Professor at Imperial College driven to his death?

December 8, 2014

This is sad and rather depressing.

On his blog, Professor David Colquhoun, FRS reports on the case of Professor Stefan Grimm of Imperial College who seems to have been bullied to his death.

Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm

This week’s Times Higher Education carried a report of the death, at age 51, of Professor Stefan Grimm: Imperial College London to ‘review procedures’ after death of academic. He was professor of toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial.

Now Stefan Grimm is dead. Despite having a good publication record, he failed to do sufficiently expensive research, so he was fired (or at least threatened with being fired).

“Speaking to Times Higher Education on condition of anonymity, two academics who knew Professor Grimm, who was 51, said that he had complained of being placed under undue pressure by the university in the months leading up to his death, and that he had been placed on performance review.”

Having had cause to report before on bullying at Imperial’s Department of Medicine, I was curious to know more. 

Martin Wilkins wrote to Grimm on 10 March 2014. ………

……. It didn’t take long to get hold of an email from Grimm that has been widely circulated within Imperial. The mail is dated a month after his death. It isn’t known whether it was pre-set by Grimm himself or whether it was sent by someone else. It’s even possible that it wasn’t written by Grimm himself, though if it is an accurate description of what happened, that’s not crucial.

No doubt any Imperial staff member would be in great danger if they were to publish the mail. So, as a public service, I shall do so. ……

Read the rest at DC’s Improbable Science. 

Academic progress and goodness of research are not necessarily connected.

 

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RSS YTD Temps Only 7th Highest Since 1998

December 8, 2014

Global warming PR always peaks at the time of a UN climate conference. Last week we had much weeping and gnashing of teeth about 2014 going to be the warmest year ever (based on adjusted temperature data sets). This week has started with glaciers melting everywhere.
In the meantime the satellite record shows that the pause in global temperature continues (over 18 years now) and that ice cover at the poles is pretty close to the average over the last 30 years.

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The difference

December 8, 2014

Dress code for football coaches.

The key difference of course being that European football coaches are more formally dressed than the US football coaches.

Reblogged from RealScience

B4QpUtmCcAAsMA3

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Using racial profiling is to be banned – except for those who need to use it

December 6, 2014

The point about profiling of any kind is that is tries to tie certain kinds of unwanted behaviour to other visible characteristics as a way of trying to detect such unwanted behaviour before it happens. But in almost every case it tries to increase the probability of detection of what is always a very low incidence rate of a particular behaviour.

For example if more terrorists tend to be bearded than not, then all bearded people are made subject to extra checks even though the incidence of a bearded person being a terrorist may be very low. The liberties of bearded people at large are sacrificed for the potential benefit of finding the “bad”, bearded guy. Or, as is happening in the US, and because certain crimes are more likely to be carried out by black or hispanic people, police detain and check black and hispanics more often just because they are black or hispanic rather than because they have any other indicators. But the connections between behaviour and profiles are a long, long way from being a science. Profiling is a very crude tool.

But using just race or appearance is not just crude, it also uses the ends (finding the “bad guy”) to justify the means (disenfranchising a great many of a particular group). And of course these means then tend to become self-fulfilling. It inconveniences and harasses the many in order to find the very few. It becomes a vicious loop when the means used provoke the very behaviour that is to be detected and avoided. And then to use such a crude tool – as profiling actually is – ends up with a huge amount of collateral damage.

The recent deaths of black people in encounters with white policemen, where the US Grand Juries do just what the prosecutor wants, and finds that policemen have no case to answer, have brought this again in to focus. And so racial profiling is to be banned except for use by the Department of Homeland Security and the Customs. Presumably the justification is that the DHS and Customs are looking at “very serious crimes”. Therefore the trampling on of individual liberties of many can be justified by the level of the potential downside.

VAGazette: As the Obama administration prepares to announce new curbs on racial profiling by federal law enforcement, government officials said Friday that many officers and agents at the Department of Homeland Security will still be allowed to use the controversial practice, including while they screen airline passengers and guard the country’s southwestern border. …… 

The changes will also expand the definition of profiling to prevent FBI agents from considering factors such as religion and national origin when opening cases, officials said.

But after sharp disagreements among top officials, the administration will exempt a broad swath of DHS, namely the Transportation Security Administration and key parts of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to law enforcement officials.

The announcement of the new policy comes at a time of rising national protest over allegations that police engage in profiling when investigating and using force against minorities. The debate has been fueled by the recent deaths of three unarmed African-Americans at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, New York and Cleveland, and the absence so far of criminal charges against the police officers who were involved.

But this logic is flawed. If it is acceptable for use by Customs to look for drug runners, then why is it not also acceptable for policemen doing the same thing? Either it is a good enough tool or it is not.

This action does not actually address the problems displayed at Ferguson or New York. And it is not just that there is a single problem. Policemen in the US, it is clear, profile people by race and do it automatically and unconsciously. They have some justification in real crime rates. Prosecutors and District Attorney’s use the grand juries for political ends – especially in not prosecuting those that they wish to protect. They also use prosecutions to harass political opponents. And thirdly – and that cannot either be ignored – the crime rate among blacks is undoubtedly significantly higher than for other groups (whatever the causes may be).

I suspect that these actions are primarily for the administration to demonstrate that they are doing something – anything – and to defuse the current wave of protests.

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Swedish political crisis follows a failure of leadership

December 6, 2014

Leadership and courage do not result from administering a set of rules.  Changing the rules will not produce them either. But even a bad set of rules can be made to work if courage and leadership are present. Minority governments work when the leaders of the minority have the courage and the imagination and the leadership to maintain the temporary majorities necessary and sufficient to govern.

 Contrary to what is being taken as fact, a new general election in Sweden has not yet been called. While the current Red/Green government has had its budget rejected by the parliament and the current Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, has announced his intention to call a new election, he cannot actually do so until 29th December. The laws require that a new election cannot be called until 3 months after this parliament first met on 29th September. In fact it is perfectly possible – instead – for a no-confidence motion against the government to be called in parliament (10% of members have to call for such a vote) and a simple majority of the vote can shift power from the PM and his government to the speaker of the house. If that happens before 22nd December (Christmas holidays intervening) then Löfven will not be around to call a new election as he intends to do on 29th December. It would then be up to the speaker or any other government which is established to make such a call. In practice Swedish parliaments have never before taken such a bold step and it would take a level of political courage that members of this parliament do not seem to have.

In municipalities all over Sweden a variety of coalitions between the different parties have been formed to create working majorities so that the business of government can continue. It always needs the leader of the largest local party to show some imagination and courage and not a little skill to create these coalitions. Some coalitions sometimes fail on contentious issues which the parties cannot overcome, but then a new coalition emerges so that the business of government continues.

It is this leadership – to first imagine and then to constitute a working majority – which is visible in abundance at local government level which has been absent at the national level. At national level there is now much talk about changing the rules of voting to enable a minority government to govern. This is a red herring. There is much talk also blaming the Sweden Democrat Party of breaking the “Swedish Model”. This, too, is another red herring. The Sweden Democrats may not have followed practice but they certainly broke no rules. 

The Prime Minister, the Social Democrats, their Environmental Party partners and their far Left supporters are all screeching about a failure of the rules and the malicious nature of the Sweden Democrats. Even the opposition is calling for a change of rules. But this is not a case of the failure of the rules. It has been a case of a failure of leadership, a failure of the ability to see what is required to govern and ultimately the skill to govern.

Löfven has not had the imagination to visualise a manner of cooperation with the other parties (whether jointly or separately) which would have given a working majority. He has taken the easy path of not crossing the Left/Right divide. He brought the Greens into government and took the support of the far Left. He effectively raised and strengthened the wall between Left and Right. He missed the first rule of building consensus by allying too closely with small and extreme groups, which immediately alienated all others. As soon as he had allied with one party on the left he made no real efforts to balance that with an ally on the right. Starting from a minority position on the left he only achieved another minority but extreme position which only hardened the position of his opponents. He judged that the opposition would be too fractured to defeat his grouping and that was a strategic blunder. He was reduced later to arguing why the opposition should remain fractured and not come together! But even after the blunder led to the defeat in parliament, he had not the vision or the skill to put together a new working majority. Instead he seems to have abdicated his responsibility to look for a solution and announced his intention to dump the problem back on to the electorate.

Though there are a few voices calling for parliamentarians to table a no-confidence motion, I am not expecting any group of 35 members to show the necessary courage. That will lead to another election on March 22nd. But the issue which should be the deciding issue and which should transcend all others should be that of leadership and the courage to govern.

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Finland approves new Russian nuclear plant

December 5, 2014

Russia’s Rosatom had offered a to supply the reactor for the 1,200 megawatt Hanhikivi 1 nuclear power plant for Fennovoima at Pyhäjoki in north-east Finland. The Finnish government had required Finnish ownership of greater than 60% as a condition for granting a license for construction. Construction is planned to start in 2015 for the plant to be in operation in 2024. With Finnish Fortum now taking a 15% share in the project, Finnish ownership now exceeds 65%.

The Finnish parliament has this morning has given the basic approval for construction to start.

Reuters:

Finland’s parliament on Friday approved plans to build a new nuclear plant supplied by Russia’s state-owned Rosatom despite East-West tensions over the Ukraine crisis.

With support from 115 parliamentarians against 74 opposed, the vote comes at a time when the European Union has called for EU member states to curb energy deals with Russia.

The Fennovoima reactor in northern Finland, which will be supplied and fuelled by Rosatom, is expected to begin output in 2024.

Hanhikivi 1

The AES-2006 model proposed for the Hanhikivi site (source: Fennovoima)

NEI: Finland’s Fennovoima and Rusatom Overseas have signed a Project Development Agreement aiming at a nuclear power plant supply contract for Hanhikivi 1 to be signed by the end of 2013.

The companies have set “common targets,” according to which negotiations will be carried out. They are also in talks over the possibility of Rusatom Overseas acquiring a 34% stake in Fennovoima.

The Russian 1200 MW AES-2006 pressurized water reactor (VVER) is being considered for the Hanhikivi 1 project, in northern Finland. The plant corresponds with IAEA and EUR requirements, according to Rusatom Overseas. However, for licensing purposes it “will be adapted to be in accordance with Finnish national safety standards.”

Direct negotiations with Rusatom Overseas begun in April 2013. Talks also started with Toshiba in February 2013, but will now only continue with the Russian firm.

Fennovoima, which is owned by 60 companies representing industry, trade, and energy sectors from all around Finland, said that before a plant supply contract is signed, all of Fennovoima’s owners must decide on their continuation in the project.

Foto: Fennovoima

Image Fennovoima

 

 

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Homo erectus was making engravings 500,000 years ago

December 4, 2014

Long before any specimens of Homo sapiens were even gleams in the eyes of their hominin ancestors, Homo erectus peoples on Java (how and when did they get there?) were using shells as tools and were making engravings on the shells themselves. A new paper in Nature reports on studies of hundreds of fossil shells from the Homo erectus site Trinil, on the Indonesian island of Java. The shells are part of the Dubois Collection held at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden. They have been dated to about 500,000 years ago.

Of course if all Homo Sapiens came Out of Africa (or Africarabia) around 100,000 years ago, then these Homo erectus on Java must have gone extinct without leaving any survivors (unless some of their genes still live on through later admixtures).

Joordens J.C.A., et al. Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool product i on and engraving, Nature 10.1038/nature19362.

The 'Pseudodon shell' fossil with the engraving made by Homo erectus op Trinil. (Photo: Wim Lustenhouwer, Vrije Universiteit)

The ‘Pseudodon shell’ fossil with the engraving made by Homo erectus on Trinil. (Photo: Wim Lustenhouwer, Vrije Universiteit)

From the Leiden University Press Release:

Oldest ever engraving discovered on 500,000-year-old shell

Homo erectus on Java was already using shells of freshwater mussels as tools half a million years ago, and as a ‘canvas’ for an engraving. An international team of researchers, led by Leiden archaeologist José Joordens, published this discovery on 3 December in Nature. The discovery provides new insights into the evolution of human behaviour.

‘Until this discovery, it was assumed that comparable engravings were only made by modern humans – Homo sapiens – in Africa, starting about 100,000 years ago,’ says lead author José Joordens, researcher at the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University.

A team of 21 researchers studied hundreds of fossil shells from the Homo erectus site Trinil, on the Indonesian island of Java. The shells are part of the Dubois Collection held at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden. The shells were excavated at the end of the 19th century by the Dutch physician and researcher Eugène Dubois, the discoverer ofPithecanthropus erectus – now known as Homo erectus.

The discovery of an engraved geometrical pattern on one of the shells came as a total surprise. The zigzag pattern, that can only be seen with oblique lighting, clearly pre-dates the weathering processes on the shell arising from fossilisation. The study has excluded the possibility that the pattern could have been caused by animals or by natural weathering processes and shows that the zigzag pattern is the work of Homo erectus.

By applying two dating methods, researchers at the VU University Amsterdam and Wageningen University have determined that the shell with the engraving is minimally 430,000 and maximally 540,000 years old.This means that the engraving is at least four times older than the previously oldest known engravings, found in Africa. …..

…… This research has shown that these early human-like people were very clever about how they opened these large freshwater mussels; they drilled a hole through the shell using a sharp object, possibly a shark’s tooth, exactly at the point where the muscle is attached that keeps the shell closed. ‘The precision with which these early humans worked indicates great dexterity and detailed knowledge of mollusc anatomy,’ says Frank Wesselingh, a researcher and expert on fossil shells at Naturalis. The molluscs were eaten and the empty shells were used to manufacture tools, such as knives.

A. Shell tool, made by Homo erectus. B. Detail of the sharp edge used for cutting or etching. (Photo: Francesco d'Errico, Bordeaux University)

A. Shell tool, made by Homo erectus. B. Detail of the sharp edge used for cutting or etching. (Photo: Francesco d’Errico, Bordeaux University)

 

 

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Low farce as Stefan Löfven gives up – will call a new election on 29th December

December 3, 2014

It has been another busy day in the Swedish parliament and for the political commentators. The 2-month old Red/Green government’s budget (supported by the communistic far Left) was defeated in Parliament. The alternative budget presented by the right-leaning Alliance of opposition parties, was also supported – going against past practice – by the far-right Sweden Democrats, and prevailed. We now have the very odd situation of a Red/Green government now having to administer the opposition’s budget which comes into force on 1st January 2015. It has been a spectacular failure by the Red/Green government after just 2 months in power.

Stefan Löfven, the Prime Minister, could have just resigned and let the speaker try to get a government cobbled together which could manage to get a budget passed. Strictly he could not call a new election since it has been less than 3 months since this parliament first met. Those 3 months are up on December 29th.

Many political commentators called this the most dramatic happening in Swedish politics since 1958! But I thought there was more of low farce than of high drama in the proceedings today. Everybody had announced how they were going to vote yesterday. There was 6 hours of meaningless debate in parliament before the vote.  Each speaker tried to avoid blame. CYA of the lowest order! Löfven called a press conference and lashed out like a very sore loser. He blamed everybody else and then announced that he would be calling a new election on December 29th to be then held on 22nd March next year. He comes from the trade union movement and has had a reputation as a good negotiator in industrial disputes. But his wage negotiation skills were not up to political negotiations. He has moved too far, too fast to the left in appeasing the Greens and the far Left party. So much so that he misjudged his strengths and weaknesses completely. He provided the Sweden Democrats an irresistible opportunity to become the centre of attraction in bringing him down. In fact he also managed with his lurch to the left to alienate the Alliance so much that it became impossible for them to rescue him (even if they had wanted to) from the quagmire of his own making.

So today he threw his hands up in the air and announced he was giving up and that he would call a new election – when he could – and ask the electorate to take the call on his budget. It strikes me that this is not just giving up. It is also a tacit acknowledgement of misjudgements and a lack of competence in managing the process of getting his budget passed.

Maybe he is hoping that before the new election is actually called 26 days from now, that the Alliance or just the Moderate Party (2nd largest party in parliament) will somehow find a way of saving his face by offering him some form of cooperation. Maybe his public announcement that he would campaign together with the Greens is just negotiating tactics. Arithmetically the only way for a majority to form is if the Social Democrats cooperate with the Alliance or just the Moderates. It is highly unlikely that the Moderate Party will just abandon its allies. The chances for the Alliance to form a Grand Coalition with the Social Democrats is extremely small and will extract a heavy price. The Social Democrats would have to dump the Greens and the far Left. That price may be too heavy for the Social Democrats

But I can speculate that if the Social Democrats have the long term in mind and are prepared to dump the Greens and the far-Left, Löfven could retain the post of Prime Minister in a Grand Coalition with the Alliance. They would command a very stable parliamentary majority which could manage to keep the Sweden Democrats completely marginalised. But some of the key portfolios – such as Finance, Defence and Foreign Affairs – would have to go to the Alliance. It may not be politically possible for this crop of politicians, but it could be the best possible thing for the country.

But unless some such cooperation is finalised within the next 26 days, the Swedish parliamentarians would have failed the electorate. And just going back to the electorate may produce the same result and solve nothing.

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Amateur dramatics on the Swedish political landscape

December 3, 2014

Yesterday was a busy day in Swedish politics, but it was amateur theatricality and not any high drama. I am left with the perception of some unruly teenagers (the Swedish Democrats) acting like hooligans in a classroom but where the adults (the other parties) have not the faintest idea what to do. They cannot expel the unruly elements and can only threaten not to speak to them. And they are then surprised that the unruliness continues. A most unedifying spectacle.

The Sweden Democrats announced yesterday that they would vote for the opposition’s alternative budget today in parliament rather than merely abstain to allow the red/green government’s budget to pass.

A Government Crisis will therefore be upon is when the vote is taken later this morning.

The government went into full panic mode last night and invited (begged) the opposition alliance (but not the Sweden Democrats or the Left Party) to emergency talks last night. They had to attend of course and they met with the Social Democrats and their Environment Party colleagues. Of course they just reiterated that it was not an opposition’s duty to help the government to pass its own budget and they would just be voting for their own alternative today.

The Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, is in a bind. He does not have many options. Once he loses the vote today he can either call a new election (cannot be called before 29th December) or he can dump the green millstone around his neck and try and build a Grand Coalition in the German style with the moderates. Actually this is not that crazy. If he dumps the greens and the far left (who he has accommodated to a great extent so far), it is conceivable that sufficient common ground could be found with the Moderate Party for a very stable, majority government. Of course there would be some areas of ideological conflict but they would both have to leave those differences aside for their term together and revisit them in better days.

My own opinion is that Löfven and the Social Democrats have been weakened rather than strengthened by their association with the Greens and the Far Left. In fact the weight given to these minority parties has – in part – precipitated the crisis. The deep reds and the greens are anathema to the Sweden Democrats. The other parties would like to have no truck with the far-right Sweden Democrats (who I still perceive to be a bunch of junkies and hooligans) even though 13% of the country voted for them. They are attempting to make them political pariahs but they are not being very skillful about it. The other parties are coming across as bullies and are failing to show up the far-right extremists for what they truly are. (They have not yet learned that just shouting how bad the Sweden Democrats are does not address the reasons why their voters shifted their allegiance). Of course, they are all now blaming the Sweden Democrats for the crisis, but the reality is that the Social Democrats have been more than a little incompetent in giving undue weight to the wishes of the greens and the far left in their budget proposition. The bottom line is that the government has not had the skill to put together the support needed to get their budget passed.

All the other 7 parties have been rather clumsy – and inept – in their efforts to marginalise the Sweden Democrats and have only succeeded in catapulting them to the fulcrum of an artificial and ill-conceived crisis. I was listening to some of the comments yesterday from some of the politicians of the past and who are no longer in politics. I can’t help feeling that the current parties are lacking in pondus and could well use some older and more experienced advisors.

I am also quite sure that any sales or marketing manager from industry could teach these political parties a thing or two about how to marginalise a competitor – even in their home market.

Bringing in the extremists from the left or the right will not work.

Swedish political landscape 2014

Swedish political landscape 2014

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Criminal fathers have stupid sons – Swedish study

December 2, 2014

I first thought this new paper was something of a hoax, but perhaps it isn’t. Our genes are the ultimate multi-taskers. Not only do they combine to cooperate with a variety of other genes to express certain characteristics, each gene seems to take part in many such cooperations in many other teams of genes.. If criminal behaviour is (even partly) genetic, and if intelligence is also (partly) genetic, then it is not impossible that the genetic factors which lead to increased criminal behaviour in the parent may also cause (directly or indirectly) lower cognitive ability (intelligence) in offspring. Of course I would expect that the tendency to have lower intelligence will also be exhibited in the parent.

Swedish and Finnish researchers have looked at data for over 1,000,000 men and “found that men whose fathers had any criminal convictions tended to have lower cognitive-ability scores than men whose fathers had no such history”.

A. Latvala, R. Kuja-Halkola, N. Langstrom, P. Lichtenstein. Paternal Antisocial Behavior and Sons’ Cognitive Ability: A Population-Based Quasiexperimental Study. Psychological Science, 2014; DOI: 10.1177/0956797614555726

From the Association for Psychological Science press release:

Sons whose fathers have criminal records tend to have lower cognitive abilities than sons whose fathers have no criminal history, data from over 1 million Swedish men show. The research, conducted by scientists in Sweden and Finland, indicates that the link is not directly caused by fathers’ behavior but is instead explained by genetic factors that are shared by father and son. …….. 

… Research looking across generations in families has shown that children of parents who engage in “antisocial” behaviors — such as rule-breaking, aggressive, or violent behavior — are at greater risk for various negative outcomes, including criminality, psychiatric disorders, substance use, and low academic achievement. And research has also shown that individuals who engage in antisocial behaviors tend to have poorer cognitive abilities than those without antisocial tendencies.

Latvala and colleagues wanted to combine these two strands of research to investigate how parents’ antisocial behaviors might affect their children’s cognitive development.

“We wondered whether children of antisocial parents also have lower cognitive ability than children of non-antisocial parents, and if so, whether compromised cognitive functioning might be part of the inherited risk for antisocial behavior,” says Latvala.

The researchers took advantage of extensive data collected from Swedish residents, including data on cognitive ability acquired as part of compulsory military conscription and data on antisocial behavior (in this case, defined as criminal convictions) obtained from a national crime register.

Looking at data from over 1,000,000 men, the researchers found that men whose fathers had any criminal convictions tended to have lower cognitive-ability scores than men whose fathers had no such history.

And this association seemed to be influenced by the severity of the fathers’ criminal history:

“Perhaps most surprising was the clear gradient seen in the magnitude of the association with sons’ cognitive ability by severity of fathers’ criminality: The more severe crimes the father had committed, the poorer was the sons’ cognitive performance,” explains Latvala.

But did fathers’ antisocial behavior have a direct causal effect on sons’ cognitive ability, or could the link be explained by shared genetic factors?

To find out, the researchers compared the link between fathers’ criminal history and sons’ cognitive ability across cousins whose fathers had varying relationships to each other.

Specifically, they examined the link in cousins whose fathers were half-siblings (sharing about 25% of their genetic makeup), cousins whose fathers were full siblings or fraternal twins (sharing about 50% of their genetic makeup), and cousins whose fathers were identical twins (sharing 100% of their genes).

If fathers’ antisocial behavior directly caused sons’ lower cognitive ability, the link would remain equally strong across the comparisons of varying genetic relationships.

The data, however, suggested otherwise. When the researchers took the varying genetic relationships into account, the association between fathers’ criminality and sons’ cognitive ability gradually diminished.

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