Media mangles science

by daisybush
Autism, Testosterone and Eugenics:
[Via BPSDB | The Lay Scientist -]

The media’s all too often shabby treatment of neuroscience and psychology research doesn’t just propagate bad science – it means that the really interesting and important bits go unreported. This is what’s just happened with the controversy surrounding a paper from the Autism Research Center (ARC) at Cambridge University – Bonnie Aeyeung et. al.’s Fetal Testosterone and Autistic Traits. For research published in a journal with an impact factor of 1.538 (i.e. not good), it’s certainly attracted plenty of attention – but for all the wrong reasons.

[More]

A nice discussion of how a reasonable paper gets altered into something completely different by the press. A paper describes the results of a small study where the production of testosterone by fetuses is correlated with the self-reporting questionnaires of the mothers taken 8 years later.

First the correlation, if there really is wrong, is not the strongest and has a lot of noise. So looking at testosterone levels could not be used to screen for autism.

And secondly, none of the children developed autism, so there is no data in the paper for the levels of testosterone produced by a fetus who actually did develop autism. SO I am not sure what the data really shows a correlation to.

But that does not stop the papers, who ended up having discussions on a huge range of things that reality had little support for.

Par for the course.

Technorati Tags: Science

Path to Sustainable blog

I’m on the board of the Sustainable Path Foundation (formerly the Seattle Biotech Legacy Foundation). We just went through a rebranding which included the creation of a new website, which was actually a wonderful exercise. One of the aspects of this that I am interested in is trying to use new technologies to increase our ability to meet our objectives.

One objective is to serve as a convener/collaborator for topics dealing with human health and sustainability. In addition to providing grants and putting on a very successful seminar series, we have also started Idea Club, a free-form forum for open discussions of relevant topics. I have discussed the upcoming one.

Because the new tools allow an individual to take come control, I have been working on content for a blog dealing with the matters of interest to Sustainable Path. It reflects my personal viewpoints and is only connected with Sustainable Path by my membership on the board.

But I hope its content will stimulate discussions that can carry over to Idea Club or the Seminar series. I hope I can bring together an online community that can harness digital Web 2.0 approaches as well as the Sustainable Path Foundation harness in person approaches.

So, let me introduce Path to Sustainable.

Yes, I know the name sounds odd but I wanted to convey that we are on a path TO someplace. A path to a sustainable world, sustainable state, sustainable community, sustainable economy, etc. We want more than just the ability to be sustainable. We want to BE sustainable. And that is the path we are on.

Technorati Tags: Economy, General, Science, Sustainability

HIGH-FIVE INAUGURATION!

more about "HIGH-FIVE INAUGURATION! from Almost T…", posted with vodpod

Not only is this funny but it is a hoot trying to figure out who everyone is.

Plus, now I know how to embed other video types. other than just Youtube.

DIMEs

Dense Inert Metal Explosives in Gaza:
[Via Booman Tribune]

It seems Gaza was a weapons testing lab for the use of a particularly toxic form of weapons: DIME weapons More from Al Jazeera English: Medics working in the Gaza Strip have condemned Israel’s use of suspected “new weapons” that inflict horrific injuries they say most surgeons will not have seen before. Dr Jan Brommundt, a German doctor working for Medecins du Monde in the south Gazan city of Khan Younis, described the injuries he had seen as “absolutely gruesome”. [...] When detonated, a Dime device expels a blade of charged tungsten dust that burns and destroys everything within a four-metre radius. Brommundt also described widespread but previously unseen abdominal injuries that appear minor at first but degenerate within hours causing multi-organ failure. “Initially everything seems in order… but they will present within one to five hours with an acute abdomen which looks like appendicitus but it turns out on operation that dozens of miniature particles can be found in all of their organs,” he said. “It seems to be some sort of explosive or shell that disperses tiny particles at around 1×1 or 2×1 millimetres that penetrate all organs, these miniature injuries, you are not able to attack them surgically.” The doctors said many patients succomb to septicaemia and die within 24 hours. Dr Erik Fosse, a Norwegian surgeon who worked at the Al-Shifa hospital in northern Gaza during the Israeli offensive in Gaza, also told Al Jazeera there was a significant increase in double amputations. “We suspect they [Israel] used Dime weapons because we saw cases of huge amputations or flesh torn off the lower parts of the body,” he said. “The pressure wave [from a Dime device] moves from the ground upwards and that’s why the majority of patients have huge injuries to the lower part of the body and abdomen.” I can’t add much to that. I don’t know what to say, frankly.

I had never heard of these types of munitions before. It appears that they were developed to reduce the overall size of a destructive blast radius and thus the collateral damage. Instead of possibly killing and maiming a lot of unnecessary people with a large blast radius, it reduces the radius but also increases the lethality within the zone. It is a bomb you can walk away from but then be dead 24 hours later.

So they are better targeted and perhaps more lethal than normal bombs. I can see the wish for this sort of weapon. It holds the possibility of reducing overall casualties. But it also means that someone can walk away healthy and be dead in a day. And the material is possibly quite carcinogenic, so there may well be severe outcomes that do not appear until years later.

There is something about surviving an attack but then succumbing to it some time later that causes more mental anguish than just being killed immediately. At least for me. When reading about Hiroshima, I was more upset with reading accounts of people who survived the blast but dies from radiation poisoning later. Or the early workers with radiation, such as Louis Slotin.

I think there is a visceral repugnance towards something that leaves a person conscious but knowing that they are already dead. It may be why deadly viruses, such as Ebola are of more interest than the flu even though they kill far fewer people.

Technorati Tags: Science, Technology

Because its funny

The Immortalizers:
[Via BAGnewsNotes]

If the NYT found this an amusing moment to profile on Thursday’s front page — perhaps to tide us over until a one-day-old White House gets its footing — it functions symbolically, as well (at the expense of these photographers), as an indictment of the media, and its tendency to become overwhelmingly focused on the politically trivial.

(image: Doug Mills/NYT. January 21, 2009)

Is this post-ironic? I love the three different angles. Do the Pulitzers give an award for Best Photo of an Inanimate Object? And the political paparazzi are complaining because they are not being given the same access to Obama as the official White House photographers are. I can see why the administration might want to limit access. Who wants to see pictures of the new drapes taken by 5 different photojournalists?

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Politics

Steven Chu speaks

Steven Chu Addresses the National Labs:
[Via Cosmic Variance]

The new Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, addressed the national labs in an all-hands video transmission today. I was not there, but my colleague and friend Rob Roser at Fermilab was there, and sent me a very nice bulleted summary. So, you are getting this second hand, and people who were there can add nuances in the comments, but here goes:

Read the whole list but here are a few highlights.

• Energy is the defining issue of our time.
• Addressing the environment is the major reason Chu took on this job.
• These problems provide a tremendous opportunity for the DOE, but it comes with a burden: we can not fail.

Getting energy under control is critical for almost everything else. I just worry about the time frame for this sort of change.

• The DOE can quite literally “save the world” by developing a sound energy policy going forward, and invent new science that will provide new technologies.
• Our current use of energy not sustainable – have to move forward.
• We are facing something society has never been asked to do before: to deal with ominous problems with climate change. If half of the things climate science tells us are half true, we have a huge problem on our hands and the DOE has to work to provide those solutions.

Sustainable energy use will require a huge change in our outlooks and expectations. There will be a lot of foot dragging.

It will take a true collaboration of government research labs and entrepreneurs to accomplish these tasks. We had better be up for it.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science

Sustainable Path Foundation Idea Club

The Sustainable Path Foundation will host the next Idea Club on Monday, January 26th, from 5-7. The focus this month will be on Fresh Water. There are several links at the website to interesting readings about the subject.

Idea Club is a monthly forum for discussing topics dealing with sustainability, science and human health. It is relatively free-form with some light facilitating to drive the discussion. Everyone is invited to join in, no matter what your views. We welcome direct, fact-based discussions.

Hope to see you there.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Non-Profit, Sustainability