Previous January 2004

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1. Science is never as simple as policy or ethicists want it to be. The abortion controversy is a great example of this issue. Human development is a gradual process, with no objective mark as to when someone becomes a person. Even if one attempts to pick a "moment" like conception or birth, science quickly reveals that supposed "moments" are processes requiring hours of time. Often multiple sperm reach the egg, which has to reject them, and afterwards it takes time for the DNA of the sperm and egg to combine and take control of the cell.
   
2. Science contradicts our innate understanding of the world. While our innate sense of physics is Aristotleian, we have gradually grown to accept Galileo and Newton without regarding their ideas as destructive to the moral foundations of our society. However, many of us do find modern biology's contradictions of our innate idea of mind as the "ghost in the machine," independent of the physical world, to be dangerous ideas. People make statments such that if there are biological explanations for how our mind works, how can we hold anyone responsible for their actions? The biological understanding of the mind is no more a moral problem than the Earth not being the center of the universe was, but our society has its own dogmas today, no matter how reasonable and advanced we think we are.
   

[> [> [> Re: Policy's Discomfort with Science -- sdev, 10:45:06 01/08/04 Thu

I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me another problem with policies' relationship with science is the demise of basic science research. I think less and less money is going to basic research and more to applied.

[> Re: Totally OT but interesting for science-types -- CW, 08:48:51 01/07/04 Wed

The article is really not so horrendous as it might seem at first glance. The term 'pure science' has often been coopted for other things, but here I'd like to use it to mean the underlying principles for what we call science, without the greed, glory seeking, power struggles and populatity contests that mar virtually every human activity, whether it be science, politics, art or religionn.

The biggest problem that Crichton is pointing out is that while scientists tend to try eliminate biases of various kinds from their work, people (even scientists themselves) often make the mistake of thinking they are entirely successful in this attempt, and fundamentally unbiased. The fact is that scientists are human beings, too. Sometimes they settle arguments by screaming louder. Sometimes they look the other way when other scientists who are their friends make very unscientific blunders in their work. Sometimes some of them lie about their results to keep the grant money flowing.

If all science were pure we'd never have such problems. But, that will never happen. We have to make do with what we have, as sad as that may be.

Let me give you a perfect example. In the last decade we've had medical scientists griping at the public about asking their doctors for antibiotics to treat every possible ailment. It is indeed a very bad practice. But, every known instance of drug-resistant form of a once-controlled disease in this country is traceable to hospitals abusing antibiotics, where the patients essentially have had little or no say in their treatment. We know that transplant patients are often given maintenance doses of antibiotics, yet the public has never been warned about the serious dangers of this side of this medical 'miracle.'

It is impossible to get a PhD in the Western civilization without getting a group of established types to agree that your work is both well done and 'correct' as far as they can tell. Yes, it's true you can usually have a royal fight with one person one your committe but the rest of the group pretty much has to agree with you. Let me shock Mr. Chrichton here and now: E equals M times C squared probably is not right except over a limited set of conditions. Rather than get into a gigantic argument over nothing let me say that C here is simply a conviently large number. If the proper number were much greater under certain conditions it wouldn't matter one whit to our understanding. The underlying idea that a hell of a lot of energy is bound up in what we call 'mass' is absolutely and irrefutably true. However, if you challenged the precise equation as Einstein wrote it in your oral exams for your physics PhD, even with much better evidence and arguaments than I could produce, chances are you'd never get that PhD. Why? Because too many careers are bound up in little details like this being considered precise as is.

There was a great deal of anger in the physics community about a decade ago when a couple of scientists from Utah claimed they'd produced a controlled cold fussion reaction. They hadn't, and it was certainly correct that in the scientific community it be laid to rest. But, what we saw was a gigantic furor, a huge public scathing of those guys. In part, they brought it on themselves. I personally believe anyone calling themselves a scientist who calls a press conference to discuss their findings ought to be condemned to cleanup work at the local burger joint for life. Actually flipping the burgers is too good for them! But, what happened in reaction had little to do with that. The fact is that the tests to figure out these guys were wrong were pretty cheap. But the people trying to make high-energy controlled fussion work were having no luck either, and they were spending billions and billions of dollars in their failures. To save their own butts, the high-energy people felt like they had to do everything in their power to make the Utah people look like charlatans. Thus the gigantic furor.

As a botanist Darby no doubt knows many problems in science. My recent interest in cacti has led me to wonder at the naming conventions in biology. A considerable amount of publication on the subject South Amercian cacti was done by a man, about whom if you called him scientist, it would be an act of charity. The man certainly had an interest in cacti, but he had no sense at all of scientific rigor. Among other things he did was to publish a 'scientific' description of a new species, based solely on his fleeting observations as he past by on a train. He broke rules of doing research right and left simply to get his name permanently attacted to the scientific name of the plants. Instead of banning outright everything this turkey did for self glorification, the scientific community has accepted the validity of many of his publications, and indeed other better botanists have named new discoveries after him. Sometimes it pays to be a self serving SOB.

You simply can't separate human behavior from human activity. Crichton generally is right, but what the heck can we do about it?

[> [> Amen, Brother! -- Darby, 11:27:59 01/07/04 Wed

That was exactly the point I was making.

You're right in that naming things is rarely a very vigorous pursuit, and in fact the majority of species have been named by hobbyists. And that train story is not an unusual example of how it's done. (And, not that it matters, but I'm an invertebrate zoologist / parasitologist - not that there's anything wrong with the study of botany, it's a valid lifestyle choice)

Another part of the problem is that high-profile scientists have become the witch doctors of the New Age, and it's not necessarily important if they've got data to support them if they can get a bunch of like-minded folks to nod and say, "Yep, that sounds about right..." It fits human nature to want to be told what's good and bad and not be too troubled by how the decisions are made.

[> [> [> naming things (getting way OT) -- matching mole (Talpus alignensis), 17:35:25 01/07/04 Wed

I'm not sure that I agree that most scientific names were assigned by hobbyists - it depends on your definition. For many groups (vertebrates, mollusks, flowering plants) I'm assuming that a lot of naming occurred in the 19th century when the distinction between a scientist and an amateur was less firmly drawn than it is now (Darwin was not a professional scientist in the sense we would recognize it today - he didn't have a degree in science and he didn't work at a university or anything equivalent). Groups of organisms in which describing new species is an active concern would include things like insects and fungi in which only a hnadful of people in the entire world would be able to recognize a new species in a particular group.

But that's a minor point. Taxonomy does have a series of very strict rules about naming things. Actually there are two sets of rules, one for plants and one for animals, which is kind of confusing now that we recognize that there are lots of organisms out there that are neither. These rules are designed to make communication as clear as possible by ensuring that there is one 'correct' name for every described species (the first one used). People who make flippant descriptions of new species are a real problem. Fortunately relatively few people are motivated to do so (groups with a substantial hobbyist interest like cacti are the most vulnerable). Naming is, in my opinion, more for our convenience than an accurate description of the natural world. The formation of species is a real phenomenon but it isn't a cut and dried process - lots of things are half way and calling them one species or two is arbitrary.

[> [> [> [> Re: naming things (getting way OT) -- Darby, 19:09:05 01/07/04 Wed

I was thinking about things like insects, actually - the reason there are so many named insect species is that there are - or used to be - lots of bug collectors in the world. And now, there are very few professional-type folks working in actual taxonomy.

This part of science is also very postmodern - as you point out, the reality of species is much fuzzier than we compulsively-labelling humans would like.

[> [> [> Re: Amen, Brother! -- CW, 07:13:51 01/08/04 Thu

Sorry about mixing up your speicialty.

It's disturbing in trying to learn about plants, that what matching mole says isn't quite true. In cacti, it's the genera the people argue most about. And in that case it's often the newest name that's the proper one. Hobbyists and commercial growers are the worst about hanging on to older names, but some true scientists stubbornly stick to their old favorites as well! To prevent scientific war, it's all considered acceptable. So having to know two or three scientific names for the same plant isn't unusual.

Wasn't that what scientific naming was supposed to get around? ;o)

[> [> [> [> funny movie on plant taxonomy -- sdev, 11:27:10 01/08/04 Thu

Have you ever seen the film A New Leaf, directed by Elaine May? She plays a botanist and it's quite funny. Walter Matthau is the male lead.

[> Re: Carl Sagan... the fraud! A little truth at last. -- Vegeta, 12:03:39 01/07/04 Wed

It's about time people start coming out and exposing these "scientists" as the absolute frauds they are. Especially Carl Sagan, who was more interested in pushing his ultra-liberal ideals, than forwarding science. I personally have long maintained that you pretty much have to have as much faith in science as you do in religion. The "scientists" will come out with "facts" that are often completely unsupported.
Example: The hole in the ozone layer. Scientists have no idea whether there has always been a hole in the ozone layer or not. But, they never present their facts as such. Also, in regards to it's fluctuating size, isn't that the norm when dealing with gasses.
I personally think that "global warming" is a complete scam and is being perputrated by "green" scientists to push forward their own political agenda's.
Remember the acid rain scare in the 80's? What happened to that. It was proven to not exist, that's what happened. Per usual the most interesting news is the news that isn't reported.

[> Living with uncertainty -- matching mole, 14:29:23 01/07/04 Wed

I'm supposed to be reading my wife's grant proposal right now but I guess it can wait a few minutes.

In my comments I'm going to go from the general to the specific, like you're supposed to.

First I'm going to flip Crichton's central argument upside down. As he says science is about the lack of consensus, about the one person who is right vs. the consensus. However Science is also, in a big way, about uncertainty. You can't ever be really sure that anyone is right. New information can always appear at a later date. The high degree of uncertainty about the universe is why scientific knowledge is supposed to be subject to very rigorous tests.

So if Ehrlich made the claims that he made about famine in the 1970s and the 1980s as Crichton claims he is guilty of bad science. I don't actually know what his statements were. From the position of pure science you want to take an extremely skeptical stance. However, if he actually made definitive statements like that, although I don't condone them, I can understand why he might have made them. Scientists are confortable with uncertainty but the public and politicians seem to want science to provide cut and dried answers to everything.

However, if you want to apply science to the real world, actually do something with it, things become more complicated. Several years a conservation biologist told me about dealing with politicians and bureaucrats on his job, managing the ara around a lake to preserve habitat for an endangered flycatcher (a bird). He said they were always asking what size area of land(i.e. the minimum area) was needed to ensure the survival of the population. It is impossible to give a scientifically rigorous answer to this question. It depends on too many external factors (climate, disease, immigration from other populations, etc. etc.).

Here is where I think Crichton runs into real problems. I believe that his background is in medical science? (I don't really know). His discussion of global warming reveals a fairly profound lack of insight into types of science where rigorous experimentation is not possible. I'm not an expert on global climate change by any means but a number of people at my institution are and I've seen quite a few presentations on various aspects of the issue. And here is the crux of the matter - global climate change is a unique, one time, event. The earth is a very complicated system. There is no way we can really know what the effects of what we do now will be in 100 years. Computer models present a wide range of scenarios based on different assumptions.

Crichton's response seems to be - there are no such things as informed guesses, we have no idea what's going to be going on in 100 years so lets not even bother to take action until we have a rigorous scientific understanding of the issue (i.e. we understand it as well as we understand plate tectonics or something). My resonse is: 1) nothing is certain, 2) dividing the world into rigorously tested scientific knowledge and 'predjudiced' guesswork is a false dichotomy (I would argue that most things, including almost everything scientific of interest falls into some gray area in the middle?, and 3) we have to take action on problems we face where we also face a lot of uncertainty. I would argue that we need to come to terms with the issue of uncertainty in making public policy.

Taking the specific example of global warming. The vast majority of scientists who have studied the matter have come to the conclusion that the planet is warming (a decade ago this was contentitious - I don't think it is anymore). The three questions that follow from this observation are - 1) what is causing the warming, 2) what is the climate trajectory (how warm is it going to get and where?), and what will the effects of the warming be? There is a specific model for human causation of global warming which was proposed long before anyone was concerned about it as a social issue. There is also strong correlative evidence showing that warming started around the time of the start of the industrial revolution when carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere began increasing. One tenet of science is that correlation is not causation but in this case we have nothing else. We don't have a series of identical planets to experiment with. The projections into the future and studies of the possible effects on the world's ecosystems are obviously just projections. But they are informed guesses - nothing definitive but a lot more definitive than nothing.

So the question is - what do we do with this information? If we reduce our output of carbon dioxide this will have definite lifestyle costs (fossils fuels and travel will become more expensive and standards of living may decline somehwat). That outcome seems far more desirable than the projected outcomes from doing nothing. Based on imperfect information the choice to me seems fairly obvious. If we find out that it is all meaningless in 20 years those that are inclined can cheerfully go back to driving SUVs.

I think that true scientific literacy involves having a understanding of and a comfortableness with, the uncertainty inherit in science involving any kind of complex system.

[> [> So, what IS science then? -- dub ;o), 18:03:47 01/07/04 Wed

His discussion of global warming reveals a fairly profound lack of insight into types of science where rigorous experimentation is not possible.

Pity us poor non-scientific types. One of the few things I can remember being hammered into me by the public education system was that the scientific method was based on rigorous, reproducible experimentation. If you're engaged in an endeavour were rigorous experimentation, and therefore the scientific method, cannot be applied, how can that endeavour be classified as scientific? Isn't it, rather, speculative?

Not trying to cause a fuss, but things like this thread drive me crazy. I read Crichton's speech, and sure, I understand what he's getting at and it all seems to make sense. Some things he states flat out, as facts. For instance, The American Cancer Society announced that 53,000 people died each year of second-hand smoke. The evidence for this claim is nonexistent. Is he correct, incorrect, or deliberately lying? If he is correct, is the American Cancer Society incorrect, or deliberately lying? And how the heck could someone like myself ever find out the truth of the matter?

The wonder of the internet is that it can provide me with access to Crichton's speech, and this interesting discussion which follows it, but, even with the help of the omniscient Google, just where does one find the truth?

;o)

[> [> [> What is Truth? -- Sophist, masquerading as Pilate (not the exercise class), 19:23:45 01/07/04 Wed

First off, let me congratulate mole on a terrific post.

I'm not sure anyone has a definitive answer to your basic question (what is science?). Here are some suggested criteria:

1. Whether or not it is possible to disprove the results. In science, there is no such thing as a fact or theory which is true always and forever. In principle, any fact and any theory can be shown to be incomplete or even false. In some sense, scientists never try to prove something, they try to disprove it.

Now, of course some things are far less likely to be untrue than others. But in principle any statement of a scientist is subject to revision upon further testing. All a scientist can do is say "X is true to a high level of confidence"; it is always implied that the confidence is less than 100%. The theory (or fact) may pass a thousand tests, but if it fails just one, it can be overthrown.

Newton's law of universal gravitation seemed like one of those absolutely true statements. But then came Einstein to show that under certain extreme conditions Newton's formulas would not work and had to be revised. Just in this last year, strong evidence emerged that Einstein's theory fails to account for an anti-gravity force called "dark energy". Science always progresses, but it never ends.

2. Related to the first principle is that there must be tests that can be made of a fact or theory. The reason for this is that science progresses by consensus. A fact is only considered established if it can be tested, if it is tested, and if the results agree (i.e., if there is consensus on it).

Now, subject to what I said above about the constant presence of some level of uncertainty, it is true that a fact is a fact regardless of our agreement on it. (As Galileo may have said, "What does it matter what I say? It still moves.") However, a fact does not become part of science until there is a consensus on its existence and scientists can use that fact to explore other problems. For example, the fact (if it is one) that the Earth revolves around the Sun was true long before Copernicus. However, until Copernicus suggested it, that fact was not part of science. Even then, it took a hundred years for scientists to reach a true consensus on it. And then Einstein showed that it's all relative anyway....

This leads to your question about experiments. Sometimes a fact can be tested directly and often. For example, if we want to know the mass of an electron, we can generate billions of electrons and "weigh" them over and over until we all agree on their mass to 9 decimal places. Sometimes a test can only be done once: if you want to know if a particular bomb will explode, you only get to try it once.

In other cases tests can be done, but only indirectly. This usually happens with historical sciences like cosmology and paleontology. For example, if we want to know what conditions were like just after the Big Bang, we can't create one (or, better yet, many) and see what happens. We have to work backward. Same with evolution -- we can't see it happen with long-living creatures, but we can still do indirect tests. This bothers some people because we are working by inference rather than direct test. But it's still science as long as the indirect tests are repeatable and we can reach a consensus about them.

3. Science does not try to answer big questions right off. It does not, for example, try to discover the nature of consciousness. Instead, it usually tries to find a relatively small, manageable problem and solve that. Maybe this will help answer the larger question, maybe it won't. But lots of small steps tend to work better than one big step.

4. Scientists go back and forth between facts and theories. It's sometimes said that there is no such thing as a fact without a theory. This means that facts make sense only in context, and you need a theory to establish that context. A good theory is also essential in order to find good problems to work.

5. Scientists are human. They are affected by their society and their personal background. There are often implicit assumptions in a theory that are hard to identify. This does not make their conclusions untrue, it just means that we have to be aware of that and remember it when we test a fact or theory to try to disprove it.

[> [> [> [> Good post -- dmw, 07:43:30 01/08/04 Thu

For example, if we want to know what conditions were like just after the Big Bang, we can't create one (or, better yet, many) and see what happens.

True, though as a physicist, I can't resist pointing out that you're standing in the middle of the Big Bang as we speak; it's an ongoing process that's just cooled down to a bit less than 3K. We can also see quite a bit of what happened earlier on because of the time it requires light to travel. However, the early part of the Big Bang before the Recombination Era is closed to direct observation (free electrons scatter photons far more effectively than bound ones, so the universe was opaque.) While we can't reproduce Big Bang level energies, we can get closer than Recombination Era energies in particle accelerators.

[> [> [> [> [> Well, by 'just after' I meant 10^-43 seconds or so. :) -- Sophist, 08:36:05 01/08/04 Thu


[> [> [> [> [> [> Planck Time -- dmw, 09:11:47 01/08/04 Thu

I'm a nuclear physicist by training, so I tend to use long periods of time, say 10^-24 seconds, when I say "just after" instead of amounts measured in the Planck Time. (-;

[> [> [> [> And another, possibly relevant, quote -- dub ;o), 13:00:25 01/08/04 Thu

This one from John Horgan:

In writing about science, I have tried to show that certain theories are best understood not as discoveries plucked whole from some Platonic ether but as embodiments of the aspirations and anxieities of living, breathing individuals.

I came across this today while reading about something completely different. Yes Willow, it is all connected...

;o)

[> [> [> Re: So, what IS science then? -- Darby, 20:11:24 01/07/04 Wed

Science is like democracy - there's definitely a way it should work, a bunch of ways that it shouldn't work, and the way it does work is somewhere in between.

Truth? You pays yer money and takes yer choice. The Cancer Society number is statistical smoke-and-mirrors, a technique used on second-hand smoke, radon, asbestos, and the like - connect data taken at extreme levels to much tinier exposures on the assumption that the connection is a straight line. The Better Safe Than Sorry approach. The history of this is pretty spotty.

I think that's the most disturbing aspect of this whole thing - we ought to be able to trust folks who lay claim to being eminent scientists to follow the system as closely as they can. If second-hand smoke has serious effects, there should be a host of non-smokers who grew up in smoking households, who worked in enclosed smoking workplaces, with lung cancer, way more than similar folk with smoke-free backgrounds. But those studies, that science, is barely in progress while the Cancer Society is proclaiming hard numbers.

I think it's good, though, that folks without a lot of training understand that the Powers-That-Be are sometimes about as trustworthy as Angel's. It'd be nice if that concept was more widely disseminated, rather than wait for a science version of Nixon and Agnew to make the whole pursuit suspect.

[> [> [> Second hand smoke -- Sophist, 21:32:04 01/07/04 Wed

Here is what the ACS actually said about second hand smoke. I'll leave you to decide if (a) they were quoted accurately, and (b) if the claim of "non-existent" support is accurate:

Secondhand Smoke

What Is It?
Secondhand smoke, also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) or passive smoke, is a mixture of two forms of smoke from burning tobacco products:

Sidestream smoke: smoke that comes from a lighted cigarette, pipe, or cigar
Mainstream smoke: smoke that is exhaled by a smoker

When nonsmokers are exposed to secondhand smoke it is called involuntary smoking or passive smoking. Nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke absorb nicotine and other compounds just as smokers do. The greater the exposure to secondhand smoke, the greater the level of these harmful compounds in your body.

Why Is It a Problem?

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A carcinogen, which means that there is sufficient evidence that it causes cancer in humans. Environmental tobacco smoke has also been classified as a "known human carcinogen" by the US National Toxicology Program.

Secondhand tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemical compounds. More than 60 of these are known or suspected to cause cancer.

Secondhand smoke can be harmful in many ways. In the United States alone, each year it is responsible for:

An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 deaths from heart disease in people who are not current smokers
About 3,000 lung cancer deaths in nonsmoking adults
Other respiratory problems in nonsmokers, including coughing, phlegm, chest discomfort, and reduced lung function
150,000 to 300,000 lower respiratory tract infections (such as pneumonia and bronchitis) in children younger than 18 months of age, which result in 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations
Increases in the number and severity of asthma attacks in about 200,000 to 1 million asthmatic children
The 1986 US Surgeon General's report on the health consequences of involuntary smoking reached 3 important conclusions about secondhand smoke:

Involuntary smoking causes disease, including lung cancer, in healthy nonsmokers.
When compared with the children of nonsmoking parents, children of parents who smoke have more frequent respiratory infections, more respiratory symptoms, and slower development of lung function as the lung matures.
Separating smokers and nonsmokers within the same air space may reduce, but does not eliminate, the exposure of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke.
Where Is It a Problem?

There are 3 locations where you should be especially concerned about exposure to secondhand smoke:

Your workplace: Secondhand smoke meets the criteria to be classified as a potential cancer-causing agent by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal agency responsible for health and safety regulations in the workplace. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), another federal agency, also recommends that secondhand smoke be considered a potential occupational carcinogen. Because there are no known safe levels, they recommend that exposures to secondhand smoke be reduced to the lowest possible levels.

Aside from protecting nonsmokers, workplace smoking restrictions may also encourage smokers who wish to quit or reduce their consumption of tobacco products.

Public places: Everyone is vulnerable to secondhand smoke exposure in public places, such as restaurants, shopping centers, public transportation, schools and daycare centers. Although some businesses are reluctant to ban smoking, there is no credible evidence that going smoke-free is bad for business. Public places where children go are a special area of concern.

Your home: Making your home smoke-free is perhaps one of the most important things you can do. Any family member can develop health problems related to secondhand smoke. Think about it: we spend more time at home than anywhere else. A smoke-free home protects your family, your guests, and even your pets.

Smoking Odors

There is no research in the medical literature about the cancer-causing effects of cigarette odors, but the literature shows that secondhand tobacco smoke can permeate the hair, clothing, and other surfaces. The unknown cancer causing effects would be minimal in comparison to direct secondhand smoke exposure, such as living in a household that has a smoker.

What Can Be Done About It?

Local, state, and federal authorities can enact public policies to protect people from secondhand smoke and to protect children from tobacco-caused diseases and addiction. Because there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke, it is important that any such policies be as strong as possible, and that they do not prevent action at other levels of government.

To learn how you can become involved in reducing exposure to secondhand smoke, contact your American Cancer Society at 1-800-ACS-2345.

Additional Resources

Other Organizations

American Lung Association
Telephone: 1-(800) 586-4872
Internet Address: www.lungusa.org

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Telephone: (202) 260-2090
Internet Address: www.epa.gov/iaq/ets/index.html

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - Tobacco Information and Prevention Source (TIPS)
Telephone: 1-(800) 311-3545
Internet Address: www.cdc.gov/tobacco/

National Cancer Institute (NCI) Cancer Information Service
NCI Public Inquiries Office Building 31
Telephone: 1-(800) 4-CANCER (1-(800) 422-6237)
Internet Address: www.cancer.gov

References

American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts and Figures 2003. Atlanta, GA.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. Current Intelligence Bulletin 54: Environmental Tobacco Smoke in the Workplace - Lung Cancer and Other Health Effects. 1991. (Publication No. 91-108) Available online at: www.cdc.gov/nasd/docs/d001001-d001100/d001030/d001030.html. Accessed November 2003.

Environmental Protection Agency. Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders. Washington, DC: Environmental Protection Agency; 1992. (Report # EPA/600/6-90/006F) Available online at. Accessed November 2003.

Glantz, Stanton. "Tobacco Biology and Politics," Health Edco, 1992.

Patten, et al. "Workplace Smoking Policy and Changes in Smoking Behaviour in California: A Suggested Association," Tobacco Control 1995; 4: 36-41.

Pirkle JL, Flegal KM, Bernert JT, Brody DJ, Etzel RA, Maurer KR. Exposure of the US population to environmental tobacco smoke: the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 1988 to 1991. JAMA. 1996;275(16):1233-40.

Steenland K. Passive smoking and the risk of heart disease JAMA. 1992;267:94-99.

US Department of Health and Human Services. 10th Report on Carcinogens. Public Health Service - National Toxicology Program. 2002. Available online at http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/roc/toc10.html. Accessed November 2003.

US Department of Health and Human Services. The Health Consequences of Involuntary Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General. Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services; 1986. (Publication # HPS 87-8398)

[> [> [> [> Penn & Teller investigated this controversy -- sloan, 22:06:16 01/07/04 Wed

Has anyone seen the Penn & Teller show called "Bullshit" in which they totally debunk the secondhand smoke myth because it is based on a survey that has since been thrown out by the FDA? (Or some other governmental agency--It's been a while since I've seen the episode). Their point was that everyone was taking figures from a bogus study--not that secondhand smoke is or isn't harmful, just that it hasn't been proven conclusively yet. I think the episode came out last year so the figures they were quoting were probably dated--but they made a good point.

[> [> [> [> [> A quote from Penn Gillette -- dub ;o), 07:15:44 01/08/04 Thu

"We did the show on secondhand smoke specifically because there is a good chance we are wrong on it. But we are right in that we are factually accurate that there is no proof at the start of 2003. What we say literally is that these studies have not been proven; these are not real studies. It is very possible that in five years there will be a study that shows that secondhand smoke really is harmful. When that study is out, guess what, we are on the other side."

[> [> [> [> [> [> This quote is a great illustration -- Sophist, 09:06:02 01/08/04 Thu

of both the popular misunderstanding of science and of the problems inherent in mixing science with public policy.

Penn says "these studies have not been proven". As I said in my original post, there really is no such thing as "proof" in science. There is only evidence. The evidence can be more or less convincing; when it's very convincing, we sometimes call it "proof", but it really isn't.

What I assume Penn means is that the existing studies are not convincing. Well, convincing to whom? To him? He's not an expert. Clearly the study was convincing to the person who published it. Was it convincing to other experts?

There are lots of times when those working in a field are divided on a particular point. Maybe 70% feel X is true, but a vocal minority of 30% insists this is wrong. It becomes difficult to create public policy in such cases, especially when the consequences can be serious.

Take second hand smoke for example. At what level should there be regulation? When 99% agree that it's harmful? 40%? Hard to say. And then there's the problem that those exposed to second hand smoke are often involuntarily subjected to it. Does that change the acceptable percentage?

No matter what the issue in science, there will always be someone who disagrees. It's downright silly and often disingenuous to claim that something hasn't been "proven" so we shouldn't act; if that's the standard, science could never be useful. The use of science to establish public policy is now and will always be a judgment call. Anyone claiming otherwise (who could I have in mind here?) is either ignorant or only interested in furthering an ideological agenda.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: So... we should take action on any kook theory or study, just in case? -- Vegeta, 14:11:26 01/08/04 Thu

That really doesn't make alot of sense to me. Especially since my tax dollars are paying for it. Has it ever occured to you that since most of these studies are run on government grants, that it's in a scientists best interest to make sure they have results (therefore justifying their existence and that they continue to garner government support)? Just something I wanted to throw out there...

[> [> Removing Uncertainty -- Sara, 20:07:27 01/07/04 Wed

I think the point made in the article isn't that educated guesses and computer models are completely invalid, but that they are mis-represented in their accuracy in order to make the point that someone wants to be made. I never believe anything based on a computer model is anything more than a possiblity - models are not precise analyzed data, they're projections and guesses based on a combination of both hard information and guesses/approximations.

The only reason you would treat models as factually accurate is if you desire to manipulate people's opinions. This is the problem - when the opinion is intuitively positive such as "Nuclear war is bad" and "Smoking is bad for health" people become urgent in their need to have everyone agree with them and overuse whatever they have in their arsenal to convince the audience. Anyone else remember health classes that were so over the top about Marijuana you stopped taking anything they said seriously? When that happens the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater and nothing that's said has any credibility.

I think many people know that I'm strongly against smoking. I believe my father's smoking took decades away from his life, and other people's smoking around him had a significant effect on the quality of his last 20 years. But even rabid little me doesn't take second hand smoke information seriously. It always sounds so much like they're reaching to get the conclusion they want to have. It's not good enough to say second hand smoke can be damaging to the people around you with lung conditions, instead you have to yell to the skies that it's going to give everyone cancer.

I found the article to be describing in scientists the same fear tactics we've seen from teachers, activists, politicians and the medical profession. It would be nice if people would make the best case that they can make fairly for their point of view and let the public make up it's own minds. There's nothing wrong with saying "I think" instead of "I know".

By the way, I told Darbs years ago that science was another form of religon after he tried explaining quantum mechanics to me. That's either religon or the result of other students who took the same health classes I took...

[> [> [> There's nothing wrong with saying 'I think' unless you wish to be mostly ignored. -- OnM, 20:13:51 01/08/04 Thu

I've been really enjoying this thread, because, well... I have a theory.

OK, more than one, many even. I've been looking for a good point to drop into this discussion and finally have settled on this one simply because the following comment triggered the old "my personal experience is so completely otherwise" somethingorother.

*** I found the article to be describing in scientists the same fear tactics we've seen from teachers, activists, politicians and the medical profession. It would be nice if people would make the best case that they can make fairly for their point of view and let the public make up it's own minds. There's nothing wrong with saying "I think" instead of "I know". ***

I fully agree that many times, this technique is indeed a 'fear tactic'. However, it is also important to be aware (and several other posters in this thread have already touched on this directly or indirectly) that overstatement in a confident fashion is a survival tactic.

Survival in the 'modern', techologically advanced world has mutated into a variety of forms, but it is still based in one wa or another on the age old, apparently DNA-driven urge for social animals to form vertical hierarchies with an alpha animal at the top. In other words, we tend to give far greater credence to the actions or (in the case of verbal creatures such as ourselves) statements that are presented with a high degree of confidence. Conversely, we tend to dismiss the actions or statements of those who do not present their opinions forcefully.

Using the qualifier "I think" is, unfortunately, a perfect way to denote weakness to many others around us. Not all mind you, but a very statistically significant proportion. My personal desire to not disseminate information of a highly dubious or questionable nature as regards technologies in the audio/video field has cost me quite a lot of income over the years.

Just last week, a home theatre related magazine that I subscribe to contained an ad by an extremely well known electronics manufacturer, one who I happen to intensely dislike because they regularly set up technical straw men and then knock them down, garnering huge sales and overwhelming public acclaim by doing so.

The ad managed to reach a new pinnacle in idiotic blather and bafflegab. Nearly three-quarters of it (and there was quite a lot of text) was flat out wrong or grotesquely misleading.

But no one cares, and in fact if I try to counter some of the claims to a potential victim of this nonsense, do they thank me? No, they usually think to themselves he doesn't sell the line, so he has to badmouth them. Everyone else says their stuff is just the best there is!

And how do I know what they're thinking? Because some weeks later on, after I haven't heard from them and do a follow up call, I find that they purchased the very thing I recommended that they try to avoid. And this happens over and over and over again, even though I take great pains to explain why I don't think this company (or many others) is worthy of their hard earned money and try to back it up with empirical evidence, and not just an impassioned, forcefully delived 'opinion'.

In short, I cite a few easily proven examples and then I frame the question to the potential buyer as, "Why would you want to do business with a company that routinely lies to you?"

And the answer come back, "Because they make such great stuff! Everybody knows that!"

Huh.

OK, sorry for the rambly-ness, but it's late and at the end of a way-too-long day, but I have been enjoying the thread, so by all means keep it coming!

G'nite now.

:-)

[> [> [> [> Re: There's nothing wrong with saying 'I think' unless you wish to be mostly ignored. -- Copper, 22:13:58 01/08/04 Thu

This is one of the most interesting threads I've read here in some time. But then I've been a more sporadic reader lately, too.

As a biological scientist I agree with most of what the other biologists and many of the others here have posted. I also agree with OnM. I think that quite often one is not really heard unless one states his/her position forcefully. In the case of scientists, there is almost always data to support that position. However, the actual strength and quality of the data are also usually open to discussion. But unless the position is forcefully made, it is quite possible that the scientist's view will get little or no hearing from colleagues. If the scientist fears that will happen, he/she may well decide that getting the idea to the general public may generate the interest that is needed for fellow scientists to give his/her position a hearing.

[> [> [> [> Hmmm...this may be an issue of writing and arguing carefully? -- s'kat, 22:38:26 01/08/04 Thu

In other words, we tend to give far greater credence to the actions or (in the case of verbal creatures such as ourselves) statements that are presented with a high degree of confidence. Conversely, we tend to dismiss the actions or statements of those who do not present their opinions forcefully.

Yet, as you demonstrate in your post, if those opinions or beliefs are not supported - does it matter that they are presented forcefully? Or maybe, if just the act of stating something forcefully makes it more true and more worthy of attention than something that isn't that's a little dangerous and disconcerting in of itself. And makes me wonder if we should be a little more careful how we phrase things? Particularly opinions stated in public forums. Should you forcefully utter an opinion as fact when you are uncertain of your facts or even your findings?
I wonder about this.

When someone sells a piece of audio-equipement and forcefully tells you it can do all these wonderful things, yet that person has never tried the equipment and is basically talking out of their hat (I think that's the correct idiom - ;-)), is that useful or harmful? Aren't they, in effect, "lying" to the purchaser, which granted is a selling technique that one too many people use. I recently read part of a book by Al Franken that tears apart a couple of political pundits who forcefully stated their opinions as "facts" yet did not check the facts to see if those opinions were supported as such.

Don't get me wrong - I don't have any problem with someone stating an opinion forcefully or with conviction, I do it all the time, but I do think we all need to be careful that we can support it - if we forcefully state our opinion as a fact, or at least be prepared to take the consequences for doing so. I've gotten jumped on for doing so myself more than once and dearly hope I've learned from it. Actually- one of the most valuable lessons I've learned on this board is to be careful how I phrase an opinion or view on a topic, particularly one I am *not* an expert on - which covers quite a bit of ground, I'm afraid (grin).
Saying "I think" or "this is my opinion" or "I saw this some where but this what I think" - helps clarify to the reader how much I do know on the topic. If they choose to ignore my views b/c they appear weak - that is a risk I take, but it is a much smaller risk than the one I take if someone out there decides to take my unsubstantiated views as fact - ie. the audio/visual seller who sells a piece of equipement stating it does one thing when it does another.

The frightening thing about our news media, salesmen, etc is how many do state their unsubstantiated opinions as facts and the percentage of the population that appears to believe what they say without question, often using these opinions as support for their own. I've learned to question what I hear on the news or in the media - to cross-check it through more than one source before I believe what is said. I don't do it on everything of course - I get lazy, but I do remain skeptical... and try not to make a judgement until I get all the information. Arguing and writing and thinking carefully is easier said then done, it takes lots of time and effort I think. But - I can't help but wonder how many disagreements, acts of violence, even wars may have been avoided if we/people in general had taken the time to gather information and think carefully as opposed to just reacting and taking a forcible opinion as fact?

[> [> [> [> [> Hope to respond in more depth later on tonight or over the weekend, but meanwhile... -- OnM, 07:37:27 01/09/04 Fri

... consider that this is exactly the subject dealt with in the BtVS S7 endgame. Buffy states her opinions forcefully, as leaders tend to do, but was she right?

In retrospect she was, and yet she wasn't. Thus beginneth a rampant array of philosophical difficulties.

[> [> [> [> [> [> Facts, force, opinions. -- Arethusa, 08:13:59 01/09/04 Fri

Buffy's problem was one that accompanies any argument forcefully presented. If someone expects an argument to be acccepted based on their forcefulness, they had better be sure of their facts, because what they are really saying is, "Believe me because I say so. Forcefully." Their believability is the basis of the argument, not verifiable facts. Buffy said everyone should do what she says because she's the slayer and knows what she's talking about, but she glossed over one easily identifiable flaw-she was't the only slayer. So the Potentials turned to the other slayer, who did not agree with Buffy's opinion, thereby destroying the forcefulness of her argument, as well as its efficacy. Faith did't present her arguments forcefully, but she was believed and followed becasue her audience was already predisposed to disbelieve Buffy and to the Potentials Faith's opinion was just as valid as Buffy's.

In the Real World, look at the Univ. of Maryland study on the audience of news programs, especially Fox News. Fox's audience was found to believe a number of quite untrue "facts," forcefully and repeatedly stated by its newscasters and pundits. The combination of repetition, forcefullness, and predisposition towards belief resulted in a bunch of people believing lies and mistakes.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: That study is a case in point -- sdev, 23:11:19 01/09/04 Fri

I believe that study is a good case for policy prompting results. The study results have been disputed because of ambiguous questions. In fact the questions were revised halfway into the study. The study was funded by the Ford foundation which has come under recent fire for its own "agenda" and funding of questionable research.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Questions, questions :) -- Arethusa, 07:01:16 01/10/04 Sat

By whom were the results disputed? What agenda and research? Is it typical for studies to chage questions they feel are unclear or otherwise need changing? I'm not saying that the study was without flaws because I don't know one way or the other. However, if I were to dismiss a study because of its flaws, I would need to know as much about the people questioning it and their methods as I do about the people conducting the study. Everybody has an agenda. ;)

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Ah yes, the old 'proof by vigorous assertion' technique -- Vickie, 09:19:57 01/09/04 Fri


[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Hope to respond in more depth later on tonight or over the weekend, but meanwhile... -- s'kat, 09:04:27 01/09/04 Fri

consider that this is exactly the subject dealt with in the BtVS S7 endgame. Buffy states her opinions forcefully, as leaders tend to do, but was she right?

In retrospect she was, and yet she wasn't. Thus beginneth a rampant array of philosophical difficulties.

Hmmm..Buffy's decisions in S7 were not necessarily the best ever and could in the long run prove to have some really nasty consequences. The fun part of these shows is that no matter what decision the character makes - it's always a double-edged sword - there's always a negative reprecussion.
Much like life.

Examples: she chose to spread her power to every would-be potential across the universe, not considering for a second how these potential girls would deal with that power or the consequences of doing it. Think about that for a minute.
What if one of the potentials was...a murderer like Faith, before they got the power? OR a soulless monster like the boy Ryan in I've Got You Under My Skin, Ats S1? Or someone who is a borderline head case and the sudden influx of the slayer ability just sends them careening over the edge? But in war, we don't have time to consider these matters - right? So is it our fault if our "war-time" decision costs lives after the fact? Is it our responsibility?

In the episode Empty Places - Buffy's inability to listen to others and just state her opinions forefully - gets her thrown out of her own house. And in Touched -End of Days - Faith's decision to take action without questioning things - gets people killed.

The finale? Well if it weren't for Spike's amulet, everyone in that building would have been dead. There's no indication that Buffy and 20 some girls would be able to take out over 1000 ubervamps. Was Buffy's opinion a sound one? A good one? Or one that could have potentially cost a lot of lives?

I'm not sure. Again I think stating an opinion forcefully may depend on the circumstances - I think you'll agree that there is a huge difference between stating an opinion you believe with all your hear and soul to be the only way to win a fight and stating one that you are uncertain of.

[> [> [> [> [> Re: Hmmm...this may be an issue of writing and arguing carefully? -- Copper, 08:33:51 01/09/04 Fri

If only we lived in an ideal world. I agree that carefully-reasoned, well-supported arguments are necessary. Stating a viewpoint forcefully without the data to back it up is foolish. However, not stating it forcefully, especially when one does have the supporting data, pretty much guarantees that it will be ignored. In my experience, most scientists and physicians do not bother to read a journal article past the abstract unless it is something that they really, really care about. And even then, they will probably just read the introduction and conclusion. Scientists generally are busy and narrowly-focused. If you want to get their attention, you have to hit them on the head.

To take one example from Crichton's essay, there are data showing that those exposed to second-hand smoke have more health problems than those not exposed. For instance, children of smoking parents have much higher rates of respiratory problems than do children of non-smokers. Now, the total numbers may not be as high as some groups state. However, until the problems of second-hand smoke were forcefully articulated, efforts to limit/prevent tobacco use were stalled. I feel sure that there were numerous scientific articles written that stated in carefully neutral tones that second-hand smoke was problematic. But until someone decided to put the issue more forcefully and to get general public attention, nothing much happened.

As another example, you, Shadowkat, write long, fascinating essays. However, they are often so long, that I have no time to carefully read them. It would be great if my time were unlimited and I could spend as much time as I wished reading everything that appears intriguing. But I, and most individuals, do have limited time. This means that if you or I or someone else wants what we've written to be read, we may need to hit the reader over the head initially. Once we have their attention, then we can provide the detailed supporting data.

[> [> [> [> [> [> Writing and arguing carefully -- Arethusa, 09:12:35 01/09/04 Fri

As another example, you, Shadowkat, write long, fascinating essays. However, they are often so long, that I have no time to carefully read them. It would be great if my time were unlimited and I could spend as much time as I wished reading everything that appears intriguing. But I, and most individuals, do have limited time. This means that if you or I or someone else wants what we've written to be read, we may need to hit the reader over the head initially. Once we have their attention, then we can provide the detailed supporting data.

You're talking about what "hooks" a reader. In my journalism classes, we were taught to put the most interesting/relateable/scandalous facts and quotes in the lead (opening parargraph) because most people don't read beyond the first paragraph of an article (or headline, for that matter). Other hooks are humor, shock, forcefulness, and so on. Perhaps hooks for an ATPO reader include familiarity with the the poster's work, subject/topic (All Spike!/No Spike!), age of subject matter, familiarity with subject matter, frequecy of discussion of the topic, etc. Forcefulness and dogmaticism turn me off, as do well-worn topics and gushy fan posts (not that we get many), and total absence of punctuation (too hard to read). Forcefulness may or may not get the audience's attention.

[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Exactly -- s'kat, 09:44:28 01/09/04 Fri

Forcefulness and dogmaticism turn me off, as do well-worn topics and gushy fan posts (not that we get many), and total absence of punctuation (too hard to read). Forcefulness may or may not get the audience's attention.

Actually I think you state this better in both your posts than I do. I also think matching mole does a wonderful job of stating it.

While a strong word or phrase may get my attention, if it's too forceful it can also turn me off or worse raise my own uncertainity/skepticism about the writer. Writers who state in an opening paragraph that their opinion is the only one or this is a fact - tend to make me stop reading or cause me to roll my eyes.

There is a difference between language that hooks a reader and language which is intended to persuade them. Persuading someone to believe something - is a difficult thing. Lawyers make a living doing it - in court it is very important to state your case persuasively to a judge or to a jury or both. But you have to be careful not to piss them off in the process, so you spend a great deal of time hunting the right words and right emphasis. If you use the wrong ones - you could lose your case in the first twenty minutes of trial or in the first paragraph of a brief.

A really good example of bad persuasion techniques is Buffy's speechs in S7, instead of inspiring the potentials and SG to follow her lead, she inspired them to kick her out of her own house. Was she speaking forcefully? Yes. But she did not take the time to understand her audience or find a way of communicating to them. She assumed they'd follow her if she stated her opinions as facts and was shocked to learn that it had the opposite effect. People don't like to be ordered to believe something. They like to be persuaded by evidence - they like to figure it out for themselves, not treated like idiots who need to be told or informed. Knowing how to do this is an art in of itself.

[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Hmmm...this may be an issue of writing and arguing carefully? -- s'kat, 09:28:22 01/09/04 Fri

Oh, don't misunderstand me - I'm not saying you *shouldn't* state an opinion forcefully. What I'm stating and I think from what I've read - you'd probably agree - is that when you do so, you should make damn sure you've backed up it with supporting data or at least can back it up with supporting data. If you can't? Then you probably deserve to have yourself raked over the nails by others. Which I'm certain happens quite a bit in the scientific field. Actually - Cactus Watcher, I believe, gives an example of a few scientists losing all credibility due to the fact that they forcefully stated an opinion and were unable to back it up. Happens all the time on this board - heck I've gotten raked over hot nails a few times myself as have you and pretty much everyone else here- for doing just that. We're human after all, we don't always back up our data and when we feel strongly about something we have a tendency to use strong language to back it up. That is not to say we shouldn't forcefully state opinions or use strong language necessarily - what I guess I'm saying is we might want to be *more careful*, be sure we do have information to back up our opinions, test our assumptions and theories before necessarily sharing them or better yet share them but with the caveat that we are trying them out - open it up for experimentation.

I remember doing an essay - an incredibly long essay - on the Pitfalls of Television (you can find it in the atpo August archives if you want), and I spent a great deal of time of researching my claims - the length of the essay was mainly due to the large number of footnotes I had and sources I quoted - which were close to 50 in various works. I used strong language in the essay and did state my opinions forcefully. Even with all that information to back me up - I made a few mistakes, there were a few gaps in my logic that people jumped down my throat on - but because I had supported the majority of my statements, I was able to defend even those areas fairly well and make a few qualified changes here and there, even admit where I was wrong and correct it. If I hadn't backed up and/or supported my data - then I would have lost my credibility. We can forgive a mistake here or there, but not a whole list of them. That's the worst - losing credibility.

IF you don't write carefully - you risk losing the reader's trust and your own credibility. You're right we don't have time to read long posts or every post, so on boards such as atpo, we chose carefully which ones to click on, just like we may chose which magazine to subscribe to or which News program to watch. If we discover that the people we have chosen to read or listen to are lying to us or not credible? We'll stop reading or listening to them - we will ignore them and go elsewhere. After all - why would you want to waste time on someone you can't trust or believe? That's one of the risks of speaking or writing forcefully without being careful about it. (Aresutha gives a wonderful example above of how Buffy lost the SG and potentials to Faith's leadership for making this same mistake.)

[> [> [> [> Exactly! -- matching mole, 09:17:04 01/09/04 Fri

You've hit the nail on the head as far as I'm concerned. OnM's post explains why I entitled my post 'Living with Uncertainty'. In public disputes be they political, economic, scientific, whatever - certainty and simplicity almost always win out over uncertainty and complexity. And, in almost any issue that is interesting and important, there is going to be a fair amount of uncertainty. I'm talking issues of pragmatism not morality here.

If we're talking about SETI and the probability of contacting aliens I think it is fine to take the high road. Stand up for scientific rigor. But if we're talking about global warming and a situation where the potential costs of both action and inaction are high and enormous respectively and the world is full of voices willing to state with utter certainty that global warming is a giant hoax, what is the responsible course of action for a scientist in the area to take? I don't really have an answer.

I have a definite bias. If I hear an argument in which one person states things in absolute terms and with complete certainty and the other person has caveats and admits the possibility that some things they say might end up being wrong then I think that person number two is likely to much closer to the truth than person 1 in the vast majority of cases. Expressions of absolute certainty, to me, indicate a lack of skepticism about your own world view that is likely to lead to errors. If you can't question yourself, how can question the outside world? However the evidence from the world at large tends to indicate that most people don't seem to operate the same way I do.

[> [> [> [> [> Re: Exactly! -- Copper, 10:07:13 01/09/04 Fri

As I am sure you are well aware, equating forcefulness with absolute certainty is simplistic. One can state something forcefully, with plenty of arguments in support of that position, and still point out that this position is something else that must be considered, not the only thing, or the only correct thing. My point, which seems to have been lost, is that calm neutrality generally does not get people to really think about an issue.

[> A lot of nonscience -- MsGiles, 09:24:19 01/08/04 Thu

Warning, homespun philosophy ahead,(1)

Scientific method is a belief system, in a sense. Its certainly a philosophy. It's a way of approaching the material world which says we can make up theories, but we only accept them fully to the extent that they can be confirmed by experiment. It's a relationalisation of the human way of dealing with the environment by projecting results of actions eg 'If I sharpen this stick I can use it to spear a rabbit' goes to, 'If I plant these seeds I'll have wheat next summer to make bread'. Then this goes to 'Why?' and after various philosophical and spiritual theorising this goes to 'Yes, but why in a purely practical cause and effect sense?'

What science does is try answer the last question, to work out the underlying pattern to all these causes and affects by starting from the immediate why (why do I have to sharpen the stick? Will it work blunt? Will it work if I sharpen it flat instead of round? Will anything other than a stick sharpen? Then, why do sharp things go into rabbits more easily than blunt things? etc), and it differs from other philosophies in saying, 'this is our theory, but we now have to find a way of going out and testing it. To do this we have to use our theory to predict what will happen in a circumstance that we haven't experienced yet, and then go out and see if that does happen'. (As a vegetarian I leave the rabbit metaphor here, I'm not really sure why I picked it. Am I channelling Anya?)

With all this emphasis on testing, science has a materialist slant. The correctness of a theory doesn't (or shouldn't) depend on the spiritual purity of the author. Scientists don't fast in deserts, or spend weeks in deep meditation, to come up with their theories. In that they differ from most religious/spiritual philosphers. That's not the only other sort of philosophy, though, we have a long tradition of secular philosophy, which generally tries to work with the way we express things in words, to try and reach better ways of understanding things. Again, these philosphers are looking for patterns (one of the deepest, most inexplicable needs people have).

The emphasis on experimentally validating theory doesn't stop scientists making up theories (obviously). Lots of scientific theories, particularly in physics, are pretty much untestable at the moment, and really partake of pure philosophy. They have their umbilical to empirically based science, but they are untestable (I've seen this explained on telly, so it may be dodgy info, but I assume there are no other-agenda'd interests deliberately promulgating this. Unless - aha! - they want to soften us up to accept untestable science in other arenas ..)

Also, the technology and the philosophy hang off one another, when you're following scientific method, you don't get advances in the one without advances in the other.

One thing science doesn't do in the main (though individual scientists do) is debate the nature of good and evil, or have any basic remit to work for good (or for evil, for that matter). The only bad in science is bad practise - there's no such thing as a bad conclusion if the method and analysis are sound.

Crichton seems to be saying that scientific practise is often bad and scientists aren't always truthful. Probably true. He's saying that some scientists are abandoning the purely pragmatic to induge in moral crusades, and that in some cases they have decided the need to push their issue has overridden their commitment to scientific method. Well, scientists are human beings. I expect some of them read horoscopes, try feng shui, avoid walking under ladders or carry lucky objects. Some of them are religious, and many of them are interested in philosophies that aren't empirically testable.

I go with some of his observations, though. I've felt the smoking thing to have long since gone into the realms of the illogical, and yet I welcome it, because it counteracts all the smoking advertising and marketing. And I'm sure a lot of smoking (particularly of quantities of mass-produced, chemically treated cigarettes) is bad for the health. Smoking had got to the point where it wasn't the occasional hobbit with a pouch of Longbottom leaf (sorry, fantasy leakage occurring) but bulk addiction to unpleasant smelling little white sticks. I'm happy to work in a smoke-free office. But also I'm happy with my Dad smoking a ridiculously fumigatious pipe (like spending Christmas with a small bonfire in the living room). I don't think smoking is Eeevil, just addictive, prone to be commercially manipulated and unpleasant to be around in quantity, like a lot of drug use. The tendency to identify it as evil creeps me a bit. I've been brought up around scientific materialists, and I like my ultimate good and evil safely wrapped in fiction.

I love the Bad Science column in the Guardian, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/) though it rarely touches on such major issues as nuclear power. Rather it concentrates on the minutea of bad science that filters into the press every day, the shampoo adverts that invent new elements and Christmas press releases about the health-giving properties of chocolate.

I enjoyed reading Crichton's lecture, but I thought in the end it qualified as a rant. As people said, as unsystematic and opinionated as the stuff he was criticising.


1
Philosophers are free to tell me I'm talking rubbish. Always.

[> [> Re: A lot of nonscience -- Ames, 19:32:30 01/08/04 Thu

Ok, I've avoided reading most of this thread, but I will comment that there's a lot of popular misconception about what science is.

Science is a method of developing true and verifiable knowledge on which future generations can build. It's the reason why every researcher in every generation since about the year 1400 doesn't have to start at ground zero. Up until that time, everyone interested in increasing human knowledge had to start by verifying every single basic fact personally, because the "knowledge" found in books and common lore was completely unreliable. That put a pretty strict limit on what anyone could accomplish in a lifetime. As Newton said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Science is just a method, maybe not the only one or the best one, but by and large it works in spite of human fallibility.

BTW, one axiom of the scientific method is that theories which cannot be proved or disproved are irrelevant, unless and until new facts are discovered. Occam's Razor is frequently mis-applied in a similar way - it's often misquoted as "the simplest theory is the right one", implying that the other theories are wrong, but in reality it's better quoted as "the simplest explanation that fits the facts is best, because more complex explanations that fit the same facts contribute nothing more".

[> [> [> Thanks, that's very succint. -- MsGiles, 03:51:06 01/09/04 Fri

You emphasise that science is, over and above all, a body of knowledge which can be built on, something I completely missed.

Isn't it true, though that the element of experimental verification is what distinguishes modern science from earlier natural philosophies, and from other contemporary philosphical systems, religious and otherwise? For example, Epicurus in the third century BC first proposed atomic theory as a way of understanding the material world, but support of this theory was based entirely upon whether one followed, and agreed with, the reasoning that led to it, and not on the system of using theory to extrapolate a result in a controlled experimental situation and then testing whether that result is achieved in practice.

One of the things that produced modern science was the meeting of alchemy and Greek-influenced philosophy, combining the experimental nature of the first with the intellectual rigour of the second.

[> [> [> [> Meanings of Science -- dmw, 05:41:38 01/09/04 Fri

You emphasise that science is, over and above all, a body of knowledge which can be built on, something I completely missed.

Isn't it true, though that the element of experimental verification is what distinguishes modern science from earlier natural philosophies, and from other contemporary philosphical systems, religious and otherwise?

When I use the word science, I'm generally referring directly or indirectly to the scientific method, but it does also refer to the body of the knowledge and I think the essence of Ames' post is that the two are interrelated in that it's impossible to build up a body of valid knowledge without a method of verification like the scientific one.

[> [> [> [> Experimental verification -- Ames, 11:48:02 01/09/04 Fri

What distinguishes "scientific" experimental verification from earlier attempts is the key word "repeatable". There were plenty of early experimentalists who understood the importance of actually testing theories as well as philosophizing about them, but they never fully understood the importance of controlled conditions, documentation, and above all repeatability. It's not enough to make careful observations, develop a theory, and tell other people about it. Those other people have to be able to repeat the same experiments from your description, and obtain the same results. Without that, your knowledge is folklore.

[> [> [> Re: A lot of nonscience -- Darby, 06:48:29 01/09/04 Fri

I've got to disagree with your definition of Occam's Razor, which sounds more like a rationalization for what actually is a simple (but, according to recent evidence, probably wrong) rule: "given a range of possible explanations for something, the simplest explanation is probably correct." It was one of those old, accepted ideas that only recently was tested, and with luck it may eventually fall out of favor as an "obvious" rule of logic. (Give it a home test - write down a couple of dozen items from your area of expertise, imagine the simplest explanation for how they work, and see how often that matches the accepted explanation)

But to say that Einstein's space-time explanation of gravity added nothing to Newton's simpler "attraction" concepts takes a simple, already-questionable axiom in a very misleading direction. There are no shoulders to stand on if the initial, simple explanations are the end of it.

[> [> [> [> Re: A lot of nonscience -- Ames, 16:02:11 01/09/04 Fri

* Sigh *
It's exactly this type of thing which is a misinterpretation of Occam's Razor. Einstein's special and general relativity theories would indeed be irrelevant if all we knew about mechanics and gravity was the classical observations. Speculating that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant for all observers, or that gravity is a geometric distortion of space-time, is pointless if you have no way to observe those things, and no testable predictions can be made from them. But Einstein's reason for coming up with these theories was to explain observed data which could not be explained by the classical theories, e.g. the Michelson-Morely experiment and the equivalence of inertial and gravitation mass. His theories then made predictions which could be (and were) tested by experiment.

[> I trtied contacting Crichton, but he was still in granular form -- MsGiles, 03:56:52 01/09/04 Fri

And Scorpius was too busy snogging Sikosu .. oh, sorry, wrong Crichton

[> [> LOL! -- Rob, 09:46:23 01/09/04 Fri


[> Nuclear winter: How science proceeds -- Sophist, 08:54:46 01/09/04 Fri

Nuclear winter is one apocalypse Buffy never had to stop. I just decided to discuss it, totally random and out of the blue. I decided to put in this thread for the same reason. No other reason. Really.

This topic developed in an interesting way which sheds a great deal of light on the practice of science in today's world. It also sheds a great deal of light on the politicization of science.

I actually know something about this story from someone who was there and whose reliability is beyond question. I'm not going to disclose details because I don't have permission, but I am going to add some observations that are not public knowledge. Otherwise, I'm going to let others tell the story for me.

I'll start with William Calvin. He's a well known scientist and author. His book, The River That Flows Uphill, provides most of the details. It can be found online at http://williamcalvin.com/bk3/bk3day8.htm. His version is quite accurate and well written; passages in brackets are mine:

"Scientists had been studying the effects of dust injected into the atmosphere by volcanoes ("a stratospheric veil of fine silicate ash and sulfur aerosols, with resultant surface cooling"), stimulated not only by the marked climate changes that have followed some eruptions but also by the results of one of the unmanned spacecraft which flew past Mars in 1971. There it found a giant dust storm which enveloped much of the planet and took 10 months to clear. [Carl Sagan wrote papers on this issue in his work on the space program.] Could that happen here? Why does dust take so long to settle out of the atmosphere? One answer is that, if it gets up high enough, rain won't wash it out anymore.

And how does dust get up that high? When the geologist Walter Alvarez discovered unusually high concentrations of the rare element iridium in 65-million-year-old layers of rock in both Italy and Denmark, he considered whether the breakup of a meteor might have caused it. He, his father the physicist Luis Alvarez, and others postulated in 1980 that such a meteor could have kicked up enough dust to cause the Cretaceous extinction, that wiped out the dinosaurs and so many other species about that time. The giant dust cloud they postulated got everyone to thinking about extinctions and atmospheric disruptions.

But what about smoke? ... In 1977, George Woodwell of the Woods Hole biological labs suggested that all of the clearing of tropical forests that was going on might, because of the burning, be injecting more carbon compounds into the atmosphere than all the coal and oil burned in the Northern Hemisphere.

Smoke can also get high enough in the troposphere to avoid being washed out immediately; when it does wash out, it causes acid rain, as the people and wildlife downwind of industrial centers well know by now. Smoke at any altitude is far worse than dust -- one big difference is that, while dust tends to reflect light back into space that would have otherwise reached the earth's surface, the black carbon particles tend to absorb light and heat up, thus heating the air molecules around them much more than dust does. Heating up the middle atmosphere, while simultaneously reducing the heating of the lower layers near the earth's surface, is just the sort of thing to give nightmares to atmospheric scientists: the circulation patterns that carry weather around are quite dependent on the temperature gradient between the lower and upper atmosphere.

The nuclear winter story actually started with supersonic jets and ozone, the three-atom oxygen molecule that tends to accumulate in the stratosphere and screen out much of the sun's ultraviolet light that would otherwise seriously damage plants, not to mention human skin and eyes. In Germany, Paul Crutzen's studies of the ozone layer called into question the building of supersonic passenger jets in 1971. [Crutzen won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1995.] He then contributed to the subsequent studies which had led to the concern over refrigerator coolants and the propellant gas used in spray cans, because of fluorocarbon's potential for destroying the ozone layer. In 1975, a U.S. National Academy of Science report concluded that all-out nuclear war might destroy enough of the ozone layer to expose the earth's surface to lethal doses of ultraviolet light -- lethal to plants as well as people. The president of the Academy, in releasing the report, offered his personal opinion. He chose to look on the report as "encouraging," characterizing it as suggesting that much of the planet could recover from a nuclear war.

By the late seventies, Crutzen was studying burning trees in Brazil and trying to figure out what happened to the constituents of the smoke and vapors, worried that they too might affect the earth's ozone.

All of this formed the background to one of those startling serendipities that sometimes occurs in basic science, when one problem suddenly illuminates another. Smoke had some effects on ozone, but what might they do to temperature? Smoke hadn't been taken seriously before, and atmospheric scientists began to reevaluate the old studies about the aftermath of a nuclear war. Never mind for a moment all those people killed by the blasts and firestorms and fallout -- what sort of world would the survivors face? If volcanoes can cause so much trouble, what would happen after all those bombs kicked up a lot of dust? And all those firestorms burned up all those cities with their fuel dumps and asphalt pavements and flammable buildings, sending smoke up high?

Crutzen didn't have data on burning cities, but he did have data on forest fires and he assumed that the city firestorms might spread to the forests. So Crutzen and an American colleague, John Birks, wrote a paper in 1982 for the Swedish environmental journal Ambio on the smoke from forest fires that a war might cause -- and calculated that a typical nuclear war might cause enough atmospheric disruption from forest fires alone to prevent 99 percent of the sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth, and that the effect might last for weeks.

Is a simple calculation reliable? One can't just experiment by burning cities down, but there is the smoke-haze data from forest fires. The volcanoes and the weather records have provided a lot of data with which to calibrate computer models of dust in the atmosphere. But the next part of the story came when people working on very different problems applied their expertise to Crutzen and Birk's scenario. Carl Sagan and two of his former students, Owen Toon and James Pollack [the world's preeminent authority on planetary atmospheres], had developed computerized models to study how the giant dust storm on Mars might have operated [Sagan was Toon's thesis advisor and an expert on this subject]; Richard Turco [the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' award] and James Ackerman had been using a more sophisticated version of this computerized model to test the notion that dust clouds kicked up by a meteor striking the earth might have been the cause of the mass extinctions postulated by Alvarez et al. Turco saw an advance copy of Crutzen and Birk's work, and realized that smoke was much more important than dust because of what it did to atmospheric temperatures.

The five had gotten together to study the biologists' mass extinction problem, but now they shifted and extended Crutzen and Birks' calculations using the sophisticated computer "working model" of the atmosphere; they included estimates for burning cities as well as burning forests. Turco, Toon, Ackerman, Pollack, and Sagan wrote a paper (soon known by the acronym TTAPS) published in Science [Science magazine is the most prestigious scientific magazine in the US] in late 1983 detailing the consequences of nuclear exchanges of various sizes and types; the TTAPS report was delayed one year, Sagan said, because their U.S. government sponsors were nervous about the political reaction and wanted more studies done before letting it become public knowledge. But news circulated quickly in the scientific community anyway.

...In the interim year before the TTAPS publication, while the results were circulating privately, a group of physical scientists met to assess the Crutzen-Birks and TTAPS reports; every time they found a neglected factor that might lessen the effects, they also found several that would make things even worse." [The study concluded that temperatures could be lowered by as much as 35 degrees.]

[Sophist adds: Turco's employer at the time also insisted on rigorous internal review of the paper. This review raised technical issues regarding the report, but never suggested it was politically motivated. It is possible to state without qualification that Turco, at least, was not motivated by ideology and that the science of the paper was entirely unaffected by political concerns.]

So that's the basic story. What have we learned about the way science proceeds? Here are some key points:
1. The TTAPS study grew naturally out of previous work on related issues.
2. The scientists who worked on this and related issues were among the most respected in their fields.
3. The TTAPS report went through 3 levels of peer review -- two internal reviews and the peer review demanded by Science magazine - before publication.
4. The topic of the paper cannot be studied directly (obviously, no one wants to start a nuclear war in order to find out what happens). However, there are related tests that can be made: dust storms on Mars; volcanoes; forest fires; and asteroid impacts (which themselves can be studied indirectly). Notwithstanding such tests, certain assumptions must be made and those assumptions may drastically affect the outcome.
5. Because the point of the study was to make a plausible prediction, the study could not be characterized as "true" or "false". It could only be described as "plausible" or "not plausible". Because of the complex issues, only an expert could make such an evaluation.

The nuclear winter scenario was controversial from the beginning. A later, very critical article, for example, quoted Richard Feynman, Freeman Dyson, and Victor Weisskopf - all prominent physicists, but not experts in this field - as making derogatory comments about the TTAPS paper. Dyson and Weisskopf denied the quotes attributed to them; Feynman could not remember saying it. Other studies attacked some of the assumptions, while later studies of the atmosphere caused modification of some of the formulas used in the paper. For the current understanding of the issue, I'll quote the Columbia Encyclopedia online:

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.

nuclear winter

theory holding that the smoke and dust produced by a large nuclear war would result in a prolonged period of cold on the earth. The earliest version of the theory, which was put forward in the early 1980s in the so-called TTAPS report (named for last initials of its authors, Richard P. Turco, Owen B. Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan), held that the ensuing low temperatures and prolonged periods of darkness would obliterate plant life and seriously threaten the existence of the human species. Later models, which took into account additional variables, confirmed the basic conclusions of the TTAPS report and suggested that the detonation of 100 megatons (the explosive power of 100 million tons of TNT) over 100 cities could produce temperature drops ranging from 5 to 15 degrees.

So, what's the point here? Well, if someone were to suggest that

"nuclear winter was a meaningless formula, tricked out with bad science, for policy ends. It was political from the beginning",

we would all know that such a suggestion was blatantly false. And if that same person were to repeat the quotes from Feynman, Dyson, and Weisskopf after those quotes had been disputed, the most charitable conclusion we could reach is that such person was, well, careless with the facts. If the same person then went on to imply that subsequent studies undercut the basic conclusions of the study, we would suspect that such person might not be an expert, or even a scientist. We would also know that such person didn't interpret the later studies the same way the Encyclopedia did. Finally, if that same person suggested that TTAPS "subverted science to political ends" with the risk of "Lysenkoism" or "Nazi euthanasia" (!!!), then we might suspect this person of himself engaging in the politicization of science and reach an even less charitable conclusion about him. I sure did.

[> [> Thanks -- Darby, 10:05:05 01/10/04 Sat

Is it fair to say that this is a "button" area for you?

I appreciate your taking the time to give your perspective on this. It doesn't surprise me that some of this evolved from rain forest research, which is one of the sloppiest arenas I know - it's almost like peer review must amount to "I'll let this obvious incongruity slide, because I know you'll do the same for my papers." It's one of the few areas I know of where when field tests don't work, they get published as confirming the initial hypothesis (kind of, "Oh, we now realize we should have gone this way with it - surely the results will match up if we do this differently next year!"). Although I'm more familiar with the ecosystem and diversity stuff than the atmospheric, I don't know of any field test data (the Gulf War fires aren't the only example) that comes close to matching what's supposed to happen with smoke. At least the dust and PCB data is more cooperative in reality.

Your criticism of Crichton using similar tactics doesn't quite work, though, unless he's responsible for putting this on the web. I don't consider a lecture at Caltech - presumably to a group with the background to look into the assertions - equivalent to introducing a dramatic concept in a Sunday supplement. He was maybe a bit over the top, true, but the guy works in potboilers and television now, and was delivering a live lecture, so that's no surprise.

He did claim that the mentioned critics' quotes were revuted but later the revutations were revuted (yikes!) - I have no idea if that's true, but if Crichton had those later facts, I don't see him as careless.

Overall, I thought of this as a useful if colorful warning that heroes, even in science, are not beyond pushing an idea that they feel is important, even if that means that they play a bit fast and loose with the rules of their vocations. But the reason it made an impact on me is that I feel, from looking at a fraction of it, that the evidence is weak and the logic suspect. And I know how commonly science is driven by intense feelings and a compulsion to shake people by their metaphoric lapels.

Again, it comes down to opinion and human nature anyway, and I am by no measure an expert in this area. I'm sorry if that has put me in the position of denigrating someone you respect - it won't be the first time my foot has lived in my mouth.

[> [> [> Well, this did (obviously) push a button... -- Sophist, 13:06:09 01/10/04 Sat

But I'm not sure what aspect about it was responsible. I believe several factors did it:

1. I would never deny that politics and science sometimes intermingle in harmful ways. However, ALL of his examples were chosen from a right wing perspective. That ticked me off, since the danger is at least equal from both sides. In fact, I think it fair to say that government -- whichever side is in power -- is the largest purveyor of politicized science.

2. The particular example of TTAPS happens to be something I know quite a bit about, and he's dead wrong about it in every possible way. Worse, he's dishonestly wrong. Though I didn't mention it above, he obviously took his information on TTAPS from an article by a right winger named Russell Seitz who is not a scientist and who was the source of the denied quotes and other inaccurate information.

3. The "Lysenkoism" and "Nazi euthanasia" comments were SO outrageous that any reader should lose all respect for the author.

4. There are numerous debater's tricks scattered throughout the speech; I found these offensive in light of the topic and thesis.

5. There were other errors of fact on the other examples, so many I don't have the time to correct them all. Without actually counting, I'd say there are more factual errors than correct statements in the speech.

6. The question of using models in science is an interesting one. My own view is that opposition to them amounts to little more than fogeyism. That said, use of them is a substitute for direct testing, and for that reason a great deal of care is required. A priori dismissal of them as "nonscience" is, however, absurd.

He did claim that the mentioned critics' quotes were revuted but later the revutations were revuted (yikes!) - I have no idea if that's true, but if Crichton had those later facts, I don't see him as careless.

It not only is NOT true, but the information is available on the web. I found it in preparing my post above.

I thought of this as a useful if colorful warning that heroes, even in science, are not beyond pushing an idea that they feel is important, even if that means that they play a bit fast and loose with the rules of their vocations. But the reason it made an impact on me is that I feel, from looking at a fraction of it, that the evidence is weak and the logic suspect.

I have no problem with this in general. There are good historical examples to choose from (Buffon and New World animals, for example). My complaints are that (a) his examples were chosen to score what appears to me to be a political point, and (b) in fact those examples do not support his thesis.

[> [> Thank you, Sophist -- dub ;o), 12:25:18 01/10/04 Sat

Thank you so much for taking the time to put together a post that goes far toward explaining an obviously complex situation for the layperson. Not many would bother, and I appreciate it.

I actually know something about this story from someone who was there and whose reliability is beyond question. I'm not going to disclose details because I don't have permission, but I am going to add some observations that are not public knowledge. Otherwise, I'm going to let others tell the story for me.

Again, if you try to see this from the perspective of a person with no scientific background, I think you will recognize the difficulty inherent in sorting out the "facts" from what is public knowledge, never mind the hidden details!

;o)