Category Archives: Science

Controversies III – Evolution

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So, we have some ideas for how to deal with climate change. Will they work? I don’t know. I hope my friends that read my last post will discuss will educate themselves on climate change and work to talk with their friends about it. Also, let me know if you do and how it goes!

How do we deal with evolution though? This one is a lot trickier, not that dealing with climate change is easy (but I think my idea is a step in the right direction). People who are much smarter than I am have been attempting to tackle this one for some time, including Richard Dawkins who is extremely knowledgeable about the topic. He wrote a fantastic book about evolution called “The greatest show on Earth” where he discusses each of the “counter” claims of ID (Intelligent design) advocates.

However, in some ways this is even besides the point. The major issue is that people are trying to remove evolution from the classroom. This is the biggest problem. This would destroy our capabilities to compete in the future in biomedical applications.

Why are people trying to fight evolution? Well, they feel that it will drive people to atheism. This isn’t true. There are many people that have figured out ways to reconcile their religious beliefs with evolution. The biggest problem is that it directly contradicts the bible. Which in the US there is a growing minority that take the bible literally. The next issue is the growing minority that falsely claim the US is a “Christian Nation” which this CNN contributor debunks.

It appears that we need to not just worry about scientific accuracy but also historical. For it is impossible to really understand the “controversy” without understanding the context that it is being framed within. Without this claimed backdrop there would be no basis under which to fight having evolution in school classes. Evolution is not a religion. With the pope accepting it, it’s as much of a part of catholicism as it is part of secular humanism or part of the accepted scientific facts of an atheist. Since the supporters of ID place the argument within this framework though we must first refute the framework of a christian nation and from there we can show that it is impossible to teach ID in school while evolution must be taught in school.

Additional ponderable thoughts:
“Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” is a 1973 essay by the evolutionary biologist and Russian Orthodox Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky, criticising anti-evolution creationism and espousing theistic evolution. The essay was first published in the American Biology Teacher, volume 35, pages 125-129. (Wikipedia)


We teach our vets, doctors, nurses and pharmacists biology. Without a clear understanding of biology from a young age the quality of our healthcare can only go down. As a country we will not be able to stay on top of the life sciences research and pharmaceutical production.


If we fail to education our students on biology how do we keep up, and how to we keep our economy running?

Controversies II

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It’s been a few days since I posted. Mostly because my friend Brian just moved to Eindhoven and I’ve been busy showing him around. But i also had an exam on friday and was kept busy with that.

In my last post, a reader pointed out that I was perhaps being a bit over generalizing with the group of people that refute climate change. I said that it was rural christian republicans that most likely refused to accept the evidence for climate change. I still say this is true, however, not everyone that falls into this description refuses to accept climate change.

Indeed, we should be thankful for that. In a study that was looking to determine how trust is developed in an informational source it was determined that similarity in other opinions increases trust in topics unrelated. Meijnders et al (2009) investigated the trust that develops with sources related to Genetically Modified foods.  They found that when there is no other information about the source other than what they wrote about an unrelated topic if the opinions matched it increased trust in the source. So if an author wrote about a cash register and the reader agreed with the author, and then the reader read an article about GM foods by the same author there would be higher acceptance of the information in the source. It also found the opposite to be true as well. That if there was a difference in opinion then it would lead to a rejection of the author and they would dispute their claims.

What does this have to do with climate change or any other controversy though? Well, who are the people that speak the most about evolution and climate change? Scientists, and as Neil deGrasse Tyson pointed out in his talk on naming rights that 40% of scientists in the US don’t believe in God and 85% from the National Academy of Science. For the group that has the biggest issues with these topics this reduces any  trust between the reader and the author. The amount of evidence presented become inconsequential as there’s no trust between the two and the evidence may in fact strengthen the rejection of climate change or evolution.

How can we deal with this? Well, one way is through more communication with the general public. It may also include educating the religious leaders of how the science works and why they should accept the evidence. Many atheists may not like that idea, but these leaders can reach a lot of people and they are a trusted source of information on other topics. The next step would be to have christian scientists that work within the field of evolution (there are some not many) and climate change explain how these two accepted scientific principles do not conflict with belief in god.

The catholic church has already accepted evolution, and have made positive remarks on climate change. This helps some, but most US citizens are not catholic, so we need to go after different people. Evolution is going to be much more difficult to succeed in this. As pastors are leading the charge against evolution in many churches. However, there is no reason why an approach like this would not work for climate change.

In controversial topics, science would be better served to be inclusive in educating as many religious leaders as possible to ensure that their followers are getting correct information from the best sources. This is in additional more scientific communication in general. More scientists need to function as journalists and start their own blogs.

References:
Meijnders et al, 2009, “The role of similarity cues in the development of trust in sources of information about GM foods”, Risk Analysis vol 29, no 8 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2009.01240.x/full
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf

Science Controversies in the US

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In the US, there are a few “controversies” raging in the public debate. For the most part these controversies have been settle in the scientific community and many other countries. Europe for exam does not have a problem with either evolution through natural selection and climate change. These two are huge problems in the US. What are some others? Geocentric solar system, flat earth, connection between HIV and AIDs, and the link between autism and vaccines. While most of these can be laughed off, such as the geocentric or flat earth, others can have serious repercussions. For instance there is a growing population that is refusing to vaccinate their children because they are afraid that they will develop autism. This not only puts that child at risk, but it also puts every other child around them at risk.vaccines only work when a critical mass is vaccinated, because not all vaccines actually take. Typically, scientists look at people that are skeptical of the main stream science with scorn and tend to mock them. This will not get people to change their views.

I’m going to focus on evolution and climate change in this blog. Mostly because the people that don’t accept the evidence for either or both fit into the same set of people. Dealing, I don’t know enough about the autism/vaccine group to comment on them intelligently.

Who are the people that reject evolution most often? They are typically rural white, Christians that are also republicans (article). The same people also reject climate change (I can’t find an article, but republicans rejected global warming in the house). So, let’s assume that these people aren’t stupid, uneducated and are not immoral. What reasons could they have to reject Climate change?

Well, what kind of ethics are these people following? They believe that humans have no ability to change nature. This is actually a belief that Kant held, that there is a separation between what humans can impact and what they cannot impact. Next the Bible says God won’t allow another flood. This, to some extent, falls under the belief that we don’t have the ability to impact the world enough to destroy it.

BUT! Look at the data! It’s pretty obvious. Unfortunately, we humans have an amazing ability to take contradictory evidence and convince ourselves that it’s actually completely wrong and strengths our currently held position. So, people will create elaborate stories or point to anecdotal evidence that “disproves” the aggregate data. Meijnders et al, puts this as statistics are humans with the tears dried off. Basically we need stories. We don’t understand statistics  or how it relates to people in general.

Are these people being irrational? Well, the first case is clearly not irrational. They are operating within a clear set of ethical principles that dictated to them that the world is not at risk as we cannot impact it in this way whatsoever. Not accepting scientific evidence to the contrary is not irrational. The second part, well that’s a defense mechanism to increase the rationality of their decision. If you can show that these data are wrong, then obviously your ethical stance is even more justified.

Accepting climate change as fact for many of these people would cause an earth shattering change in their current belief system. It won’t cause them to lose faith in the bible or anything, however it will force them to look at their current behavior in a way that maybe incredibly painful for them.

Tomorrow, I’ll attempt to come up with some ways to correct this problem. How we address this is important for addressing our growing climate problem.

References:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bnyhan/nyhan-reifler.pdf
Meijnders et al (2009) “The Role of Similarity Cues in the Development of Trustin Sources of Information About GM Food” Risk Analysis Vol 29, No. 8 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2009.01240.x/full

Patents and Innovations

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So, I think that the news that Apple and Nokia decided to drop lawsuits against each other is a good starting point for this discussion. Here’s the BBC article discussing the decision. Basically, Apple decided to license several patents from Nokia. Which in itself has some implication for innovation within the Smart Phone market.

I plan to do several of these types of posts. However, in this one I will focus specifically on smart phones. This will extend to many other product spaces, but not to software or business models.

So first what are some implications of this agreement by Nokia and Apple? Well, the most obvious is that they aren’t suing each other any more. The less obvious is that neither of these cases was heard by a judge or a jury. This doesn’t allow us, the observer, to actually know if these patents were valid or not (see my post on patents to see what a valid patent is). In some cases the patent office, whichever office, may approve a patent that is invalid. This could be due to prior art, like the PB&J sandwich described in my patent post, or that it’s an obvious invention. The only way that a patent’s validity can be overturned is by a jury or a judge. Let’s say that Nokia is also suing HTC over the exact same infringement. HTC doesn’t believe that the Nokia patent is valid so they were also counter suing saying that it’s an invalid patent and HTC has the reasons why. So, this case goes to trial and Nokia is now able to say that Apple is currently licensing this patent from them. This claim will give a great deal of credibility to Nokia’s claim. At this point HTC may have to decide to license with Nokia to avoid the potential of a huge fine.

In this case Nokia has a tract record of being an innovative firm. What happens when the firm isn’t an innovative firm or has no products though? Well, these cases happen all the time. For instance a few years ago RIM, the maker of BlackBerry was hit with a lawsuit that would have effectively shut down the Blackberry network, or prevent emails. Here’s a link to when it started. While at the time it was a $60million fine, it eventually got up to $612.5 million. The firm suing BlackBerry NTP, doesn’t actually produce anything. They are a patent management firm. In other words, a patent troll.

So what does this do to our economy when it’s based upon innovation. Patenting is supposed to protect innovative firms from competition so they can exploit their invention. It’s supposed to grow the economy, as these firms can license out the patent and allow other people to manufacture the product. Well, in this case it took $612.5 million from the pocket of a firm that was innovating and creating a product and put it into the pocket of a firm that doesn’t produce anything. That’s not the best for innovation.

There are some good things about the patents though. For instance, once the Xerox patent expired for the copier, there was an explosion of innovation in the field and Xerox nearly lost all market share. It had to sprint to catch back up. How did this happen? Well, you are allowed to work on a patented technology for research and development. Xerox’s competitors didn’t sit idle while Xerox was dominating the market. They were waiting until they were able to sell a product and then unleashed pent up innovation onto the market. This was an excellent thing for consumers. We can thank the fact that this patent ran out for our 3 in 1 printers.

Innovation

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Yesterday I said I was going to discuss how patents impacted innovation. However, I think the first thing we need to do is clarify what innovation is. Schumpeter, described innovation as bringing a product to the market. He claims that without innovation, invention is worthless. Indeed, patents play this out. There is no legal requirement to actually manufacture anything that you’ve patented. I will discuss that in more detail tomorrow though. Schumpeter also notes that these innovations are the source of creative destruction in the economy. He claims that through innovation we are able to keep growing. He called these the long waves. See the picture below for a representation of these waves and the innovations that drove the economy at the time.

Based on Schumpeterian principles we can see that we should expect growth slow down and potentially economic issues at these times. So, if an innovation is bringing a product to a market, in what ways can we innovate? There are four ways in which innovation can occur in a product; Incremental, Modular, Architectural and Radical. Please see the picture below:

Henderson and Clark ,1990

Most innovation occurs in the upper left hand corner, incremental innovations. These are fairly obvious and most people aren’t surprised to see these products. Products like iPhone 3G after the iPhone first came out. this was an incremental innovation on this product. While Apple did a fantastic job making it sound like it was a radical innovation, it simply wasn’t.

The next most likely is the modular. In this case it could be considered that an electric car might be a modular change. As you only have to change one part of a larger piece of equipment. In this case a combustion engine is replaced with an electric engine.

The architectural changes are less common than either of the previous. As these ones typically require a great deal of changes within a firm. An architectural change can be described as going from a ceiling fan into a box fan (Henderson and Clark 1990). Seems pretty simple right? Well, there are a lot of changes that go into this innovation. You have to think about how to keep the box from falling over. How to keep the noise down. How to protect the users. You also have to manufacture everything differently. So, in many cases there are two innovations within an architectural innovation. One at the product level and one at the firm level. Another example is the reintegration of the original developers of the Mac into Apple after the successful product launch.

The final type of innovation is the radical innovation. This is the stuff that “creative destruction” is made from. When these types of innovations occur most of the previous knowledge base is blown away and the innovators have to start all over again. I’d say the most common example of something like this would be with game consoles. Basically each time a new one comes out everything starts all over again. Other examples can include things like the Jet engine from the propeller. Not only did this require changes in the aircraft but it also required changes in the runway, it needed to be longer than before.

There are many cases of Radical innovations and in some cases they completely reworked our economy. IT/ICT is the most recent set of radical innovations that is shaping our economy. These technologies are heavily patented and impact our economy. Tomorrow I will look at how these patents interact with innovation to increase or decrease the rate of innovation.

Further reading/Citation:
Henderson, R., Clark, Kim. “Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms” Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1.
http://dimetic.dime-eu.org/dimetic_files/HendersonClarkASQ1990.pdf