Tag Archives: Science

Hypocrisy of science deniers

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This is something that has been bothering me for a while. People pick and choose the types of science they are willing to accept the validity of the scientific method. This relates to my controversies series where I explained several major controversies in the US. As I said then, people have decided for whatever reason to suspend their acceptance of scientific principles and believe something that is unfounded, been proven to be untrue, or untestable or have simply chosen not to accept the scientific data.

So what am I upset about? Well, each group of these people accept the scientific method in fullness in other situations. The general heuristic used in scientific research is the same in all types of science. The specific methodologies used are typically sources of creativity. Scientists are able to connect strings concepts, and data to create a testable theory to a problem. These theories are then rejected or accepted for more testing. That’s all well and good, but the problem is that people wholeheartedly accept less rigorous testing for other products. You hear the organic crowd talking about how this organic food is so much better for you than that processed apple sprayed with chemical. The reason, because it’s more natural. They also argue that fish oil and vitamins make you feel better. Well, the problem is that there is no actual evidence to support these claims. In many cases, as Michael Specter put it, it just turns into really expensive pee. However, many of them will reject health food science that disputes these claims.

Ok, so I’ve rambled a bit without a good story in this one. People will always be this way. However, this science, layperson disputed science, has lead to amazing breakthroughs that have made our lives better. For instance, because we know evolution to be true, we’re able to test on animals because we are genetically similar to them. We test specific animals in specific ways because of their genetic similarity to us. We are able to non-human organ transplants because of this as well. We have made huge strides in our technologies because of the same methods that developed the theory of evolution, climate change and vaccines. People have no problems, for the most part, using technologies. Adopting these new technologies that in some cases we don’t even really know why or how these technologies work the way they do.

People put more trust in these technologies than they do in well proven science that have lead to life saving inventions, and practices. We cannot pick and chose which sciences we support. We need to support all of them with the understanding that from any of these branches of investigation that something major can be discovered that will make our lives better.

We may not really understand or see how this will happen at first, but looking back we can see the wonders that have arisen because of our voyage into the endless frontier of science.

Economics III

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I’m sorry it’s been so long between my last couple posts. I’ve been pretty busy. Brian just moved to Eindhoven from Austin, so I’ve been hanging out with him, moving to our new place, and then I just read a dance with dragons. In addition to that, I’ve also started working on my research project for the summer. Hopefully things will settle down now and I’ll be able to post blogs more frequently.

So, last week, I was beating up on the neoclassical growth model and my friend came running to it’s defense. He had a good point. The best way to predict the weather is based on what today’s weather is. This might work passably well, but will fail pretty quickly here in the Netherlands and in Pittsburgh. It works really well in Austin. Hot today, going to be hot tomorrow. A better way to predict is to create a range of likely outcomes through simulation. This is what the weather man does on the news. They run simulations based upon the current conditions as well as conditions in the surrounding areas to make a better prediction than just walking outside.

Evolutionary economics is based upon these same ideas. Many of the models are more like climate models rather than mathematical equations. These models have predicted crashes similarly to what happened in 2007, based upon the rules of our economy and behaviors of people within the system. There have been some models that have attempted to create models very similarly to the neoclassical models, which are able to account for more of the differences between growth rates within countries.

I prefer the simulation approach over the mathematical models, because you are able to easily change things. As we have more control over our economy than the weather, these changes can reflect policy choices, changes in regulation as well as increases or decreases in government spending. As these changes build on each other the system can simulate how a series of changes within a short time period may impact the system.

The other benefit of evolutionary economics over neoclassical is the clear tie to how science, technology and education impact the economy. These factors are typically left in the residual or the measure of our ignorance in neoclassical economics. Changes in the rate of adoption or creation of new technologies and scientific breakthroughs can impact the long term health of an economy which everyone knows, but the economists haven’t done the best job showing it under neoclassicalism. If they had, then we would never be cutting education and science funding first. We would be pouring money into these systems to try to spur more discoveries!

Neoclassical economics was useful, however, I think the time for it has passed as it is unable to deal with the complexity of the world. Evolutionary economics looks at the economy as a complex system and is designed to handle it.

Further reading:
Origin of Wealth: http://www.amazon.com/Origin-Wealth-Evolution-Complexity-Economics/dp/157851777X
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQhNZENMG1o&feature=related

NASA

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I’ve gotta say, it’s hard to be a lover of space, NASA and scientific exploration right now. With the end of the shuttle program around the corner, and a new bill to cut a huge amount of funding from NASA (article) things are looking rather down right now. Basically this would kill the James Webb telescope. I think this would be a terrible thing.

Why should we invest? Well, the US prides itself on being number one in everything, even if we aren’t actually number one. Without continuing to push the frontier of research we will fall behind eventually. The article above, or another article mentioned congress killing the Super Collider in Texas, it would have been able to produce the novel results that the Large Hadroc Collider is producing now. The US would be the world leader in particle physics. We are starting to fall behind. Europe is going to be the world leader, and in the future we will be reading articles written by Europeans. We could be excellent teaching centers for particle physics for years to come, but the best of the best will not be in the US.

The same could happen with astronomy. The Hubble Telescope led to over 9,000 scientific papers being published. Yes, that may seem like we were probably spending more money on research than just the money that we spent on Hubble, but remember we were also producing jobs to support those scientists that were writing the papers. The Webb Telescope is going to be significantly more powerful than Hubble. We have had some amazing picture of space and the universe around us because of Hubble. Pictures of the Crab Nebula, Pillars of Creation and the Rose Galaxy. See below.

Top Left Crab Nebula, Right Pillars of Creation Bottom Rose Galaxy

For me, these images instill a feeling of awe and wonder. Through the Hubble we’ve expanded our understanding of how the universe works and how dangerous of a place we live. The rose galaxy, or galaxies, are two galaxies colliding with each other. Our galaxy is actually predicted to collide with the andromeda galaxy in a few million years. We know this because of Hubble.

We are also starting to realize that what we’re learning at the particle level may interact with the origins of the universe. For example, string/M theory also is a theory about how the universe was started. We need to be able to keep seeing back in time to understand how these theories interact with each other.

Controversies IV – Vaccines

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Today I learned something interesting. A guy who does Judo with me told me that in France there are concerns over Hep B shots and Multiple Sclerosis. Apparently, this is based on a discredited publication and health authorities have not been able to convince the French to begin taking the vaccines again. This is of serious concern for me, because he also mentioned that the vaccination rate was something like 30% or so.

In some ways France is lucky, because the vaccine isn’t as serious as the vaccine people are rejecting in the US. They are rejecting MMR (Measles Mumps and Rubella), which are highly contagious. What can we learn from these two cases?

First, it is extremely difficult to overcome personal beliefs on scientific evidence. In both cases many different studies have been conducted to verify the safety of the vaccines. In the US, the connection was completely debunked. The Journal the Lancet it is the UK medical journal, actually went so far to retract the article. It was a flawed study where there were only 12 patients, they were unwilling included and the author was also being paid. There were many cases of ethical violations and the guy isn’t even allowed to practice medicine in the UK any more. He now works in the US. So, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary people still believe these findings.

Second, we learned that it’s not only conservatives, or a segment of the population that is uneducated that hold these anti-science beliefs. The topics I’ve talked about have focused primarily on that group. This controversy is with the liberal well educated group of people living in California. They have celebrity spokespeople and many of these people are engineers or some other scientifically based  profession. These people should know better.

What are the risks if we don’t vaccinate though? Well, vaccination works through protection of the herd. Everyone needs to be protected in the “herd” otherwise everyone is at risk. Well, that just sounds like a scare tactic. Ok, yes a bit, however vaccines don’t always work. You could have gotten vaccinated for MMR and it didn’t actually give you the anti-bodies you needed. It’s difficult to test for these things and expensive. Not something you’d want to subject a small child to. So, lets say that unknown to you, your child’s vaccine didn’t work, and another kid in class was intentionally unvaccinated. He some how comes across measles and comes to school with it. Your child could become ill, as well as any other person in the school that the vaccination didn’t work for or intentionally wasn’t vaccinated.

Ok, let’s say you’re right, why is Autism increasing? Well, partially we’ve changed the standards for what fits autism over time. In the past only people like Rainman would have been considered autistic, now there’s a well defined spectrum that includes a lot more types of behaviors. Other reasons may be from who are having children together. A recent study (WSJ summary) showed that Eindhoven has a significantly higher rate of autism than two other areas where there are many less technology jobs, thus less engineers and scientists. This also would indicate a possible reason why Silicon Valley might also have a higher rate than other places in the US. This does need additional research to compare regions in the US to regions like this and others around the world.

In conclusion, just because you believe non-scientific things does not mean you are stupid. There are a lot of changes in scientific literature. However, we need to develop techniques to educate people and convince them that the new data is right and that there is not some grand plot to make some one money (anti-vac think its the pharmaceutical companies lying) or destroy our economy (anti-climate change thing it’s a conspiracy to destroy the US economy). These groups are increasing risk to everyone. We need to as a general public, figure out a way to address these problems.

Further Reading:
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/01/california-stud/
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_waronscience/

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?