You spin me right round

Ben Goldacre always has interesting things to say about the science behind health care and the pharmaceutical industry. In one of his recent posts he writes about a research project that examined 72 trials with negative results, i.e. an investigated drug or treatment did not cause a desired effect. Out of all of these trials, he quotes that only 9 gave any figures in the trials' abstracts and that 28 gave no numerical results at all.

What was in the reports was "spin," or the authors' attempts to project the results in a positive light. In order to prevent this, he says, trials are supposed to be registered before they are performed so that their intended purpose can not be changed. Additionally, there are guidelines that dictate what must be included in a report. These rules, however, are more akin to suggestions since there is no enforcement of them.

Can such a system be implemented in the physical sciences? I don't think so. Often, we're actually learning about the topic as we proceed through the research. No amount of preparation can allow us to establish a hypothesis sufficient for inclusion in a detailed report before we undertake the experiment. Hypotheses, I feel, are best constructed concurrent with an experiment. And as for report guidelines? Well, anyone who has had to deal with reviewers' critiques of their papers will tell you that there is rarely any consensus about what makes a good report.

I suppose that one could argue that a grant proposal tries to satisfy this purpose, but I can't say that I'm experienced enough to comment one way or another on it.

On science and faith

Here is an interesting article from Talking Philosophy Magazine. The author discusses the similarity and difference between religions faith and scientific faith. I believe it is often taken for granted that much of what we know about the natural world does not exist in the strict sense; all that we truly know is the outcome of an experiment. Theoretical models, such as the concept of protons and electrons or the theory of gravity, create entities or concepts that don't actually exist in the same way that a ball or dog exists. They are simply mental constructs that are used to explain repeated experimental outcomes and predict future behavior.

Of course, one can always argue that these constructs are "true" in the sense that they are predictive and can be tested as opposed to religious concepts. But I'm not so certain that their predictive powers and testability prove that they exist. "Truth" and "existence" seem to be two separate ideas here. So, in some sense, all of us, whether religious or not, believe in things that don't exist.

Fun with thermodynamics

Admittedly, the thought experiment I'm about to tell you about is simply explained by thermodynamics. Despite this, I puzzled over it for a while since it is very counter-intuitive, at least to me.

Suspend a weight from an elastic band so it is stretched (only slightly) beyond its equilibrium point. Now, heat the band with a hair dryer. Does the weight move up or down?

Give up? It moves upward. Do you know why?

I plan to verify this experimentally at some point.

If you swim after eating, your stomach will cramp

As a student of the physical sciences, the importance of experimentation for determining the true principles behind many natural phenomena is impressed upon me on a near daily basis. However, I am becoming increasingly convinced that carefully designed experiments are even more important for the social sciences.

Within the the social sciences, there are (to my untrained eye at least) few theories to predict the behavior of individuals or groups. Furthermore, their behavior is often influenced greatly by the interests of other groups. For example, McDougall's Born to Run contains a chapter about the drastic increase in foot and knee injuries that occurred following the development of the athletic shoe in the 1970's. Despite an enormous amount of evidence that running shoes are the cause of many running-related injuries, companies such as Nike create a "false truth" for the public: the more cushioned a running shoe is (and the more expensive), the better it is for your feet and knees. Though this is a misconception perpetrated by a company in the field of sports medicine, the idea can be carried over quite easily to the social sciences (see Levitt's Freakanomics). Thus, common wisdom in the social sciences can be attributed to a lack of predictive power and conflicting interests.

The importance of these fields to society is enormous when compared to the physical sciences. After all, if the common wisdom is wrong in the physical sciences, the general public is likely to be affected by not having a new iPod or smart phone until the misconception is discovered and the science is applied to new technologies. However, if misconceptions exist in the social sciences, large groups of people could go without health care, school curricula could be poorly engineered by state governments (New Math, anyone?), and governments could be buried by incredible deficits.

Thus, carefully designed and controlled experiments in the social sciences, and really any science, are important for everyone. Without them, the truth might remain buried in speculation and deception.

Like cures like?

Yesterday some fellow CREOL students and I visited a high school in Sanford to discuss our roles as graduate students and to demonstrate some basic scientific principles of our research with the students. The high school is a special school that is administered by Seminole County for students who have been expelled from normal public high schools. The idea (at least how I understand it) is that placing students with similar behavioral problems in the same setting will allow them to receive more attention from teachers since they are no longer overshadowed by the well-performing students. Of course, the obvious objection to a school such as this is that packing many students who all have had disciplinary issues into the same classroom will prevent everyone from learning effectively since the teachers will be less likely to control the students given their nature.

After speaking with one of the teachers, the consensus seemed to be that the system was working and that the students were more eager to learn (on the average) than they were at a normal institution. Specifically she cited the personal attention that the students receive as a major cause for their better performance. Of course, the school still has a wealth of issues with discipline, but if a few students end up for the better, then I suppose that the school has served some good utilitarian purpose.

Keeping with a utilitarian discussion, it would be worthwhile to consider the cost per student that is paid by the government (and indirectly by taxpayers) to run such a school. Suppose only a small percentage of the students actually perform better academically at this school after having been expelled from a normal public high school. Would the additional costs of running this school justify the improvement in the education of this small percentage?

To be honest, I'm not quite sure what my opinion is on the matter. However, I sincerely respect the teachers, both here and at all schools, who have to deal with both the duty of educating the youth and the need to maneuver through an often hostile bureaucratic system of school administration.

Language leads to scientific understanding

I am currently working on my Ph.D. candidacy report. The topic is on optical sensing and manipulation of cells. While brainstorming for the abstract, I wrote the following expression: "Organisms are organized hierarchically..."

Of course I immediately realized that "Organisms are organized" sounds redundant. But it did make me notice the connection between the two words and their common root. Life is built from inter-dependent structures that form higher levels of  organized complexity; from a reductionist standpoint, it is a system of organization built on lower level systems of organization. Hence, we have the word organism.

This little personal epiphany probably impresses only me, but I think it serves as a reminder to everyone that language can very often lead to a deeper understanding of a topic. We need only look to the literal meaning behind an object or phenomenon's name to connect it with a more familiar idea.

What's also interesting about this particular example is that the meaning of the word "organism" suggests that when the term was coined people already understood that lifeforms were made of some sort of hierarchical structure. According to Dictionary.com, the word's origin comes from around 1650. Not surprisingly, this is roughly the same time that Robert Hooke began looking at cells through microscopes. So not only can the literal meaning of a phenomenon's name lead to a more intuitive understanding of the phenomena, but so to can the name's etymology place the idea within a historical context.

One more note about numerics

A friend of mine pointed out that numerics are very useful in fabrication since they allow one to predict the behavior of a material or device without having to perform costly trials in the lab. I completely agree that this is another strength of simulations.

A demonstration of this idea can be found in this Nature paper, where the authors first performed calculations of the surface free energy of a crystal before fabricating them. These calculations enabled them to develop titanium dioxide crystals with high surface reactivity for use in solar cells and photocatalysis. Without the numerics, it is likely that countless experimental trials would have been required to grow the crystals.

(I came across this paper via Ross McKenzie's condensed matter blog)