Holidays!

Posted on July 13, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

I am off on holiday – [to my small number of readers]
to Northern Spain….
will be blogging like a fool on my return……

will be back in 2 weeks

Posted in random | Comments Off on Holidays!

On beauty, sex and evolution

Posted on July 7, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

Apparently we (and some other animals) think people are more ‘beautiful’ if they are more symmetric (and here). Presumably, this is why Les Damoiselles d’Avignon caused such a stir when it arrived on the Paris scene at the turn of the last century. Asymmetrical ladies, not really pretty in that context.

Les Damoiselles d'Avignon

Yet this famous picture is now thought to be one of the most influential, important and yes by some beautiful, pieces of art today. I think probably most people realize that the definition of beauty changes over time, and this definition is influenced by things from human social structure and fads to, especially in the modern age, advertising. However this doesn’t seem to stop some scientists from making the link between ‘ideal beauty’ and how we choose our sexual partners to human evolution.

Much interpretation (at least as it is reported in the mainstream media) of beauty and sex studies are linked to evolution in a sort of ‘Well out on the veld, you would need to be strong and promiscuous in order to spread your seed; which is why today we prefer (fill in the blank)’ kind of way. Which sort of reminds me of buying a horse. Because, apparently, somewhere you can ‘tell’ in your lizard brain about those childbearing hips or even recently, wrists and feet and how this relates to a suitable mate for makin’ babies.

Personally, I find reading some of these studies fascinating but there often seems to be an over-interpretation of the results – specifically when making a link between beauty and sex and evolution. These interpretations are often wrought with unconscious bias. ‘Beauty’ like ‘intelligence’ are incredibly difficult to measure because you have to start with some assumptions about what beauty and intelligence are, and extending this to evolutionary pressures is even more difficult as there is often a pre-supposition about what the answer is before applying it to a theory.

Here is a good example, in the article mentioned above ‘Men find women with small wrists more attractive’ women didn’t actually show a consistent preference between big wristed and small wristed men. But instead of just saying – “we cannot estabilish a link” this was what the researchers concluded:

Women may lack a consistent preference because powerful, masculine men can be a mixed blessing, evolutionarily speaking, says Atkinson. “If they go for a big alpha male, they’ll get good genes,” he says. “But they may be left to raise the child themselves.”

But why this conclusion and not “there is no preference, and we have been unable to find that women select their mates on size alone” ?
Apparently giraffes are the real size-queens.

Moreover, how exactly do you define an alpha male? They are not always the biggest and bulkiest male on the block – and it has never been clear how an alpha male is defined in human social structure (or if there even is one), not to mention, if you want to make a link with the other social animals there are alpha females too (such as in wolves).
However this statement seems to apply the caveman theory – me Tarzan you Jane – of which not only is there not much information, but we’ve been out of caves (for the most part) for a pretty long time.

The article goes on to state this in support of the evolutionary ‘alpha male’ love ’em and leave ’em theory:

Indeed, the women who took part in the study were twice as likely to rate the large-wristed morph as more open to sex without love, and by the same margin opted for the small-wristed morph as a better candidate for a long-term relationship.

On the surface these things might seem to be related but I would argue that while the former statement is a mere over-interpretation of the results (or the non-result), this statement or ‘finding’ is not at all related to the first. How do you know that the alpha male is bigger? But even assuming that he is, how do you know that sex without love means there is no long-term relationship? And what does love have to do with it? Making evolutionary statements based on love is opening up an even bigger can of worms. Go on, define ‘love’ in a scientific sense. The idea of ‘love’ being important to a long-term relationship, is historically relatively recent, just go read about the Tudors and Henry VIII desire for male progeny if you don’t believe me.

Both John Manning at University of Liverpool and Darwin himself caution against overgeneralization and making links between sex, beauty and evolution. In the words of Manning “Darwin thought that there were few universals of physical beauty because there was much variance in appearance and preference across human groups.”

But alot of people still persist in doing this and there is a danger in dressing up ideologies by over-interpreting scientific results. Humans are pretty complex creatures with a pretty complex social structure and I think this needs to be kept in mind when assessing the links between beauty and evolution.

Posted in beauty, evolution, sex | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Why are academics so snotty about blogging?

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

Apparently many academics in biology and astronomy discourage blogging because it has no reliability or prestige .

Huh? Well both of these things are true, to some extent, of course; but isn’t this also true of dissemination in traditional peer reviewed scientific journalism too? Even peer reviewed published papers can be bad and maybe even unreliable, as I blogged about before here, though admittedly this is rare. And peer-reviewed publications really don’t usually bring you prestige – I have never for instance been stopped on a plane and been asked for my autograph because of some paper I have published in Angewandte Chemie.

Ok so maybe the criticism of blogging being unreliable is almost understandable, you can blog about anything (as is obvious from this post) and it may not be ‘reliable’, you can blog about aliens in your closet too! But this wouldn’t be unreliable it would just be weird. What the academics surveyed likely mean is that non-scientific ‘science’ might get put on the web and be an unreliable source. On no! Shock, horror, you don’t need a blog to do that, it already happens all of the time in the media.

The ‘no prestige’ argument, though, this is just silly – I guess there are a random few that go into scientific research for ‘prestige’, but I bet not most of us.

I think most of us go into science for a desire to understand, or create, or learn about the world around us or even to teach. The prestige might be a nice side value for some (not me) but is that really why you are a scientist in the first place? Maybe so but I would not think that is true for the majority. And it certainly can’t be for the money.

To my mind, these views are a bit snooty and a bit ,well archaic. The Nature article quite rightly points out, given that most surveyed scientists state they think its important to engage with the public – blogs do make sense.

Personally, I think blogging about science is great – obviously because I do it. But reading science blogs also helps me to look at things in a different way and gather other information in scientific fields I don’t spend much of my day thinking all that much about. On top of this, most bona fide science blogs – such as nature.com blogs and scienceblogs.com, actually include links to the research they are talking about, I can read the original peer-reviewed papers the articles are based on. What’s not to love?

Stop being so snobby fellow academics – embrace the future

Posted in random, science blogging | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

That’s why I am in it, for the money

Posted on June 28, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

I became a scientist, because of the money, really as Simon Jenkins pointed out, so I could live off the earnings of other people. And OH what a fortune I make, because academics are the most highly paid of all public sector employees – as everyone knows. And his implications that we scientists are high-preists who just lobby for money, and don’t do much but navel gazing? THAT obvservation, that is spot on!

But I feel sorry for the poor journalists like Jenkins, he must be underpaid, he must have to write grants to write those articles and pay for his assistants – and I am sure he has to deal with Full Economic Costing, too, which would sadly, sadly cut his resources down and take away precious time. I, who live off the tax-payer, feel sorry for him. It must be tough to be able to predict EXACTLY what he is going to write before he has to write, like 5 years before he writes it, because you know this is how people like him get paid. But he is good, he probably knows in advance what is going to be high-impact journalism, even 10 years before it gets there.
Of course, I am sure, that his journalistic opinions will lead to a great technology some day, and without all of the damn money that us scientists waste.

It must also be really. really tough for him because he gets rejected about, oh 70% of the time, for his grant money and articles. I guess he just has to scrape by on whatever data he can scrap together by himself, to write those opinion pieces. Its a tough gig

I especially feel sorry for him because, on top of this, I bet poor poor Simon has to mentor and teach and administrate and try to get himself reimbursed for all of those viva’s he has to do (there are alot of them I hear at the Guardian)..

When you work in academic science on the other hand, you can just get paid! If you have a good lobby and faith in your research (you don’t actually have to DO research you just have to have faith) you will be swimmin’ in cash. You know what I do all day? Drink tea, oh and play on the internet – and people treat me with absolute reverence because I am a SCIENTIST – free drinks at the pub, awed stares, the celebrity life. We, like the Holy See, even have special robes we slip into…

I know I keep repeating this but besides the perks, I get paid so much money! My husband works in academics too, and together we are so rich that we just jet-set around the world – who has TIME for a mortgage?

You know Simon Jenkins says he has a ‘wonder in science’ and that that ‘wonder’ should be taught,

but I don’t think so, I just want the money.

Posted in random | Tagged | 2 Comments

Victorians, homeopathy and the sea

Posted on June 25, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

Shirking work this morning, I went for a sea-swim today, because it is warm and lovely and I happen to live near it, the sea…

Swimming in the English channel is a bit rough and a bit exhausting – even on these lovely calm days, but when I was done I felt, well, refreshed! Its easy to see why the Victorians believed in the healing powers of the sea – in fact they actually used to PAY people to throw them, in a baptismal fashion for healing.

And during Victorian times, another, much currently debated healing-fad, was introduced to Britain in the 1830’s, Homeopathy. At the time it was very useful as it was one of the few modern treatments which wasn’t actively harming you (like leeches and mercury enemas), because well it did nothing.

But these things DO make people feel better, despite lack of all scientific evidence for any kind of ‘healing’ power and as lots and lots and lots of Health Professionals state the ‘placebo’ effect is pretty damn powerful.

But maybe this is one of the difficulties with the current fight about the NHS supporting “non-traditional” medicines such as homeopathy. It actually makes people feel better.

Maybe the health community needs to think about how to REPLACE these treatments and not just rage against the machine about how their scientific invalidity. Maybe alternatives like psychological therapy or just simple exercise programs, or something similar?

It is very hard to get people to give up on beliefs, even if they are scientifically false, so instead of telling everyone they are wrong, maybe they can be convinced with effective alternatives which are NOT so scientifically silly…

You catch alot more flies with honey..

Posted in health policy, homeopathy | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

China is becoming more progressive than the UK

Posted on June 21, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

So China just announced it is opening up its trade and (slowly) letting the Yuan float free – previously they have kept the Yuan fixed against the dollar, in part, to make exports to other countries cheap.

This, I think, is going to change China and indeed the world fundamentally.

And while China has made this progressive move, the UK coalition government is being economically Draconian? They are evidently not listening to the economic arguments from Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman and Road From Ruin authors Bishop and Green – that now is the time to put money INTO the economy, not effectively shut it down. And as Krugman says ‘How hard is that to understand?”

The UK Con/Lib coalition government is going to announce its budget tomorrow, and I don’t think things are looking good for science, higher education in addition to the economy. Given that higher education places and the business innovation budget have already been slashed, more than likely there will be more budget cuts to these two sectors by the government.

But science research, higher education and business innovation are essential to a solvent future for the UK, so to echo Krugman..

How hard is this to understand?

The Chinese get it.

China is currently putting big money into these sectors, with a 25% rise in their science funding budget in 2009 and a 45% increase in the 2008 budget for universities.

China seems to understand that their future is in scientific research and education, presumably to create new high technolgical industries which will make them a world competitor in the future.

Maybe George Osbourne could use a trip to China, but I somehow doubt he would listen.

Posted in China, economics, higher education, politics, UK Science policy | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on China is becoming more progressive than the UK

Persevering against all odds is NOT the way forward

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

Beware of the hype..

Most of us love a good old perseverance, against all odds, pulling yourself up by your boot straps story.

And there are thousands of them about scientific people – some apocryphal, some mythological and some of them are even true.

Are most great scientists like this? Should we take these stories to heart during these difficult financial times? Definitely not.

So many people love to talk about Einstein and how he merely worked as a lowly patent officer and then miraculously launched into cutting edge world physics – apocryphally on his own, where he was anti-establishment, beyond the realm of normal stuffy academics.
But the man had a PhD in Physics and worked hard, incredibly hard, and importantly always maintained access to the library at University of Vienna, where he read alot. And his job at the patent office, wasn’t exacly, what most people probably think it was. They weren’t paper pushing bored bureaucrats at Einstein’s patent office, like the driver’s license offices of today. Nope, they were scientists trying to prove if what was being patented was actually scientifically sound. Intellectually, it was a fabulous place to be.

Then we have the mythological – the Good Will Hunting model, where the poor Boston working-class boy who sweeps the floor is actually a mathematical genius and can solve things just by well, you know, gazing at numbers on the wall knowing what they mean – with NO training. Which would be akin to learning to speak Chinese by just looking at the characters, which I have tried – it doesn’t work ( but maybe I am just not a genius).

But, really. This just doesn’t happen. Almost every story like this, when you behind this veneer of idiot savant, there is usually some training, sometimes autodiadectic, hard work and some pre-exposure to the subject at hand.

Then there are the stories about women – how against all odds they overcame adversity to do the scientific research they were passionate about and always wanted to do. Rosalind Franklin is a good example – she was shunned, ousted, and eventually (posthumously in fact) given credit for her contributions to science. This is cool, don’t get me wrong, against-all-odds stories usually puts a tear even in my crusty eye.

But think how much MORE Dr. Franklin could have done with more support and more funding!

And while these are great stories, they are also really dangerous stories.

Why? Because sometimes it leads people to believe that ALL science is conducted, or rather all science COULD be best conducted against the odds by people so passionate they don’t care about things like, getting paid! AND this gives governments a good excuse NOT to fund science or higher education under the idea the adversity is the mother of invention. The real quote, as you know, is necessity is the mother of invention.

But a mother is not the only parent – whether you are single parented or not, it takes two – in some capacity. And what I am getting at is the other parent is almost always SCHOOL and TRAINING. Thinking, and thinking well, takes an awful lot of reading, grist to the mill and work.

So should we give up on science funding and vainly hope that all of the researchers and geniuses out there will just beat the odds and discover what they were going to discover anyway?

Perhaps some would say – yes, sure, why not? If Einstein can do it so can anyone else (I think it is worth mentioning here, Einstein was a theorist… back in the day when they didn’t need computers, but now to be a theorist you really need them, and they cost money).

On the surface this might seem sort of viable.

For instance, the UK, per capita, has a higher scientific publication rate and a higher citation rate from those publications compared to the rest of the world, second only to the US, despite spending a smaller proportion of their GDP, on the average, on science funding than most countries (the US actually spends a lower proportion of their GDP, but the US has a much bigger GDP than Britain).

Now in the current funding climate, this should give us a warm fuzzy smug feeling in the UK, we can pump ourselves up know that we can achieve so much with ‘so little’ and persevere despite the lack of funding.

It really isn’t much solace however, largely because it is NOT TRUE.

These are statistics from 2004, AFTER the UK has increased its R&D budget over a 10 year period from 1992 to 2003, under Labour, to be close to the highest in Europe by the end of 10 the year period. However, NOW, the science, R&D and Higher educations budgets are decreasing, so these publication statistics will undoubtedly get worse, the UK won’t be soaring at #2 after all of the budget cuts.

When you are close to the top of research and innovation is when you want to put in MORE money to keep up the momentum, not slide back into wartime austerity measures, and start bringing up stories about those who persevered without.

This is true especially now, when most UK-based industries are failing and new ‘technologically based industries’ are needed. ALL of the candidates in the recent UK general election were in agreement about this, during the election anyway, though not apparently any more.

A ‘make do and mend’ mentality, persevering against the odds are admirable individual qualities and of course help with research, teaching and reading science. But relying on these qualities to emerge from underfunded science and education sectors is not simply less than ideal, it is the death toll for science, innovation and higher education en masse.

But I guess we will get some good stories out of it.

Posted in science ethics, UK Science policy, women in science | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Facts shmacts

Posted on June 13, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

in support of Dr. Goldacre…

There is a recent controversy between Ben Goldacre and Jeremy Laurance concerning Goldacre’s ‘attack’ on health journalists. Laurance, doesn’t like it, and one of the points he brings up is that Goldacre doesn’t know the pressure journalists are under with deadlines and etc. Which presumably means we should be forgiving about him not checking the facts.

Well cry me a damn river …

We as scientists are under greater and greater pressure to do the same thing that journalists are doing according to Jeremy Laurance, namely, in order to keep our jobs in research we need – grants, publications, high-impact papers, etc. Where there is obvious pressure to pubish faster than we maybe normally would.

I feel this pressure, I need papers, I have several which are ‘almost there’ but I don’t think are good enough to publish. I have a fair amount of research experience, have written a fair number research publications (admittedly not inthe 100’s) and at this stage I have a pretty good idea when I might need to publish something, and when I need to hold off and do some more work.

So you might be thinking, yeah but you don’t have a deadline. REALLY? Scientists have deadlines just like anyone else (I am sure Ben Goldacre has deadlines too – he is after all a journalist). We give talks, go up for probation (and these days redundancy boards thanks to budget cuts), write grants (where your track record is assessed partly on your number of publications), have to get students (who don’t want to work for you if you aren’t well published) and all while teaching and doing administration.

But is anyone, ANYONE, going to feel sorry for me in the literature just because I had to publish my research quickly? And say, well, its ok that the facts weren’t checked, because scientists are under too much pressure these days? I sincerely doubt it.

And what kind of scientist would I be if I just shoved half-baked research out?
A really, really bad one is what I would be.

Whatever you think about his methods, it should be remembered that Ben Goldacre’s column is called BAD SCIENCE, and not ALL JOURNALISTS ARE CRAP – and this is actually important. There are bad scientists just as there are bad scientific journalists. And both are similar in that they either don’t check their facts or they don’t finish their job. And I think all Dr. Goldacre is pointing out is, they should have checked the facts.

Posted in bad science, random, science ethics | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Facts shmacts

Prince Charles, keepin’ it real for mother earth

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

worried about the evils of the world?
I know! Lets blame science and science driven consumerism…

or Galileo, he started it you know…

Prince Charles speaking at the Oxford Centre for Islamic studies a few days ago, seems to know all about the evils of science and capitalism. The profit imperative for scientific research and science exploiting and ‘damaging’ the natural world – all driven by nasty consumers and scientists. And he says we have objectified mother earth with science, by you know trying to learn more about her, maybe we are robbing her of her mystique – and she is pissed…

The Green Prince

While, HRH Prince of Wales seems to have forgotten that capitalism is why he still has a job (I think he really wants to go back to the good old days of medieval times presumably so he might get a little more respect or perhaps mistresses that could be easily covered up), in the wise prince’s view, science as an evil force in the world goes back to Galileo.

If it wasn’t for Galileo making his assertions about motion and quantity, then we would be ok today and live back in the good old days with horse manure everywhere in cities, poor sanitation and a life expectancy of ooh 45 years (if you were rich) that was great.

We all want to blame someone, just like with BP and this horrific oil spill and environmental disaster. But can we really blame science at large?

And as Kevin Cosnter puts it (I can’t believe I am quoting Kevin Costner, but he is after all trying to do something) “We’re all at fault here it is just too easy to blame BP.”

I am not quite sure what Mr. Costner means by this specifically, but the point is good. Blaming science (and consumerism) for what ails us is easy to do but doesn’t make a whole lot of sense and it actually doesn’t really help anything. Any time anyone wants to blame someone – it means that something is wrong and it needs to be fixed!

But who is going to fix this?

Science and technology.
How else are we going to stop the oil spill? Mother Earth doesn’t seem to be doing much ..

On a broader scope, science and technology are also the answers to a ‘greener’ future, not just cleaning up the oil spill. Perhaps science ’caused’ these problems in the first place, but science has also helped solve many societal problems throughout history. We no longer die of the bubonic plague – I think that’s kind of cool myself.

Of course maybe this is the Prince’s point – if all of the common folk died of the bubonic plague while he was out hunting in the country during plague season, that would take care of the nasty population problem he is worried about too, hoorah!

I guess Prince Charles forgot about his expensive organic food for consumers – well at least it isn’t science driven, and mother earth ‘she’ must be pleased.

Posted in bp oil, environment, science | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Monkeys can’t take their booze

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Sylvia McLain

and neither can adolescents…

IT WILL ROT YOUR BRAIN

New Scientist reports in an article Binge Drinking Rots Teenage Brains that if you binge drink as a teen, your stem cells are going to die and you will have lasting damage to your spatial and memory thought functions (space and damn what was I saying?)

They found this out after feeding adolescent monkeys alcohol daily over 11 months and then doing an autopsy on their brains 2 months later.

Is doing an autopsy after 2 months really proof of lasting damage?
I would say no – but hey maybe I am wrong

In this article this research:
…. reinforces the rationale for anti-alcohol policies in the US and elsewhere which aim to raise the age at with people start to drink.

First of all I am not advocating youthful (or any) binge drinking… but this is not really a good direct link… The damage may or may not be lasting from tippling human teens BUT from this article it isn’t clear to me that your brain won’t recover and that the damage is truly lasting. They didn’t give the little monkeys time to shake it off and see how they grew into adulthood

Using these kind of studies to support why kid’s shouldn’t drink, doesn’t work. It never has, its like Nancy Reagan’s just say No campaign – that didn’t work either.

Or the
This is your brain on drugs add in the US from the late 1980’s…
brain on drugs

this doesn’t work either –
Why doesn’t it work?

Because usually these kinds of campaigns are either based on some kind of psuedoscience or on faulty scientific reporting. Or worse, as in the present case, it’s based on exaggerating some real scientific results, making them appear to have a much stronger causal link than they actually do.

Its not that I think you shouldn’t campaign against the use of drugs in teens or anyone else for that matter, but at least try to be more realistic about it, and don’t use scientific tactics unless they are reasonably presented. This not only doesn’t help anyone stop binge drinking but it gives scientific evidence a bad name.

Science reported in this fear-mongering kind of way can come back and bite you in the face. Why? Because its over-egging the pudding. And people aren’t stupid – when they find out it isn’t necessarily or completely true, then its easy to reject the scientific bases altogether.

Its easy for people to distrust what scientists say or rather what is reported that scientists say, when there are over-arching conclusions about why something is bad for you. And it doesn’t help to increase scientific literacy, or help stop binge drinking in teenagers or monkeys for that matter.

Posted in drugs, random, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 4 Comments