Street Science in Paris

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Philip Strange

I recently returned from a week’s holiday in Paris. It’s a beautiful place for just walking and looking and while we were there, spring finally arrived. On our last day, we were invited to a rehearsal of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under the young Venezuelan conductor, Diego Matheuz. It was fascinating to watch a big orchestra working hard and creating wonderful music but with a degree of relaxation you don’t see in a formal concert. The rehearsal was in the Salle Pleyel, not far from the Arc de Triomph and afterwards we decided to do the ultimate touristy thing and walk down the Champs-Elysees. I’ve been to Paris many times but I can’t remember ever having done this. The street itself is a curious mixture of posh and tat but it was a sunny day and the views were magnificent both towards the Louvre and back to the Arc and I can see why some call it the world’s most beautiful avenue.
About two thirds of the way down the Champs-Elysees we could see, ahead of us, a series of striking, almost life sized, pictures set up in rows either side of the pavement so that they were visible to both pedestrians and motorists. It turned out that these were all pictures of women scientists, and the exhibition was part of the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the L’Oreal-UNESCO programme “For women in science”. Here is a photograph of some of the pictures, which were all of International Laureates of the Programme; the eagle-eyed will spot one of the OT bloggers, Athene Donald.

Athene Donald poster
Each of the portraits was accompanied by a lay description of the scientist’s work and the overall effect was very impressive. I don’t recall ever having seen anything like this in a public place frequented by thousands of people each day and it seems like a very good way to publicise both science and women in science.

Here are two links, one to more of the pictures and another to a post by Athene Donald about her experience as a Laureate.

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Bad Pharma, Good Pharma, Bad Pharma

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Philip Strange

I was surprised and saddened to hear the news that the pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca were closing their R and D facility at Alderley Park in the North West of the country.  This is an iconic research site, set among lakes and parkland.  The beta blocker, propranolol and the breast cancer drug, tamoxifen were both discovered there.  I remember visiting the site many years ago when I was a postdoc in the US.  I had come back to the UK to look for a job and went to Alderley Park for an interview but in the end there was no suitable position.    Much more recently I gave a talk there and was impressed by the beauty of the local countryside and by the opulence of the new research buildings.

Some of the R and D will be relocated to an enlarged Cambridge site and the head of AstraZeneca believes that drug discovery will be stimulated by proximity to Cambridge University.  I don’t buy this argument in an era of internationalised science and I detect misplaced snobbery in his words.  There are world class universities in the North and surely we should be distributing jobs and wealth around the country.  It is certainly a blow for the North West and for the people whose lives are affected by the decision.  One of the people affected is a former PhD student from my lab.

But of course there is no room for sentiment in these commercial decisions.  AstraZeneca has, until recently, been making vast sums of money from its blockbuster drugs.  Several of these are due to come off patent and the company has a poor pipeline of new drugs so something had to be done to get those billions flowing again.

The need for the Pharmaceutical Industry to make as much money as possible pervades Ben Goldacre’s second book, Bad Pharma, which I just finished reading.  It is a shocking indictment of the practices of this industry which is, after all, so important for the health of so many people.  There are plenty of reviews of the book around including one by OT blogger, Stephen Curry so I won’t go in to great detail.  Two of the many facts in Goldacre’s book that shocked me include: how clinical trial data on many drugs are incomplete with data being suppressed when the result is inconvenient; how doctors’ prescribing decisions are influenced by devious and dodgy marketing practices.   There is much more in the book about how “medicine is broken” and I am surprised there has not been more outcry.  It is not an easy read, which is a pity, but I urge you to have a go.

The book made me feel very uneasy, not only because I am a user of a medical system that appears to be seriously flawed but also because I have myself had a lot of dealings with the pharmaceutical industry.  These have been almost exclusively in collaborations with preclinical scientists.  My first PhD student was part-sponsored by Pfizer and about half of all my other doctoral students also had industry links.  This was a deliberate decision on my behalf; I wanted our work in basic science to have important potential applications and drug action fitted well.  I also enjoyed the stimulation of getting out to visit different Pharma sites.  Students benefitted from their industry placements: they could use different techniques and they could learn first hand how it was to work in industry.  Because we didn’t do research that was close to “market” there was never any conflict of interest and, apart from approval delays, we were always free to publish.

On my visits to different companies, we discussed science but there was always a social aspect and I got to know the Pharma scientists as people.  I found them to be honest, intelligent and hardworking so it comes as a big surprise to read Ben Goldacre’s revelations.  Of course I was dealing with preclinical scientists and Goldacre’s revelations relate to clinical aspects of drug development and to marketing practices.

At some stage, however, the preclinical teams must liaise with clinicians as they pass candidate drugs on for testing and I have no idea how the preclinical/clinical boundary is managed in the pharmaceutical industry.  As an academic, I found that the clinical/preclinical divide created some odd anomalies.  My first academic post was in the recently established Nottingham Medical School.  I hadn’t anticipated the amour propre of some of the clinically qualified staff but I soon learnt my place.  On one occasion, I had been teaching a course on brain disorders (schizophrenia, depression etc) to medical students and when it came to exam time I duly submitted my questions.  The Professor of Psychiatry vetoed my questions as they included references to drug therapy and, as a non-clinician and a non-prescriber, I lacked the ability to ask such questions.  Some years later, I got my own back by writing a book: Brain Biochemistry and Brain Disorders.  Following on from this I wrote a series of reviews on the drugs used to treat schizophrenia, including speculation on how they worked and the basis of their side effects.  As a result I began to be invited to speak at meetings in the area of psychopharmacology and this is where I had my first experience of the murkier side of Pharma marketing.  The meetings I attended, in the mid 2000s were based around strong core symposia on both pre-clinical and clinical topics.  They were held in interesting locations and we were well looked after.  I learnt a lot and I never detected any bias in the scientific content of the main symposia.  There was also a programme of Satellite symposia, each sponsored by a drug company, and on at least one occasion I detected what seemed to me to be company-driven content.

Attached to the main meeting was the Exhibition Hall which is basically a trade fair. Trade fairs attached to meetings of the Biochemical Society or the British Pharmacological Society are, in my recollection, rather grey affairs.  The psychopharmacology trade fairs were like nothing I had ever encountered.  The Exhibition Hall was decked out with brightly coloured stands for each of the drug companies making psychiatric drugs.  Attractive staff dressed in colour-coordinated business suits were on hand to speak to you and take you through the posters detailing the virtues of their drugs.  The hall was full and noisy and people, many of whom were clinicians, walked purposefully from stand to stand with carrier bags bulging with the freebies on offer.  It reminded me of traditional food markets I had visited in Southern France or Italy, only there was an altogether more sinister intent.

The psychopharmacology trade fairs are basically marketing exercises providing literature on the drugs, some freebies like pens and balloons all emblazoned with drug names, also free food and drink.  Occasionally, proceedings at one of the stands would be interrupted by a quiz.  Here one of the staff would take a microphone and ask questions to a group of people who had apparently read all the literature on the stand about that company’s drug.  The person who knew most about the drug would be declared winner and would get a slightly better freebie like a memory stick.  If this isn’t brain washing I don’t know what it is; the most surprising thing to me was the readiness of clinicians to participate in these juvenile charades.  I have to admit a conflict of interest here; I did pick up some freebies my self.  I picked up some pens and for my research, I picked up some of the articles on drugs.  According to Ben Goldacre the articles were probably ghost-written and worthless.  I also acquired two shopping bags from the AstraZeneca stand.  We still use these but what people think when they see us in Devon using a bag emblazoned with “AstraZeneca Neuroscience” I don’t know.

If any of this troubles you, please read the full story in Ben Goldacre’s book.  Also, have a look at the AllTrials web site which demands that all clinical trial data should be published so that a true assessment of the efficacy of drugs can be made.  I want to emphasise the importance of this.  There are many drugs in use around the world where published data on clinical trials are incomplete.  If you are a biomedical researcher interested, as I am, in the basis of drug action then you may be drawing incorrect conclusions because you have access to incomplete and misleading trial data.  If you are a patient, then you may be taking a medicine for which we have incomplete and, therefore, potentially inaccurate data on efficacy.

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The two ideas to fix the gender balance that do not make me cringe

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Eva Amsen

When I was in the penultimate year of high school, at that point where you need to think about universities, all six of the girls in my physics class got a flyer advertising “girl days” at technical universities, during which we could visit and look around without any boys present.

I instantly decided I did not want to attend either the “girl days” in particular, or their universities as a whole. I was offended that someone thought I needed to be treated differently.

I don’t know if this early offense was the cause of it, or just another manifestation of the same thing, but I always get antsy when I see “women in science” features. Ultimately I just don’t want there to even be a reason to have to produce these things. However, in the past few years I have heard stories of women who were not taken seriously at work, who were bullied out of a job, or simply forgotten. So I can see that it’s necessary to do things. I just question what the point is of always showing examples of women in particular careers in the hopes of – what exactly?

So-and-so has a career AND a family – isn’t she amazing? And here’s another feature about how unfair the salary imbalance is. And, I know, let’s hold a panel discussion with four women who barely have time for this because they’re also the token women on every other panel, every committee, and every editorial board. They can talk about how they’re “doing it all”, where “all” is mainly sitting on panels talking about this sort of thing.

And I’m made to feel like I should read all the features and join in the discussion and spend another good portion of my time supporting other women in science, but just like when I was seventeen I don’t WANT to go to “girl days” or talk about women in science. I just want to do my actual work.

That being said, there are two recent initiatives to improve female representation in the science and tech world, and unlike the well-meant flyers and features and endless discussions, I think these two things might actually change something. For the first time since my first encounter with gender issues in science, way back in high school, I did not cringe at “women in science” initiatives. I actually like these ideas, and that’s pretty high praise coming from me!

1. The panel pledge
Proposed by Rebecca Rosen in an Atlantic piece, this amazingly simple idea is already changing the composition of conference panels. Men who have taken this pledge have promised that when they’re invited to speak at a conference or on a panel, they will only accept if there is at least one female speaker.

It’s a brilliant mechanism that uses the voice of men who notice a lack of women, and who are in a position to change that. They can put the pressure on organisers to invite women at a stage where the programme is still being made, which is much more effective than people complaining afterward that they were left out. It’s also a friendly way to remind organisers that they may have overlooked someone.

Since hearing about this, I’ve also made a point of thinking about who I recommend for panels or include in lists of scientists. So far I haven’t caught myself leaving out any women, but if I accidentally do, I’ll be aware of it, and will think a bit further before finalizing my list. I’m also trying not to recommend the usual suspects. There are more women in science than the two or three that always step up.

2. The Finkbeiner test
Ann Finkbeiner proposed to write about a female scientist and not once mention the fact that she is a woman. This idea was expanded by Christie Aschwanden to the “Finkbeiner test”, which you can use to analyse any piece of writing about a woman in science.

“To pass the Finkbeiner test, the story cannot mention

  • The fact that she’s a woman
  • Her husband’s job
  • Her child care arrangements
  • How she nurtures her underlings
  • How she was taken aback by the competitiveness in her field
  • How she’s such a role model for other women
  • How she’s the “first woman to…”

“

I like this one because it addresses exactly the things I dislike so much about open house days for girls only or feature articles about women in science. There is no reason to write about women in science any differently than about men in science. It’s exactly that tone, that “look how much she can do! She’s so special!”-attitude that irks me about those features, and that made me avoid particular universities when as a high school student I had to make important choices about my own future in science.

Together, these two ideas say: Treat scientists all the same, regardless of their gender, but be aware that there is more than one gender when looking for representative groups of experts.

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Sympathy or schadenfreude? – the ENCODE consortium gets the hatchet job.

Posted on March 2, 2013 by Philip Strange

A paper was published earlier this week making an extraordinary attack on the integrity of the work of the ENCODE consortium, an international group studying the human genome.  Scientists don’t normally go in for this type of public blood letting, making the attack all the more surprising.

Other disciplines are not so reticent.  The literary world even hands out a prize, The Hatchet Job of the Year, for the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past 12 months.  This dubious accolade was awarded in February to Camilla Long for her Sunday Times review of Rachel Cusk’s memoir, Aftermath, cataloguing the breakup of her marriage.  I remember reading extracts from Cusk’s book and having to give up; I felt as though I was intruding on something that should not have been made public.  Long’s review is beautifully written and wonderfully and shockingly harsh referring to Cusk as a “brittle little dominatrix and peerless narcissist”.  Here is a longer extract from the review:

“The book is crammed with mad, flowery metaphors and hifalutin creative-writing experiments. There are hectic passages on Greek tragedy and the Christian concept of family, as well as fragments of ghost stories, references to the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy, and heavy Freudian symbolism, including a long description of the removal of a molar, “a large tooth,” she writes portentously, “of great…personal significance”. The final chapter is an out-of-body experience — her situation seen through the eyes of her pill-popping Eastern European au pair”.

Responses from other reviewers were highly polarised: they were either very positive or very negative.

 

The scientific world rarely behaves like this in public.  Not that is to say that we don’t judge our colleagues; we do it all the time.  It’s just that we don’t write it down publicly in the same way.  Scientific meetings are rife with gossip and I’ve heard character assassinations on more than one occasion at Grant Committees.  There is also some trenchant criticism on the blogosphere, as you would expect.  Peer-reviewed papers tend to be much more reserved; if we don’t believe another’s work we will say something discrete like “the inability to repeat X’s work is most likely due to methodological differences”.  Until recently, the strongest criticism I had seen in a scientific paper was that a competitor’s work was “naïve”.

Earlier this week a paper appeared on line in Genome Biology and Evolution from Dan Graur and colleagues which rewrites these rules.  The paper is a critique of work published by the ENCODE consortium last September.  To remind you, the ENCODE consortium set out to study that part of the human genome that did not code for proteins.  Their headline conclusion, and here I am quoting from the press release, was that 80% of the non coding DNA was functional and comprised millions of switches that regulate the activity of our genes.  The press release occasioned many articles in the mainstream media including a silly article by Johnjoe McFadden in the Guardian (Soon science could enable us all to run as fast as Usain Bolt) that spoilt my breakfast one Friday morning.  I am not a “DNA/sequencing” person but I objected to the idea of so many, essentially uncharacterised, gene switches and wrote a blog post about this.

At the time, some experts and commentators criticised the ENCODE results in a series of blog posts using strong but polite language. Here are links to Michael Eisen and Brendan Maher both of whom were uncomfortable with the 80% functional figure

Now we have the Graur et al paper with its swingeing critique of ENCODE.  Here is the Abstract:

“A recent slew of ENCODE Consortium publications, specifically the article signed by all Consortium members, put forward the idea that more than 80% of the human genome is functional. This claim flies in the face of current estimates according to which the fraction of the genome that is evolutionarily conserved through purifying selection is under 10%. Thus, according to the ENCODE Consortium, a biological function can be maintained indefinitely without selection, which implies that at least 80 − 10 = 70% of the genome is perfectly invulnerable to deleterious mutations, either because no mutation can ever occur in these “functional” regions, or because no mutation in these regions can ever be deleterious. This absurd conclusion was reached through various means, chiefly (1) by employing the seldom used “causal role” definition of biological function and then applying it inconsistently to different biochemical properties, (2) by committing a logical fallacy known as “affirming the consequent,” (3) by failing to appreciate the crucial difference between “junk DNA” and “garbage DNA,” (4) by using analytical methods that yield biased errors and inflate estimates of functionality, (5) by favoring statistical sensitivity over specificity, and (6) by emphasizing statistical significance rather than the magnitude of the effect. Here, we detail the many logical and methodological transgressions involved in assigning functionality to almost every nucleotide in the human genome. The ENCODE results were predicted by one of its authors to necessitate the rewriting of textbooks. We agree, many textbooks dealing with marketing, mass-media hype, and public relations may well have to be rewritten.”

 

You have to read the text to get the full flavour of the critique but to quote PZ Myers on his blog: “Graur and friends haven’t just poked a hole in the balloon, they’ve set it on fire, pissed on the ashes and dumped them in a cesspit”.   A fuller account of the article and its fall out appears on POPSCI.

What are we to make of this?  In my opinion, a peer-reviewed paper carries much more weight than a blog post.  The paper will be indexed in PubMed and the criticism and language will stand for all to see.  Is Graur et al’s criticism of ENCODE justified?  I am not an expert but it looks as though it is mostly justified.  Is the language of Graur et al justified?  Here I am in two minds.  On the one hand I enjoy watching a good academic spat and I would expect that, once the anger has cooled, there will be progress in understanding.  On the other hand, the derisory and sarcastic language makes me feel uncomfortable and I am very surprised the journal agreed to publish this version of the manuscript.  I support the criticism but prefer that this sort of language be left to blogs.  More measured language can then be reserved for peer-reviewed papers.

Perhaps we should start a scientific Hatchet Job of the Year award, in which case Graur et al must be favourites to win the 2013 award.

 

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The “bute” in horsemeat

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Philip Strange

The horsemeat scandal in Europe continues to surprise and shock.  Henry Gee has written about the controversy for this site and for Occam’s Corner but I wanted to comment on one of the safety issues.

It seems that a drug, colloquially known as “bute”, has entered the human food chain via some of the horsemeat produced in the UK.  This revelation piqued my pharmacological interest.  I wasn’t familiar with “bute” or to give it its proper chemical name, phenylbutazone, so I decided to dig around a bit.

Quite quickly I found that phenylbutazone had been marketed for human use under the trade name of butazolidine. For me, hearing this name was Proustian, and I was transported back more than 40 years to my father’s pharmacy.  As a teenager, I would occasionally help him dispense drugs and I well remember counting out butazolidine tablets all those years ago.  In those days, blister packs did not exist; there were large bottles of tablets in the dispensary and it was the job of the pharmacist to transfer the correct number to a small, carefully labelled glass bottle.

This anecdote is part of my history but it does tell us one thing: phenylbutazone is an old drug.  In fact it was first synthesised by Geigy Pharmaceuticals in Basel and marketed as butazolidine in the late 1940’s.   The drug was used to treat arthritis and other painful inflammatory conditions and for patients that tolerated the drug it was an effective remedy.  It is classified as a Non Steroidal Anti-inflammatory Drug (NSAID), a class of drugs widely used to treat pain and inflammation.   Aspirin was the first NSAID and many people will be familiar with ibuprofen, another member of this group of drugs.  NSAIDs relieve pain and inflammation by inhibiting an enzyme that synthesises chemical mediators called prostaglandins.

Whereas aspirin and ibuprofen are quite well tolerated by patients, the use of phenylbutazone was associated with a wide range of side effects.  The most serious of these were blood dyscrasias where bone marrow production of blood cells was affected.  This disorder was fatal for about 1 in 45000 of patients taking the drug.  More than a quarter of patients taking the drug reported other side effects including gastrointestinal bleeding, oedema, and toxic effects on the liver or kidney.

By the mid 1980’s, phenylbutazone was withdrawn from general use, partly because of the side effects and partly because better drugs such as ibuprofen had appeared on the market.  Phenylbutazone still features in the British National Formulary as a treatment for the severe rheumatic disorder ankylosing spondylitis, but for use only when other drugs are unsuitable.

Despite being withdrawn for general human use, the drug has found a niche in veterinary medicine where it is widely used to treat pain and inflammation in horses.  Although horses treated with phenylbutazone are not supposed to enter the human food chain, it seems that this rule has been flouted in some cases.  The drug has been found recently in horses slaughtered in the UK but destined for human consumption in continental Europe.

The question then is whether this poses a risk to human health so we need to know the levels of drug found in the horsemeat.  The most straightforward way to express the levels of phenylbutazone is to work out how much there is in a kilo of the meat and in the recent tests, the highest amount found was 1.9 mg.  The Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies has said that this level of phenylbutazone poses no risk to human health and I thought it might be useful to think about how this conclusion was reached.  In the past, when phenylbutazone was used in patients, a typical dose would have been 400 mg a day, spaced out in four equal amounts.  To reach this level you would need to eat as much as 200 kilos of contaminated horsemeat a day!   On that basis there would appear to be little or no risk.

 

I wonder, however, if there is a bit more complexity to the story and here are some issues that give me pause for thought:

  1.  The argument about the levels of phenylbutazone in horsemeat assumes that it would be necessary to consume up to 400 mg a day of the drug to see effects.  The relation between drug dose and drug response is, however, a complex one, especially for phenylbutazone. I don’t know whether 400 mg of drug is just enough to give a response or whether it is well over that level.  If the latter is true, then lower amounts of drug might have small effects.
  2. Some drugs are said to interact so that the effects of one drug on a patient may be modified if they also take a second drug.  There is a very well known interaction between phenylbutazone and the anticoagulant drug warfarin and patients taking warfarin can suffer severe gastrointestinal bleeding if they also take phenylbutazone.  The mechanism of this interaction is complex and, as far as I can tell, it is not fully understood.  This complicates arguments about safety of phenylbutazone in horsemeat.
  3. Phenylbutazone is broken down in animals and in humans to another drug called oxyphenbutazone.  This has many of the same actions as phenylbutazone and I wonder if oxyphenbutazone has been tested for in the horsemeat.
  4. Drugs developed nowadays are very well characterised for potential side effects and off-target interactions.  Because phenylbutazone was developed so long ago, it will not have been characterised in the same way.  I doubt if we know all the potential actions of the drug.  If any of these occurs at lower concentrations than the effects on pain and inflammation, this could complicate arguments about safety.
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Mind your language

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Philip Strange

I enjoy going to art galleries.  I enjoy looking at art and I can recall vividly the thrill of seeing the “Impressionists” in Paris for the first time.  For me, visiting a gallery is still something of an occasion and I get the added pleasure of people watching.

For some time, though, I have felt mystified by the prose used in galleries to describe exhibitions of contemporary art.  Here are two good examples of the style:

“Display devices, specifically those employed in the presentation of consumable goods fascinate Mooney and often appear within her photographs.  These empty structures become the focus and subject of the work, questioning conventional notions of function, commodity and value exchange.  Other work transposes found imagery, for example of precious stones embedded in rocks, to create a lexicon of images and objects that move between the artificial and the organic”  Exhibition note, Spike Island, Bristol.

“Version Control is a large-scale survey exhibition about the notion of appropriation and performance in the expanded field of contemporary artistic practice.  Instead of an understanding of performance as a live activity or connected to an exploration of the artist’s body, the exhibition explores performance in a radical sense as a method of making the past present.  Performativity, in this way, explores the conscious moment of staging, appropriating, archiving and re-visiting images and other forms of representation, touching on questions of historiography, mediation, subjectivity and ownership”.  Exhibition note, Arnolfini Bristol.

I was reassured recently to read that my unease and confusion generated by this overblown pretentious verbiage were shared by others.  An article by Alix Rule and David Levine appeared last year in the trendy American art journal Triple Canopy analysing and debunking what has come to be called “International Art English” (IAE); covered recently by Andy Beckett in the Guardian.  Rule and Levine used computer software to analyse the language used in exhibition announcements appearing on an influential American network for art professionals called e-flux.  They analysed many thousands of these announcements and identified unique language patterns and word usage that define IAE.  As you might guess, IAE always uses more words when fewer will do.  Words take on new meanings and there are trends in word usage:  “speculative” was popular in 2009 and “rupture” peaked in 2011. The power of IAE has been increased by the internet where these announcements circulate very widely.  Despite the fact that it is critical of art practitioners, Rule and Levine’s article has been read extensively within the art community.

But what’s the point of IAE, why do people use it?  I identify two principal reasons: IAE defines a select elite within the contemporary art world, and at the same time it keeps the outsiders at bay.  So, if you are fluent in IAE, you define yourself as an insider; IAE acts as a knowing membership badge for this exclusive club.  If you don’t use IAE you mark yourself down as being outside the contemporary art elite.  For the contemporary art world this exclusivity may be exactly what they intend. Those with the money to buy contemporary art will understand IAE whereas the outsiders who don’t understand the language don’t have the money anyway.

This set me thinking about scientists and language.   I wondered whether scientists also used language to define their elites.  If so, do we use language to keep outsiders away and how much does this affect understanding of science?

So how do scientists use language?  They need to communicate with one another and when they discuss their work, they use a language liberally spattered with technical details and jargon related to this work.  As a biologist, I would also expect the language to include some use of the passive form, also many convoluted sentences and many abbreviations.  There may be odd word usage, for example utilise for use, methodology for method etc.  Conclusions will be hedged around with many caveats.  Conversely, implications will be spelled out very strongly as in the form “This work could provide a cure for [choose your disease]”.

We might call this International Science English (ISE) but it’s not really a single language as science is no longer a single culture.  The increasing specialisation of science means that scientists separate in to different tribes according to their different disciplines.  Each tribe speaks its own version of ISE and only closely related tribes understand one other’s dialects.

The art world uses IAE as some kind of unnecessary conceit that serves no purpose in understanding. For scientists, however, ISE and its dialects are necessary in order to communicate the technical details of their work in papers, seminars, grant applications etc.  Whether all aspects of ISE are necessary is open to debate.  The high point of the use of ISE occurs when tribes assemble at scientific conferences and celebrate their particular branch of science using the language of ISE.  This specialised language defines the tribe as an elite but it also creates huge barriers to external communication. Indeed, an outsider attending one of these events might be as mystified as when they visit a gallery and read descriptions of artworks couched in IAE.

So science and the contemporary art world have some similarities.  They both form closed elites that are difficult for outsiders to penetrate and understand but there are also differences.  In the case of the contemporary art world, it is still possible to visit a gallery and make your own appreciation of the art works.  Because IAE is basically pretentious guff, you can ignore the IAE-descriptions of the art and be no worse off, although a little explanation in plain English sometimes helps.  In the case of science, however, it is very difficult for the outsider to understand the content and importance of a scientific paper or a seminar without some assistance.   The tribal language gets in the way and if we want our work to be understood more widely by the non-specialist we must translate or get someone else to do it for us.

Some scientists do this themselves: they give talks or write about their work using language accessible to the general audience.  Some write blogs, some use social networks, some may even write books designed to spread the word and some have used video to great effect, my favourite being the Periodic Table of Videos.  Most of this is excellent because those who do it are self selecting.  They are likely to be gifted communicators who feel passionately about their work and the need to communicate, but they are a minority.

For many scientists, external communication is not a priority; they want to stay in their labs and keep their heads down.  In this case, if the work is to be understood more widely there have to be other routes to translate from ISE in to Standard English.  Popular science magazines like the New Scientist have long fulfilled the role of translating scientists’ work in to easily digestible forms and nowadays there is also an army of science bloggers who write about headline grabbing science.  The newspapers carry some reports of science discoveries but these are of patchy quality especially in the print versions.   One factor that influences the quality of these translations is whether the person writing the report is scientifically trained.  This will determine whether they read the original paper when compiling a report or whether they rely on a Press Release.  The combination of a non-scientist journalist and the Press Release leads to much misreporting of science (Ben Goldacre skewers this problem in his book, Bad Science, and I have written about another example here).

So, for both the contemporary art world and for science, the use of specialised language erects barriers and hinders understanding.  For scientists, this may also contribute to the rather mixed image we have in the eyes of the general population.  We are associated with wonderful discoveries and medical breakthroughs but also with disasters and scandals like BSE, MMR, Chernobyl etc.  We are perceived as aloof and non-communicative, the owners of knowledge inaccessible to many.  I had always attributed this to bad press coverage and general ignorance of science.  Having written this piece, I now wonder how much we are ourselves to blame.   Perhaps we enjoy our elite status and don’t do enough to dissolve the barrier this creates.   Perhaps this causes resentment and leads to some unnecessary science bashing.

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On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me, eight waxwings trilling ……

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Philip Strange

I’ve had bird books for many years: pocket-sized books with pictures and descriptions of the common British birds.   Not that I am a bird enthusiast.  I just want to be able to identify the birds around me.  If I am honest, though, I have always found the books slightly frustrating.  There seem to be so many small brown birds that I could not hope to distinguish in the field and an irritating sprinkling of exotic species that feels like it is included to show how clever the author is.  In mostly monochrome Britain how can I expect to see brightly coloured rarities like Hoopoes and Golden Orioles?

Over the years, as I predicted, I didn’t see any of the “exotics” but I’ve found that with bird watching, the more you look the more you see.  I can still remember where and when I saw, for the first time, the striking red bib of a male linnet.   Another strong memory is a green woodpecker systematically gorging itself on the ants in our front lawn.  And once you have seen the brash pinkish-red breast of a male bullfinch with his neat black cap, you never forget and never fail to be struck by the colours.  But this was still only an occasional pastime until, a few years ago, my teenage daughter became interested in birds.

She started by disappearing to her room with all the bird books we have in the house.  She studied the books in great detail comparing the different entries.  She can now identify most birds visually and tell us about the minute differences between species.  She was particularly thrilled to find out that several female birds of prey are bigger than their male counterparts!  Eventually she asked for some good binoculars for a present and we all found that we could see so much more.   It sounds obvious but it was a surprise and we were all drawn in.

Around the same time, we were visiting Lyme Regis in Dorset on a cold Saturday in December 2010.  The car park above the town is surrounded by trees that have berries in winter and we saw, on one of these trees, a bird with an odd profile.  Getting a bit closer, we were able to see the unmistakable crest of a waxwing.  The bird stayed long enough for us to get some photos and the experience of seeing, for the first time, an “exotic” was thrilling.

 

Bombycilla garrulusII

Waxwing (Andreas Trepte/Wikimedia Commons)

Why the fuss?  I think it’s because waxwings are unlike any other bird I have seen and they are rare, at least in this country.  They are plump, reddish-brown birds about the size of a starling and with their jaunty quiff of a crest they are unmistakable.   They also have a black mask around their eyes and it is the combination of crest and mask that gives them a pugnacious swagger rather like bank robbers in a silent movie.  The wing feathers have small yellow and white details and distinctive red tips that resemble drops of sealing wax, hence the bird’s name.

 

Sidensvans Bombycilla garrulus 03

Wing patterns and “sealing wax” tips (Amphis/Wikimedia Commons)

 

Waxwings (or more properly Bohemian Waxwings) are found in the northern forests of Europe, Asia and North America where they breed, feeding on fruits, berries and insects.  The European birds breed in northern Sweden and Finland and in the winter they head south in search of food.  If breeding has been very successful or if there is a shortage of winter berries in Scandinavia they move further afield.  Sometimes this means they come to the UK and we experience an “irruption” or “waxwing winter”.  2010 was one of these years and many of the birds were seen in the UK.  2011 was a poor year and 2012 is looking good.

Let’s now turn to my silly title.  There are many good birding sites on the internet and I have been following the arrival of waxwings in the UK as 2012 comes to a close.  The birds were spotted in Fair Isle, Shetland in early November and some outstanding pictures of the birds eating fruit have been posted.  They were also reported in good numbers elsewhere in Scotland and in other parts of the UK.

Some waxwings were seen, mostly in small groups, in the South West, near where I live and there were sporadic sightings throughout November and December.  In late December a small group had been seen on consecutive days in one street in Torquay, feeding on berries.  We had to go to Torquay for another reason and I persuaded my family that we should also search for these exotic visitors.  This part of Torquay was developed about 40 years ago and consists of pleasant residential streets with mature trees and many mature shrubs with copious red berries at this time of year.  Parking some way away from the place where the waxwings had been spotted we walked quietly up the road.  Approaching the prescribed place we saw a small group of birds fly from a berry-laden hedge to a nearby tree.  With binoculars we could see the signature crests of the waxwings and were able to count eight in total.  The birds stayed in the tree, moving about and “talking” to one another with their pretty and distinctive trill.  We went home, well pleased with our luck.

So it’s no longer “eight maids a milking” and here is a picture of our “eight waxwings trilling”.

waxwings 2012,1

Eight waxwings trilling (Hazel Strange)

Posted in Guest posts, Hobbies | Tagged , , | 14 Comments

The truth about pesticides and bees?

Posted on December 17, 2012 by Philip Strange

Each week Riverford Organic delivers a vegetable box to our door. Nestling among the mosaic of vegetables is a newsletter from the Riverford boss, Guy Watson.  This summer he has moaned, justifiably, about the state of the weather and the effect on his farming business. A week or so ago, the litany of moans was interrupted when he used his newsletter to publicise a new Soil Association campaign, “Keep Britain Buzzing”. The campaign calls for a ban on a group of insecticides named neonicotinoids. The neonicotinoids are widely used to kill insect pests on crops such as Oil Seed Rape but there is increasing concern that they may also be harming bees.

I hadn’t really woken up to the problems that bees were facing until earlier this year when there was a flurry of letters in the Guardian under the headline “The truth about pesticides and bees”. The palpable anger of the beekeepers, expressed in this correspondence, was tinged with despair that their bees might be harmed by these insecticides and nobody cared.

Beehives in Devon                                                         Beehives in Devon

 

The letters were responding to an article that had described the findings of two papers published in the high profile journal Science on the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on bees.  The two new papers looked at the effects of these insecticides under “field conditions” using “field-realistic” amounts of neonicotinoid and the results were striking. One paper, from the University of Stirling, reported an 85% reduction in queen production by bumblebees that had consumed neonicotinoids. The other paper, from INRA in France, reported that neonicotinoids reduced the ability of honeybee workers to find their way back to their hives. Both studies showed effects on bee behaviour that could threaten survival of the bee colony without directly killing the bees.

These two papers have had a huge effect on policy but to consider this properly, I need to fill in a bit of background about bees and about these insecticides.

The neonicotinoids were introduced as insecticides in the 1990’s and had the advantage that they were less toxic to mammals than the chemicals used before. They work by acting as insect neurotoxins but they are also toxic to other organisms including earthworms and butterflies. Unlike other insecticides the neonicotinoids act systemically. They are typically applied as soil or seed treatments and given their water solubility, they distribute throughout the growing plant.  This means that insects coming to feed from the treated plant will be exposed to the insecticide. Among these insects, there may be bees gathering nectar or pollen. Imidacloprid, a popular neonicotinoid, is one of the most widely used insecticides in the world, making millions for the agrochemical company Bayer.

Bees (honeybees, bumblebees and solitary bees) play a very important role as pollinators and make a major economic contribution to agriculture. They pollinate up to three quarters of our most vital crops and favourite foods and it has been estimated that without bees it would cost UK farmers £1.8 billion each year to pollinate crops.  Bees are also essential pollinators for our gardens, parks and countryside. Without bees, not only would food be much more expensive but our countryside would look entirely different.

There is no doubt that the neonicotinoids can kill bees if not used correctly. There have been several instances of large scale bee deaths following inappropriate or careless use of the chemicals and some countries have introduced partial bans. The key question has been whether the neonicotinoids are harming bees when used as directed by the agrochemical companies who make them. The agrochemical companies say they are safe. Many others, however, fear that there may be unintended effects of the neonicotinoids on bee populations; they are, after all, insecticides and are designed to kill insects.  Protocols for testing for unintended effects on bees were developed for insecticides used in single spray application. Although these protocols were used to evaluate the neonicotinoids, they are inappropriate for systemic insecticides that will be present for prolonged periods and they focus only on honeybees. They also fail to assess fully the more subtle effects of insecticides on bee society. Honeybee and bumblebee colonies depend on complex behaviours and there had been a growing concern that neonicotinoids might exert sub-lethal effects on these activities.

honeybee on lavender 3                                                         Honeybees on lavender

This was where the two new papers made their impact. They provided important new evidence under field conditions that the neonicotinoids did indeed have sub-lethal effects on bee behaviour that could threaten survival of the colony.  As a result they were widely reported in the media and had a huge effect. The French study on honeybees used the neonicotinoid, thiamethoxam and by June the French government had banned this compound. The UK response was more phlegmatic. DEFRA were asked to comment and eventually did so concluding that “recent studies do not justify changing existing regulations”.  Some sections of the press have been very critical of DEFRA’s reply including Damian Carrington of the Guardian and Michael McCarthy of the Independent. By September, the Environmental Audit Committee of the House of Commons had decided to set up an enquiry in to these insecticides and DEFRA’s recent response.  That Committee is currently holding hearings on the topic, having received written submissions from interested parties. If you have the time you can watch the proceedings on Parliament TV.

Buff-tailed Bumblebee on Bergamot                                                  Bumblebee on bergamot

In the meantime the science has moved on. Another field-realistic study on bumblebees appeared in October, this time from Royal Holloway College, showing that this species of bee is vulnerable to mixtures of pesticides. Bumblebees exposed to combinations of insecticides (neonicotinoid and pyrethroid) exhibited impaired foraging and increased worker mortality. A lab-based study from the University of Exeter was also published and compared the effects of neonicotinoids on bumblebees and honeybees. Bumblebees were very sensitive to the neonicotinoids which reduced their feeding rate.  Honeybees were unaffected in this test system.  A clear case for the vulnerability of bumblebees to the neonicotinoids is emerging and given the importance of bumblebees as pollinators this ought to be taken seriously. Perhaps bumblebees are more sensitive to neonicotinoids than honeybees, making the case for safety re-evaluation more urgent.

Further potentially significant evidence has been uncovered recently by the Environmental Audit Committee about the persistence of one neonicotinoid in soil. Imidacloprid had been thought to degrade relatively quickly but new evidence suggests it may persist in soil so that with repeated annual applications a build up of the chemical could occur. This could be detrimental to insects that overwinter in soil.

The battle lines are now clear. On one side we have the Soil Association, also Friends of the Earth, Buglife and journalists from the Guardian and the Independent. On the other side there are the agrochemical companies, Bayer and Syngenta and the National Farmers Union (NFU). The battle is currently being waged at the Environmental Audit Committee but I would imagine there is furious lobbying going on behind the scenes. In a separate and surprising development the Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson has asked for new advice on the practical consequences of banning the neonicotinoids. It’s currently difficult to predict the outcome of this battle.

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The more I read about this topic, however, the more I wonder how we got to this point? These chemicals are being ladled on to crops (and also gardens, golf courses and school playing fields) in huge amounts each year with little regard to outcome apart from ensuring the profitability of intensive farming and of agrochemical companies. The key players betray their attitudes to the situation by their public utterances. For example, when France banned thiamethoxam, Syngenta commented: “This is a dark day for French and European agriculture” adding that 30% of the Oil Seed Rape in France would now be lost. In their written submission to the ongoing parliamentary enquiry the NFU say “If neonicotinoid insecticides were not available, farmers and growers would use less effective insecticides that pose a greater risk to bees and other insects”.

It feels to me that we need to take a fresh look at the use of the neonicotinoids given the way the evidence is stacking up, focussing especially on their detrimental effects on bumblebees. In the past, insecticides were used on an “as needed” basis – if a crop had an insect problem then it was sprayed. Because the neonicotinoids act systemically, they can be used as a seed treatment and distribute throughout the plant. This is very convenient for the farmer, but it means that neonicotinoids are being used as insurance against potential pests rather than “as needed”. For example, almost all of the Oil Seed Rape now grown in the UK derives from seed treated with insecticide. If neonicotinoids persist in soil this becomes all the more damaging to the environment. We need to ask: “What would happen if we did not treat a crop with insecticide? Might we be better reverting to older insecticides that are used when required? Should we plant bee-friendly areas around fields?”

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But, why should we worry about the bees? There are now so many other issues that should concern us. One reason is economics. Bees play an essential role as pollinators and it would be very expensive to arrange pollination otherwise, so we need to protect them. I believe there is another argument that is not so clearly defined. When I became interested in the plight of bees I visited several beekeepers so that I could learn more. I was able to look inside honeybee hives and spot the queen and got to know the stratification of the colony and the elaborate chemical and behavioural signalling that goes on. I also spent some time watching and photographing the bumblebees and solitary bees in our garden. This is all getting a bit “touchy feely” but it empathises for me the need to look after nature and to conserve species. Our apparent disregard for bees, our readiness to kill them, is an appalling indictment of our attitude to the natural world.

Posted in Insects, Science Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Let’s hear it for Thomas Newcomen!

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Philip Strange

I first heard of Thomas Newcomen soon after we moved to the West Country. I’d been looking around for the names of famous scientists from Devon and quickly came across Newcomen. I was surprised to find out that a man from the small riverside town of Dartmouth was responsible for inventing steam power. In the recesses of my memory I had always associated James Watt with this invention but that turned out to be incorrect. The more I read about Newcomen, the more surprising his story seemed and I wrote a piece about him for a Devon magazine.

2012 sees the tercentenary of Newcomen’s invention. 300 years ago, the first workable steam powered pump designed by Newcomen was installed at a Staffordshire colliery. This is a very significant anniversary as it was the first time the power of steam had been harnessed and one of the first examples of a machine that converted heat energy in to mechanical energy. Dartmouth celebrated this event in July and I fully expected that the main stream media would pick up on this but it is now November and so far the only mention of Newcomen has been in the Channel 4 series “How Britain worked”. Otherwise, I have seen nothing substantive in the newspapers or magazines or on radio in this anniversary year.

More should have been made of this anniversary so I want to take this opportunity to blow the trumpet for Newcomen.

Newcomen is something of an elusive figure. There are no pictures of him so we can only imagine how he looked. We know he was born in 1663 in Dartmouth and died in London in 1729. Throughout his life he was very religious being a member of a small Dartmouth group of Baptists. His wife and some of his business associates came from this group including his partner John Calley, a plumber and glazier. Newcomen trained as an ironmonger and specialised in making all kinds of metal items such as latches, nails, locks etc. He sold some of these to mine owners and on his sales visits he would have become aware of the problem of flooding in mines in the 18th century. As miners dug more deeply for coal they were hindered by accumulation of water that could not be pumped out easily.

For reasons we shall never know, Newcomen decided to try to solve the problem of flooding in mines opting to use the energy of steam to drive pumps. The potential of using the pressure of steam to pump water had been recognised by others, including Papin in Paris and Savery in Devon. Savery had devised a steam-driven water pump in 1698, but the steam pressure possible at the time was not high enough to enable his pump to work in deep mines.

Newcomen realised that existing technology could not cope with pressurised steam so he decided to use steam in a different way. In his engine, low pressure steam from a copper boiler was used to fill a chamber below a piston and then a jet of cold water was injected in to the chamber. This condensed the steam leaving a vacuum. The pressure of the atmosphere then forced the piston down generating a power stroke. The downwards movement of the piston was connected by a massive rocking wooden beam to upwards movement in the mine shaft to drive the pumps. Newcomen automated the engine using a valve system that allowed steam and cold water to enter at the correct time. Most importantly, his invention was achievable with the existing technology and it worked. The first recorded working Newcomen engine was installed in 1712 at a coal mine near Dudley Castle in Tipton, Staffordshire. The machine worked well; the overhead beam rocked 12 times a minute with each stroke pumping 45 litres of water from a depth of 50 metres. The design was so successful that more than a thousand Newcomen-type engines were built.

It’s not easy nowadays to appreciate the true significance of Newcomen’s invention. Try to imagine yourself in 1712 gazing in shock and awe at the first Newcomen engine. Life is still primitive; it’s only a century since Elizabeth I was on the throne. If you want power you have to resort to muscle (human or animal) or the elements (wind, water). This new monster is like a dragon, belching steam with its enormous head and tail nodding threateningly at you. And yet it miraculously pumps water out of the mine so that coal can be worked at greater depths. There has never been anything remotely like this new machine, it gets the Industrial Revolution going by making coal more easily available and it has been said that “In the whole history of technology it would be difficult to find a greater single advance than this, and certainly not one more pregnant with significance for all humanity”.

But why do I still find the name of James Watt rattling around in my head when I think of steam power, where does he fit in? In 1763, Watt, an instrument maker, was given the job of repairing a model of one of the Newcomen engines. He quickly realised how inefficient it was, how much coal these engines must consume. This lead Watt to modify the Newcomen design, improving its efficiency. Watt made huge progress in developing steam power and many Watt engines were built. Watt became a member of the scientific elite of the time and it’s easy to see how the name of a provincial ironmonger could be forgotten by comparison. Because he was so successful, Watt is often referred to as the inventor of the steam engine whereas he was actually a modifier and improver.

The next big step forward was to use high pressure steam. This demanded improved engineering and was achieved by the Cornishman, Richard Trevithick. His engines were small and light enough to be used to make steam locomotives and steam railways now became possible. Steam is still used nowadays to drive turbines and generate electricity but none of this would have been possible without Newcomen’s invention.

 

The new Newcomen sign in Dartmouth


So, I am surprised that Newcomen has not been celebrated more widely this year. It’s not that he has been completely overlooked. His home town of Dartmouth celebrated the tercentenary with a series of lectures, a community play and new town signs highlighting Newcomen. The Newcomen Society put on a series of lectures around the UK. A replica Newcomen engine at the Black Country Museum was refurbished and restarted and this featured in “How Britain worked” on Channel 4. The extraordinary opening ceremony for the London Olympics featured five beam engines in its “Industrial Revolution” section and Newcomen featured on a “Britons of Distinction” postage stamp.

Although all of this is excellent, I am still mystified as to why the mainstream media and the scientific press have completely ignored the Newcomen tercentenary. I don’t have a good explanation for this omission; perhaps there was too much going on elsewhere with the Olympics, the Diamond Jubilee, the US Presidential race and the Higg’s Boson. Perhaps deep in our scientific DNA we still believe Watt was the inventor of steam power? After all, Watt’s name is used for the unit of power and appears on everyone’s electricity and gas bills. It is also Watt and his financial backer Boulton, who feature on the £50 UK bank note because of the importance of their steam engines for the Industrial Revolution.

Or could it be that we don’t want to address the issue of the Industrial Revolution and the use of coal. This was, after all, the beginning of our love affair with fossil fuels which has got us in to the mess we are in today with climate change. We can’t blame it on Newcomen but we might say that he started it.

Posted in Guest posts | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Three new observations about crowdfunding

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Eva Amsen

Since I wrote my previous post, I’ve been to SpotOn London, where I attended a session about crowdfunding. One of the panelists was Ethan Perlstein, who is still raising funds for his lab. One of the other panelists was Cindy Wu, co-founder of Microryza, who Skyped in from the US. You can watch the entire session here if you have an hour to spare.

1. Cindy explained what prompted the launch of Microryza. She was working in a lab as a student, and wanted to do an additional project, but the project was too small to find conventional funding. When she told that story, something clicked with me. I was – and still am – skeptical of crowdfunding for entire research projects, but as I said in my previous post, it might work for side-projects, and I found it reassuring that she mentioned that as inspiration.

2. After meeting Ethan last weekend, I donated to his crowdfunding campaign. I don’t really know if I would have done so if I had not met him. I was definitely on the fence while I wrote my previous post, and I was telling myself I should remain objective and unbiased, and that I can’t donate to every project I come across, and I have to draw a line somewhere. But then I met him and he’s really nice and knows what he’s talking about and I just wanted his project to do well, so I pitched in.

That got me thinking: is that exactly the kind of thing that crowdfunding research relies on?

There is nothing material I get in return (other than the 3D methamphetamine thank-you gift), there is no guarantee the project will work. It’s not like pitching in for a Kickstarter campaign for a new magazine (see below), where the money is literally used to kickstart a project that can then start generating its own revenue. Crowdfunding research is basically a donation to someone to do research, and I’m far more tempted to give money to people I’ve met and like than to strangers on the Internet.

3. Several months ago, I donated to the Kickstarter project for Matter magazine. This week, they launched their first issue. Now, Matter embarked on a truly new and experimental way to disseminate long-form science writing. For $0.99 you buy one very well-written article that you can read online or on a Kindle or iPad or other device. Would people pay money for one article? With my Kickstarter donation I got a few free articles, and I downloaded the first one to read on the train this week. It is amazing. It’s scary. And it’s long. Definitely worth $0.99. When downloaded on my iPad it’s a 39-page ebook.

It’s an article by Anil Ananthaswamy about people who have a disorder that makes them think one of their limbs doesn’t belong to their body, and voluntarily have it amputated. It’s strange and alien and graphic. I wanted a hug while I read it (as if my own limbs were not even enough for me) but there were only train-strangers around me, so I just sort of hugged my coat and pressed against the train window. When was the last time an article made you do that?

When I donated to the Matter Kickstarter campaign, I didn’t know what to expect. Nobody did. They raised an incredible amount of money through word-of-mouth. I donated because everyone who I normally agree with on issues of long-form journalism and magazines also donated. We not only wanted things to read, but we wanted there to be a successful platform where longform writing wasn’t ignored. We didn’t know if we’d ever get our money’s worth, but if the other articles will be as good as this one, we clearly did.

Conclusions? I have none. I just wanted to share these new thoughts, to follow up on my previous post.

Posted in Funding | 8 Comments