Cops on camera

Cops Frame Woman for Routine Accident:
[Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

An accident that was their fault, by the way, because they hit her from behind. Four police officers from Hollywood, Florida are caught on camera inventing evidence and plotting to falsify police reports to frame an innocent woman that they ran into with a police car. New professionalism, indeed. Video below the fold.

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What is just jaw-dropping is that the cops knew they were being filmed and recorded by their own cameras yet they still talked about the frame up on camera. This would indicate that they felt the film would never see the light of day. As the reporter says, this calls into question every single DWI that these 4 policemen were involved in.

Nothing like a little transparency to keep people honest, I guess. Although I expect in the future that the police conspirators will just make sure they are off camera when they plot. Maybe we will then have to put wireless cameras and mikes on every cop in order to make sure they do their job with covering up malfeasance?

Technorati Tags: Technology

A refreshing bit of music

Perhaps hominids are not the only animals that appreciate music. Case in point:

Technorati Tags: General

More gaps filled in

by Rennett Stowe
Scientists find that chimps were born to appreciate music:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

Chimpanzees are biologically programmed to appreciate pleasant music.

The discovery comes from experiments showing that an infant chimpanzee prefers to listen to consonant music over dissonant music.

That suggests the apes are born with an innate appreciation of pleasant sounds, say scientists in the journal Primates.

Until now, this was thought to be a universal human trait, but the new finding suggests it evolved in the ancestors of humans and modern apes.

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One of the arguments made by Wallace and Collins is that certain traits only found in humans are a sign of the Creator’s touch. As I discussed yesterday, Wallace believed that musical ability was one of these traits.

Yet here we have another hominid who can do something no other animal besides man has been shown to do – tell the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sounds and choose the ‘good’ sounds.

Natural selection has no problem with the finding that other apes appreciate music. But it undercuts any theory that these traits are only found in Man and signal the divine hand of a Creator.

Science continually fills in the gaps. There are fewer and fewer ones for scientists like Collins to fit their theories into. Because science works to figure out what we do not currently understand. Faith is a poor substitute in that area.

Technorati Tags: Science

More on Wallace

by celesteh

I wrote the other day about Francis Collins and Alfred Russel Wallace, who both use the same argument for the existence of God, even though there is 120 years separating their scientific understandings. Here is a little more about Wallace and his scientific argument, one based on the accepted, for its time, racism of Western civilization.

He wrote that there was no doubt that Man’s physical form was directed by natural selection, but he tried to prove that Man’s morality, music and math could only have been derived from an external source (all quotes from the Alfred Russel Wallace Page):

It is not, therefore, to be assumed, without proof or against independent evidence, that the later stages of an apparently continuous development are necessarily due to the same causes only as the earlier stages [He is saying that just because we know that the body evolved, that does not mean the mind did. Separate proof is needed. RBG]. Applying this argument to the case of man’s intellectual and moral nature, I propose to show that certain definite portions of it could not have been developed by variation and natural selection alone, and that, therefore, some other influence, law, or agency is required to account for them. If this can be clearly shown for any one or more of the special faculties of intellectual man, we shall be justified in assuming that the same unknown cause or power may have had a much wider influence, and may have profoundly influenced the whole course of his development.

He then proceeds to demonstrate that Mankind has certain intellectual attributes not seen in other animals. But he then choses things like mathematics and music to illustrate that difference.:

Among the lower savages music, as we understand it, hardly exists, though they all delight in rude musical sounds, as of drums, tom-toms, or gongs; and they also sing in monotonous chants. Almost exactly as they advance in general intellect, and in the arts of social life, their appreciation of music appears to rise in proportion; and we find among them rude stringed instruments and whistles, till, in Java, we have regular bands of skilled performers probably the successors of Hindoo musicians of the age before the Mahometan conquest. The Egyptians are believed to have been the earliest musicians, and from them the Jews and the Greeks, no doubt, derived their knowledge of the art; but it seems to be admitted that neither the latter nor the Romans knew anything of harmony or of the essential features of modern music.16 Till the fifteenth century little progress appears to have been made in the science or the practice of music; but since that era it has advanced with marvellous rapidity, its progress being curiously parallel with that of mathematics, inasmuch as great musical geniuses appeared suddenly among different nations, equal in their possession of this special faculty to any that have since arisen.

Similarly, with mathematics, he notes the progression from savages who can not count beyond two upwards to the elite of Western culture. He then makes this statement that is he grand proof:

As with the mathematical, so with the musical faculty, it is impossible to trace any connection between its possession and survival in the struggle for existence. It seems to have arisen as a result of social and intellectual advancement, not as a cause; and there is some evidence that it is latent in the lower races, since under European training native military bands have been formed in many parts of the world, which have been able to perform creditably the best modern music.

So, the fact that there is no selective advantage to music or math, but coupled with the fact that man possesses it means that Darwin’s theory does not cover morality in Man.

In fact, it only leaps into existence when people become civilized and possess a Spiritual faculty:

Such is the metaphysical faculty, which enables us to form abstract conceptions of a kind the most remote from all practical applications, to discuss the ultimate causes of things, the nature and qualities of matter, motion, and force, of space and time, of cause and effect, of will and conscience. Speculations on these abstract and difficult questions are impossible to savages, who seem to have no mental faculty enabling them to grasp the essential ideas or conceptions; yet whenever any race attains to civilisation, and comprises a body of people who, whether as priests or philosophers, are relieved from the necessity of labour or of taking an active part in war or government, the metaphysical faculty appears to spring suddenly into existence, although, like the other faculties we have referred to, it is always confined to a very limited proportion of the population

His best statement is that wit and humor falls into the class of exceptional traits not only found in man but actually only in small numbers in the civilized population, ” the majority being, as is well known, totally unable to say a witty thing or make a pun even to save their lives.” Since, by his argument, such a very small percentage of Mankind can even understand music, practice mathematics or posit a social barb, then the shear presence of these traits requires a divine Creator.

Now, we know better today because, as I tried to do before, we have 120 years of exemplary research to inform us. Collins still suggests that codes of behavior or altruism provide the same demonstration that Wallace’s arguments did; that certain specific human traits, ones not found in any other animal, must be divinely created because there is no reason for evolution to have ever produced them.

Again, what are the timely, rational, evidence-based arguments for this?? Even Wallace, whose arguments today would be seen as ineffective and ill-informed, at least tried to come up with an evidence-based approach. His arguments were at least based on current research. They were entirely rational. Does Collins’ argument come close to possessing any of these three traits?

Wallace tried to sustain his faith in the exceptional creation of Mankind by using scientific evidence to provide proof. He actually made a valiant attempt but 120 years later his argument is known to be misguided, with an underpinning of data that were shown to be factually wrong.

Wallace’s argument was filtered by his special pleading for Mankind. He had the conclusion first and arranged the data to fit. While this is not too unusual in science, the danger is that the scientist can too easily fool themselves with a wonderful theory. They can then cherry pick data and shoehorn things into the theory that do not actually provide the sort of rigorous proof needed.

This is what happened to Wallace, who took up a theory and explained it with data that has easily been shown to be totally incorrect, thus rendering his theory ineffective as a useful model of Nature. This figures to happen to Collins also. It starts getting to be like a post hoc logical fallacy. ‘Since this data supports my theory, it must be right. Since this data does not support my theory, it must be wrong.”

What sort of data will Collins accept in order to forget about his theory of a Creator who is responsible for morality in humans? In order to adopt a purely mechanistic origin of moral codes derived from lower primates and modified by human civilization? If other primates are shown to be moral, will that change his mind? Because a scientist that is not willing to drop their theory after facts that can not be explained by their theory have been uncovered is not much of a scientist.

Technorati Tags: Science

A reason to be a guy

Male germ cells can be directly converted into other cell types:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]
Researchers have found a way to directly convert spermatogonial stem cells, the precursors of sperm cells, into tissues of the prostate, skin and uterus. Their approach, described this month in the journal Stem Cells, may prove to be an effective alternative to the medical use of embryonic stem cells.

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This is pretty nice experiment, especially since they used cells from mice that would glow green under fluorescent light in order to tell just what the cells were doing. Still lots of things to do, like showing it will work with human cells and what not.

Lots of good work coming out on stem cells. Maybe we will get even closer to human uses soon.

Technorati Tags: Science

Nothing new learned in 120 years?

by woodleywonderworks
Good, Bad, and Government Funding:
[Via Discover Magazine | RSS]

The National Institutes of Health funds research on the biology of morality in the human brain, as well as the evolution of human morality by comparing humans to other primates. Francis Collins, who has been nominated to head NIH, has repeatedly criticized this sort of research–and has used its failure as evidence for the existence of God. In 2008, for example, he said, “I think human altruism can be seen as one of strongest signposts to the existence of a personal God. I can see no fully satisfactory explanation for it coming from biology.”
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I am going to discuss and rebut the idea that some rational, science-based approaches can provide direct evidence of a Creator. Simply because I do not feel that Collins’ argument holds up does not mean that anyone who has faith in a Creator is wrong. It simply means that this is not an approach that will be successful for proving there is one. There is a reason it is called faith.

Collins may be a good scientist but the quote attributed to him displays a shocking lack of understanding of the history and science behind his special pleading argument. Simply because we may not fully understand all aspects of something does not mean that a designer had to have been responsible. This God of the gaps is a tool often used by creationists. It is disturbing to see it used by a prominent scientist.

The faith that Collins demonstrates about God’s hand in human morality, thus providing for human exceptionalism, reminds me of Alfred Russel Wallace, another scientist who attempted to use science to prove the existence of a Creator. The same ‘rational’ underpinnings used by Collins are at least 120 years old. Wallace, besides being involved with the development of the theory of evolution by natural selection, also believed that Darwin’s theory could not explain many attributes of human consciousness and morality. In fact, Wallace ended his book entitled Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of Its Applications with these words:

We thus find that the Darwinian theory, even when carried out to its extreme logical conclusion, not only does not oppose, but lends a decided support to, a belief in the spiritual nature of man. It shows us how man’s body may have been developed from that of a lower animal form under the law of natural selection; but it also teaches us that we possess intellectual and moral faculties which could not have been so developed, but must have had another origin; and for this origin we can only find an adequate cause in the unseen universe of Spirit. (Courtesy of The Alfred Russel Wallace Page)

Some things just do not change, do they? This book was first published in 1889. Yet over 100 years later, after all the research we have done, we still have researchers who say that the fact that Man has certain moral and intellectual benefits proves there is a God because those facts can not be explained any other way, such as by natural selection. That because we may not have an explanation for morality then that means that God did it.

‘Man could not have evolved the intellect and morality he shows today unless the hand of a Creator had been present.’ But what is the scientific underpinning for their special pleading? For if there is no science, and they are only speaking because of their faith, then why should they be listened to any more than a minister or priest?

Wallace actually tried to explain the need for special pleading using the scientific knowledge he had available to him. I do not see Collins doing the same thing.

Both Wallace and Collins do not believe that Man was specifically created, that an episode of special creation is required. From the same chapter in Wallace’s book:

The facts now very briefly summarised amount almost to a demonstration that man, in his bodily structure, has been derived from the lower animals, of which he is the culminating development. In his possession of rudimentary structures which are functional in some of the mammalia; in the numerous variations of his muscles and other organs agreeing with characters which are constant in some apes; in his embryonic development, absolutely identical in character with that of mammalia in general, and closely resembling in its details that of the higher quadrumana; in the diseases which he has in common with other mammalia; and in the wonderful approximation of his skeleton to those of one or other of the anthropoid apes, we have an amount of evidence in this direction which it seems impossible to explain away. And this evidence will appear more forcible if we consider for a moment what the rejection of it implies. For the only alternative supposition is, that man has been specially created–that is to say, has been produced in some quite different way from other animals and altogether independently of them. But in that case the rudimentary structures, the animal-like variations, the identical course of development, and all the other animal characteristics he possesses are deceptive, and inevitably lead us, as thinking beings making use of the reason which is our noblest and most distinctive feature, into gross error.We cannot believe, however, that a careful study of the facts of nature leads to conclusions directly opposed to the truth; and, as we seek in vain, in our physical structure and the course of its development, for any indication of an origin independent of the rest of the animal world, we are compelled to reject the idea of “special creation” for man, as being entirely unsupported by facts as well as in the highest degree improbable.

No special creation. Because a ‘careful study of the facts of nature’ tell us so. Man was not created in a separate incident from the rest of the natural world. But his brain and intellect were specially created.

So, no special creation. Just special pleading. ‘God was still involved. There is apparently no other way to explain morality, to explain altruism or why humans will help others even at the risk of their own life.’ ‘Somehow Man is really different and this proves that God exists.’ ‘There is no selective advantage to being moral so there is no reason for it to ever have evolved.’ “We don’t yet understand everything so God must have done it.’

Except that people doing real research to test the hypotheses that natural selection CAN explain morality, altruism, etc. have produced a wealth of information over the last 120 years. I’ve talked about just a small part of this over the years. Like this work indicating that societies which contained members who would die for others, even those they were not related to, in wars would come to dominate all societies. And that collaboration in times of peace also permit societies to dominate.

Or this one, explaining why lines form and can be important in the behavior of a group. Or this one on why the development of co-operation could be very important in primate cultures?

When Wallace wrote his words, he did not know about genes, genetics, the germ theory of disease, the Spanish Flu, polio vaccines, HIV, yellow fever vaccine, Ebola, antibiotics, viroids, molecular biology, biotechnology, bioinformatics, viruses, Drosophila, mitochondrial DNA, the Golgi apparatus, plasmids, organelles, bacteriophage, the endoplasmic reticulum, the centriole, ribosomal RNA, tRNA, DNA, mRNA, microRNA, siRNA, the double helix, replication, neurobiology, plate tectonics, the age of the planet and of the universe, the Burgess shale, Hox, hedgehog, evo-devo, Mendel, Morgan,Watson, Muller, Sanger, Venter, Lederberg, Crick, Kornberg, Khorana, Baltimore, Lewis, Schrodinger, Gamow, Brenner, McClintock, Benzer, Luria, Delbruck, Cech, PCR, phosphoramidates, NMR, PET, MRI, CAT scans, X-ray crystallography, cryo-electron microscopy, DNA microarrays, Southern blotting, Maxam-Gilbert sequencing, dideoxynucleotides, Mitochondrial Eve, Hardy-Weinburg, metabolic pathways, microcomputers, Genentech, Amgen, Cetus, Beckman, Biogen, immune tolerance, HLA, superantigens, idiotypes, CDR, gene rearrangement, somatic hypermutation, spliceosome, intervening sequence, exon, horizontal gene transfer, Alu sequences, endogenous retroviuses, short tandem repeats, genetic fingerprinting, SNPs, VNTRs, genetic linkage, microsatellites,

and about a billion other things and people involved in a 120 years worth of high powered biology.

Collins does have this benefit. Yet Collins seems to echo the words of Wallace almost identically. At least Wallace had an excuse for his view of human exceptionalism. In his world, there really was a huge difference in the intellectual capacities of Mankind, with ’savages’ not being able to count above two and having no musical or artistic talents at all.

We know now this is wrong, which completely destroys Wallace’s rational argument. But at the time he made the argument, it was based on up-to-date data.

What is Collin’s excuse? What is Collins’ basis for saying he sees no satisfactory explanation? Does Collins really believe that 120 years of biological research has not provided any indication at all that special pleading for humanity might not hold up? At least Wallace worked really hard to present a rational, science-based argument for his exceptionalism.

So what are Collin’s rational arguments? While Wallace’s reasoning was faulty and incorrect, as we know today, at least his arguments were based on then current research. What current research is Collins basing his reasoning on?

There may be a Creator but if the presence of moral codes in a highly social primate is shown to arise by selection, then factual basis for such a belief disappears. Would Collins then renounce his faith? Collins would be much more honest to say he has faith there is a Creator and leave it at that. By trying to present some sort of rational, scientific argument, one that has been around for 120 years without garnering much traction in the scientific world, he opens himself up to rational, scientific counter arguments.

Frankly the counter arguments have greater strength, which would then seem to weaken his argument that there is a Creator at all. For if his conclusions are wrong, that morality could be derived from natural selection, then what IS his rational reason to believe in a Creator?

Better he just keep his faith for the faithful and his science for the scientists.

Technorati Tags: Science

Science for students

Penn Summer Science Academy:
[Via Cosmic Variance]

The last couple of weeks have seen our Department teeming with the participants in the Penn Summer Science Academy. This wonderful program, now in its twelfth year, is run by Bill Berner, who can also pull together any demonstration you may wish for in your classes. Guided by Bill, a number of other staff members and a local high school physics teacher, the students (“academically qualified high school students currently enrolled in 10th, 11th, or 12th grade”) go through an intensive physics experience for four weeks, including mini-courses, demos, research lectures, lab work and field trips, finishing up with a panel discussion on careers in science, featuring professionals from research, education, and industry.

On Tuesday I got to play a small part in this by delivering a lecture on modern cosmology

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The summer between my sophomore and junior years in HIgh School, I took place in a program at the University of Texas at Austin, SSTP – Summer Science Training Program – funded by the NSF. Dr. Irwin Spear, who passed away a few years ago, ran it and provided lectures. we got to do research with real scientists and had to give a presentation based on our work.

This is where I decided I wanted to be a biologist. I got to hear about things I had not been exposed to (one of these was evolution, which we had not had time to get to in sophomore biology. Funny how the chapters on evolution were at the end of the book). We read actual papers by scientists, using Peters’ Classic Papers in Genetics.

It is where I learned what the day to day experience was like in a lab, where I saw how knowledge was gleaned from data and how sometimes a researcher had to make decisions about what data to use.

It was my first really extended time by myself. We stayed in Jester and got our first experience with dorm food service. I think one guy lived the entire time on McDonald’s french fries. I saw my first X-rated film (A Clockwork Orange. How tastes have changed!) and discovered college film series (I got to see Invasion of the Body Snatchers on a big screen. This would come in handy several years later at CalTech when I was able to raise my GPA by taking a film class and writing a paper on ‘Science Fiction Movies of the 50s: A Reflection of the Communist Menace’,where I compared the movies, and the stories they were made from, of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing From Another World.

Ahh. Memories. But is was a program like this that put me on the path that pretty much determined my life. I hope these current programs do the same and I am really encouraged by the researchers taking time to work with them

Technorati Tags: Education, Science

People make the network, not the other way around

Too much networking?:
[Via Cosmic Log]

Open-source communities may suffer from “an overabundance of connections,”
an information policy researcher suggests in the journal Science.

Are geeks guilty of groupthink? A network expert argues that less social networking would produce more radical innovation on the Internet.

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I have a long post about this at my SpreadingScience blog. I also left a comment at Cosmic Log but I wanted to repeat it here so I can find it again. I think the original paper has identified something important – that some online communities are not very innovative. Rather than it being a fault of the online network, I think it is more a problem of the types of people that make up the online networks.

Everyone goes through at least 5 steps as the adopt new innovations. Innovators and early adopters go through these steps much more rapidly than the early and late majority. If a community does not have enough innovators, as well as enough the critical early adopters to filter useful innovations for the community, then the ability of the community to adopt innovations will be greatly hampered.

Here is my comment on this:

I’m not so sure the problem is the network. The original paper seems to describe the nodes in an impersonal fashion, rather than recognizing that humans are involved, each with their own views.

Networks do not make communities innovative. People make communities innovative. The problem identified may be a result of an ineffective mix of people that make up the network, not the network itself.

Rogers’ work on the technology adoption lifecycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_lifecycle and the diffusion of innovations in a community http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_Innovations would indicate that the makeup of the Open Source community might not be optimal for rapid dispersal of innovative ideas.

In particular, there may not be a sufficient number of early adopters/innovators engaged in these online networks to permit innovations to efficiently diffuse throughout the community. Too few of these types of people make it very likely that the natural tendency of the majority to be evolutionary, not revolutionary, will dominate.

For innovation to traverse a community there needs to be sufficient numbers of early adopters (who filter out good and bad ideas) and innovators (who create the good and bad ideas) to combat the status quo of the majority (who hate to have their workflow disrupted). Without the right mix, ideas that are useful to the community do not get effectively filtered and presented. The conservatism of the majority overwhelms the efforts of early adopters/innovators.

The majority, whether in real life or online, usually only communicates with others in the community, is skeptical of change and often only adopts a new innovation when told to by a respected member of the community, often someone who can be labeled an early adopter.

Early adopters and innovators as a group have the largest number of connections outside the community. They know a lot of people and access a lot of external information. The fact that some of the described networks only connect to themselves indicates to me that they do not have enough early adopters and innovators in the community.

Without an effective core of early adopters whose opinions are respected by the majority, there will be a noticeable slowdown in the rate of diffusion of innovation in a community. Without the right amount of early adopters/innovators to push ideas through to the majority, innovation can falter.

The solution may not be to change the networks as much as to identify and empower early adopters/innovators.

The way to do this in the real world is to put them all in a group called Research where their relative numbers are greatly increased and the conservatism of the majority is not as readily seen.

Skunk works are effective in the real world for similar reasons – they artificially increase the percentage of early adopters/innovators, permitting the filtering activity to be enhanced. They work, not because they change the network but because they alter the relative numbers of key people, such as early adopters/innovators, in a group.

Purposefully creating something like this, and making sure it is well populated with the proper sort of people, could be a big factor in increasing innovation in online networks.

Not because the network itself is necessarily altered but because enough of the ‘right’ people are included.

Technorati Tags: Social media, Web 2.0

Food for thought

Next Up: Plagues and Pestilence:
[Via Opinio Juris]

by Kevin Jon Heller

According to a national poll conducted by Time, now that Walter Cronkite is dead, John Stewart is America’s most trusted newscaster. Stewart, 44%. Brian Williams, 29%. Charlie Gibson, 19%. Katie Couric: 7%.

(I guess I shouldn’t mock. If those were the choices, I’d have voted for him, too.)

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Nothing demonstrates the decline in broadcast journalism than this. A basic cable comedian is viewed as a more trusted newcaster in America. This would be viewed as satire if someone wrote about it.

(Yes, of course it is an internet poll and is not scientific at all. BUt it is amusing that Time thought to add John Stewart to the mix. It certainly brought a lot of traffic to their site. I was really interested in finding out who was everyone’s favorite character in the series after Harry Potter?

Technorati Tags: General

The original helpdesk

This is brilliant.

I’ve been waiting for this

Wireless power system shown off:
[Via BBC News | Science/Nature | World Edition]

A US firm has demonstrated its technique that sends power through the air, powering and charging devices wirelessly.

[More]

One of the big items from science fiction of my youth that has not appeared yet is broadcast power – charging and running things without the need for a ire or cord.

Now we could charge our cell phones without ever having to plug them in. Same with flashlights or even TVs. Even electric cars could be recharged while standing still.

I’m sure there will be some other great uses that come up. Should be fun.

Technorati Tags: Energy Use, Science

Denying using bad math

by the mad LOLscientist
Old News:
[Via Open Mind]

The denialosphere is atwitter about a new paper by McLean, Freitas, and Carter (2009, J. Geophysical Res. 114, D14104). They seek to relate variations in tropospheric temperature to the southern oscillation index (SOI). The concluding sentence is:

Finally, this study has shown that natural climate forcing associated with ENSO is a major contributor to variability and perhaps recent trends in global temperature, a relationship that is not included in current global climate models.

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A very nice dissection of how bad math in a recent paper removes any increase in temperature, allowing the authors to say that there is no effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases on temperature. This a clear demonstration of how ‘climate skeptics’ can get published – use math to get rid of the thing they do not want to see and then conclude that it does not exist.

As the post demonstrates, a well defined increase in temperature can be added to the data and this increase will be completely lost when analyzed using the methods in the paper. This is a classic ‘control’ on any analytical method – add in the quantity you are discussing and see if the system can register it.

In this case, the analytical method can not, so when the authors, or any denialist, says that this paper demonstrates that there is little or no trend in temperature increase due to humans, know that it has not proven any such thing. Maybe they are right and there is no trend from human CO2 release but that can not be known from the analysis of the data that they present in the paper.

This paper used a poorly designed analysis to reach a conclusion that the authors apparently wanted to reach. Peer review does not always work, as has been shown by several incidents already recorded by some of the very authors involved in this paper. But the self-correcting nature of science means that even after publication, a paper’s weaknesses will be rapidly exposed.

One poorly designed paper, easily examined and corrected, does not change the entire system. The responses of scientists are to find what is true, how strong the author’s arguments are, to see if the conclusions really match the data and to poke any holes in the argument they can. Sometimes, as in this case, they pretty much destroy the argument.

In other cases, the structure of the argument may be so strong that it leads to much more important work.

Scientists do not just explore papers and research that only agrees with them, with their own logical arguments. We can disagree strongly with someone’s conclusions yet still recognize that the logical argument they put forward is not only rational but strong. So we either have to do more research to find better ways to poke holes in their arguments or we might just have to recognize that they have a better handle on Natural Truths than we do.

A great example of this is in another post by the same author. This is a discussion from another paper on whether temperature increases have halted and will remain that way for several more years until starting up again. The paper postulates that the synchronization of some regular climate cycles is responsible for this temporary plateau.

Tamino does not really agree with much in the paper and does not think that the conclusions are necessarily valid. There are many things about the paper that raises a skeptical eye.

After setting things up, the post gives us this:

I have two overriding opinions of this work. My first overall opinion is that I don’t believe it’s correct, for several reasons. One is that the theoretical basis (as outlined in Tsonis et al. 2007) involves an extremely intricate framework of suppositions which I don’t find convincing, and the statistics used to support that work likewise don’t convince me. I don’t believe we have sufficient understanding of the behavior of chaotic dynamical systems to make the transition from the present theoretical framework to a practical real-world analysis of the climate system. Also, the hypothesis uses certain aspects of the HadCRU temperature time series which aren’t shared by the GISS or NCDC time series, so at least in part it’s dependent on the use of a particular data set.

After providing more skeptical detail, the post ends with this:

My second overriding opinion is that this work is tremendously important. I said earlier that I don’t believe we have sufficient understanding of the behavior of chaotic dynamical systems to make the transition from the present theoretical framework to a practical real-world analysis of the climate system. But without work like this, we never will. If the central hypothesis turns out to be correct, or even if it doesn’t, we may have made great progress toward extending our knowledge of how climate dynamics works. Much of the theoretical underpinning is very appealing, and may be key to future breakthroughs — which almost never happen without someone laying a foundation upon which they’re built. Even if the present work ends up being entirely cast aside, many of its themes may persist and may be an integral part of the next generation of climate dynamics.

Spoken like a true scientist, one who is willing to drop their own logical framework if shown that another one is better, and one who, while viewing a paper as flawed, can still be excited by the implications of the work, where this will lead and what sorts of questions it can answer.

That is something that many people seem unable to understand, as they can only seem to appreciate those that agree with them and not deal at all with logical, rational arguments that reach different conclusions. As a scientist, I deal with this all the time.

Because we are all trying to solve difficult natural problems and ANYTHING that will help us solve them is important, even if it might ruin our own argument. Of course, we are only human and may have to be dragged kicking and screaming into a world where our arguments are wrong.

After all, you have to possess a very large and healthy ego to do science. So we won’t give up for just any old thing. And we kind of like being the really smart guy who finds the flaw in someone else’s model. Even a scientist likes a good ego boost every so often.

But even the most stubborn researchers have to eventually recognize when someone else’s model does a better job of explaining things. As others gravitate to the better model, as that model becomes stronger and stronger, we are left with two choices – futilely trying to sustain our own model through more an more rarified research, watching as our colleagues begin to ignore us or coming to the conclusion that the other model is more ‘right’ than ours and embracing it. (There is sometimes a third possibility – coming up with a completely new model that does an even better job than any of the other ones. Rare but it can happen.)

It is often this hard and sustained attack that creates a model that is incredibly strong. Our current view of climate change has been under such an onslaught for the last 20 years or so, mostly by the very researchers involved in the work. That the main attack on this structure that we see today derives from faulty math and conclusions not supported by the data suggests that there are few strong, rational arguments left to deal with anthropogenic reasons for climate change. The chance of the third possibility grows smaller all the time.

This mainly leaves irrational arguments. And there certainly are no shortage of those today, many of which will get someone a nice spot on a cable news network or two.

Technorati Tags: Entertainment, Science

Laughs for a biology nerd

My inner Bennett Cerf:

[Via Pharyngula]

These will

keep you groaning all day.

A fellow accidentally ingested some alpha-L-glucose and discovered that he had no ill effects. Apparently he was ambidextrose.

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A bloke walks into a pub, and asks for a pint of Adenosinetriphosphate. The barman says “That’ll be 80p (ATP) please!”

(note 100p = £1, and ATP is short for Adenosinetriphosphate, but you already knew that.)

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Some genetic researchers were studying Acinonyx jubatus to find out why he had a high abnormal sperm count. They gave a group of these animals a histocompatibility (tissue-type) test.

“This is singular,” observed one to the other. “Every one of these cats gave the same answers.”

“Aw,” drawled the other, “they’re all a bunch of cheetahs.

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Did you hear about the biologist who had twins? She baptized one and kept the other as a control.

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Many of these will require explanations for laypeople. And as anyone knows, having to explain a joke renders it unfunny.

But I laughed out loud at several of these. And, the last one should be enjoyable to anyone, at least if they remember novelty songs.

Technorati Tags: General, Science

That explains that

More Discovery Institute bulldung on the way to my door:
[Via Pharyngula]

Supposedly, the Next Big Thing in the Intelligent Design creationism movement is Stephen Meyer’s new book, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). Meyer is wandering about the country, peddling absurd op-eds and flogging his book in bad talks. Here’s a good summary of one of his presentations in Seattle:

To sum up, Meyer’s argument is as follows:

(1) According to Bill Gates, DNA is like a computer program.
(2) Because I am unfamiliar with the field known as genetic programming, every computer program I’ve ever heard of has had a developer.
(3) Charles Darwin once used the principle of Inference To The Best Explanation.
(4) Even though Darwin was a wicked, wicked man, I’m going to use that same principle to refute him. It will be, you know, irony.
(5) I say that intelligent design is the best explanation for the computer-program-like-ness of DNA.
(6) Therefore, by Darwin’s own reasoning, intelligent design must be true.
(7) Please buy my book.

[More]

So the answer to my question ‘Why are they even given a soapbox?‘ has been answered. He has a book coming out. The op-ed was more an attempt to market his book than to actually explain anything.

So when did op-eds become marketing tools? Did I miss some big change in the medium? Does anyone who has a book coming out get one or is this guy’s publisher owned by the same corporation that owns the Boston Globe?

These sorts of incestuous interactions is one reason I see for the loss in readership for news media. They are no longer interested in doing much of anything but cater to the lowest denominator (i.e. Michael Jackson, birther conspiracies, etc.) While this has always been a part, there was usually something for the non-lowest denominators. Maybe a good columnist or an op-ed that could really educate, rather than cater.

Now it seems that we only really see partisan pundits geared to divide or op-eds designed to sell books. That may have worked in the old days when there was little choice but now, these attempts will result in having only the lowest denominators still reading a newspaper.

Others will find their informative commentators elsewhere on the web. I no longer need to buy a paper in order to read great words written by rational people thinking deeply about a topic. I know, that seldom happened before but it did often enough to make a paper worthwhile.

Now, even the best sports reporting by a paper can be found in the blogs written by the sports reporters, not in the paper. I read about the Seattle Sounders online at the Seattle Times because the news and comments inform me more than a newspaper ever did.

Technorati Tags: Science

Why looking different can be good

by Dr. Rosemary Gillespie, UC Berkeley.

Looking different ‘helps animals to survive’:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

In the animal kingdom, everything is not as it seems. Individuals of the same species can look very different from each other – what biologists term ‘polymorphism.’

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This is a pretty interesting topic. Some animals have a genetic tendency to look vastly different from one another. This can really be seen with coloration.

Now, why would it be selective for a species to come in a wide variety of colors? It turns out that it is predator’s fault. Using computer models, the researchers showed that one postulated reason, apostatic predation, was part of the reason. Here, the predator keeps a visual picture of its prey. So, if an animal does not look like prey, the predator will not east it.

But this did not explain everything. The other reason shown by the researchers showed that dietary wariness was also important. Here, a predator will not eat a ‘new’ species it has not seen before because it might be sickened. So, by looking very different, the prey can escape being eaten while the predator looks for something it KNOWS is edible.

The new research suggests that a modest level of predator dietary wariness can, on its own, lead to the maintenance of large numbers distinct prey forms within a single species.

Pretty cool. It is like a biological countermeasure to prevent being eaten. I wonder if it would ever be important for human use?

And if you want to take an extraordinary and well-written journey through their research, and see how Legos enter into the story, read this nice story put together by the Understanding Evolution team. The picture above is from the site.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Science