a few generations at most.</span></div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-55148164831315094782016-08-07T12:11:00.005-07:002016-08-07T12:25:33.750-07:00Fact-resistant humans are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="p1">
Andy Borowitz <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/scientists-earth-endangered-by-new-strain-of-fact-resistant-humans" target="_blank">reports</a> that "Scientists have discovered a powerful new strain of fact-resistant humans who are threatening the ability of Earth to sustain life."</div>
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Brilliant.</div>
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<span class="s1">Actually, we DO understand the psychology of this phenomenon. We know that human cognition which includes storytelling and logical thinking did not evolve to discern TRUTH but simply to enhance the probability of survival and reproductive success. Right? We are exquisitely tuned to detect inauthentic or flawed STORIES, not whether or not the stories are based on or contradict hard evidence. On the contrary, to conserve energy under severe cognitive load, we basically delegate reasoning from evidence and first principles — which is HARD — to much more subconscious heuristics that are predisposed to select those stories framed to confirm existing beliefs and to filter out those stories which contradict them. It’s called ‘confirmation bias.'</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Borowitz is right: shocks required to break through confirmation bias could include hunger, thirst or even respiration.</span></div>
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-69608772641457078222016-03-21T04:00:00.000-07:002016-03-21T04:07:55.971-07:00Remembering Carl Sagan and his Legacy of Critical Thinking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's hard to believe that Carl Sagan died 20 years ago. But it's worth remembering his death because it's worth remembering his life, his belief in and dedication to public engagement with science. In <a href="http://www.upworthy.com/a-science-icon-died-17-years-ago-in-his-last-interview-he-made-a-warning-that-gives-me-goosebumps-5?g=2&c=reccon1&fb_ref=Default" target="_blank">this last interview with Charlie Rose</a> he articulates the two arguments that motivated him throughout his life to continuously seek new ways to communicate science to everyone. First, he reminded us that science is power, surely the defining power of our time.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We live in an age based on science and technology with formidable scientific powers.... If we don't understand it ... then who is making all the decisions ... that are going to determine the world our children are going to live in? <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We have arranged a society based on science and technology ... in which nobody understands anything about [it].... This combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces. </blockquote>
But he did not stop there. He went on to underline the fact that science is a critical thinking tool for all of us, based on asking good questions.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Science is more than a body of knowledge: its a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the Universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those who are in authority, then we are up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.</blockquote>
So in both ways, a public and popular understanding of science is critical to our democracy. Sagan asserts, and I believe he's correct, that Thomas Jefferson and other Enlightenment thinkers were well aware that democratic institutions did not depend solely on the consent and civil rights of the governed but also on their critical thinking. I love how he just epitomizes the distinction between skepticism and cynicism. If people can't ask good questions of their political leaders and hold them accountable, then we'll will cease to run our government and "it will run us."<br />
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On the margin, perhaps it has even less to do with the size of government or even the function of government and more to do with our critical relationship to it. A philosophical, historical and practical understanding of science can help.<br />
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<a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Carl_Sagan_Planetary_Society.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Carl_Sagan_Planetary_Society.JPG" width="234" /></a></div>
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-56821049316573870492016-03-17T21:00:00.000-07:002016-04-02T08:49:18.178-07:00Reason, Truth, Lies, Empiricism and Belief in the Age of the Internet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/the-internet-of-us-and-the-end-of-facts">March issue of The New Yorker</a> Jill Lepore posted an amusing rant on reason, truth, lies, empiricism and belief in the "Age of the Internet."<br />
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She asks a good question: How do we know? And what is the role of evidence? Reason?<br />
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<span class="s1">Lepore observes in this season dominated by the Republican debates and largely negative advertising based almost exclusively on unsubstantiated opinion and belief:</span></div>
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</div>
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>"Tump doesn’t reason... He wants combat." </li>
<li>"Cruz’s appeal is to the judgment of God. 'Father God, please . . . awaken the body of Christ, that we might pull back from the abyss,' he preached on the campaign trail."</li>
<li>"Rubio’s appeal is to Google."<a name='more'></a></li>
</ol>
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<span class="s1">Then she asks: Is there another appeal?" </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Really? Is there really only one other one? Why do I have to choose?</span></div>
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<span class="s1">She continues:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="s1">People who care about civil society have two choices: find some epistemic principles other than empiricism on which everyone can agree or else find some method other than reason with which to defend empiricism. </span></blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Wow. It’s a subject that requires a little more nuanced than a simple either-or. And she’s left out experimentation entirely! There is no substitute for empirical observation, of course. But that’s not sufficient. You have to ask questions about what you perceive and design experiments to test your understanding. Reasoning on observation alone is problematic without testing. The thing about theory when it’s supported by observation AND experimentation is that reality pushes back: it has a way of asserting itself and telling you that your ideas are bullshit, even though they sound great and are packaged in wonderful, compelling narratives.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Her argument is classic enlightenment thinking, at least it seems to me:</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Lynch suspects that doing the first of these things [finding some epistemic principles other than empiricism] is not possible, but that the second [some method other than reason] might be. He thinks the best defense of reason is a common practical and ethical commitment. I believe he means popular sovereignty. That, anyway, is what Alexander Hamilton meant in the Federalist Papers, when he explained that the United States is an act of empirical inquiry: “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” The evidence is not yet in.</span></blockquote>
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<span class="s1">Oh yes it is. And it’s not good news.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We KNOW that evidence and reason and experimentation are necessary but insufficient in the real world. We HAVE to wrap them in wonderful, compelling narratives as well. We know that “popular sovereignty” is no defense against a sophisticated messaging campaign! What more evidence of this do we need? When we expect these arguments to function in the real world, we NEED state-of-the-art rhetoric to compete for attention with very sophisticated audiences. Not reason, but emotion. We need combat, religion, and even Google to deliver what we know to be true (based on empirical evidence, experimentation, reason, etc.) in a social and political context. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Unlike the Enlightenment view of science, we must not “let the fact speak for themselves”: they’ll be CRUSHED by compelling lies.</span></div>
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-86395553458549055262014-12-30T07:39:00.002-08:002015-11-13T09:28:40.575-08:00Is it Christmas Everywhere in the Universe?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="s1">Is it Christmas everywhere in the Universe? </span></div>
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<span class="s1">Dennis Overbye, one of my favorite science journalists, has taken a stab at this question in a light-hearted and fun way in this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/science/how-possibilities-of-life-elsewhere-might-alter-held-notions-of-faith.html"><span class="s2">article in the Times</span></a>, asking himself, "would an alien know it is Christmas?" I love how he manages to stimulate our thinking by posing some interesting questions with a few answers but without writing a treatise on the philosophy of science and religion. How exactly does he do it?</span></div>
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<span class="s1">First of all he's focused on one and only one aspect of the question. For example, he avoids completely the obvious fact that aliens would be unlikely to mark the passage of time since Jesus' birth in terms of Earth years. But he also sets aside the problem of objective "simultaneity" across the Universe, </span><span class="s3">which would make</span><span class="s1"> it difficult for a hypothetical alien being to even agree on when the birth of Jesus occurred in the first place, even if they could then measure the passage of time in their </span><span class="s4">own</span><span class="s3"> </span><span class="s1">timeframe. Instead, </span><span class="s4">Overbye</span><span class="s1"> aims at the </span><span class="s4">Universal</span><span class="s1"> significance of the event, bringing directly into focus the central claims of Christianity and </span><span class="s4">the</span><span class="s1"> scientific postulate of an extraterrestrial "intelligence."</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was hooked. </span><span class="s3">This is fun.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I was pleased that Overbye puts this in context of the historical debate within Christianity on how to understand Jesus as the only son of God. After all, this is not a new argument. Even in the 4th Century Augustine worried about what kind of God would be content reaching him in Hippo, Algeria but not to millions of Africans or Asians? Ten centuries </span><span class="s4">later</span><span class="s1"> in the age of exploration and arguably the beginning of what we now call "globalization," this apparent injustice would compel thousands of well intentioned missionaries (and a lot of imperial infrastructure) to bring the message of Jesus' birth to the Americas as well as Africa and Asia, converting indigenous peoples everywhere with force if necessary. It's also a matter of the historical record that Western Civilization lost much of this missionary zeal as knowledge of indigenous peoples grew, the messiness of empire became more apparent, and science and philosophies of the modern era reshaped our world view: what are we to make of the wealth of non-Christian religious experiences and traditions? Taking this to the level of the Cosmos makes the singularity of his birth even more difficult to believe, even for Christians. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">Guy Consolmagno, for example, </span><span class="s4">an Astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and a</span><span class="s1"> Jesuit brother, agrees that "One [Universal] incarnation seems absurd" but adds that it's "not inconsistent with the data."</span></div>
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Wow.<br />
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<span class="s1">First of all, before we even get to what he said, isn't it great that there is actually a <a href="http://vaticanobservatory.org/"><span class="s2">Vatican Observatory</span></a>, staffed by a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Jesus"><span class="s2">Jesuit</span></a> astronomer? Overbye explained that "Brother Consolmagno spent 10 years working and teaching as a planetary scientist, specializing in meteorites, before joining the Jesuits." And he's been recognized by his peers: "Last year he was awarded the Carl Sagan Medal by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, for communication in planetary science.” He's even co-authored a book called “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? ... And Other Questions from the Astronomer’s In-box at the Vatican Observatory.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Overbye is awesome: he actually found an authority on the subject! On so many levels!!!</span></div>
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<span class="s1">But what exactly did Consolmagno mean when he suggested that one incarnation "seems absurd?" Was the claim of the incarnation absurd or the uniqueness of that event? Or both? And what data? What IS an "incarnation?” How would we know if one were to occur? </span><span class="s3">How would we distinguish between such false and authentic claims? Although I think Overbye would agree that the answers to these questions will continue to be a matter of faith, not data, he does not say...</span><br />
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<span class="s3">In my opinion, this is by design; it's not what this piece is about. Instead, he redirects our attention back to the history of philosophy, science and religion. Both </span><span class="s4">Overbye and Consolmagno seem to agree that, despite what "originalists" might argue, religion, like science, is dynamic, always changing. As we learn more, what we don't know also appears to expand. And sometimes, what we thought we knew turns out to be incorrect in science, religion and philosophy. Consolmagno said, </span><span class="s1">"Science ... is stuff we understand about truths we only partially grasp. Religion is trying to get closer to truths we don’t understand." </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I think this is rather nice. Perhaps the "data" Consolmagno's referring to here is not the evidence of incarnation -- whether it happened or not -- but the history of this conversation between people who are struggling to understand what it all means. Consolmagno is curious, like a good scientist, and tells us that the question was "fun" even though "he didn’t have any answers.” </span><br />
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<span class="s5">It's wonderful to see such </span><span class="s1">a knowledgeable authority figure </span><span class="s5">appreciating the importance of questions and approaching the unknown with humility, even within his own area of expertise. However, I wish that they would take opportunities like this one to plainly and explicitly state that a simplistic, literal interpretation of scripture is silly and unreasonable given what we know of our Universe today. Even at the time of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides"><span class="s2">Moses Maimonides</span></a> (1135-1204) in Moorish Spain, </span><span class="s1">it was already common for Jews, Christians AND Moslems, to insist on a figurative and active interpretation of scripture. Living amongst learned Christians and Moslems, educated Jews could not interpret expressions like the “Chosen People” literally. Instead they tell us clearly that they interpreted this as God’s choice of the Jews to receive the Torah. In other words, they believed that God chose the Torah as a specific, physical and historical means to appear to Jews</span><span class="s5">, leaving the distinct possibility for God to remain one and Universal by accepting the fact that, obviously, the Torah was not.</span><span class="s6"> </span><span class="s7"> </span><span class="s1">I would wager a bet that Consolmagno, for example, does not believe that the Earth is 4,000 years old. And he probably DOES believe in vaccines, evolution and anthropogenic climate change.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The most important truth this reveals is simply that religious communities are more complex and diverse than they appear to secular outsiders. In fact, theological debate continues within and between religious communities, many of which are open to ideas from other belief systems and science. </span><br />
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<span class="s1">If we loosen our grip on rigid stereotypes of religious beliefs and recognize the diversity of religious communities and changes over time, what EXACTLY can they agree on? And what of non-believers? What can we call common ground? In the 1960’s Abraham Joshua Heschel </span><span class="s4">wrote beautifully on this subject as he tried to bring Christians and Jews together in the struggle for Civil Rights based on what he called</span><span class="s1"> a “deep" theology. He <a href="http://www.onbeing.org/program/spiritual-audacity-abraham-joshua-heschel/particulars/2267"><span class="s2">wrote</span></a> about the individual religious EXPERIENCE of the prophets </span><span class="s3">and in our everyday lives </span><span class="s1">and sought to differentiate that experience from religious institutions. "Theology speaks for the people; depth theology speaks for the individual. Theology strives for communication, for universality; depth theology strives for insight, for uniqueness. Theology is like sculpture, depth theology like music. Theology is in the books; depth theology is in the hearts. The former is doctrine, the latter an event. Theologies divide us; depth theology unites us.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In other words, abstraction is key. And religious experiences -- and the texts that we use to communicate them -- require active interpretation, not a literal reading. Perhaps this can help us see continuity in changing </span>"truths" over time. <br />
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I would hasten to add, however, that the methods used to propel historical change in religious thought are not like those of science. It's not as if we could run an experiment. Science and religion describe different KINDS of truth, rely on different KINDS of evidence, different KINDS of arguments, and different WAYS of knowing. And philosophy is the domain where these ways of thinking come together, where we can sort all this out. Over time. With some difficulty.</div>
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<span class="s5">Overbye concludes his essay with Nancy Ellen Abrams, a lawyer, philosopher and author of "A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science and the Future of Our Planet.” </span><span class="s1">Overbye writes, “[She] argues that God is an emergent phenomenon, a result of the complexity of the universe and human aspirations rather than the cause of them.” Now THAT's interesting. Clearly such an emergent, abstract God could be shared by believers and non-believers on Earth. Perhaps this will work for alien creatures as well. Abrams didn't think so. She said in an interview, "Our god is the god of humanity; it has nothing to do with aliens."</span></div>
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<span class="s1">That sums it up for me. The Torah is for the Jews. The Koran is for Muslims. Christmas is for Christians. All of them can be understood as approximations of some more fundamental human experience. And God is our peculiarly human way of understanding emergent beauty and meaning in the Universe, a deep understanding that is somehow inside all of us and shared, not “out there” in the Universe. </span><span class="s3">Aliens, were they to exist, would be likely to conceive of the divine rather differently.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Merry Christmas!</span></div>
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-4593270367778698732014-03-01T09:43:00.002-08:002014-03-02T04:08:58.965-08:00A Journalist Asks "How Do We Know"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Dean Miller, the Director of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University posted <a href="http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/28/guest-post-news-literacy-is-not-optional-if-you-need-to-be-well-informed/?_php=true&_type=blogs&emc=edit_tnt_20140301&tntemail0=y&_r=0">this warning</a> on his New York Time blog. News literacy, whether you are a producer or consumer of news, is based on skepticism and, perhaps more than anything else, a healthy awareness of your own bias. <br />
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But it seemed odd to me that he could ask the question "how do we know" and feel obligated to restrict his assessment of veracity to the text itself and not even mention objective sources or empirical evidence outside of the story. Is that the best we can do?<br />
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<a name='more'></a>Taking a deeper look at these journalistic conventions with regard to journalistic "truth" at the level of a story can help us understand how matters of scientific evidence and reason are covered in the media.<br />
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In Miller's post he recalls three stories that were widely circulated from the Sochi Olympics. Which of the following claims turned out to be real? See if you can tell from these statements:<br />
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<li>"The man responsible for the opening-ceremony display of Olympic rings was stabbed to death the day after the ring device malfunctioned in the middle of the world-televised event."</li>
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<li>"Russian officials claim that surveillance video from inside a guest’s bathroom proves that sabotage lead to the complaints about shoddy workmanship in Olympic hotels."</li>
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<li>"Russian authorities are quoted announcing they will solve prison overcrowding problems by housing convicts in Sochi hotels."</li>
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You won't be surprised to learn that your perception will be largely determined by what you think about Russia in the first place. I wasn't.</div>
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When I read the stories the second time, however, I noticed that two of the stories included sources while one did not. This was deliberate, I suppose. Miller points out that "News Literacy students spend a lot of time learning to evaluate the evidence provided by journalists and to analyze the authority and independence of people quoted as experts and witnesses in news stories."<br />
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This is a great quote and it speaks volumes about how journalists often cover controversial matters of fact and opinion like climate change as a compelling and interesting story. And that is CERTAINLY how we consumers of journalism read it: as a literary story. But is it true? We humans are exquisitely tuned to consider the social standing and social relationships of the speaker to infer interests and motives as context we use to assess the validity of their account of some event. But is that REALLY the best we can do? <br />
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In controversial matters of fact and opinion in science, for example, it's a problem to rely only on the stature of the scientist or the authority of their scientific institutions to assess their claims. What are we to make of a reputable and brilliant physicist like Freeman Dyson who continues to criticize the scientific establishment for presenting the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? What happens when that authority is undermined by "scandalous" personal emails between scientists, for example? Or when new findings overturn established science? <br />
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It's just as problematic to assess the legitimacy of an argument by how coherent and compelling it seems. <a href="http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/h-l-mencken-the-first-new-atheist/">H. L. Menckin wrote</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea, however fundamental it may seem to be, for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable."</blockquote>
But the authority of science is derived not from the standing of the scientist. And neither is it based on the elegance of the theory or the quality of a "better" idea as Menkin wrote, any more than the veracity of a journalistic account can be determined by compelling quality of the characters or the logical flow of the narrative.<br />
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Dyson's stature as a brilliant and influential scientist framed as an iconoclastic, independent thinker, outcast from mainstream climate science for his beliefs makes a compelling story... and it obscures the reasons we should be skeptical of his skepticism. Perhaps that's why, in dozens of <a href="http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2013/04/climatologists_are_no_einstein.html">blog posts</a>, Dyson is cited as an authority with very specific critical positions opposed to established models, without reporting how he knows what he know or why his views are rejected by the mainstream. In <a href="http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20140227/OPINION/302270007/Charles-Krauthammer-Climate-change-not-settled-science">this opinion piece by Charles Krauthammer</a>, counter claims and rebuttals are not included. Instead, these authors adopt a political frame showing Dyson as having been excluded from the scientific mainstream simply because his ideas are deemed politically unacceptable, as if they were involved in a theological dispute of "eternal truths" rather than a scientific dispute based on changing truths and evidence. But how can a reader figure this out from the text of the story itself? <br />
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What IS the basis for scientific "truth" and how can journalists get beyond hearsay? What about empirical evidence, observation and experimentation? Can we even distinguish self-delusion from deliberate omission, in the case of Dyson, Krauthammer, or his editors? How can a reader tell fact from fiction from the story itself? <br />
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It turns out that Dyson is not published in prestigious journals not because of his conclusions but because of his arguments. In fact, his claims HAVE been and are regularly rebutted in scientific literature. Climate scientists agree with Dyson, for example, that cloud formation is a source of tremendous uncertainty in predicting what will happen to the Earth's climate as global CO2 concentrations continue to rise. Climate science knows that it's possible to cherry pick ten year sequences of average temperature to show that global warming has ceased, even though the 10- or 100-year temperature record -- not to mention evidence from the distribution of plants, animal and ice -- clearly shows continuation or even the acceleration of warming trends. However Krauthammer and Dyson know what they know, they appear to be unaware of these rebuttals. The reader is left to figure this out for themselves, however, no easy task and impossible if they remain within the frame of the story.<br />
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Although it's surely not a panacea, as readers we ought to insist that both journalists and their sources tell us how they know what they are reporting, not just why we should trust their authority. This is easier said than done, however. In history, there is often no way to ask historical sources how they knew what they recorded was true. As readers of news, the sources are not there for us to examine. Good journalists, editors and fact checkers always do ask this question on our behalf; they just don't always tell us what they learn. And none of these best practices protect us readers from bias, selective omissions, and deliberate fabrication.<br />
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I do not think the failure to include how sources know what they know is a conspiracy; on the contrary, the REASON to leave out exactly how the authorities in a story know what they know is that often the details detract from the narrative of the story, especially in science journalism. Kerry Emanuel at a recent even in Lexington told us that, in fact, the margin of error in predictions of climate change are actually growing in some cases. On one hand, we have much more certainty about the most likely climate change outcomes assuming different courses of human behavior. We are more confident than ever that the most probable outcomes will be devastating for billions of people. On the other hand, however, Emanuel is very transparent admitting that, as we learn more about the climate, we recognize that there is is actually MORE UNCERTAINTY in our models, not less. In other words, the range of possible outcomes is growing wider even as we gain confidence in the most probable outcomes.<br />
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This is precisely how we know. This is precisely the texture or quality of scientific knowledge that you hear when you engage directly with scientists but is difficult to find in the media. In the frame of a policy controversy, often used by the media, each actor must assume positions either for or against a specific policy, it's impossible to report on uncertainty and probability, hallmarks of science. Although uncertainty is always present in science, it is often cited as a reason not to act and it surely weakens the story. It's no wonder we leave it out.<br />
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Looking back at the three "stories" from Sochi, what are your questions as a reader? <br />
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It turns out that the account of the "Russian officials" defending the quality of construction projects in Sochi was based on actual video evidence. Ironically, revealing how you know something can make your claim more compelling while, at the same time, revealing something about yourself that you may not want to be known. The first story was without attribution but it turns out to have been a YouTube video posted by American luger, Kate Hansen, video evidence that was completely staged by comedian, Jimmy Kimmel. But that was information that was deliberately omitted from the story and the original video. Similarly, the final story was simply satire, completely fake, including fictitious "officials." If it's possible to construct evidence, authorities and even "how do we know" stories from nothing at all, how is the reader supposed to sort out the truth of deliberate lies from the text itself? And when a scientists falsifies data to support his claims, we loose our way. <br />
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Any way you look at it, this is "bad news", pun intended. In the end it's necessary to go outside any story itself to form an educated opinion from multiple sources regarding it's veracity.</div>
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-17944942913196902062014-01-02T07:49:00.001-08:002014-01-02T07:49:10.943-08:00Ethan Zuckerman and Kate Darling on Robot Ethics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Ethan Zuckerman of the MIT Media Lab has an excellent summary of Kate Darling's recent work on Robot Ethics. Check it out.<br />
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<a href="http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2013/11/19/kate-darling-on-robot-ethics/">http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2013/11/19/kate-darling-on-robot-ethics/</a><br />
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-51461377391427375412013-11-25T06:31:00.001-08:002014-01-14T16:21:06.173-08:00Robotics Scientists Meet to Discuss Ethics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In October a group of leading robotics scientists and engineers met to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/science/already-anticipating-terminator-ethics.html?smid=pl-share">discuss the ethical implications of their work</a>. Until recently a vast majority of industrial robots have been confined to cages where they work and humans are unwelcome. Increasingly, however, we find robotic applications in our human world. They are "aware" of us, sensing our presence, our identities, our activity and inferring from those data our intentions and goals. And these robots act in our world too, based on their own objectives and what they can sense from their surroundings, including present human beings.<br />
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Now that they are among us, we need to ask some important questions: What do we want our robotic progeny to do for us? And where do we draw the line? What do we want them to "know" about their environment in general but about us in particular, and, once they know it, what should they do with the data? Who is creating these actors in our world and what what are THEIR objectives and priorities? And what guidelines SHOULD they be following?<br />
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As usual, like an adolescent, our ability to act vastly outstrips our ability to understand the consequences of our actions. Our ability to solve mechanical problems simply overwhelms our capacity to understand what we are doing to our world. <br />
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I'm not suggesting, however, that we stop acting while we somehow figure it all out in theory. Also like an adolescent, we need to act to learn. Experimentation is needed to acquire experience and real data. We just want to be relatively certain that we know when we're running an experiment with potentially lasting or fatal consequences...<br />
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As I watch this happening from within the emergent, so-called Internet of Things, I'm somewhat ambivalent but very, very curious, perhaps cautiously optimistic. I think we do need to proceed with the research for sure, but I'm positive we need to watch this carefully and make it visible. I believe that regulations and testing are going to be important, as they are in other industries from mining and agriculture to aerospace and automotive manufacturing. And I'm not sure that trying to slow progress or restrict research will have the desired results. In other words, within the field, perhaps, we are doing all the right things in the domain of engineering. But are we doing enough reflection? As we drive science and engineering to achieve results, are we moving along as fast as we can in the parallel field of ethics?<br />
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What we need in my opinion is a significant investment in the field of philosophy -- ethics in particular --- from research to public outreach and engagement with scientists and engineers alike. This is not unlike the importance of ethics in biology with respect to genetic engineering and medical technology. We shouldn't expect meetings like this to definitively answer such profound and difficult ethical questions. But on the other hand, we should celebrate their efforts, encourage more meetings like this with different populations and diverse points of view, and insist on transparency and the opportunity to inform ourselves. <br />
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Science writer John Markoff got it right when he observed that although the conference did not produce any clear answers, it seems useful "to persuade the researchers to confront the implications of their work." I only wish the article had gone a little farther in this dimension and given us a feel for what kinds of implications they considered.</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-44803429722987579112013-11-14T05:22:00.000-08:002013-11-14T05:22:00.187-08:00Memory: The Relationship Between Brain and the Experience of 'Self'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Interesting article in Time Magazine about a woman named Lonni Sue Johnson who was a very successful artist, violinist and pilot until she suffered an attack of encephalitis in 2007 at the age of 57. Studying patients like Johnson, scientists are learning about the relationship between the physical brain and experiences and even the nature of 'self'.</div>
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With the help of the hardware and Johnson's willingness to sit still for so much study, science may be able to answer one other, more abstract question: What is it like to have lost so many memories about your life and the world? If who you are is an amalgamation, at least in part, of the things you've experienced--the people you've loved, the places you've lived, the tragedies you've endured--are you actually you at all when those things are wiped away? The self is ineffable, but it's also material, the product of neurochemicals sparking their way through living tissue. How we draw the line between those two dimensions--the biological and the experiential, the brain and the far less knowable mind--has kept philosophers awake for millennia. </blockquote>
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<a name='more'></a>But how do we know?<br />
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Johnson, with her profound damage to the material self, may help us better understand the immaterial one.</blockquote>
And here is where it starts to get REALLY interesting.<br />
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Brain scans revealed that her encephalitis had effectively destroyed her hippocampi, a pair of sea-horse-shaped structures deep in the brain's basement. It also did extensive damage to structures surrounding the hippocampus, including areas known as the perirhinal cortex and the parahippocampal cortex. That was very bad news since the job of the hippocampus is to consolidate short-term memories into permanent, long-term ones. If the hippocampus isn't there to do that work, everything starts over every few minutes. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The reason, explains Larry Squire, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Diego, is that what seems like a single memory is actually many memories in different parts of the brain. The recollections you have of last year's Thanksgiving dinner, for example, consist of sights and sounds and smells and tastes and deeper links to the people who were there, all of which are processed in different parts of the brain. It's the job of the hippocampus to act like the attentive host at a party making introductions among all those parts. "It's a common mistake to think that memories are initially in the hippocampus and then get shipped somewhere," says Squire. "They're never shipped. They're always somewhere else."</blockquote>
Wow.<br />
<br />
I don't need to copy the entire article here but this little bit blows me away.<br />
<blockquote>
The slow recovery Johnson has made offers other clues about how memory works. Months after she started painstakingly copying lines, Johnson began sketching without help. Eventually, says Aline, "the little people came back." Tiny human figures had been a hallmark of Johnson's pre-amnesia art. "It was one of the first indications that those images were still inside her head. If it weren't for the art, how would we know they were there?" But exactly where they'd been hiding or how they were flushed out remain unclear. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
Equally mysterious is why Johnson can identify her pre-encephalitis drawings as her own, despite the fact that she can't identify even the world's most famous paintings except the Mona Lisa. "Whatever it is that allows her to recognize her own style is incredibly complex," says Johns Hopkins cognitive neuroscientist Barbara Landau, who works with Johnson. "I don't think we know how to characterize it."</blockquote>
This is classic science. In practice, answers to one question only reveals the next set of questions, perhaps even more mysterious than the first.<br />
<br />
And so it goes. </div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-85386033456682014672013-11-07T04:56:00.003-08:002013-11-07T05:23:26.027-08:00More Asteroid Strikes in Our Future?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="tr_bq">
The Times today <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/science/space/more-large-asteroid-strikes-are-likely-scientists-find.html?_r=0">reported</a> that we are likely to encounter more astroid strikes than we thought. "That's interesting," I thought, "But how do we know?" And "What changed?"</div>
<br />
Turns out that they are using a new measurement that begins with empirical observations of collisions instead of predicting the number of likely collisions based on estimates of how many asteroids there are in orbit around the Sun and what their orbits are.<br />
<blockquote>
<a name='more'></a>Because telescope surveys have counted so few of the small asteroids, Dr. Brown and his colleagues instead investigated what has actually hit the Earth. In one of the articles in Nature, they examined United States Air Force data from the 1960s and 1970s and later data from sensors verifying a ban on aboveground nuclear weapons testing. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
The recordings captured the low-frequency atmospheric rumblings generated by about 60 asteroid explosions. Most came from small asteroids, but their data suggested that the somewhat larger ones hit more frequently than would be expected based on the estimates from sky surveys. That could mean the Earth has been unlucky recently, or that the estimates on the number of Chelyabinsk-size asteroids are too low.</blockquote>
</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-55437938790994255412013-11-06T19:49:00.001-08:002013-11-06T21:11:13.224-08:00Disruptive Change; Creative Destruction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today the neighborhood video chain Blockbuster <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/business/media/internet-kills-the-video-store.html?emc=edit_tnt_20131106&tntemail0=y&_r=0">closed its doors</a>, apparently "outdone by Netflix."<br />
<br />
But the dynamic between these companies looked very different at different stages in their histories. Initially, both Blockbuster and Netflix rented DVD's. Blockbuster had the initial, first mover advantage and at its peak consisted of a network of over 9,000 stores. To compete, Netflix made no investment in physical stores, instead using the post office to deliver its disks in its iconic red envelopes.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ1dfmszh5MSWG7ATe3OqYdovSAjoQQ3SoyNqzWXpbbyvLnuJuYZoamuk0pdno9N2CbVMetJU53OqONdnljOiATku9t30-t6fgPQs1xin-eUHb-1TySd2sNT12vOmYSUkb3wOD5AadijI_/s1600/netflix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ1dfmszh5MSWG7ATe3OqYdovSAjoQQ3SoyNqzWXpbbyvLnuJuYZoamuk0pdno9N2CbVMetJU53OqONdnljOiATku9t30-t6fgPQs1xin-eUHb-1TySd2sNT12vOmYSUkb3wOD5AadijI_/s320/netflix.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a>As it turned out, the convenience of ordering discs on the Internet and receiving them in the mail plus the terms of the rental (which did not include late fees) may have been enough to drive this dynamic. According to Wikipedia, in September of 2013 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix">Netflix</a> had over 40 Million streaming subscribers while at it peak in 2007 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_LLC">Blockbuster</a> had only 3 million customers.<br />
<br />
But Netflix also had the classic "eTailer" advantage: in addition to its 9,000 stores, Blockbuster had over 60,000 employees at its peak while even now <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix">Netflix</a> has just over 2,000.<br />
<br />
Netflix, however, did not rest on their many advantages but pressed them instead, introducing a streaming service over the Internet in 2007. In 2010 Netflix dropped from the fastest growing customer of the US Postal Service to the largest consumer of Internet bandwidth in a single year.<br />
<br />
It's hard to measure market capitalization because in 1994 Blockbuster was acquired by Viacom for $8.4 Billion. But we do know that Netflix was worth over $19 Billion in November of 2013 and in 2000 Blockbuster declined to acquire Netflix for only $50 Million. <br />
<br />
So it may be that shareholders as a class have done fine: there is substantially more shareholder value created than was destroyed in the competition. Similarly, Netflix seems to be serving all the consumers lost to Bockbuster and then some. This is precisely what <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumpeter">Schumpeter</a> meant by "creative destruction": disruptive change must destroy wealth in the creative process.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But what about those 60,000 jobs?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
I'm not able to do the research to figure this out but some day someone should look at the entire value chain to see just what impact the Internet has had on this part of the economy. Both companies in fact rested on several other entities which have also been disrupted by this transition. Presumably, based on bandwidth utilization, we could figure out how many jobs have been created at Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and technology suppliers like Cisco Systems, my employer. But to net it all out, we should probably also try to determine how much revenue and how many jobs were lost at media companies and the US Postal Service. Manufacturing and shipping bits is just fundamentally cheaper than atoms. And maybe, in this case, almost as good.<br />
<br />
But I'm afraid that most of those 60,000 jobs are gone for good. What ARE people going to do, anyway?<br />
<br />
<div>
I'm also curious about the retail experience, however. On the one hand, consumers save time, effort and money getting back and forth from their homes to the Blockbuster store. But on the other hand, can we value the social interaction that occurs in the neighborhood shops, malls and downtown streets, created by the local video store? It's hard to say. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What do you all think?</div>
</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-15344836904045065412013-10-21T07:03:00.000-07:002013-10-23T05:43:23.619-07:00Moving Old HDWK Blog to BlogSpot<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am in the process of re-hosting my original "How Do We Know" blog to Google's BlogSpot service. It may take some time. But that can be a good thing too. It's a chance to re-read all my old posts and experience again my study of Science and Society in 2006-7.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://technorati.com/claim/R5FDGV4YH2HH" rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>
</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-49840031475577927402011-03-20T11:17:00.000-07:002013-10-23T21:04:06.461-07:00Change in our System of Public Education<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've often heard repeated the following comparison to describe the inertia of our public education system and its resistance to change. And it's probably even true. It's said that business has changed so much in the past 50 years, that if were possible to transplant a business executive, a secretary (what's that?) or an engineer from 1961 to 2011, they would not be productive in a modern corporation or small business for many, many months, if ever. And yet, it is also said, a teacher from 1861 would probably do just fine in a modern classroom.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Have you heard this? What does this mean? Do you suppose it's true? Why is it so?<br />
<br />
Check out this amazing animated talk by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_(British_author)">Ken Robinson</a> to get a feel for the dimensions of change I am talking about.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zDZFcDGpL4U?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
Business executives know that change in business has not been easy or cheap. On the contrary: it's real work, fraught with risk of failure. Even private businesses are more likely to fail than they are to change when challenged, not by a little but by a lot. A few of them might change in maladaptive ways although most of them simply fail to change at all. And the bigger they are they more likely they are to atrophy and fail...<br />
<br />
But if large private companies are hard to change, then large public entities are pretty near impossible. And public entities with a charter we might call EDUCATION have an additional challenge: a "mission conflict" that makes this task EVEN HARDER. It is their unenviable job to teach our children to think for themselves while, at the same time, they are custodians of knowledge. Like museum curators, they must care for and pass on ALL of what we know as a society, most of which was once true, some of which is still useful, and a small bit of which is actually essential!<br />
<br />
But as this body of knowledge grows and the world changes, it's increasingly difficult to say with any certainly which is which. And how are these poor classroom teachers or administrators to decide? Would YOU want to try new things, to make these choices and manage such trade-offs with shrinking budgets and parents, administrators, politicians and pundits scrutinizing every action!?!? What we we have is a recipe for conservatism and fear of change: <em>OMG?!?! What if we experiment with something new and, as a result, neglect to TRANSMIT something that is both true AND useful?</em><br />
<br />
Reform of such a system is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem">wicked problem</a> indeed.<br />
<br />
Yesterday I met the CEO of the Stupski Foundation, Susan Colby, to introduce her to some of the people I've met at the MIT Media Lab, which must be the center of the Universe for divergent thinking about Education. Seeing their research through her eyes was an amazing experience. It's pretty obvious talking to her that gobs of money, inspirational teachers and wonderful, innovative ideas are just not going to be enough. This is going to take organizational talent, patience, and political wizardry the likes of which we've NEVER seen in public education.<br />
<br />
(Do you suppose <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Dewey">Dewey</a> was an exception? I wonder, who were the ACTUAL reformers who paved the way, helped his ideas stick, take root, and flourish? How were they successful changing the system they encountered at the turn of the last century?)<br />
<br />
I am obviously an outsider in this historic process. But, Susan and the Stupski Foundation seem to have a great thing going. It's a project called the <a href="http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/Partnership_for_Next_Generation_Learning_Overview.html">Partnership for Next Generation Learning</a> between the Stupski Foundation and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) across all 50 states.<br />
<br />
I'm writing about it here for a very specific reason: their approach is quite interesting and related to many of the themes developed in this blog. It begins with the premise that there are tons and tons of great ideas around that might improve our system of public education and that the problem is ADOPTION, not INNOVATION. And secondly, they are acting on the evidence, which seems to be pretty substantial, that we cannot THEORETICALLY PREDICT which innovations will be adopted and will work with actual students, teachers and administrators in the context of real communities and their social, cultural and political systems. Instead they have created what they call "laboratories" from real school systems -- <em><strong>as a whole</strong></em> -- in 6 different states, to measure and study adoption.<br />
<br />
In other words, they are developing experimental end empirical models for education reform that are REAL SYSTEMS, a platform to study the adoption and impact of innovative ideas on entire school districts.<br />
<br />
Sounds like science to me.<br />
<br />
Go Susan! Be aggressive. Be bold. Try new things. Ask the right questions and measure the right things. Collect lots and lots of data. And be patient even if you have to act impatiently.</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-69775214713810083662009-11-26T18:16:00.000-08:002015-07-02T18:25:31.681-07:00Being Thankful for Natalie Angiers and Oxytocin<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I am being thankful this year for Natalie Angiers and the peptide hormone oxytocin.
<br />
<br />
In her <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/science/24angier.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y">post</a> today in the New York Times she wrote:
<br />
<blockquote>
In a series of papers that appeared in Nature, Neuron and elsewhere, Ernst Fehr, director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich, and his colleagues showed that the hormone had a remarkable effect on the willingness of people to trust strangers with their money. In the Nature study, 58 healthy male students were given a single nasal squirt of either oxytocin or a placebo solution and, 50 minutes later, were instructed to start playing rounds of the Trust Game with each other, using monetary units they could either invest or withhold.
<br />
<br />
The researchers found that the oxytocin-enhanced subjects were significantly more likely than the placebo players to trust their financial partners: whereas 45 percent of the oxytocin group agreed to invest the maximum amount of money possible, just 21 percent of the control group proved so amenable.
</blockquote>
She truly has the give for making this stuff accessible. It's rare to read something of hers that fails to make you laugh out loud, marvel at her ability to choose and arrange words, and also to ponder and savor the mysteries of life.
<br />
<br />
Read whatever she writes, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/science/24angier.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail0=y">this being a perfect example</a>. It will not disappoint.
<br />
<br />
Thank you, Natalie.
</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-64152958162467184402007-12-05T04:44:00.000-08:002017-11-20T05:18:28.384-08:00Science Behind the Seasonal Flu: Why Winter?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In October of 2007, Anice Lowen, Samira Mubareka, John Steel, and Peter Palese published a <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.0030151" target="_blank">paper</a> reporting that the reason we suffer influenza in the winter is “low relative humidity produced by indoor heating and cold temperatures … [which] favor influenza virus spread.”<br />
<br />
Is it just me? Or does that seem self-evident, obvious even? I’m quite sure my grandmother told me that!<br />
<br />
But it turns out that understanding how the flu is passed from host to host and why outbreaks happen in the winter has remained a mystery for many years. This October I heard Dr. Marc Lipsitch, professor of Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health, talk about the great epidemic of 1918 and how many questions we still have about the virus. Scientists and science writers love to talk about what we know rather than the unknown, the answers rather than the questions. Although the great questions are obvious to the scientific community, they are often implicit and not part of the public dialogue. And that’s why, when we learn something we thought we always knew, it can come as a surprise.<br />
<br />
Isn’t that amazing: that as much as we DO know about health and disease, there are still such basic things to learn about everyday phenomena like how the flu is spread? And we can be certain that, at some point in the not-too-far-distant future we’ll take this too for granted. This little bit of scientific knowledge will be completely integrated into what we teach and learn about human health, biology and medicine as if we had always known it. <br />
<br />
But that’s a pity. Although it’s unlikely that anyone then will remember such a classic study, it’s worth trying. Even then it will be important to remember: that this knowledge was not always known; that this new theory was one of a variety of controversial, plausible explanations; and that someone who cared needed to ask very specific questions, conduct experiments, and finally to collect evidence which supported or contradicted these alternative theories. And we should remember that it all began with an idea in the imagination of the investigator and ended when a community of autonomous and highly independent thinkers have reproduced his results and challenged every aspect of his procedures and logic.<br />
<br />
So why do we get the flu in the winter? An <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/health/research/05flu.html" target="_blank">article</a> in the New York Times provided some interesting context for their scientific paper:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
As long as flu has been recognized, people have asked, Why winter? The very name, “influenza,” is an Italian word that some historians proposed, originated in the mid-18th century as influenza di freddo or “influence of the cold.”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There was no shortage of hypotheses. Some said flu came in winter because people are indoors; and children are in school, crowded together, getting the flu and passing it on to their families. Others proposed a diminished immune response because people make less vitamin D or melatonin when days are shorter. Others pointed to the direction of air currents in the upper atmosphere.</blockquote>
Although scientists have been speculating about this for centuries, it has been surprisingly difficult to study: first because it was unethical for scientists to expose people to the virus under controlled conditions; and second, <i><b>until now, scientists did not have laboratory animals they could use to study the transmission of the human flu virus.</b></i><br />
<br />
As is often the case, <b><i>this science</i></b> began with an accident and an observant, curious mind. Dr. Palese, one of the investigators in the study, was reading a paper published in 1919, soon after the influenza epidemic. From the article he learned that, in addition to 20 million human beings, the laboratory guinea pigs at Camp Cody in New Mexico apparently also succumbed to the virus. Could these animals help him discover how the flu virus was actually transmitted? <br />
<br />
Is it possible that nobody else who read this article actually asked this question? Apparently, yes.<br />
<br />
In 2006, 87 years after the article was published, Dr. Palese acquired several of the guinea pigs and discovered that unlike laboratory mice, these animals can infect one another much the way people do. Equipped with an animal model, he enlisted the help of three colleagues and began testing their hypothesis “that ambient air temperature and RH [relative humidity] impact the efficiency with which influenza virus is spread.” [1]<br />
<br />
They constructed an <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.0030151#ppat-0030151-g001" target="_blank">apparatus</a> to keep infected animals in isolated chambers under controlled conditions. Air was forced to flow through chambers with the infected animals into chambers with healthy animals, allowing only the temperature and humidity to vary. <br />
<br />
Gina Kolata reported in the Times:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
They discovered that transmission was excellent at 41 degrees. It declined as the temperature rose until, by 86 degrees, the virus was not transmitted at all. The virus was transmitted best at a low humidity, 20 percent, and not transmitted at all when the humidity reached 80 percent.</blockquote>
From this, they confirmed that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Flu viruses spread through the air, unlike cold viruses, Dr. Palese said, which primarily spread by direct contact when people touch surfaces that had been touched by someone with a cold or shake hands with someone who is infected, for example.</blockquote>
But they also demonstrated that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Flu viruses are more stable in cold air, and low humidity also helps the virus particles remain in the air. That is because the viruses float in the air in little respiratory droplets, Dr. Palese said. When the air is humid, those droplets pick up water, grow larger and fall to the ground.</blockquote>
The coverage in the is excellent with regard to what they learned about the flu virus, how hard it has to been to work on transmission specifically in the past, and how Dr. Palese discovered the animal model in the paper from 1919. <br />
<br />
The technical paper published in PloS Pathogens, on the other hand omitted this rich context, but nevertheless offered other interesting insights to the real work of the scientist which might be rewarding to the persistent, lay reader. In it I discovered, for example, that they had to rinse virus particles from the noses of the healthy guinea pigs to determine when and to what extent their inoculated neighbors infected them. I also learned that they observed conventions that regulate how these animals are treated and that they were anesthetized before they were tested for infection. I could see that there were precautions – including the use of a ‘sentinel animal’ – that demonstrated that the researchers handling the animals were not inadvertently spreading the virus themselves, invalidating their careful experiment. And finally, underlying this simple experiment, the collaborative, rich web connecting many laboratories and technology providers is also quite apparent, all predicated on openness and trust.<br />
<br />
This is all part of that texture, the tangible world of the researcher, which is transparent and obvious to other researchers but quite opaque to the lay reader and difficult to imagine. How often do we refer to an ‘animal model’ without appreciating what it really is, how fortunate we are that we can study human disease in animals and how we can extend what we learn about these animals to ourselves?<br />
<br />
And with regard to the really broad question I posed at the beginning of this essay: what can this study teach us about the scientific community as a whole? First, when scientists ask ‘why’ the flu is transmitted more readily in winter they really mean ‘how’. Although science can tell us a lot about how things work, it’s unable to help us understand what things mean. I don’t want to suggest that these larger questions are not important to scientists – of course they are. In fact, the human dimensions of health and illness, life and death motivate lots of scientists and doctors. But you won’t find that in their own writing: it is assumed.<br />
<br />
And second, also rarely discussed, is the role of curiosity and relentless inquiry as the engine that drives science, not glory or riches (although they help too in some cases). How many people would have read that paper and thought nothing of the guinea pigs death from human influenza in the great epidemic of 1918? Lots of them, apparently! Gina Kolata of the Times was right to include this crucial part of the story. But she neglected to consider how Dr. Peter Palese might have been different, how he was able to see something new and ask an original question. <br />
<br />
Let's make the implicit, explicit, enumerating a list of what Dr. Palese had to believe, first of all, and then what he had to DO to make this science thing work: <br />
<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>He had to assume the mechanism of transmission was knowable and observable.</li>
<li>He was optimistic about our ability as humans and his own capacity as a scientist to imagine new and untested ideas, to devise strategies to test their validity in the lab and then to use reason, extending their application to the real world.</li>
<li>He had a precise question -- he knew what he wanted to know.</li>
<li>He was on the lookout for an animal model he could use to test the transmission of human flu.</li>
<li>He was willing and able to do the test.</li>
<li>He was committed to sharing his results with a community of peers, allowing them to decide if and to what extent they contribute to our understanding of the natural world.</li>
</ol>
Will we remember all this when we teach how the flu virus is transmitted ten years from now? Is it enough to remember what we know about the flu? Or is it just as important to recall how we know what we know, including some of the less obvious assumptions on this list?<br />
<br />
If we succeed in communicating how we know what we know clearly embedded in specific examples of scientific research -- something real and true and human about the culture and practice of science – perhaps then we will become wiser, more mature as we puzzle over the limits of scientific knowledge, uncertainty, risk and controversies about global warming or stem cell research or mercury in tuna fish or the demise of the polar bear, for example. <br />
<br />
How can simple stories like this one help us answer another, larger question: What is science, anyway?<br />
<br />
<br />
Sources:<br />
<br />
[1] <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.0030151" target="_blank">Influenza Virus Transmission Is Dependent on Relative Humidity and Temperature</a> by Lowen AC, Mubareka S, Steel J, Palese P PLoS Pathogens Vol. 3, No. 10<br />
<br />
[2] <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/health/research/05flu.html" target="_blank">Study Shows Why the Flu Likes Winter</a> by Gina Kolata, New York Times, 12/5/2007<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-12550013171466894582007-10-31T23:41:00.001-07:002013-11-06T21:11:44.681-08:00The Challenge of Science and Civic Engagement<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Many of the most complex and serious issues facing society today have significant technical and scientific dimensions: how to manage climate change, public health, loss of biodiversity, and dwindling natural resources, to name a few. These are not just technical or scientific issues, however. These are fundamentally social, political and economic problems with substantial ethical, moral and cultural dimensions. Answers to these challenges require judgment, values and priorities in addition to empirical observation, experimental evidence, quantitative models and methods.<br />
<br />
But no matter how you look at it, despite their utility in policy-making, the "hard sciences" are not always applied. But why? Although this is complicated and, for sure, there are many other factors, it's pretty safe to simply observe that, at the moment, scientists and their work are somewhat isolated from popular culture and the domain of policy decision-making.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>The influence of science in public policy may have peaked in the Roosevelt Administration when Roosevelt named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush">Vannevar Bush</a>, the first time a science advisor was included in the President's Cabinet. The Preseident's science advisor continued to serve an important role in the Cold War and throughout NASA's space programs. In the 1970's we laughed at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_sagan">Carl Sagan</a> when he appeared on the Tonight Show, but he was admired and respected. <br />
<br />
Now who has taken his place on Leno or Letterman? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore">Al Gore</a> has had an impact on popular culture but he is no <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronowski">Jacob Bronowski</a>. And who would step into their shoes in today’s climate of tenure battles and culture wars? As scientists have retreated from public view, carefully produced talking heads have replaced the authentic voices of the scientists themselves. When these “experts” disagree, they only confirm public perception that science is “just another special interest group” or, even worse, several special interest groups. Who are we to believe? What has happened to the public voice of science? And what can be done about it?<br />
<br />
Whatever the reason -- whether the loss of prestige, politicization and marginalization of science is cause or effect, whether it is simply a matter of public perception or the nature of big (and expensive) science, whether it is a new phenomenon or as old as science itself -- we should all agree ignoring scientific theory, evidence and reasoning on these issues at this time is unwise. Arguably the stakes have never been higher.<br />
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Historically, science has always been the purview of a highly specialized elite, operating in relative isolation from society. Political, cultural, religious and business leaders seldom have background in the sciences and tend to rely on stereotypes about science and intellectual tools they acquired in the social sciences and humanities. And therefore it’s natural that popular misconceptions about science abound and interfere with communication and collaboration on every level. For example, science is not a collection of “facts” as it is taught in school. Richard Feynman wrote, “Scientific knowledge is a body of statement of varying degrees of certainty—some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.” Steven J. Gould agreed adding, “Science is a method for testing claims about the natural world, not a compendium of absolute truths.”<br />
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Unfortunately, there are formidable obstacles to this kind of cross-cultural engagement on both sides of the divide. Some of these challenges are due to popular misconceptions that stem from specialization and isolation in science itself. Others are more emotional than logical, based on deeply held beliefs, mutual mistrust, ignorance, fear and suspicion. Science media in the short run and science education in the long run can help, of course. But it's equally clear that science cannot simply "explain" itself our of this deep hole it's in. Face to face engagement and establishing a dialogue of trust and clear motives for collaboration will be critical for our public institutions to engage science and to take advantage of its full potential.<br />
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But I believe that the largest deficit in popular culture is a fundamental misunderstanding of what science actually is. And therefore, it's possible that the largest return on investment would be realized from remedial programs in the history and philosophy of science, contrary to conventional wisdom that we need to double down on the STEM curriculum.<br />
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And yet what we teach in science is scientific knowledge, NOT the practice or experience of scientists. Scientists know what the public does not: science is what scientists do and what they have been doing for centuries, not what they know at the moment. It is a process but it does not follow a linear, deductive path. It is quirky and imperfect, quintessentially human, a profoundly creative endeavor. It is infused with ego, competition, politics and calculated risks. Yet examples of good luck, cooperation, and idealism abound. There is comedy and tragedy in a classical sense, but the personal and human drama often goes unnoticed by the public. Science is a process of discovery but it’s certainly not a mechanical process as it is often imagined by outsiders—inherently dull, unimaginative, dehumanizing and cold.<br />
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Science is a way of knowing about our natural Universe, a rich and rewarding part of the human experience. It is inherently and deeply connected with the arts, humanities and social sciences. And, although science and technology have not always been used wisely or for the benefit of humanity or our planet, scientists know how they have contributed mightily to the success of our species, our civilization and the health and material well-being of billions of people living today.<br />
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It makes mistakes, serious mistakes at times, but over time it corrects itself. And that is what make it distinct, what makes it valuable, and also what makes it hard to communicate. Although it is not absolutely "true", it is a quest for truth, inquiry driven by curiosity and leaps of inspiration and imagination and tested repeatedly with experiments and observation.<br />
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Scientists know that their work is relevant beyond their laboratory benches, how their work applies to social, political and economic problems because they are also members of the community, citizens, employees and consumers. But it seems to me that, despite their understanding of their own discipline and the relevance of what they know, they often have not reflected on HOW they know what they know. Scientists aren't any more able than any other social group to apply what they know about the physical Universe to difficult social, political or ethical questions. They are as guilty as anyone of oversimplifying political, social, cultural and economic dimensions of applying science to real-world problems. They mistake the map of their domain for the territory of society. And when answers require knowledge of economics, values and priorities, scientists, technicians and engineers need help from outside. When science challenges religious beliefs, ethical norms or cultural traditions, scientists also have to listen. Science can inform these kinds of decisions but will never determine them.<br />
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We must be careful not to oversimplify the situation; it would be a serious mistake to assume that closing this gap is a simple matter of explaining science to the public or correcting these popular misconceptions with an education or public relations campaign. The two-way failure to communicate is compounded by a crisis of confidence on both sides of the divide. Public confidence in science is based on blind faith at best, and at worst is dominated by uncertainty, fear and suspicion. On the other side, funding cuts, privatization and politicization have also taken a toll on scientists, who have become comfortable in their isolation and leery of greater transparency and public engagement.<br />
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Merely correcting misconceptions and telling the truth about science in the media is simply not sufficient. Paternalistically asserting the authority of scientific institutions only makes matters worse. Who is even listening? Information is ubiquitous: attention is the precious resource. And most importantly, without confidence and respect, even the most basic communication fails to make an impact.<br />
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What is missing is not a simple matter of information, knowledge or exposure, but a series of genuine personal experiences that overcome social barriers of isolation on both sides of the divide. When scientists engage the public face to face, they share their experience of science: skepticism, autonomy, integrity, inquiry, adventure, exploration and even beauty and spirituality. At the same time, legitimate public concerns for economic tradeoffs, priorities, values and traditions can also be aired and experienced by scientists. <br />
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There is no mystery; we know how to design and mange such engagements. The question is, do we have the will? How will we muster the necessary resources? And how can we overcome isolation, create opportunities for engagement for thousands or even millions of people? Where should we start? Individual examples of successful engagement are all around us. How can we replicate them and make it scale?<br />
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The answer is a very special combination of media and organization we are working on at Science Media and Engagement Strategies.</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-51287429616786735742007-05-06T11:18:00.000-07:002014-01-14T16:22:18.949-08:00Cockburn Publishes Attack on Greenhouse Warming Theory<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Alexander Cockburn published a story on Counterpunch today called "<a href="http://counterpunch.org/cockburn04282007.html">Is Global Warming a Sin</a>?" attacking the theory of global warming. Initially the argument seemed somewhat personal and political but also cogent and founded on legitimate data and observations. However, after rereading it and looking for criticism -- especially of the arguments he raised that seemed original and missing from the mainstream debate -- cracks in his argument started to appear. And the closer I looked the more I realized that it's pretty sophisticated politically but really inadequate with respect to what I am beginning to expect of science journalism.<br />
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Despite the weaknesses of article, however, it is a great opportunity to understand the anatomy of a cultural and political attack on science itself.<br />
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Let's begin with a quick reply by George Monbiot, like Cockburn, a journalist and political activist. Unlike Cockburn, however, he begins his post by reminding us that he is a journalist not a scientist. Then he adds that he is writing about science with policy implications, not just politics and therefore that he is concerned with evidence and peer-reviewed research, which he carefully cites in his article. He is reporting on what scientists know and, to some extent, how they know it. Finally, he models civil dialogue: you know, he actually refers to what Cockburn has written, interprets it in context, replies to specific points and makes clear counter claims with supporting evidence. <br />
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I am neither an experienced journalist nor a scientist. But even I can use what I learned in 8th grade English to illustrate how Cockburn's piece fails to meet the most basic test of legitimate public discourse: it neither argues against anything specific nor does it contribute any meaningful data in support of its own claims. Although it sounds wonderful, it actually says nothing about the science he is attacking, the specific claims he is making, OR the evidence supporting them.<br />
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It does, however, call scientists bad names.<br />
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Cockburn wrote: “There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend.”<br />
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This is a lie. Not opinion. It is a lie. There is certainly empirical evidence. It was controversial evidence in the 70's, 80's and into the 90's. It's a lot better now. And serious people have spent serious time and money, collectively thousands of years and millions of dollars arguing both sides of this issue with data. But for the last ten years it is converging evidence on climate change induced by CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. He asserts that it’s all nonsense but doesn't actually refer to anything specifically. <br />
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Can it be that simple? Just ignore the evidence of climate scientists? And assert evidence of his own? I guess so. But that's just the beginning....<br />
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Next he attacks his opponents instead of their ideas by calling them “fearmongers.” And then he attacks their ideas, again without substantiating his claims: “The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful contribution.”<br />
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Does he really intend to discredit the use of models in science? All models? Number models? Or just "computer models"? Who trusts models? Well, people who use automobiles, airplanes and telephones, for example. People who use medicine, electricity and the Internet also come to mind. We understand LOTS of things that are too complicated to physically construct on a laboratory bench. LOTS of things are easier to instrument and control using models instead of the real thing. And we know that there is a difference between the model and reality, between the map and the territory. Yet, we know we can learn things about reality from a good model, even the dynamics of a business, for example. Models are valuable and useful because they help us understand the reality they model, not because of their political or cultural appeal.<br />
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He says the models are “unverified and crudely oversimplified” but does not substantiate these claims. In fact, these models have emerged from decades of observation, testing, peer-review and publication. And every time results are published, they are reproduced. And criticized. And the result is a kind of constructive conversation. Valid criticism sticks. Experiments and analysis are changed and repeated. Reasonable, skeptical people come to new understandings and the models are refined and their predictive value grows. The cycle is repeated. Although politics and charisma can affect the process in the short run, over time, skeptics become supporters because the models develop, not because they are politically manipulated or seduced. <br />
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By ignoring decades of peer-reviewed literature, Cockburn ignores this process and the hard work of thousands of serious, skeptical scientists. Just ignores it. Can't readers see what he is doing? But by ignoring this fundamental aspect of scientific inquiry, Monbiot and other journalists are also missing the boat: tell us HOW we know what we know! Don't just point out that Cockburn's claims are missing citations. Tell us who these people are and how they got their data!<br />
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Cockburn seems to be using a meteorological model of a Dr. Martin Herzenberg who “was a meteorologist for three years in the U.S. Navy.” If we assume is 70 now and that he completed 4 years of college before joining up at the age of 22, that put him in the army between 1959 and 1962 or so. Somehow, although he probably never saw a computer, he acquired a “lifelong mistrust of climate modeling.” After the Navy, he spent his professional life studying the chemistry and physics of combustion: explosives apparently. <br />
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I googled Herzenberg and only found hits on no-name blogs who cut and paste identical text from each other.... He’s published nothing although he seems to have found an uncritical fan in Cockburn who he met on a cruse in 2001. Hmmm....<br />
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(In the process I found one blog that was kind of fun. Called globalwarminghype.org, it reported how a sixth grade Earth Science class put <a href="http://www.globalwarminghype.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry070323-144523">global warming on trial </a>and found the scientists guilty of making exaggerated claims. The teacher proudly reported that they didn’t find the Theory of Evolution very convincing either.... Go figure. I sure hope none of THOSE kids grow up to be doctors. Or lawyers or engineers or business managers either, for that matter. Then they would have to use data, evidence and logical discourse in their jobs!)<br />
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Herzenberg's data is cited here as if it contradicted and discredited the "oversimplified" models used by climatologists to study long-term trends in the climate. But no references to Herzenberg's data OR the models they presumably contradict have actually been provided.<br />
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In fact, the differences in the rates that CO2 have been produced by our economy and the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are actually part of the models. Lag-times and feedback cycles in the system such as these have been studied and argued about endlessly. And these arguments are exactly why the models are complex and verified, despite their claims to the contrary. And the entire, real process is ignored in his column. Unfortunately, this is missing from most science media on climate change as well. Why won't journalists tell us what's in these models?<br />
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The absence of evidence suggests that it is COCKBURN and HERZENBERG’s political opinions that are oversimplified while the models they criticize actually DO account for these discrepancies.<br />
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On the other hand, if Cockburn's aim is disrupting civil discourse and discrediting scientists, his is a very sophisticated argument using implicit messages and innuendo in very clever and effective ways....<br />
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Then he returns to their motives: “Devoid of any sustaining scientific basis, carbon trafficking is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed, just like the old indulgences, though at least the latter produced beautiful monuments.” That’s it. <br />
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Now you know you are reading politics, a peculiar brand of personal attack politics that isn’t troubled with evidence or even reality. Who needs civil discourse based on an exchange of mutually accepted evidence and a body of logical argument? He just ignores data to the contrary and attacks, as if science were just an alternative point of view, as if the “fearmongers” just sat in libraries, read about indulgences in Medieval History, theorized and argued how many angels could sit on the head of a pin, and periodically thought deeply about whether or not sea levels will rise.<br />
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So how do we ACTUALLY know? Cockburn is forgetting that some of these scientists actually went to Hawaii. And Greenland and Antarctica. Several times. And they gradually learned how to measure CO2 that was trapped in glacial ice millions of years ago. Without their families. And all the while they worry about their data and their results. Will other labs be able to reproduce what they've found? Or will it be rejected by their peers? Maybe we should pay attention to the people who worry about data instead of commentators posing as "experts." <br />
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Cockburn wrote: “Several new papers show that for the last three quarter million years CO2 changes always lag global temperatures by 800 to 2,600 years.” Tricky. Right on the facts but wrong on the spin. These aren’t new. This is a reasonable question and many scientists agree that in the past changes in CO2 were driven by changes in temperature not the other way around. They know that these temperature changes were due to the orbit of the Earth, the axis of the Earth's spin, the distribution of the continents on the surface of the earth, volcanic activity, and possibly changes in the energy produced by the Sun itself. These variables are included in the current models. However, none of these factors can explain the current trend in temperature without also taking into account the effect of CO2.<br />
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Finally, the “Greenhousers” as Cockburn calls them are not a fringe or loony minority engaged in a legitimate scientific controversy in 2007. According to <a href="http://eaps4.mit.edu/faculty/Emanuel/">Kerry Emanuel</a> from MIT, most of the field was skeptical for several decades while the pioneers did lots of the early research and modeling. It <i><b>actually was</b></i> a controversy in the 70's and 80's: there were several models and they did not agree. Then, according to <a href="http://jsterman.scripts.mit.edu/">John Sterman</a> of the Sloan School, these independent models started to converge in 1994-5. They disagreed about the magnitude and rate of the predicted climate changes but agreed on many other findings. Most importantly, their predictions of time delays in average temperature increases as a result of greenhouse gas concentrations converged: it seemed even then that there was agreement that it would take 40 or even 50 years to stabilize once concentrations of greenhouse gasses stabilize. By 2003 the actual temperature data was so far outside the predicted normal range that it “could not be explained without the presence of the CO2” according to Emanuel, and <i><b>he actually changed his mind.</b></i><br />
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Consensus does not mean that the theory is right. It may be wrong. But it is incorrect to assert as Cockburn does that there is serious controversy in the field, the retired mining engineer who studied Meteorology in the 1950's notwithstanding. There is not. Rants like Cockburn's don't meet minimum standards for political opinion, let alone science journalism. But they can be useful to learn more about the rhetorical techniques that are being used so we can all become more critical readers.</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-43090545842312892282007-04-30T19:45:00.000-07:002013-12-08T19:45:53.036-08:00Approval from Department of Commerce Required for Science Communications<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Union of Concerned Scientists has published a very simple review of new Department of Commerce policies regarding the communication of science to the public and has provided links to letters written in protest of these polices and the policy itself.<br />
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These are <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/new-commerce-department-media-0024.html">remarkable documents</a>. On the surface, they appear to guarantee the "open dissemination of research results." However, upon closer examination it’s quite clear that scientists are actually required to seek approval from the Department of Commerce for any scientific communication.</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-75127446639350599632007-04-13T19:34:00.000-07:002014-01-14T16:22:43.780-08:00Marine Protected Areas (MPA's) Not Growing Fast Enough<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Erik Stokstad wrote in today’s Science NOW Daily News that we are not preserving marine biodiversity fast enough. According to Stokstad, Scientists meeting at the World Conservation Union (IUCN) believe we need to accelerate the creation of marine protected areas if we want to preserve marine biodiversity and move towards more sustainable modes of development.<br />
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At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, the signatories of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed that: 10% of the offshore regions controlled by individual countries (economic exclusive zones) and 20% of the world’s oceans would be protected by 2010. But Louisa Wood, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia, has found that the total protected area would have to double every year for the next three years to meet that goal.<br />
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That rate of growth is unlikely given that it has been increasing by only 5% per year over the past 20 years.
Stokstad reported:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“At the current rate, it would take until 2045 to designate enough reserves to meet the CBD goal, and until 2074 to meet the target for sustainable development. However, because marine species are being so rapidly depleted, there isn't really that much time, noted oceanographer Sylvia Earle. ‘If we don't do something now, we will forever lose the chance.’ Dan Laffoley of the IUCN's World Commission on Protected Areas, which helped fund the database, said of the analysis: ‘It brings it home when you see it like this. We're way off target.’” </blockquote>
My questions:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>What is a Marine Protected Area? </li>
<li> Are there different kinds or degrees of protection? </li>
<li>What kinds of oversight are there, ensuring that countries are actually enforcing the legal protections they are enacting? </li>
<li>How do we know that the right areas are being protected? </li>
<li>How do we know that it will be enough? </li>
<li>What are the actual obstacles to accelerating the rate of adding protected areas?</li>
</ul>
</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-87187219483915327102007-04-11T19:46:00.000-07:002014-01-14T16:23:17.935-08:00How Exxon Spent $15 Million to Create Confusion and Dissent in Global Warming Debate<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Union of Concerned Scientists has published an powerful and compelling report on exactly how Exxon spent $15 Million with dozens of shady organizations appearing to produce legitimate science and policy reports in order to discredit the real science behind global warming. It’s 60-some pages but really impressive in its attention to detail.<br />
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Most of the report is focused on the elaborate web of organizations, associations, think-tanks and consultancies Exxon has funded to create the impression that there is a large, heterogeneous group of informed scientists who disagree on the basic facts and theory of anthropogenic climate change. They have documented a deliberate attempt to manufacture a controversy in science when, in fact, there is none.<br />
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It's shocking to see real investigative journalism any more, professional and restrained. The money trail between Exxon and their paid experts is clearly documented. Sources are clearly documented in the full text of the report <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/exxonmobil-smoke-mirrors-hot.html">here</a>. <br />
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On the other hand, they are SO focused on what has actually happened that they have largely neglected to cover the effects of the disinformation campaign. In fact, many Americans continue to doubt the basic science underlying AGW and the mainstream media seems rather ill equipped to deal with the deliberate lies and distortions. "Balanced" reporting requires that you interview so-called "experts" from both sides of an issue. Exxon gets their money's worth because the experts they pay are called all the time and the same guys appear over and over again with the same tired arguments. And for some reason the "liberal media" is compelled to report this fiction as fact.<br />
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Is it any surprise that the public has been and is still confused? Is it "settled science" or not?<br />
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At least this report investigates the source of the lingering "debate" and attempts to expose experts paid by Exxon as liars.</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-73091633544731701992007-04-09T19:26:00.000-07:002013-12-08T19:40:38.568-08:00Einstein on the Difference Between Science and Art<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Apparently, Einstein wrote:
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<blockquote>
"Where the world ceases to be the stage for personal hopes and desires, where we, as free beings, behold it in wonder, to question and to contemplate, there we enter the realm of art and science. If we trace out what we behold and experience through the language of logic, we are doing science; if we show it in forms whose interrelationships are not accessible to our conscious thought but are intuitively recognized as meaningful, we are doing art. Common to both is the devotion to something beyond the personal, removed from the arbitrary."</blockquote>
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-54641369221153302402007-03-07T16:05:00.001-08:002014-01-16T15:29:46.700-08:00TOS Education and Public Outreach Guide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Oceanography Society has published a very useful guide to public outreach written specifically for scientists. It agrees in principle with most of my own findings and might be a very valuable resource. <br />
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You can check out their site at <a href="http://www.tos.org/">http://www.tos.org</a> and the guide is found here: <a href="http://www.tos.org/epo_guide/index.html">http://www.tos.org/epo_guide/index.html</a>.<br />
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stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5930758718848040428.post-91809021133960877352007-03-07T16:05:00.000-08:002013-10-24T19:30:55.460-07:00TOS Education and Public Outreach Guide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The Oceanography Society has published a very useful guide to public outreach written specifically for scientists. It agrees in principle with most of my own findings and might be a very valuable resource. Check out their <a href="http://www.tos.org/">site</a> and their <a href="http://www.tos.org/epo_guide/index.html">guide</a>.</div>
stefanoqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03957519878567929614noreply@blogger.com0