“Serious scientific misconduct” but NUS tries to brush it all under the carpet

December 21, 2012

The National University of Singapore is not going to win any prizes for transparency.

It is perfectly understandable that they would like that the massive “serious scientific misconduct” by Alirio Menendez had never occurred but they would seem still be in a state of denial when they refuse to reveal any details. Some 70 of his papers were suspect  and the NUS admits that more than 20 papers are involved but say little else. The NUS – which is desperately trying to buy its way to a reputation – would do better to take a lead in being transparent and – as Retraction Watch points out – follow the example of  “University of Connecticut, Erasmus Medical Center, Tilburg University, and others who’ve been involved in high-profile misconduct cases”.

Retraction Watch has this update on the Melendez saga:

Alirio Melendez, a former National University of Singapore immunologist whose story we’ve been following here since a retraction in September of last year, committed misconduct on an “unprecedented” scale, according to the university, involving more than 20 papers.

Nature’s Richard van Noorden has the scoop:

After a 19-month investigation, the National University of Singapore (NUS) today says that it has determined that one of its former scientists, the immunologist Alirio Melendez, has committed “serious scientific misconduct”.  The university found fabrication, falsification or plagiarism associated with 21 papers, and no evidence indicating that other co-authors were involved in the misconduct, it says.

Melendez has retracted five papers so far, as we’ve reported, but NUS wouldn’t give the whole list. They tell Nature:

“It’s standard procedure that for research-misconduct investigations such a report and the list of papers would be kept confidential,” an NUS spokesperson explained to Nature. She said that the university is now contacting journal editors and co-authors about each of the papers involved, and added that normally the university would not make a public statement at all, but in this case “the scientific misconduct uncovered was unprecedented”. When asked whether the report would remain permanently under wraps, she added: “I don’t think it will be released at a later date.”

Translation: Well, there you have it, folks, please move along, nothing to see here. It’s “standard procedure” to sweep misconduct investigations under the carpet, so we’ll just keep doing things our way, thank you very much. We released a statement this time because the misconduct was “unprecedented.” But misconduct with precedent? We’re not going to release reports about that.

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End of the World postponed to 2nd October 2027 due to construction delays

December 21, 2012

Breaking News!!

The End of the World expected for today 21st December 2012 has been postponed by the Powers That Be.

In an exclusive message the Powers That Be have revealed that the preparations for the World to Come are not yet complete (due to unforeseen construction delays) and the End of the World has had to be postponed. A new contractor has been anointed and appointed and the Powers That Be are utterly confident that the apocalypse will now take place when the Aztec calendar reaches the end of its next 52 year cycle on

2nd October 2027

colliding planets

colliding planets: image Lynette R. Cook/UCLA

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Wind farm performance declines by a third in just 10 years

December 20, 2012

The intermittent nature of wind and the speed restructions on wind turbines means that the load factor of wind farms is low to begin with (about 20 -25% for on-shore units and about 35-40% for off-shore units). But this is only when they are new. They seem to age very rapidly. This study of UK on-shore plants and Danish on-shore and off-shore plants shows that

  1. Wind farms age rapidly with on-shore plants declining in performance by about one-third in 10 years and off-shore plants declining by over 60% in 10 years, and
  2. The economic life of a wind farm is, at best, around 15 years and not the 25 years considered “normal” for a power plant

REF’s press release:

The Renewable Energy Foundation [1] today published a new study, The Performance of Wind Farms in the United Kingdom and Denmark,[2] showing that the economic life of onshore wind turbines is between 10 and 15 years, not the 20 to 25 years projected by the wind industry itself, and used for government projections.  

The work has been conducted by one of the UK’s leading energy & environmental economists, Professor Gordon Hughes of the University of Edinburgh[3], and has been anonymously peer-reviewed.  This groundbreaking study applies rigorous statistical analysis to years of actual wind farm performance data from wind farms in both the UK and in Denmark.

The full report is available here.

The Executive Summary states.

1. Onshore wind turbines represent a relatively mature technology, which ought to have achieved a satisfactory level of reliability in operation as plants age. Unfortunately, detailed analysis of the relationship between age and performance gives a rather different picture for both the United Kingdom and Denmark with a significant decline in the average load factor of onshore wind farms adjusted for wind availability as they get older. An even more dramatic decline is observed for offshore wind farms in Denmark, but this may be a reflection of the immaturity of the technology.

2. The study has used data on the monthly output of wind farms in the UK and Denmark reported under regulatory arrangements and schemes for subsidising renewable energy. Normalised age-performance curves have been estimated using standard statistical techniques which allow for differences between sites and over time in wind resources and other factors.

3. The normalised load factor for UK onshore wind farms declines from a peak of about 24% at age 1 to 15% at age 10 and 11% at age 15. The decline in the normalised load factor for Danish onshore wind farms is slower but still significant with a fall from a peak of 22% to 18% at age 15. On the other hand for offshore wind farms in Denmark the normalised load factor falls from 39% at age 0 to 15% at age 10. The reasons for the observed declines in normalised load factors cannot be fully assessed using the data available but outages due to mechanical breakdowns appear to be a contributory factor.

4. Analysis of site-specific performance reveals that the average normalised load factor of new UK onshore wind farms at age 1 (the peak year of operation) declined significantly from 2000 to 2011. In addition, larger wind farms have systematically worse performance than smaller wind farms. Adjusted for age and wind availability the overall performance of wind farms in the UK has deteriorated markedly since the beginning of the century.

5. These findings have important implications for policy towards wind generation in the UK. First, they suggest that the subsidy regime is extremely generous if investment in new wind farms is profitable despite the decline in performance due to age and over time. Second, meeting the UK Government’s targets for wind generation will require a much higher level of wind capacity – and, thus, capital investment – than current projections imply. Third, the structure of contracts offered to wind generators under the proposed reform of the electricity market should be modified since few wind farms will operate for more than 12–15 years.

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Too “mentally ill” to sell hot-dogs but he can cope with being a Swedish MP!

December 20, 2012

The behaviour of some parliamentarians and all that they get away with never ceases to amaze (whether fiddling expenses in the UK or being convicted criminals in India or being benefit spongers in Sweden).

He was mentally incapable of working at a hot-dog stand (for which he drew sickness benefits) but perfectly able to cope with the strains of being a Member of the Swedish Parliament (which commands a generous salary with no demands).

The Sweden Democrats are riding very high in the polls even though their “junkies and hooligans” image is being further embellished by revelations that one of their leading lights has been living off benefits for most of his adult life. Apparently Johnny Skalin was too mentally disturbed to be able to stand the rigours of working at a hot-dog stand. A stint of 4 hours required 2 days to recover! But working for the party during this time was not too onerous (and he received fees from the party in addition to his “sickness” benefits”).  But after living off benefits for some 13 years he found he was quite able to cope with the tough life of being a Member of Parliament.  He explained in an interview with Aftonbladet that he didn’t want to talk about his illness but it that it took a very long time for him to recover! He has now given up his benefits and can manage on his salary as an MP (about $9000 per month).

The Local has the story:

Sweden Democrat MP Johnny Skalin, whose party describes unemployed immigrants as being “a burden on society”, has lived on state benefits most of his adult life. 

Swedish authorities said in 1997 that Johnny Skalin, who is now 34, was suffering from a mental disorder that prevented him from carrying out his duties in a hotdog stand where he was employed at the time. It was then that he began receiving disability benefits, local newspaper Sundsvalls Tidning wrote. Ten years later, he told the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (Försäkringskassan) that he suffered from extreme tiredness and needed up to two days of rest after working a four-hour shift.

However, that same year he became the head of the Sweden Democrat local chapter in the northeastern town of Sundsvall. “It was naturally a lot of work,” Skalin told the same newspaper.

Skalin also began to study sociology, and went on to co-author a party platform that helped the Sweden Democrats get into parliament in the 2010 election, when it got 5.7 percent of the vote and won 20 seats in the Swedish Riksdag.

Two months into the job as an MP, he told authorities that he no longer needed any benefits for his mental disability.

But the fundamental truism is that voters get the politicians they deserve. And convicted criminals or junkies or hooligans or benefit spongers are as entitled to be members of Parliament as anybody else who can get the votes of the discerning electorate.

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Are IQ tests fundamentally flawed?

December 20, 2012

The issue is not measurement – for measurements made properly do not lie.

But the interpretation of what they measure and how they may be related to what we choose to call “intelligence” is controversial. The uncertainty is exacerbated by the varying definitions of what “intelligence” is. Where is the boundary between native intelligence and that dependent upon some measure of knowledge? Is there intelligence without memory or artificial intelligence without data storage? Is intelligence just processing power or is it processing with purpose? Does judgement matter? Or the speed of learning? Can there be wisdom without intelligence?

Nevertheless “well-constructed IQ tests are generally accepted as an accurate measure of intelligence by the scientific community”.

IQ scores are used as predictors of educational achievement, special needs, job performance and income. They are also used to study IQ distributions in populations and the correlations between IQ and other variables. The average IQ scores for many populations have been rising at an average rate of three points per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect. It is disputed whether these changes in scores reflect real changes in intellectual abilities.

Science Daily reports on a new paper : “After conducting the largest online intelligence study on record, a Western University-led research team has concluded that the notion of measuring one’s intelligence quotient or IQ by a singular, standardized test is highly misleading.”

Fractionating Human Intelligence by Adam Hampshire, Roger R. Highfield, Beth L. Parkin and Adrian M. Owen, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2012.06.022

(A pdf version of the paper is available here).

Summary

What makes one person more intellectually able than another? Can the entire distribution of human intelligence be accounted for by just one general factor? Is intelligence supported by a single neural system? Here, we provide a perspective on human intelligence that takes into account how general abilities or “factors” reflect the functional organization of the brain. By comparing factor models of individual differences in performance with factor models of brain functional organization, we demonstrate that different components of intelligence have their analogs in distinct brain networks. Using simulations based on neuroimaging data, we show that the higher-order factor “g” is accounted for by cognitive tasks corecruiting multiple networks. Finally, we confirm the independence of these components of intelligence by dissociating them using questionnaire variables. We propose that intelligence is an emergent property of anatomically distinct cognitive systems, each of which has its own capacity. 

Highlights

  •  We propose that human intelligence is composed of multiple independent components
  •  Each behavioral component is associated with a distinct functional brain network
  •  The higher-order “g” factor is an artifact of tasks recruiting multiple networks
  •  The components of intelligence dissociate when correlated with demographic variables
While this paper adds weight to the view that the standard IQ test is much too simplistic, I tend to accept that IQ tests do measure some diffuse thing which is connected to whatever can be said to constitute intelligence. But in over 30 years of recruiting I have never found it particularly decisive as a selection criterion. While it has been sometimes helpful in screening a large number of applicants, I cannot recall a single instance where an IQ score has been the deciding factor for my making a selection.

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Harshest Russian winter in 70 years – must be global warming

December 20, 2012

Down to -50C: Russians freeze to death…

Russia is enduring its harshest winter in over 70 years, with temperatures plunging as low as -50 degrees Celsius. Dozens of people have already died, and almost 150 have been hospitalized.

The country has not witnessed such a long cold spell since 1938, meteorologists said, with temperatures 10 to 15 degrees lower than the seasonal norm all over Russia.

Across the country, 45 people have died due to the cold, and 266 have been taken to hospitals. In total, 542 people were injured due to the freezing temperatures, RIA Novosti reported.

The Moscow region saw temperatures of -17 to -18 degrees Celsius on Wednesday, and the record cold temperatures are expected to linger for at least three more days. Thermometers in Siberia touched -50 degrees Celsius, which is also abnormal for December.

RIA Novosti / Aleksey Malgavko

If this is global warming …. image. RIA Novosti / Aleksey Malgavko

The cold spell, along with snowfalls, has disrupted flights all over the country, and led to huge traffic jams. In the southern city of Rostov-on-Don some highways were closed due to snowfalls over the past two days, triggering a traffic collapse. …

Over the weekend, meteorologists predict temperatures will plunge even lower in the Moscow region, hitting -25. The Russian capital is also expected to be swept with snow, RIA Novosti reported.

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HC Andersen’s lost tale: The Tallow Candle

December 19, 2012

A Christmas present for all lovers of HC Andersen’s fairy tales.

Danish National Archives:

At the Funen Provincial Archives enthusiasm is running high. If you ask Denmark’s leading Hans Christian Andersen expert, Ejnar Stig Askgård, he is in no doubt – it’s a sensational find that has turned up: “It’s my view that this is a transcript of one of Hans Christian Ander­sen’s earliest tales. It’s a work of his youth, from before Andersen’s real debut as a writer and poet. So the manuscript The Tallow Candle must be considered the first tale from the pen of Hans Christian Andersen. It’s a fantastic find.” …. 

Many people will perhaps be asking, “How can we be sure it’s a genuine Hans Christian Andersen tale?” According to the Hans Christian Andersen expert, we can tell from among other things the traces of history, the language and the themes in the manuscript – and they all bear the clear fingerprint of Hans Christian Andersen. “The tale The Tallow Candle has a classic Hans Christian Andersen theme. The themes that run through all his tales also recur here, the idea of ‘inner truth’ as opposed to ‘outer transience’,” says Ejnar Stig Askgård.

The short tale in English is printed by Politiken.dk and is reproduced here.

Copy of an original manuscript that is believed to have been lost, with a later dedication in blue ink reading: To P Plum from his friend Bunkeflod. The Plum and Bunkeflod families were close friends, and Hans Christian Andersen had a close relationship with Mme Bunkeflod.

To Mme Bunkeflod
from her devoted
H.C. Andersen

The Tallow Candle

It sizzled and fizzled as the flames fired the cauldron.. it was the Tallow Candle’s cradle – and out of the warm cradle came a flawless candle; solid, shining white and slim it was formed in a way that made everyone who saw it believe that it was a promise of a bright and radiant future – promises that everyone who looked on believed it would really want to keep and fulfil.

The sheep – a fine little sheep – was the candle’s mother, and the melting pot its father. Its mother had given it a shiny white body and an inkling about life, but from its father it had been given a craving for the flaming fire that would eventually go through its marrow and bone and shine for it in life.

That’s how it was born and had grown; and with the best and brightest anticipation cast itself into existence. There it met so many, many strange creations that it became involved with, wanting to learn about life – and perhaps find the place where it would best fit in. But it had too much faith in the world that only cared about itself, and not at all about the Tallow Candle. A world that failed to understand the value of the candle, and thus tried to use it for its own benefit, holding the candle wrongly; black fingers leaving bigger and bigger blemishes on its pristine white innocence which eventually faded away, completely covered by the dirt of a surrounding world that had come much too close; much closer than the candle could endure, as it had been unable to tell grime from purity – although it remained pristine and unspoiled inside.

False friends found they could not reach its inner self and angrily cast the candle away as useless.

The filthy outer shell kept all the good away – scared as they were to be tainted with grime and blemishes – and they stayed away.

So there was the poor Tallow Candle, solitary and left alone, at a loss at what to do. Rejected by the good, it now realised it had only been a tool to further the wicked. It felt so unbelievably unhappy, because it had spent its life to no good end – in fact it had perhaps sullied the better parts of its surroundings. It just could not determine why it had been created or where it belonged; why it had been put on this earth – perhaps to end up ruining itself and others.

More and more, and deeper and deeper, it contemplated – but the more it considered itself, the more despondent it became, finding nothing good, no real substance for itself, no real goal for the existence it had been given at its birth. As if the grimy cape had also covered its eyes.

But then it met a little flame, a tinder box. It knew the candle better than the Tallow Candle knew itself. The tinder box had such a clear view – straight through the outer shell – and inside it found so much good. It came closer and there was bright expectation in the candle – it lit and its heart melted.

Out burst the flame, like the triumphant torch of a blissful wedding. Light burst out bright and clear all around, bathing the way forward with light for its surroundings – its true friends – who were now able to seek truth in the glow of the candle.

The body too was strong enough to give sustenance to the fiery flame. One drop upon another, like the seeds of a new life, trickled round and chubby down the candle, covering the old grime with their bodies.

They were not just the bodily, but also the spiritual issue of the marriage.

And the Tallow Candle had found its right place in life – and shown that it was a real candle, and went on to shine for many a year, pleasing itself and the other creations around it.

H.C. Andersen.

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Shale gas boosts petrochemical developments as fracking proves as important as catalytic cracking

December 19, 2012

The advent of shale gas (and shale oil) is having more profound effects than just on the production of energy or electric power. The development of “fracking” technology is providing an impetus for developments in the petrochemical industry which can be compared to the “golden years” which followed the introduction of catalytic cracking.  Petrochemical processing costs are now lower in the US than in many other countries and there has been a sharp increase in projects for the “cracking” of ethane to make ethylene as a feedstock.

As put by the Financial Times: “The international chemicals industry is undergoing its most profound upheaval for 75 years, according to Kevin Swift of the American Chemistry Council. Not since the years before the second world war, when there was a flood of discoveries including nylon, synthetic rubber, PVC plastic and polystyrene, has there been technological change with such far-reaching consequences.”

The American Chemistry Council has just published its Year End 2012 Situation and Outlook and issued this press release.

HydrocarbonProcessing writes:

Favorable oil-to-gas price ratios driven by the production of natural gas from shale will drive a renewed US competitiveness that will boost exports and fuel greater domestic investment, economic growth and job creation within the business of chemistry.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Coal consumption growing inexorably — but global temperatures are still declining

December 19, 2012

The International Energy Agency has just released its annual Medium-Term Coal Market Report (MCMR) and reports that “coal’s share of the global energy mix continues to rise, and by 2017 coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world’s top energy source”.

Yet global temperatures have not risen for 16 years and continue to decline. And the demonisation of the use of coal has increased electricity prices quite unnecessarily. The end of the world will not happen either on 21st December 2012 or by the use of fossil fuels.

In a press release the IEA says:

“Thanks to abundant supplies and insatiable demand for power from emerging markets, coal met nearly half of the rise in global energy demand during the first decade of the 21st Century,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven. “This report sees that trend continuing. In fact, the world will burn around 1.2 billion more tonnes of coal per year by 2017 compared to today – equivalent to the current coal consumption of Russia and the United States combined. Coal’s share of the global energy mix continues to grow each year, and if no changes are made to current policies, coal will catch oil within a decade.” 

China and India lead the growth in coal consumption over the next five years. The report says China will surpass the rest of the world in coal demand during the outlook period, while India will become the largest seaborne coal importer and second-largest consumer, surpassing the United States.

The report notes that in the absence of a high carbon price, only fierce competition from low-priced gas can effectively reduce coal demand. “The US experience suggests that a more efficient gas market, marked by flexible pricing and fueled by indigenous unconventional resources that are produced sustainably, can reduce coal use, CO2 emissions and consumers’ electricity bills, without harming energy security,” said Ms. van der Hoeven. “Europe, China and other regions should take note.”

While coal consumption and carbon dioxide have been rising, global temperatures have not been paying any attention – much to the dismay of alarmist models.

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Wow! “Scientific study” reveals that healthy people live longer

December 17, 2012

This has been published in the BMJ today so it obviously has been “peer-reviewed” before publication. Crunch a little data (why only Olympic medalists and not all Olympic participants?), do some elementary statistics and come up with something profoundly obvious and it passes for “science”. It took no less than six authors!!

Survival of the fittest: retrospective cohort study of the longevity of Olympic medallists in the modern era, by Philip M Clarke, Simon J Walter, Andrew Hayen, William J Mallon, Jeroen Heijmans, and David M Studdert. BMJ 2012; 345

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e8308 (Published 13 December 2012)

15 174 Olympic athletes from nine country groups (United States, Germany, Nordic countries, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, and Australia and New Zealand) who won medals in the Olympic Games held in 1896-2010. Medallists were compared with matched cohorts in the general population (by country, age, sex, and year of birth).

Results More medallists than matched controls in the general population were alive 30 years after winning (relative conditional survival 1.08, 95% confidence interval 1.07 to 1.10). Medallists lived an average of 2.8 years longer than controls. Medallists in eight of the nine country groups had a significant survival advantage compared with controls. Gold, silver, and bronze medallists each enjoyed similar sized survival advantages. Medallists in endurance sports and mixed sports had a larger survival advantage over controls at 30 years (1.13, 1.09 to 1.17; 1.11, 1.09 to 1.13) than that of medallists in power sports (1.05, 1.01 to 1.08).

Conclusions Olympic medallists live longer than the general population, irrespective of country, medal, or sport. This study was not designed to explain this effect, but possible explanations include genetic factors, physical activity, healthy lifestyle, and the wealth and status that come with international sporting glory.

The discussion is remarkably mundane and offers little insight into anything:

… One explanation is that athletes are much healthier than the average person. Part of this advantage could be genetic, but environmental factors undoubtedly amplify genetic advantages. Young athletes who exhibit exceptional physical talents are often selected into national training squads to undergo intensive physical training over many years. Most Olympic medallists will have come through such programmes.

Strong evidence indicates that physical activity confers many health benefits, including improved functional health status and reduced risks of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, stroke, depression, type 2 diabetes, and breast and colon cancer ………

Ah well! One more publication to add to the list.

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