Reproducibility of results in science helps determine what is going on

by schoschie

Previously questioned Nature paper on innate immunity retracted
[Via Retraction Watch]

Last week, we noted a Nature editorial in which the journal came clean about its higher-than-average number of retractions this year — four. What we missed was the fact that the fourth retraction of the year also appeared in last week’s issue.

The retraction, of a paper called “The large-conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channel is essential for innate immunity,” reads (link to the author’s homepage added):

The authors wish to retract this Letter after the report of an inability to reproduce their results¹, later confirmed by another². The studies the authors then conducted led to an internal investigation by University College London, please see the accompanying Supplementary Information for details. The retraction has not been signed by Jatinder Ahluwalia.

Oddly, at the time of this posting, the Supplementary Information link goes to a PDF that reads: “The Supplementary Information accompanying this retraction is currently unavailable.”

The paper, which has been cited 114 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, reported that when researchers blocked a particular cellular channel with iberiotoxin, cells could no longer kill and digest microbes. Those findings, however, were disproven in two later papers — one in the Journal of General Physiology in 2006, and another in the American Journal of Physiology: Cell Physiology in 2007.

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As discussed in the article, the initial results prompted a lot of skepticism, because they did not fit in the scientific models used to explain other data. So, researchers tried to repeat the work and were unable to. As another scientist said:

I do believe that false findings in prominent journals can have a harmful effect on research progress. However, in this particular case, the dramatic nature of the claim and the inability of others to find corroborating evidence served to limit the damage. This time, science worked the way it is supposed to, and the retraction turns out to be rather anti-climactic.

If earth-shattering new data are published, it will attract a lot of attention. If no one can repeat the work, then serious doubt arises.

So a retraction is actually a demonstration that science is working. Fallible humans work in science. So they can fool themselves, just as anyone can. The strength of science is that by public vetting of the work, particularly prominent research, we can more easily overcome the Scientific Cargo Cults Feynman warned us about.

Now if only similar approaches could be used with other types of Cargo Cults.

Do funny titles for science papers help make them highly cited?

Humor in Scientific Publications
[Via Research Blogging - All Topics - English]

A couple of years ago, two researchers at the Technion tested whether or not funnier scientific article titles yielded higher citations. Their article, Amusing titles in scientific journals and article citation, takes the titles of over 1000 articles and has them rated on two scales, pleasantness and how amusing they are. They then checked to [...]

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Short answer – no. It appears that serious scientists only want to see funny titles in the Journal of Irreproducible Results and such.

Denialists do not have to play by the same rational rules that scientists have to

Climate scientists planning to “aggressively engage the denialists”
[Via CEJournal]

The new get-tough campaign from the American Geophysical Union will feature a “climate rapid response team”

Update 11/7/10 5:30 p.m.: Some additional thoughts at the bottom, and a link to Andy Revkin’s post about this at DotEarth.

Check this out from today’s Los Angeles Times:

Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The still-evolving efforts reveal a shift among climate scientists, many of whom have traditionally stayed out of politics and avoided the news media. Many now say they are willing to go toe-to-toe with their critics, some of whom gained new power after the Republicans won control of the House in last Tuesday’s election.

And this:

“This group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists,” said Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York.

Does anyone else think there’s a big risk of this ending badly?

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The problem with this is that denialists do not have to use the same rules of persuasion that scientists do. Researchers have to stick with facts and can not lie to accomplish their political goals.

Not so with denialists. They are free to make up facts, distort the truth, cherry pick data, quote mine, and generally do anything to obfuscate the issue.That is why engaging denialists such as creationists simply does not work to change their minds. Denialists use the tricks of lawyers for which few scientists are prepared to deal with. Simply providing facts does not convince any of these people. They simply rationalize away the facts.

There is a lot of recent data showing just how hard it is to move people from their strongly held beliefs, even when it can be demonstrated that those beliefs are built on lies. The truth does not move them.

Perhaps this is an approach to take – a truly collaborative approach to denialists using multiple fronts simultaneously.

I wish these guys all sorts of luck but if it was easy to change people’s minds with facts, it would not have taken so long to deal with cigarettes. When science goes up against business interests and politics, it is a very slow road to eventual success.

As I wrote before, if your rhetoric only has lies to support it, you should stop. Of course, that is in a rational world. In our world, that approach gets people elected.

Hot october in the Arctic

N. Atlantic sea surface temperatures ran high in October
[Via CEJournal]

Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic during October were well above normal, as seen in this image from NOAA’s Environmental Visualization Laboratory.

Air temperatures in the Arctic region overall, although below freezing, were also high in October, as seen in the map to the left. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, temperatures were 4 to 6 degrees Celsius (7 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than normal.

“The warm conditions resulted partly from regions of open water releasing heat to the atmosphere, and in part from an atmospheric circulation pattern that brought warm air from lower latitudes to the Arctic,” the NSIDC’s latest report states.

The extent of Arctic sea ice in October was the third lowest for the month in satellite record, which extends back to 1979. Even at the end of the month, “extensive open water areas remained in the Beaufort, Chukchi, Kara and Barents seas,” according to the report. “This region had the warmest ocean surface temperatures at the end of the melt season.”

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As of November 6, the sea ice extent in 2010 is as low as seen in the worst year for sea ice – 2007. So, there may have been more ice in the summer for 2010 than 2007, it seems to be reforming at a slower rate. Air temperatures remain higher than normal, so the rest of the winter may follow the 2007 curve. Which does not bode well for next year.

We may be into a self-propogating cycle, where the large amounts of open water retain more heat, making them slower to refreeze, meaning there is more open water to heat up, making them slower to refreeze, an so on.

10 degrees warmer does not go away easily.

Something else to worry about – ejecta from the sun

from NOAA SWPC

Any Port in a Storm
[Via I, Cringely]

Nearly every day I hear from at least one person who thinks I am an idiot. Typically they are complaining about something I wrote months or even years before, so I often confirm my idiocy by not even remembering what has them so upset. This week, however, I was contacted by an upset reader who may well have a good point, so let’s reconsider for a moment the security of GPS.

I wrote more than a year ago that a Government Accountability Office report was overblown, claiming a 20 percent chance of the GPS system going down in the next few years because the U. S. Air Force can’t launch new satellites fast enough to replace those that are dying. I just didn’t see this as a big deal and said so.

This week, however, I heard from a retired communication engineer who lectured me at great length about my various failings as a human being, but in the process made a couple points that I have to concede are correct. The first of these is that the GPS system is vulnerable to a catastrophic solar storm and we have reason to believe such a storm might be coming between now and 2013.

Or not.

That’s the way it is with these thing, you know. A lot could happen, but almost nothing must happen. Still, his argument was sobering. Basically we are headed toward a peak of sunspot activity in 2012 or so that could well trigger a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that could take out half or more of all geosynchronous satellites, not just GPS. No more satellite navigation, no more cable TV.

Here, simply to infuriate space scientists everywhere, is my simplistic explanation of a CME. Remember how in Ghostbusters they weren’t supposed to allow the beams from their nuclear-powered ghost guns to cross? Well there are similar magnetic beams that emerge from sunspots and solar flares and if two of those with opposite polarities should happen to cross, a magnetic burp follows, ejecting millions of tons of magnetically charged material from the Sun’s corona headed toward the Earth at speeds up to two million miles-per-hour. That’s a Coronal Mass Ejection or CME.

CME’s come in various sizes and velocities. CME’s aren’t intrinsically aimed at the Earth and could just as easily dissipate into empty space. Many CME’s don’t even make it as far as the Earth. But if conditions are right, CME’s can do a lot of damage. A CME hit Quebec in 1989 causing a nine-hour blackout and $4.3 billion in damages to the Canadian power grid. The mother of all CME’s in 1859 took down every telegraph in the world, causing arcing, fires, and melted wires in the equipment. Imagine what something like that would do to your PC or cellphone!

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If something like the 1859 event took place today, I think whether we had GPS would be the least of our worries – unless you happen to be in a plane over the Atlantic at the time. Think no power for months. No computers because they were all fried.

It may not be very likely and NOAA has modeled the next cycle as a lower energy one. But then, the storm from 1859 occurred in a cycle with a similar level of activity so how many sunspots is not as important as how strong the CME is. Here is what NASA has to say:

The 1859 storm–known as the “Carrington Event” after astronomer Richard Carrington who witnessed the instigating solar flare–electrified transmission cables, set fires in telegraph offices, and produced Northern Lights so bright that people could read newspapers by their red and green glow. A recent report by the National Academy of Sciences found that if a similar storm occurred today, it could cause $1 to 2 trillion in damages to society’s high-tech infrastructure and require four to ten years for complete recovery. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina caused “only” $80 to 125 billion in damage.

Just what we need. Although I bet it would create a lot of jobs. Luckily they re supposed to happen about once every 500 years

I’m hoping the cyclist Martin Joel Erzinger allegedlyy injured in the hit and run gets some of that $1 billion

by Tim Green aka atoach

Colorado DA drops felony hit-and-run charges against billion-dollar financier because of “serious job implications”
[Via Boing Boing]

Colorado District Attorney Mark Hurlbert has dropped felony charges against Martin Joel Erzinger, a Morgan Stanley Smith Barney wealth manager who controls $1 billion in investments, because financial rules would require Erzinger to notify his clients that he was charged with a felony, and this would have “serious job implications” for the financier. Erzinger is facing charges for allegedly rear-ending cyclist Dr. Steven Milo, and then leaving the scene of the crime. Milo, a liver transplant surgeon, has spinal and brain injuries, disfiguring scars, and will likely be in pain for the rest of his life.

Milo was bicycling eastbound on Highway 6 just east of Miller Ranch Road, when Erzinger allegedly hit him with the black 2010 Mercedes Benz sedan he was driving. Erzinger fled the scene and was arrested later, police say.

Erzinger allegedly veered onto the side of the road and hit Milo from behind. Milo was thrown to the pavement, while Erzinger struck a culvert and kept driving, according to court documents.

Erzinger drove all the way through Avon, the town’s roundabouts, under I-70 and stopped in the Pizza Hut parking lot where he called the Mercedes auto assistance service to report damage to his vehicle, and asked that his car be towed, records show. He did not ask for law enforcement assistance, according to court records.

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Any other person would have been hit with a ton of bricks in charges. Here, Martin Joel Erzinger gets off because it would affect Martin Joel Erzinger’s job. Poor boo! Now Martin Joel Erzinger just has to figure out how to get out from under the misdemeanor charges facing him.

Of course the guy Martin Joel Erzinger allegedly hit will be dealing with the consequences the rest of his life. His job as a surgeon may most likely be over. In a just world, Martin Joel Erzinger should have consequences as serious but I doubt it.

Perhaps Bill Moyers is right about the plutocracy. It certainly appears that Martin Joel Erzinger got special treatment because Martin Joel Erzinger is responsible for the investments of a lot of rich people. The DA even says as much:

“Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger’s profession, and that entered into it,” Hurlbert said. “When you’re talking about restitution, you don’t want to take away his ability to pay.”

I really wonder how just the ‘restitution’ will be? How much will make it just? Can anyone who is rich get such a get out of jail free card because it would affect their job? can everyone get out of felony charges by waving some ‘restitution’ money around or is it only Martin Joel Erzinger?

It is obvious that if this had been done by some poor schmuck, they would be facing felony charges because their ability to pay was negligible. This DA believes that you get a different sort of justice if you have money than if you do not.

He explicitly states that the amount of money Martin Joel Erzinger makes has an effect on justice. Thus Martin Joel Erzinger gets off. Justice is America is again proven to be dependent on how much money you have. Hope this helps the DA in his political career. You can bet that Martin Joel Erzinger will be a big fan.