The Adventures of My Pet Hamster

Today, while driving to Milwaukee for a return flight to Dallas, Jodi and I heard on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” about a bill in the California State Assembly aimed at creating a “No Cuss Week” in March [1]. The idea was inspired by the creation of a “No Cussing Club” in a California school [2]. Students joined the club under the belief that agreeing to reduce swearing would improve the quality of life, reduce crime (drugs) and bullying, and in general improve themselves.

There are two serious issues at work in the ideas behind the club and this bill. The first regards liberty, and the desire to curb speech to achieve a more “perfect” human behavior. The second is scientific, and regards the reasons we swear in the first place. I’ll comment on the scientific issues first, and then on the issues regarding liberty.

Why do we swear? A quick search on Google Scholar suggests that many (but not that many) scientists have asked and tried to answer this question. Some of the interesting articles were a study of women and why they swear [3], and a recent one on swearing and pain relief [4]. The study of women found that women tend to swear to express negative emotions; while swearing was connected to those emotions, in and of itself it was deemed to be uncorrelated with a lack of life satisfaction. The pain study found that release, via swearing, of the stress-pain associated with an event was better than when not swearing (e.g. having no other outlet).

The limited scientific data on swearing, its causes and effects, point to swearing as a means of expressing some other pain. Swearing is not a cause, but an effect. While there are socially acceptable and unacceptable conditions for swearing, swearing is not the root of any evils underlying the unacceptable conditions.

Clubs to root out swearing are voluntary organizations to which a person may choose to belong. Not joining has social consequences, as does joining, but ultimately it’s an individual’s choice. A state assembly creating a “No Cussing Week” for an entire state is not a club; it’s a step in the direction of state-mandated censorship. Many people don’t like swearing, but what about when a movement comes along that doesn’t like another kind of speech? Will the CA State Assembly be as willing to encourage getting rid of another kind of speech?

Fundamentally, this issue boils down to values – the value of liberty. Liberty is a thing that once taken away is difficult to restore. It may seem innocent to want to improve people’s speech, but improving speech means taking something away from that speech. It may begin with swearing, but it won’t end with swearing; it never does.

Appealing to a philosophical “better human” is also a very dangerous thing; humans are flawed creatures, and it is our flaws that make us strong and adaptable. There is no such thing as perfection, only adaptation. More to the point, every attempt made in history to appeal to an ideal human being has led to a (sometimes violent) curbing of liberty. Rather than philosophy, we should make decisions based on things as they are, not as we wish them to be. We need more science on swearing before we can say what it means, and trying to condemn it at the state level will only lead us in the wrong direction.

One last issue remains to be considered. If swearing is a symptom, what is the cause? The “No Cussing Clubs” purport to suppress swearing to root out bullying and drug use. But if the science suggests swearing is the effect, not the cause, then these clubs are mis-guided wastes of valuable time. Rather, what about clubs to discuss anger, stress, and other causes of swearing? What about state-level bills to attack poverty (the root of drug use and trade) and create economic opportunity, rather than to curb swearing?

Good decisions are based on sound principles. Swearing is a symptom. Fight the cause, whatever it might be. But silence the swearing, and you only serve the curbing of liberty.

[1] http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/09-10/bill/asm/ab_0101-0150/acr_112_bill_20100225_amended_asm_v96.html

[2] http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/california-legislature-considers-adopting-cuss-free-week/19375659

[3] “Why do women swear? An exploration of reasons for and perceived efficacy of swearing in Dutch female students.” Personality and Individual Differences Volume 38, Issue 7, May 2005, Pages 1669-1674

[4] http://www.keele.ac.uk/marketing/press/archive/2009/130709-swearing.htm

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In late February and early March came periods of devastation for Chile. Those periods came in the form of ” . . . the most severe earthquake experienced by the oldest inhabitant . . . ” as stated in an account of the events. The account continues, “A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over a fluid; – one second of time has created in the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would not have produced.”

In early March, upon surveying the damage wrought by the trembler in the port city of Talcahuano, the account continues ” . . . that not a house in Concepcion or Talcahuano  was standing; that seventy villages were destroyed . . . ” The account details the overwhelming power not just of the earthquake, but of the tsunami that followed. The land was incredibly damaged by this unprecedented natural assault, showing ” . . . fresh fractures  and displaced soil . . . “, and in some places ” . . . permanent elevation of the land . . . upraised two to three feet . . . At the island of Santa Maria, the elevation was greater . . . ” One eye witness reported ” . . . beds of putrid mussel-shells still adhering to the rocks, ten feet above the high-water mark.” The tsunami brought its own brand of destruction. “Shortly after the shock, a great wave was seen from the distance of three or four miles, approaching in the middle of the bay . . . ” The wave reportedly washed up as high as 23 vertical feet above the highest spring tides, capsizing boats, dragging cattle off hillsides, and leaving vast pools of salt water in ravaged houses.

With the changing tide and the forces of earthly upheaval came human tides and human upheaval. People gathered together in orchards for survival, “At first . . . as merry as if it had been a picnic; but soon afterward heavy rain caused much discomfort, for they were absolutely without shelter.” “Those who had saved any property were obliged to keep a constant watch, for thieves prowled about . . . ” “Hundreds knew themselves ruined, and few had the means of providing food for the day.”

These accounts are painful and haunting, but they do not come from the recent earthquake that ravaged Chile and its surrounding environs. Rather, they are the account of the Chilean earthquake of Feb. 20, 1835, as penned by Mr. Charles Darwin during his voyage on The Beagle [1]. Fortunately for history and natural history, he was witness to many of the events, gathered accounts where he was not witness, and used these events to formulate hypotheses about geological evolution and the malleable nature of the earth.

What, then, were the lessons of Concepcion? Darwin noted the coincidences – or, more accurately, the anti-coincidences – between volcanism (volcanic activity) and earthquakes. He was witness to the eruption of the volcano named Osorno, and found out later that at the same time, within 2000 miles and along the same range of mountains, had been eruptions of the volcanoes Aconcagua and Coseguina. These were accompanied by an earthquake felt for 1000 miles. Near Concepcion, the volcano Antuco had recently gone dormant before the great quake on Feb. 20. From this, Darwin drew associations between the motion of the earth and the movement of lava through the earth. He attributed the release of energy in the quake to the inability of Antuco to erupt. While the theory of plate tectonics was still MANY years away, Darwin was beginning to peel away the layers of mystery surrounding geological phenomena.

Darwin also drew connections between volcanism and the rise of mountains. Prior to his observations and his thinking on the subject, it was a common belief that the earth was unchanged since its creation (which was dated by at least one Biblical scholar to about 6000 years prior to the events of Feb. 20).  Darwin was witness to real changes in the earth’s configuration – the rising of land, the displacement of sea life tens of feet vertically. This event helped him to understand his previous observations of fresh sea shells hundreds of feet above sea level, in places where now trees grew. The earth was by no means fixed, and from this he reasoned that mountains represent the slow rise of rock due to the movement and expulsion of lava. These were bold claims in the time of Darwin, but unlike others who might have made similar claims, Darwin had real evidence on his side.

Darwin’s more practical observations spoke to the expectation of consequences to follow the quake. Quite apart from his immediate accounts of the toll on human life, he also made two observations that have real consequences for everyday life. The first was his observation of the way in which buildings were destroyed. Fire was something that he noted was a serious problem after the quake. “The thatched roofs fell over the fires, and flames burst forth in all parts.” Construction materials less flammable than thatch (or related materials) are clearly a key ingredient in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake (witness  the human toll due to fire in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake). Darwin also observed that the most destruction suffered by walls was lessened when the wall was oriented perpendicular to the seismic waves. ” . . . walls running S.W. and N.E. which presented their ends to the point whence the undulations came, would be much less likely to fall than those walls which, running N.W. and S.E., must in their whole lengths have been at the same instant thrown out of the perpendicular . . . ”

His other observations speak as a warning sign to any survivor of a quake, or any nation that would render assistance to a people devastated by the phenomenon. Darwin noted the proliferation of after-shocks, speaking of “Innumerable small tremblings [that] followed the great earthquake . . . within the first twelve days no less than three hundred were counted.” The danger to life continues well after the first major shock. In addition, robbed of shelter and a steady food supply, life continues to be threatened. After the shaking and the fire, there is a final source of destruction that may bring late woe upon a weary people: rain. Noting that the quake and the tsunami had created great fissures in the land, “Some . . . a yard wide,” Darwin observed that ” . . . . many enormous masses had already fallen on the beach . . . ” He then noted that ” . . . the inhabitants thought that when the rains commenced far greater slips would happen.”

Speaking to us from 175 years ago, Darwin’s account serves as a relevant warning about the changing Earth. While it seems a thing hard to move, the Earth’s surface is an evolving frontier. Like the punctuated equilibrium of Stephen Jay Gould, earthquakes are the sudden shocks that create rapid change in our environment. They are black swans, above our control but not our understanding. Though we lack the ability to predict when they will happen we know that they DO happen.

Let us not allow our compassion to fatigue us; the people of Haiti and Chile, and those ravaged across the globe by the shaking of the earth, require our own surge of good will in their time of crisis. We must not be so short-sighted as to think that crisis can abate in a week, or even a month. The rains of Chile  and Haiti will bring a fresh crop of misery to those without shelter, as the inhabitants believed they would in 1835. Suffering will not go away when the Red Cross stops campaigning for dollars. Nor should we become so focused on the crisis du jour that we forget that somewhere else, the earth will be moving. Our cities must be prepared, our instincts ready to survive and to overcome the chaos of widespread destruction. For in a world where adaptation is the defining characteristic of continued survival, a human equipped with the power to KNOW that change is inevitable will be best suited to sustain a world beyond that change.

[1] “Voyage of the Beagle Round the World: Journal of Researches into Natural History and Geology.” Charles Darwin.

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NPR ran a timely story tonight about how people with different value systems will interpret the same information differently [1]. Social scientists are applying these observations to understand reactions to vaccination and climate change data.

The story offered explanations but few ideas. For instance, there was this cautionary tale:

So, should climate scientists hire, say, Newt Gingrich as their spokesman? Kahan says no. “The goal can’t be to create a kind of psychological house of mirrors so that people end up seeing exactly what you want,” he argues. “The goal has to be to create an environment that allows them to be open-minded.” And Kahan says you can’t do that just by publishing more scientific data.

While I am not a fan of creating such an “information ministry” in science just to appeal to different value groups, I was left wondering what, exactly, we can do. Since the mission of science is to pursue more research, the last sentence seems at odds with the instinct of the scientist. Certainly, the present state of public acceptance of the science suggests more science doesn’t mean more people on your side.

I came to my own conclusion, in the end, and it’s pretty much what I have been saying in the last groups of posts on this. Education is the key. The only way to make more people capable of processing data outside their value system is to provide them with the mental toolkit to make decisions informed by values and data, and not just values.

The other conclusion is that you won’t sell one solution as the “best” solution when it comes to problems like climate change. For instance, as reported in the story,

In another experiment, people read a United Nations study about the dangers of global warming. Then the researchers told the participants that the solution to global warming is to regulate industrial pollution. Many in the individualistic group then rejected the climate science. But when more nuclear power was offered as the solution, says Braman, “they said, you know, it turns out global warming is a serious problem.”

Clearly, a rich portfolio of approaches is the key. Economic solutions, including the creation of carbon markets and new energy sectors, are part of it. Regulation of total industrial output of CO2 and methane are another part. Efficiency and conservation are further parts. The above cover personal, corporate, and intranational solutions; international agreements is a further avenue to attack the problem.

In a rich portfolio, everybody wins. Free-market types get new industries and new competition, as well as a new way to generate profit while capping your own emissions. Regulation types get what they want. Those who claim you can’t solve global climate change without global solutions get what they want from international agreements, while those who decry international interference in national sovereignty have their “out” through personal choice (conservation and efficiency) and local control (corporate and governmental).

If we can’t sell the science anymore, maybe we can sell the economic benefits of simply acting more responsibly.

[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124008307

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Updated on 2/25/2010: some of the language needed editing for clarity.
Updated on 2/23/2010: added discussion of the current state of the medieval warming period, and whether it was actually a global phenomenon.
George Will’s opinion piece in today’s Washington Post serves as a textbook example of the current argument against acting on climate science. If you have an account on the Post’s website, you can get the piece [1]. I’ll dissect the main points here:

1. Will begins by linking science to only American progressives
2. He then quotes a “jerk scientist ” statement, chosen from among things the IPCC Chairman has said of late. He then wags his finger at this behavior.
3. He then cites the illegally released emails from last November as casting doubt on the scientific process involved in drawing conclusions from climate data
4. He notes that climate action policies put into effect by a few U.S. western states, or climate coalitions including energy industry players, are beginning to fall apart.
5. He reports that global average temperature has not increased in 15 years.
6. He notes the wrong IPCC claim that India’s glaciers will melt by 2035.
7. He then cites the speculation that if southern hemisphere temperatures in the “medieval warming period” were as high as northern hemisphere temperatures in the same period, then that period would be warmer than now
8. He repeats that all of this points to an absence of warming
9. He then calls climate science a religion

It’s interesting to study these points and see whether they form a coherent argument against climate research and its conclusions. Points 1, 2, 4, and 9 are all rhetorical gimmicks As such, they don’t relate to the process or conclusions of climate science. Jerk scientists don’t make for bad science – they just make for good quotes to use to make people think scientists look down on the public. If scientists couldn’t be jerks, they’d had to revoke at least half of the Nobel prizes ever awarded. Just because policy actions or coalitions fail to make an impact in 3 years doesn’t mean that the science itself is flawed. It does mean that, as always, politics and policy are difficult and we have to work harder, not give up.

So let’s focus on the points that would suggest a problem with the science. Some of these have recently been addressed. The British MET, embarrassed by the emails mentioned in point 3,  re-examined data. They did so  in lieu of additional criticism from third parties about climate data analysis. The results of the re-analysis had no impact on the conclusion that the earth is slowly warming and that this is connected to human activity. Will might have missed that, since it’s recent news (science is always on the move) [2]. The land-based temperature record [3] was re-evaluated by the MET and is shown below:

Land-based temperature record (British MET Office)

The above record would seem to indicate that for about 10-15 years, within uncertainties on the year-by-year numbers, there have been only slower or no increases in temperature. So this would seem to confirm point 5.

We can also look at NASA studies from multiple sources of temperature data [5] -” . . . weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world; satellite observations of sea surface temperature; and Antarctic research station measurements . . . ” – combining land, sea, and polar data. Since the earth’s surface is about 70% water, it seems a little disingenuous to neglect data from other important sources. What do we see?

NASA study of land, sea, and polar climate data

We see that not only has the last decade shown SUSTAINED warming in both hemispheres of the planet, but 2009 marked RECORD HIGH temperatures since 1880.

A quote from the NASA article sums up the danger of mistaking short-term behavior for long-term trends:

“There’s always an interest in the annual temperature numbers and on a given year’s ranking, but usually that misses the point,” said James Hansen, the director of GISS. “There’s substantial year-to-year variability of global temperature caused by the tropical El Niño-La Niña cycle. But when we average temperature over five or ten years to minimize that variability, we find that global warming is continuing unabated.”

Is Will drawing his conclusions by only choosing to look at data from the land-temperature record and discounting other records? He shouldn’t be afraid of using more data. Is he drawing his conclusion by mistaking a 10-15 year effect for a 100-year effect? What about other periods in recent history?

Consider the land-temperature data from about 1940-1970. That seems almost flat, if not declining, and it was sustained for far longer than the present land-data trend. Amplifying this period, the same trend is also very clear in the combined-data NASA study. Yet, after the 1970s the pace of warming – in all data – accelerated. Generally speaking, from the 1880s to now, the trend is far more up than not. When the temperature climbs, it does so quickly. We again see the danger of mistaking short-term effects for long-term effects

Ten years – even 30 years – is not that long on the scale of climate. Yet the temperature goes up quickly, and does so even on the background of decadal periods of natural warming and cooling from causes like solar activity and the El Nino/La Nina cycle. So what happened during that earlier 30-year period?

Let us not forget also that 1940-1970 was the time during which we shoved industrial aerosols into the atmosphere; these are now understood to have a cooling effect [5]. It was only with the beginning of clean-air movements in the 1970s that aerosol levels began to decline. This decline removing an anthropogenic forcing factor from the climate that drove cooling. In effect, another negative human activity helped to mask our larger warming impact on the climate. Once the air got cleaned up we revealed the warming again – with a vengeance. Cleaning up the air in our hemisphere took the collar off the pit bull. It’s worth noting that in the Southern Hemisphere, temperatures steadily climbed during that same period.

What of the medieval warming period  mentioned in point 7? This period is illustrated below [6]:

Temperature in the Northern Hemisphere (2000 years)

The curves are derived from 10 different data sources which can be used as proxies for  temperature at times in the past. Thinking of the color-coding like the visible spectrum of light, more recent data sources are shifted toward the red while older sources of proxy behavior are shifted toward the blue. The variation in temperature records from different sources are then related to the uncertainty on the actual temperature during a given period.

The medieval warm period is fairly apparent in the above plot, but the only strong evidence that such a period occurred comes from studies of climate in the northern hemisphere. Data on climate in the southern hemisphere is less available, and where available does not reflect this warming. In fact, taken all together the existing data on both the northern and southern hemispheres suggests that the globe was cooler overall than in the mid-20th century. The data from outside the north Atlantic is more scattered and points to a significant region-by-region variation in temperature during that period. Will is relying on incomplete data to draw his conclusion that the current period is not “the warmest on record.” His reliance on this warming period seems shaky, at best.

This leaves only Will’s point 6, but making a mistake in a report does not mean all of climate science is bunk. In fact, the different studies by the MET and NASA point to a convergence of conclusions not only from multiple independent researchers but largely independent data samples.

Will’s argument is a good snapshot of the current attempt to mistake climate science for unsuccessful policies and politics, to mistake scientists for the scientific consensus, and to mistake short-term effects for long-term trends. It also is a good illustration of how quickly  we forget that we helped cool the earth when we pumped aerosols into the atmosphere. (That cooling was also helped by having volcanoes erupt periodically – but that was out of our control). Cleaning up our aerosol mess (which helped destroy the ozone layer) only revealed the bigger mess we had already made.

I encourage every scientist to read Will’s piece. As a blueprint, it will help you to understand what mistakes are made when talking about scientific methods and results. Climate science is science, and like all science:

• It is a web of evidence linked by hypothesis-testing. That web is growing, not shrinking, as researchers continue to question each other’s methods and conclusions.
• Science is not defined by one result or one researcher. Remember that there is a big picture, and don’t mistake a few examples of human error for a complete failure of the scientific method.
• Climate conclusions are not owned by one source or one agency – scientists come from all over the world, collect independent lines of data, and constantly criticize each other’s conclusions. Yet, the warming appears to remain as an unmistakable feature of the natural world, tracking beautifully with our continued industrialization of energy and food production.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/19/AR2010021903046.html

[2] http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/16/key-climate-change-data-laden-errors/

[3] http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/data-graphic.GIF

[4] http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/temp-analysis-2009.html

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#Physical_mechanisms

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

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Of late, I’ve written some things in my blog that, upon reflection, make me a science jerk. For instance, in my recent discussion of media coverage of the climate science mistakes uncovered in the last four months, I pretty much made it sound like anybody who doubts climate science is an idiot and should suck it up . . . and then walk it off.

As a scientist, it’s difficult to watch a great number of research peers come under attack by a public that largely ignores science until it either (a) produces a new toy or (b) conflicts with societal notions, common wisdom, or values. Climate science is one of those things where nature appears to be trying to tell us something, and most people in the U.S. don’t seem to know how to listen. Ultimately, the failure is ours. If the public fails to comprehend the scientific method and therefore disregards its conclusions, then it’s only because we failed to live up to our end of the societal bargain wherein good public education produces an informed electorate. If companies have better information machines that cast doubt on the science, it’s our fault for not having similarly organized grass-roots machines that communicate our science.

Being upset is not a license to bash. Even if I feel angry about how the media is portraying the climate e-mails, or climate data analysis, or some of the IPCC report conclusions, I shouldn’t bash my fellow citizens. At the time, I didn’t think of it as bashing. Everything looks different in the cold light that makes hindsight possible. Science as a whole only further fails the society that it criticizes for not understanding science. It’s more a sign that we have failed in our role as educators, rather than a sign that people can’t understand science.

I still stand by my fundamental concerns, and reiterate them here more as points than anything else:

• Science is not a chain, it is a web. At first, as pieces enter the web and connections are made, the strength of the web is tenuous and, really, the web may be just as likely to fail as to succeed. The web can collapse not because its conclusions run afoul of common wisdom or societal values, but because its claims simply fail to hold under withering scientific scrutiny. As a result, an area of science is not slave to the weakest conclusions in the web, but instead by the number of connections joining one conclusion to many experiments, which themselves obtain reinforcing results. A chain is defined by its weakest link; science is not such thing, and by its nature tends to weed the bad or useless ideas and identify the useful or correct ones.
• Mistaking short-term fluctuations for long-term trends is at the heart of the climate science discussion. Anyone who claims that snow trucked into Vancouver is evidence of global warming is just as dangerous to public understanding as people who claim snow in Dallas is evidence against global warming. Neither of these is evidence of anything, but rather are observations in a large web of observations, some of which may be connected by hypotheses and other which are irrelevant. It is incumbent upon all scientists to keep a focus on the long-term, using the short-term merely to add richness to the data set that is needed to establish trend and outcomes.

Most importantly, don’t be a science jerk. Don’t tell people who disagree with you that they are stupid. It’s a great way to make more enemies defined not by their understanding of science but by their opposition to individual scientists. Rather, focus on education. Focus on the quality of your own work, and on the work of others. Keep science beautiful, work to define your own brand in the enterprise, don’t let anyone tell you what you mean or who you are, and never tell anybody they are incapable of understanding your work. The only way we can ever make progress on anything in our society is to respect its members while at the same time arming those members with the very tools of skepticism that enable science to make progress in the natural world.

We will necessarily create more skeptics, armed with the freedom to inquire and the responsibility to respect the process, and while this will leave some people who disagree with the science it will create many more people who can act as independent and responsible citizens.

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Athletics at SMU can raised quite heated responses from members of the SMU academic community. This response is rooted in many things, but primarily a perception that student athletes are expected, or themselves expect, to achieve less in the academic realm than their non-athlete peers. Setting aside the reality for a moment, which is always more complicated, it’s useful to focus on the perceptions. Thinking about the meaning of the perception may lead to useful conclusions.

What are the perceptions of athletics from academics? As with any school with a visible athletics program, athletes are assumed to have less preparation before coming to college and are assumed to have been admitted not because they could prove a valuable scholar but because they can run, jump, or throw (or all of these). It’s also assumed  that a healthy athletics program draws money and attention into the university, and has the potential to benefit the entire university. As with anything involving a large, up-front investment of money and human capital, there is a tipping point that must be reached before the benefits outweigh the costs. I think it’s safe to say that it is also assumed that it is the duty of the academics to make sure any under-prepared athletes get the education they deserve.

Truth usually (but not always) lies somewhere in the tangled mess of common wisdom. We can begin simply by asking “What is a scholar?” Merriam-Webster keeps it simple: “2 a : a person who has done advanced study in a special field b : a learned person” It’s not really specific about what field, or what kind of study. I think we all assume that this means academics, but why must the scholar be divorced from athletics? Exercise of any kind, coupled with activities of the mind, improves both.

Speaking from personal experience, a little exercise every day keeps my own stress levels in check and gets my creativity moving. Without some exercise, I grow irritable, incapable of executing tasks and keeping things organized, and in extreme cases feel the effects of panic or indecision. In my own life, dividing the academic from the athlete (however amateur) is a fruitless choice.

Thinking more broadly  about the university, athletics clearly has a place. It serves to attract to the school individuals who might have never considered SMU, and in that way serves to enrich the diversity of both background and mentality present in the university population. Where research or humanities fail to draw large singular  crowds and attention to the university, athletics does so with ease. Athletics forms loyalty, which can last more than a lifetime. Media are more likely to latch onto athletics than to academics – it’s easier for the media to understand and communicate (and, to be fair, it really is easier to communicate athletics simply because of its visceral, human-scale drama).

Taking a lesson from CERN and “Angels and Demons”: all press is good press. Sure, Dan Brown decimated the science to tell his story, but CERN seized on this opportunity to educate the public about the real subatomic particle research at CERN. SMU has a similar opportunity. Faced with the goal of expanding the research profile of the university, having a visible athletics program draws attention (and money) to the university from segments of the population otherwise un-inclined to care about a university. That money should not only serve the athletics program . . .  but that’s for higher-paid people than I to decide and manage.

It is also, however, incumbent upon the athletics program to act like part of the scholarly mission of the university, and if it intends to recruit students with weaker academics it must pay for tutoring and other extra academic support. I want students to have the same opportunities, and if all an athlete needs it a little extra math tutoring to take a crack at cool science classes then by God let’s see money for tutors. Academics also have a responsibility in this. They must strive to do their best to support students who need a little extra work and encouragement. Students don’t come fully formed to university – otherwise, why are they paying us to teach? All students have a talent, a love, a passion – if sports is that passion, why not draw them into science with a “Sports Science” class? It can be fun, relevant, and teach principles of modern science in biology, chemistry, and physics.

I don’t see a dual role for SMU, or any other such university, in the coming decades. Wanting to become a better scholarly institution should never be at odds with having great athletes. We shouldn’t label people as “academic scholars” or “scholar athletes,” as if those people are divorced from one another. Rather, let us labor to produce scholars, young and talented people with a love of academics and athletics, and let us give them the value system to enjoy a lifetime full of both.

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While attending my nephews’ birthday party this weekend, I was told a horrific anecdote by one of my family members. Their employer recently bought a larger retail space not far from their original building. The employer relocated to the larger building and merged departments and personnel. In the process, they’ve changed health care plans, forcing all of the employees to go through completely new rounds of health screening.

As part of the new plan, there will be a “wellness program.” Such programs seems to be more common in modern health plans, and their idea is simple. They are intended to reward good behavior (exercise, varied diet) and, by symmetry, discourage opposing behavior. This particular wellness plan is anecdotally implemented as follows. Each employee’s health will be screened to determine indicating factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, etc. Those employees with the worst health will automatically be entered into the most expensive plans, and the wellness plan will serve as a carrot to this stick. Improvements in diet and exercise will result in lowering of premiums.

Speaking theoretically for a second, it seems that such wellness plans have their place. The leading killers of Americans are diet and exercise-related diseases (heart disease being the top killer). As such, these preventable diseases much necessarily be the things on which insurance companies make their most payout. A company looking to reduce costs is necessarily going to attach such chronic things.

Implementation seems to be the key, and the anecdote above suggests a rather poor way of implementing a wellness program. Rather than sticking people who fail their wellness screening (which, based on BMI, I would wager most Americans would fail even if they DO get exercise and eat a varied diet) with the costliest plan, it would seem to make a little more sense to start some significant fraction of the employees on a medium-cost plan. One can then use improvements in wellness to reduce premiums, and save the more expensive plans for the most extreme cases of poor health.

That said, this opens a new can of worms: when can an insurance company decide your health affects their bottom line so much that they have the right to toss you or jack up the price so much that you can’t afford care anyway? This question would be easy if a national health care plan existed; in that case, getting tossed doesn’t matter because you would still have minimum coverage. But such a plan doesn’t exist and it’s not on the table in any current debate. Lacking a public health plan, it seems we need insurance reform to prevent companies from finding new ways, clothed in an act of social good, to toss people from their plans.

Really, we as a nation need to solve the problem underlying  poor health, rather than address only the symptom (increasing insurance costs). That problem is cheap food. Cheap food happens largely to  also very poor quality food, far from what I would even like to call “food.” Until fruits, vegetables, and humanely raised and slaughtered meat and fish can compete with “the dollar menu,” we can expect the obesity rates to continue to climb. Until exercise  and good food are things instilled in our value system, we can expect obesity rates to continue to climb.

Insurance companies need to stop acting like jerks. Without a national health care plan, their behavior needs to be checked by policy, and that policy needs to be motivated by identifying our health care values. Fundamentally, we need to continue to educate people about food, exercise, and the consequences of making choices devoid of a food value system. The problem with health insurance may be nicely illustrated by my family anecdote, but let’s not mistake the symptom for the cause. Let’s also not forget to find national medicine that addresses both.

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This was buried in the third paragraph of a Fox News story on climate change and the questions about some of the results reported by the British MET office and used in IPCC reports [1]:

Although the errors did not alter the bigger picture on climate change, they were seized upon as a further sign that scientific institutions were not sufficiently transparent.

I agree with both statements: these mistakes don’t change the big picture, and science always needs to be more transparent. Too bad this was buried under a headline, “Key Climate Change Data Laden With Errors,” and under phrases like ” . . . catalogue of errors . . . ”

While the next few paragraphs struggle to “show both sides,” the article as a whole illustrates nicely the general problem in the public discourse on climate change.

First, it forgets that science is a process (mistakes get found, caught, and fixed – all of which happened in this case). That oversight means we as scientists are not communicating very well that reality of science. Second, the opening of the article mistakes science for a chain and not a web is another thing for which we have ourselves to blame – we are not communicating science well.  This latter issue is tied to mistaking wrong results for the collapse of the overall picture; when a field is as extensive as climate research, physics, evolution, math, etc. it’s difficult for single wrong results to bring the whole history of the field crashing down. It’s not impossible, but it doesn’t just happen the way that people might like it to.

After all the sensationalism of the opening of the article, the conclusion finds footing:

When all of the errors identified were corrected, the temperature trend remained well within the 95 percent confidence range of the original plot, meaning that the difference would not be considered scientifically significant.

I am left to wonder about science writing in newspapers in this country. From headlines about the CDMS dark matter result, which got way ahead of the actual science, to this headline about climate change mistakes and the real impact on the results, who writes headlines and opening paragraphs? It seems like the writers at the end and in the middle are not the same as those at the top of the story.

“Key Climate Change Data Laden With Errors” should have been “Climate Change Conclusions Unchanged by Errors.” Stick with the science. It will steer you right.

[1] http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/16/key-climate-change-data-laden-errors/

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What do autism and climate change have in common? They are two sides of the same coin. On one side, you have autism, vaccines, and a single study from 1998 that was long touted as evidence of a link between the two. On the other side, you have climate-change deniers arguing that climate science is a chain rather than a web, and thus its strength is defined by its weakest links. Let us explore this schizophrenia, and see what we can learn.

The last few weeks have brought with them news on both fronts. In the world of autism research, we heard that The Lancet [1], which originally published a study linking autism, colitis, and the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine [2], retracted the article. This came long after the article had been discredited by other studies and long after questions were raised about research ethics in the study. This article stood largely on its own as the biggest single piece of evidence wielded by anti-vaccination groups fighting childhood vaccination.

In the world of climate change, we have seen more and more attempts to totally discredit the IPCC and climate scientists. This is largely because of an erroneous IPCC statement that the Himalayan glaciers in India will all melt by 2035 [3]. The correct number was 2350, and while the evidence for climate change doesn’t rest on any such single number or study, the anti-climate-change community has been raising hell. Taken together with the cries of pundits that the recent spate of winter storms in the American south cast doubt on climate change (we’ll get to that in a moment), we see the flip-side of the Autism coin:  those in denial of human-induced climate change claim that since individual conclusions are in error, the whole of the science is absolutely incorrect.

The strategies employed by both the anti-vaccination and anti-climate-change forces are really the same: cast doubt on the overwhelming majority of science by either (a) pointing to single pieces of evidence that run counter to the rest or (b) cast the majority of science as being in doubt when one or a few pieces of the science are problematic. These strategies are very similar to the way the tobacco industry tried to counter the growing number of studies linking cancer and smoking: cast doubt on the science and the scientists. They are similar to the strategy to deny the role of evolution as real: cast doubt on the science by pointing to things it doesn’t (yet) explain, or claim that since a few intelligent design papers get published they are somehow equal in merit to the thousands of papers studying nature using evolution. From both the autism and climate change news, we as scientists can learn and grow.

It is foremost important to remember that science is a process of experimentation, induction, and deduction, designed to understand the natural world. It makes mistakes, but is largely self-correcting. Science is a process, and thus not defined by a single scientist or a single result. While science is “democratic,” in the sense that each person has equal right to contribute ideas, the scientific method itself is designed to define which  ideas are correct and useful and which are incorrect and useless. A single incorrect result will be ferreted out; a single bad actor will not stand the withering scrutiny of people employing or testing their results.

So while it is fair to offer the hypothesis that there is a link between autism and MMR vaccination, it is patently unscientific to deny the overwhelming evidence that cannot find such a link. Going further, it is then also well outside the realm of science to cling to one or a few studies that do support your idea. When you cling to an idea in the face of overwhelming  evidence to the contrary, you have crossed from science to non-science or pseudo-science and the natural world will have no truck with you.

Hundreds of studies have demonstrated the link between human activity (industrialization of production and agriculture),  increased production of CO2, methane, and other heat-trapping gases, and changes in average global temperature. The mistaken number for the year of Himalayan glacier melt does not mean all climate science is wrong. In fact, if anything the over-focus on this one error steals attention from a real crisis in India right now: the disappearance of coastal communities due to rising sea levels [4].

A single snow storm that brings record cold to the southern U.S. does not mean climate change is a lie [5] – it points more to the El Nino cycle than anything else – nor does the fact that snow had to be trucked into Whistler for the Winter Olympics constitute singular evidence for climate change. The long-term pattern is all that matters, and that is well-established: the earth has warmed and cooled in the past, but never as rapidly as now, and the correlation between CO2 and methane production by industrialization of production and farming is clearly linked to the temperature rise.

Likewise, there is no statistical correlation between MMR vaccine and autism; between when the vaccine is given and the appearance of autism; between staggering or grouping vaccinations and autism. While the actions of climate change deniers and anti-vaccination people appears the same – ignore the science – their approaches are really mirror images of one another. One clings to singular (and discredited) studies, while the other claims all of the science is wrong if even a small part of it is wrong.

The fact that glaciers won’t melt for 300 more years, rather than 20 more years, doesn’t change the fact that climate change is wreaking economic and social havoc now. This fact does not make the economic challenge of dealing with climate change any easier. The fact that there is no link between autism and vaccination does not cheapen the struggle of parents to adapt to the needs of their children; if anything, it makes the case even stronger that we need to look for the real causes of autism and empower people with real knowledge about this state of mental development. But pointing the finger at the wrong cause will only lead to the deaths of thousands or millions from easily treatable and preventable diseases. Likewise, pointing the finger at a few wrong conclusions or a handful of mis-behaved climate scientists will only forestall real action and lead to the collapse of civilizations under the unstoppable pressure of the climate.

Science tries to read the story of the natural world, and if the natural world is marching on some slow but undeniable course then science will be carried along with it. That progress is like the tide – it moves slowly, but with great purpose, and in its march forward it is hard to stop. Deniers wield a few scientific anomalies like hammers; they will stand on the shore desperately trying to beat back the tide. You can deny the tide, you can stand in one place and pretend it isn’t coming in, you can swing your little hammer, but you risk drowning. Worse, if you convince a lot of other people that science isn’t telling us something about the world, that the tide isn’t coming in, they may stand in defiance shoulder-to-shoulder with you. There you may all be safe for a while, but in the end nature will do what she does, science will read her tale and point out courses of action, and we’ll all wonder where you got off to on that lonely stretch of beach.

[1] http://twit.tv/kiki33

[2] http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2897%2911096-0/abstract (“RETRACTED: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children.” The Lancet,  Volume 351, Issue 9103, Pages 637 – 641, 28 February 1998)

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/01/21/21climatewire-climate-science-panel-apologizes-for-himalay-25267.html

[4] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123733016

[5] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123671588

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I couldn’t have said it better:

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