Marc Hauser’s lobbyists get to work but only end up excusing scientific misconduct

August 9, 2011

Marc Hauser’s friends have started on the process of repairing some of the damage to his reputation brought about by his own misconduct. He has “resigned” from Harvard but – with a little help from his friends – he will no doubt pop-up with a fancy title at some other institution soon.

 The Harvard Crimson reports that a group of academics have written a “letter” criticising the investigation of Hauser’s misconducts by Harvard. The letter was written by Pierre Pica, a scientist at the National Center for Scientific Research, Bert Vaux, director of studies in linguistics at King’s College in the University of Cambridge, and Jeffrey Watumull, a Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge. Watumull previously worked in Hauser’s lab. Eight other academics including Naom Chomsky have added their signatures.

But they protest too much about one of their own. I felt on reading their letter that while they accuse Harvard of a witch-hunt and express concern about the undermining of scientific inquiry they actually end up trivialising ethical behaviour and excusing scientific misconduct. Their concern does not ring true. The letter talks about a media frenzy against Hauser but ignores the fact that nothing came up in the media until after the 3 year investigation had shown the misconduct and Hauser had taken a year’s gardening leave.

Harvard Crimson: Monday, August 08, 2011

The letter—which was signed by MIT Linguistics Professor Noam Chomsky, one of Hauser’s mentors—criticizes the scope of the inquiry into Hauser’s research, the media frenzy that followed the release of Harvard’s findings, and insinuations that Hauser’s body of work has been thrown into question by the investigation. ….

Eight academics from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Brazil signed the letter, including Harvard Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Florian Engert. It has been circulated among top academics.

The Crimson obtained a copy of the letter—titled “Could the Process of Investigating Scientific Misconduct Undermine Scientific Inquiry?”—from the authors.

Following allegations that Hauser falsified research data, a three-year investigation into Hauser’s research found him “solely responsible for eight counts of scientific misconduct,” Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith wrote in a letter last August. Reports attributed the source of those allegations to his graduate students.

In the fallout from the investigation, Hauser took a year-long leave of absence, was then barred from teaching for another year, and ultimately resigned from his tenured position this summer.

Related: Hausergate posts

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Posted in Ethics, Science, scientific misconduct, Social Science | 1 Comment »

Arctic Ice: “Rapture” of an ice free Arctic now postponed till 2030

August 9, 2011

The ice free Arctic which was to have happened in 2008 according to Mark Serreze of the doomsday crowd has now been postponed till 2030 while scientists find that current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced.

From WUWT’s Quote of the week:

WUWT

We all cringed, then laughed when Dr. Mark Serreze of NSIDC first said it, then marveled about it as it got a life of its own, being the buzzphrase for every alarmist who wanted to shriek about declining Arctic sea ice.

In 2007 we heard him say:

“The Arctic is screaming,” said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government’s snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colorado.

So far, the “screaming” hasn’t kept anyone awake at night, and we have not returned to the low of 2007 in the last three melt seasons.

In 2008 Serreze made the  bold claim:

The ice is in a “death spiral” and may disappear in the summers within a couple of decades, according to Mark Serreze, an Arctic climate expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

And in 2008 we had the forecast from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze of an “ice free north pole”.  As we know, that didn’t even come close to being true. Summer 2008 had more arctic ice than summer 2007, and summer 2007 was not “ice free” by any measure.

With those failed predictions behind him,  in an interview in The Age just a few weeks ago, Serreze pulled a Harold Camping, and changed his prediction date. Now he’s saying the new date for an ice free summer is 2030.

”There will be ups and downs, but we are on track to see an ice-free summer by 2030. It is an overall downward spiral.”

And in the meantime research reveals that ice levels in the Arctic were about half the present levels some 5000 years ago and had no problems in recovering.

Scientists say current concerns over a tipping point in the disappearance of Arctic sea ice may be misplaced. 


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Guradian to hold Masterclass in hacking?

August 9, 2011

I just noticed that the Guardian is holding – for a £500 per person fee – a two-day course in September ostensibly on “investigative journalism”.

In this intensive, weekend course, two of the UK’s leading investigative journalists will give students the skills needed to reach the next step. Paul Lewis and Heather Brooke will teach the secrets of their trade in a series of interactive workshops and skill-based sessions.

The course will cover among other things “convincing people to talk” and “advice on data journalism” and “the course will reveal how new technology and recent innovations have revolutionised investigative journalism”.

I note – but without much surprise – that there is no mention of ethics anywhere in the course description.

Presumably David Leigh will be the guest lecturer and will explain the techniques of phone hacking  and the importance of always having noble objectives. He could also explain the finer points of utilising the public interest defence under the Data Protection Act to justify non-compliance with the Act. To cover ethics they could invite Rebekah Brooks who is probably available except that she is apparently still on the payroll of News International.

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Posted in Ethics, Media | Comments Off on Guradian to hold Masterclass in hacking?

Why are street riots in the UK a “bad thing” but a “good thing” in Egypt or Syria?

August 9, 2011

The scenes from Tottenham and other parts of London were distressing and the looting and vandalism is – I think – despicable.

It has been depressing to watch.

But I found similar scenes not so long ago – though perhaps without the same level of mindless vandalism but with much more severe loss of life – in Egypt and Tunisia were actually uplifting and I took these as a “demonstration” of democratic forces at work”. The ruthless putting down of protests in Syria is also distressing and all my sympathies are very clearly with those protesting.

I am still trying to reconcile my own “double standards” in my own mind.

Was the level of hopelessness and despair in Egypt and Tunisia which forced ordinary people onto the streets and caused governments to fall so different from the hopelessness and powerlessness felt by the crowds in Tottenham or Brixton? Is the feeling of being oppressed in Syria any different from that felt by some in the UK?

Opportunists and hooligans and plain criminals were surely present in all of these scenes.

But I am still struggling to clarify the differences in my own reactions to myself.

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Posted in Behaviour | Comments Off on Why are street riots in the UK a “bad thing” but a “good thing” in Egypt or Syria?

Pamela finds anti-matter in the Van Allen belt

August 9, 2011

I had no difficulty as a student and later as an engineer in using  imaginary and complex numbers  involving i, where

i 2 = −1

and I am reasonably confident that I grasp the general concept of imaginary numbers. It took me a while when I was a student to realise that “imaginary” here meant “being capable of being imagined” and not something that ” did not exist and could only be imagined”.

I have much greater difficulty in following the concepts of “anti-matter” and why it is rational and necessary that anti-matter must exist. But I am no high energy physicist. On the other hand, I have no difficulty in “imagining” an alternative universe composed of anti-matter subject to anti-gravity, lit up with anti-light and which presumably began with an anti-Big Bang (an implosion)! But why anti-matter must exist in our universe is something I am content to leave to physicists. But like black holes they make me vaguely uncomfortable and I suppose it’s a good thing that anti-matter does not exist naturally on the earth’s surface. Of course if the physicists could suggest how I could use anti-matter to annihilate about 20kgs of my mass I would sign on immediately!

Anti-matter

The modern theory of antimatter begins in 1928, with a paper by Paul Dirac. Dirac realised that his relativistic version of the Schrödinger wave equation for electrons predicted the possibility of antielectrons. These were discovered by Carl D. Anderson in 1932 and named positrons (a contraction of “positive electrons”). Although Dirac did not himself use the term antimatter, its use follows on naturally enough from antielectrons, antiprotons, etc.A complete periodic table of antimatter was envisaged by Charles Janet in 1929.

Antimatter cannot be stored in a container made of ordinary matter because antimatter reacts with any matter it touches, annihilating itself and an equal amount of the container. Antimatter that is composed of charged particles can be contained by a combination of an electric field and a magnetic field in a device known as a Penning trap.

In any case, when cosmic rays smash into molecules in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, a shower of smaller particles is created. Physicists have assumed that a small number of those resulting particles will be anti-protons. Most of those will be instantly annihilated when they collide with particles of ordinary matter. But those which don’t collide should get trapped in the Earth’s torus-shaped Van Allen radiation belt, and form a layer of antimatter in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Van Allen radiation belts : image stars.astro.illinois.edu

Wired reports on the paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters –  The discovery of geomagnetically trapped cosmic ray antiprotons bu O. Adriani et al. 2011 ApJ 737 L29 doi: 10.1088/2041-8205/737/2/L29

Data from the cosmic ray satellite PAMELA has added substantial weight to the theory that the Earth is encircled by a thin band of antimatter. The satellite, named Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, was launched in 2006 to study the nature of cosmic rays — high-energy particles from the Sun and beyond the solar system which barrel into Earth.  ……

It was one of PAMELA’s goals to hunt out those tiny numbers of antimatter particles among the ludicrously more abundant normal matter particles, like protons and the nuclei of helium atoms. To find them, the satellite regularly moved through a particularly dense section of the Van Allen belt called the South Atlantic Anomaly. Over a period of 850 days — from July 2006 to December 2008 — sensors aboard PAMELA detected 28 anti-protons. That might not sound like much, but it’s three times more than would be found from a random sample of the solar wind, and is the most abundant source of anti-protons ever seen near the Earth.

But what does this discovery mean, other than proving that a bunch of theorizing physicists were correct? The discovery opens the doors to harnessing those anti-protons for a variety of medical, sensing and, most importantly, rocket-propelling applications.

In a 2006 NASA-founded study by Draper Laboratory, researchers wrote, “it has been suggested that tens of nanograms to micrograms of anti-protons can be used to catalyze nuclear reactions and propel spacecraft to velocities up to 100 km/sec.”

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UK Financial Regulator warns against carbon credit trading scams

August 8, 2011

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) is the regulator of the financial services industry in the UK and has issued a warning against carbon credit trading scams.

The vast sums of money expended on misguided carbon schemes based itself on the misguided attempts to reduce carbon emissions (to what end?) have of course ended up in a few pockets.

I’m tempted to just say “I told you so!!”

FSA Warning 

The Guardian – an ardent supporter of the AGW doctrine – writes:

Carbon credit trading schemes are set to take over from landbanking as a major scam hitting unwary investors. This week the Financial Services Authority issued its first consumer alert on the schemes following an unprecedented 10-fold surge in complaints and queries in July. The watchdog warns that the schemes are unregulated, so anyone can sell them, and UK authorities have no way of controlling their quality or validity.

Investors risk ending up with an overpriced credit which is virtually unsellable – just like the almost worthless agricultural acreage that landbankers push with the promise of planning permission in the near future.

At least one company that was selling land has moved its business model from persuading investors that land will soar in value to concentrating on carbon schemes. 

Jonathan Phelan, head of the unauthorised business department at the FSA, says: “Since June, we’ve seen a significant rise in consumers reporting carbon credit trading schemes to the FSA. While carbon credit trading schemes don’t automatically amount to investment schemes that require FSA authorisation, we are concerned that the majority of the firms being reported to us are using high pressure sales tactics and targeting vulnerable consumers with little or no knowledge of commodities and derivatives trading.

“We suspect that many of these firms are essentially overseas boiler rooms or landbanking firms simply selling a highly dubious new investment product and jumping upon the green/eco-friendly bandwagon. We strongly recommend that consumers seek advice from an FSA-authorised independent financial adviser before getting involved in the carbon credit trading market.”

Well, I told you so.

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New Scientist: Climate change led to the “golden age” of human evolution

August 8, 2011

The New Scientist has been one of the high priests of the AGW doctrine and “global warming” has been a dirty word. It represents politically correct “establishment science” and generally shuns the scepticism and irreverence of the true scientist. It has been – and still is – extremely reluctant to admit to any weaknesses in AGW dogma or in any possible benefits of global warming. But as “global warming” has morphed to the less emotive “climate change” and it is becoming clearer that man-made emissions don’t even control global CO2 levels – let alone the climate – the “settled science” is being shown to be anything but settled. There are some slight signs that the New Scientist is positioning itself so that it can be found to be on the side of the good guys no matter what surprises the climate may have in store.

Change and variability in Plio-Pleistocene climates: Modelling the hominin response by Matt Grove is a new paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

  • The research expands a technique originally developed by theoretical biologists.
  • The technique distinguishes between climatic change and climatic variability.
  • Change results in directional selection; variability selects for plasticity.
  • Results suggest selection for plasticity increases c.2.3-2.5 mya.
  • This date range coincides with the evolution of Homo and the spread of the Oldowan.

The New Scientist writes.

Thank climate change for the rise of humans 05 August 2011 by Andy Coghlan

SOME claim climate change will destroy our species; now it seems it also helped forge it. The rapid fluctuations in temperature that characterised the global climate between 2 and 3 million years ago coincided with a golden age in human evolution.

Australopithecus africanus

The fossil record shows that eight distinct species emerged from one hominin species, Australopithecus africanus, alive 2.7 million years ago. The first members of our genus appeared between 2.4 and 2.5 million years ago, while Homo erectus, the first hominin to leave Africa, had evolved by 1.8 million years ago.

To work out whether climate had a hand in the speciation spurt, Matt Grove of the University of Liverpool in the UK turned to a global temperature data set compiled by Lorraine Lisiecki at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Lisiecki analysed oxygen isotopes in the shells of fossilised marine organisms called foraminifera. During glacial periods, the forams’ shells contain more of the heavier of two oxygen isotopes, as the lighter one is preferentially accumulated in snow and ice rather than the ocean.

Grove found that the mean temperature changed suddenly on three occasions during the last 5 million years. Each change was equivalent to the difference between glacial and interglacial temperatures – but none of these episodes coincided with the hominin “golden age”. What marked out this period was a greater range of recorded temperatures, suggesting it was a time of rapid but short-lived fluctuations in climate. Grove says such conditions would have favoured the evolution of adaptability that is a hallmark of the genus Homo (Journal of Archaeological Science, DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2011.07.002). Grove says the classic survival traits of H. erectus, forged during this period of change, include teeth suited for generalised diets and a large brain – both of which should have been advantageous at a time of swift climate change.

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Posted in Anthropology, Climate, Evolution | 1 Comment »

Just coincidence? Burst of solar activity (Kp index) and 18 Indonesian volcanoes move to alert status

August 7, 2011

It may just be coincidence but I am inclined to believe that the sun does influence geo-magnetic activity on earth.

1.  The K7RA Solar Update

08/05/2011

Solar activity markedly increased this week, with the sunspot number rising to 130 on Monday, August 1 — the highest since a reading of 131 on April 14, 2011. The average daily sunspot numbers more than doubled this week compared to last, rising nearly 54 points to 99.3. ……

NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center: “Three coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are currently en route to Earth, with the commencement of geomagnetic storming expected early to mid-day on August 5 with the arrival of the CMEs associated with the August 2-3 events. The third of the string, seemingly the fastest CME, may catch up with the first two in the next 12-18 hours, compressing the plasma and enhancing the embedded magnetic field. Storming levels are expected to attain G3 (strong) conditions. The current Solar Radiation Storm may experience a kick with the shocks and attain S2 (moderate) thresholds.

“Some level of geomagnetic disturbance is expected to continue through August 7 as the series of CMEs affect the Earth. Continued activity is likely from these regions as they continue to rotate off the visible solar disk over the next seven days. The Space Weather Prediction Center will continue to monitor this event as it unfolds.”

 Estimated 3-hour Planetary Kp-index

 

article image

2. The Jakarta Post:

Sun, 08/07/2011 1:05 PM

Eighteen Indonesian volcanoes are on “alert” status, two of which are at Alert Level 3, which is called “Siaga”, the Volcanology and Geology Disaster Mitigation Center says. Center head Surono said Sunday in Jakarta the erupting Mount Lokon in North Sulawesi and Mount Ibu in North Maluku were the two volcanoes at Siaga status. The center has adopted four levels of alert status: “Normal” (Level 1), “Waspada” (Level 2), “Siaga” (Level 3) and “Awas” (Level 4).

Surono said the conditions at Mt Lokon and Mt Ibu were currently considered most worrisome because they had been consistently erupting searing clouds affecting a radius of 2.5 kilometers. …… 

Surono added that 16 other volcanoes were at Level 2 alert status, “Waspada”, including Mt. Papandayan and Mt. Guntur in West Java. “Locals have reported several quakes,” he said. ….

Surono said that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had summoned him on Saturday to report the volcanoes’ status and the center’s preparations to anticipate possible disasters.

H/T – http://climaterealists.com/index.php

Related: 

Solar effects will give increased volcanic and earthquake activity in the next 2 years

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Kalasalingam University takes action against misconduct: head of department and 6 PhD students sacked

August 7, 2011

The Sangiliyandi Gurunathan and Kalasalingam University story was covered by earlier posts here and here.

I have today received replies from the University and from the Society of Scientific Values reporting on the actions already taken. The head of Department – Sangiliyandi Gurunathan – had been instructed to and has resigned. Four students registered for a PhD have had their registrations cancelled. Pending PhD registrations for two further students have also been cancelled.

This is a remarkable, speedy and very commendable response from the Vice Chancellor Dr. S Radhakrishnan. In the Indian context (and perhaps in the context of any University) the speed and decisiveness is unprecedented and it gives me hope for the future of ethical and academic standards at Indian Universities.

Press Release (pdf)  Kalasalingam release 

The replies from Dr. Radhakrishnan, Vice Chancellor and from Prof. Chopra of the Society of Scientific Values to the mail I had sent to Chopra (copied to Radhakrishnan) follow:

date Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 8:13 AM
subject Re: Action taken by Kalasalingam University

Dear Sir, 
Please refer the attached pdf file  regarding the action taken against Dr. G. Sangliyandi and the research scholars who are found to be involved in scientific misconduct (Image manipulation and the potential of scientific fraud) 
Thanking you for bringing this issue to our notice immediately. 

With Regards 
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan
Vice-Chancellor
Kalasalingam University
Krishnankoil – 626 126
Tamilnadu INDIA 

From SSV copied to me

Dear Prof Radhakrishnan:

On behalf of the Society for Scientific Values (SSV), I wish to thank you and congratulate you  on taking a right and an exemplary decision on unethical  practices by your colleague and students. We will post this news on our website as also in our next News&Views.  Very rarely do VCs take such strong and correct action as you have done.
SSV will be very happy to join hands with your faculty colleagues to organise  one day  seminar on Ethical Values for S&T at your University at a mutually convenient date. Please do let me know.
Best wishes
Prof (Dr) K. L. Chopra (Padamshri)
FNA, FASc, FNASc, FNAE, D.Sc.(hc)
(Former Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur)
President, Society for Scientific Values

date Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 9:32 PM
subject Wholesale retractions of papers at Kalasalingam University

Dear Professor Chopra,

You will be aware of the wholesale findings of image manipulation in at least 8 papers from the Biotechnology Department of Kalasalingam University. Sangiliyandi Gurunathan is the primary investigator on these papers and the list of retracted papers which bear his name is now getting very long.

There seem to be two issues here: 
  1. the widespread manipulation of images and plagiarism by doctoral  students, and
  2. the lack of leadership and supervision which seems to encourage such   scientific misconduct. 
I draw your attention to:
Retraction Watch – Angiogenesis retracts two papers, cites image manipulation in eight, as PI blames unethical students
ktwop blog – At least 8 more papers from biotechnology department at Kalasalingam University manipulated as 2 are retracted.
I would hope that the Society for Scientific Values could conduct an investigation because something is seriously amiss at this university.
I have also copied this to Dr. S Radhakrisnan, Vice Chancellor since I have corresponded with him earlier (February 2011) about the earlier retraction of Sangiliyandi Gurunathan’s paper. 
best regards
(ktwop)

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Posted in Ethics, India, Science, scientific misconduct | 6 Comments »

Carbon dioxide follows temperature – what else?

August 6, 2011

The lecture given by  at the Sydney Institute is causing waves and he has a new paper in the works. Professor Murry Salby is Chair of Climate Science at Macquarie University. He’s been a visiting professor at Paris, Stockholm, Jerusalem, and Kyoto and has been deputed to the Bureau of Meterology in Australia.

Jo Nova reports that Salby was once an IPCC reviewer, and he comments, damningly, that if these results had been available in 2007, “the IPCC could not have drawn the conclusion that it did.” After speaking in carefully selected phrases, he  finished his presentation saying that “anyone who thinks the science is settled on this topic, is in fantasia”.

His talk is available here:  “Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources”

“It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels”.

article image

CO2 variations do not correlate with man-made emissions. Peaks and falls correlate with hot years (e.g. 1998) and cold years (1991-92). No graphs are available from Salby's speech or paper yet. This graph comes from Tom Quirk's related work.: image via joannenova.com.au

Jo Nova posts a comprehensive report.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Science | 2 Comments »

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