Grumpy Scientists

The New Scientist has a write-up about the recent UK official report clearing the “climategate” scientists of data manipulation: Climate Scientists respond to ‘climategate’ report

It’s not an extensive discussion, but it does provide a nice snap-shot of the larger issues surrounding the climate change debate. I’m fond of their characterizing of the debate as needing to move from black-and-white, true-or-not-true to a grayer debate as to how much the climate is warming and what impact that may have.

But I’m really struck by the comment quoted from Muir Russell, the primary civil servant investigator into the issue:

Muir Russell, a former civil servant who spent seven months investigating the affair, concluded in his official report, released on 7 July, that "the rigour and honesty of the scientists involved are not in doubt". But he exhorted them to show more openness, to shed their "unhelpful and defensive" attitude when responding to requests to share their data and to make more effort to engage with climate sceptics who dispute their data and conclusions.

That “unhelpful and defensive” attitude is a big deal. In general, scientists do a poor job explaining their work to a lay audience. The Carl Sagans and Neal Degrasse Tysons of the world are few and far between. And the worse a scientist is at explaining her work (it seems), the more defensive the scientist is when that work is questioned by someone without specific expertise.

So when scientific research becomes a political issue, the scientists need to be less defensive to those drawn into the debate because of those politics.

And, contrarily, when a political issue has its roots in science, those in the political realm need to respect the knowledge creation processes of the originating science.

Climate Scientists Cleared

Just a news story that didn’t seem to make too much of a splash:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/07/climategate-review-clears-scientists-dishonesty

‘Climategate’ review clears scientists of dishonesty over data

The climate scientists at the centre of a media storm were today cleared of accusations that they fudged their results and silenced critics to bolster the case for man-made global warming.

Sir Muir Russell, the senior civil servant who led a six-month inquiry into the affair, said the "rigour and honesty" of the scientists at the world-leading Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia(UEA) are not in doubt. They did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, the panel found, while key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher.

Does that lay to rest the claims that scientists manipulate their data to promote political agendas? Or that scientists are even politically astute enough to recognize they could do so (or would care to)?

A 2-dimensional world

SciAm has reposted an article they ran in May 1963: The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Knowledge.

It’s a heady read, to be sure. After the first few paragraphs, it turns into some heavy-duty physics with little detail. But there are some interesting passages.

One hits at the importance of Newton

Before Newton, people looked on the world as being essentially two-dimensional-the two dimensions in which one can walk about-and the up-and-down dimension seemed to be something essentially different. Newton showed how one can look on the up-and-down direction as being symmetrical with the other two directions, by bringing in gravitational forces and showing how they take their place in physical theory. One can say that Newton enabled us to pass from a picture with two-dimensional symmetry to a picture with three-dimensional symmetry.

That’s an interesting take. Before Newton, we operated in a 2-dimensional world. The third dimension, height, wasn’t really in our vocabulary yet. Yes, we used height in small quantities when we tracked our growth as a child or built a building. But it wasn’t in our understanding of the physical world yet.

Seems dumb, no? How could height, the z axis not factor into our understanding of the Universe?

But then it kind of makes sense. Height didn’t yet factor into any of the theories. Hence there wasn’t a need for it. And to Newton’s contemporaries, adding height to the equation just seemed strange.

Jump to a parallel today: space-time. In 1963, we were just beginning to really grasp Einstein’s relativity theories (special & general). And the quote from Paul Dirac,

What appears to our consciousness is really a three-dimensional section of the four-dimensional picture. We must take a three-dimensional section to give us what appears to our consciousness at one time; at a later time we shall have a different three-dimensional section.

At the time, scientists and the general public couldn’t fully envision a Universe in which you had to take into account the passage of time. Instead, they took “snapshots” of the 3-dimensional world and tried to psychologically piece them together.

I think we’re getting a better understanding of those 4 dimensions. After 47 years, it doesn’t hit me as odd to track the position of something across time as well as space. Yes, my car is sitting in the driveway, but I know full well that this morning it was sitting at Starbucks and tomorrow it’ll be on the highway.

My point? Not sure I have a fully formed one. But I do think that we need to recast our interpretation of our innate sense of nature. We think that our understanding of the natural world is hard-wired into our brains. But, maybe that innate sense is developed over the formative years (4-17 or so) and is a social product?

Ok, last quote. And I just like this one.

I think there is a moral to this story, namely that it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.

That is, it’s more important for the equations to work nicely and simply than for them to match our understanding of the world. Given how constrained that understanding can be (2d, 3d, 4d as examples), it makes sense that beauty trumps perceived accuracy.

Unless of course the beautiful equation doesn’t describe our particular Universe…

Even More Bad Medical Reporting

Or, more specifically, even more ideas for preventing bad medical reporting.

A post by Mark Liberman over at UPenn hits at the topic of that last post, how to prevent bad reporting of medical news in the popular press.

Liberman describes yet another instance of a popular newspaper completely mangling a piece of medical research. This time it’s whether fish oil makes students more attentive (I’ll give away the ending – it doesn’t).

But I especially like how he closes his piece:

So that’s the foundation of my modest proposal. Any newspaper or magazine that has a Science writer should also have a Bad Science writer, whose job would be act as a sort of intellectual ombudsman, to practice what Ben Goldacre in another post called “The noble and ancient tradition of moron-baiting“.

The Bad Science writer is there to make sure that anything going to the presses is scientifically accurate. And that writer would, presumably, have enough knowledge to make reasonable statements on medical research.

It’s an interesting alternative to my idea of having expert consultants on call. You run the risk of getting a bad “bad science” writer – i.e. somebody who makes poor calls about what counts as real science. But you also don’t have to deal with cranky academics (present company included!).

Bad Medical Reporting?

On June 8, 2010, there was an opinion piece on cnn.com that hit at problems with medical research reporting in the popular press:

Otis Browley: Bad medical writing hurts public health

He rambles a bit in the piece, bouncing from the corporatization of medical conferences to poor reporting of medical advancements to misleading health stories. But there’s a piece about 1/2 way through that hits at the recurring theme of this blog: communicating complex information to lay audiences.

Specifically, Browley argues

Recently, the economic crisis in the media has led to the disappearance, through layoffs or by choice, of some wonderful, skilled and seasoned science writers. And with that comes genuine concern. The veterans have been replaced by mostly young, inexperienced writers who suddenly find themselves under pressure to turn out compelling stories about difficult scientific medical studies that are all too easy to oversimplify and misinterpret.

Meanwhile, to bolster readership or numbers of viewers, the media reward reporters whose stories can lead to the most eye-grabbing headline. These reporters are well-meaning, but if they do not understand medicine and the scientific process, these articles can truly harm public health. And, in my experience, that is happening more and more often.

And even more important: Reporters must understand that the motivation of every scientific report must be questioned as part of routine due diligence. The caveats from each report must also be clearly detailed in each story. From where I sit, all too often, that is not happening.

This seems a variant on that all-too-common argument that contemporary news reporting is moving towards “shock value” over in-depth reporting. That’s a highly contestable claim that I’ll save for a later post.

But, buried in this claim is an issue I find to be quite compelling. Those who report medical advances don’t fully understand what those advances are. Or, more nuanced, those who report medical advances don’t fully understand the full implications and “fuzziness” of the findings.

Browley goes on in the article to cite two instances of this misunderstanding. One, a potential cure for breast cancer. And two, the potential of blood tests for detecting lung cancer. And he does a good job pointing out the problems in the two studies that didn’t make it into the popular press.

For me, there’s a problem here of understanding. It’s laudable of the new media to try and report medical advances. Keeping the public informed of progress in the fields is a great motivator for medical researchers and funders both. But there really does need to be a rock solid understanding of the science before the editor sends the article to the presses.

Browley cites the loss of seasoned reporters as a potential cause for the (perceived) rise in bad medical reporting. And the unspoken solution is to hire the seasoned writers back.

But maybe there’s a simpler cure than trying to hire those reporters back or training the new reporters in medical research. Expert consultants.

If we can bring more experts into the mass media as individuals who do understand the nuances of the science, the bad medical reporting Browley talks about could be reduced. Yes, you have to trust the expert. And that brings up larger issues that have been talked about before here. But for things like the potential of a cancer treatment to make it out of rat trials and through human trials, that’s not asking much is it?

And, yes, being an expert consultant isn’t exactly glamorous. It stokes your ego when you’re interviewed for, say, CNN. But other researchers don’t look kindly on “selling yourself” like that. But what if it counted for tenure — and if the proceeds went to charity, the institution, or some such?

I don’t know. Anybody out there see problems with this argument?