There is virtually nothing in the physical universe around us that is not worthy of study. Most study begins with observations. We can term any such area of study where observations are made and knowledge accumulated as being a “discipline”. The social “sciences”, environmentalism and even astrology and palmistry could be considered disciplines.
But when does a discipline become a science?
That psychology is a discipline and a field of study is indisputable. That the study of human (or animal) behaviour is a worthy field and that experimentation and research are well worth pursuing is also obvious. But I am of the view that it is far from being a science. Psychology can be considered to be a pre-science similar to alchemy. And the practitioners of psychology are similar to priests and shamans and witch-doctors and other practitioners of magic. Inevitably the field contains many charlatans.
During 2011 the high profile cases of Marc Hauser and Diederik Stapel where data was faked (and no matter which way the pill is coated they both fabricated data to suit their theories) only reinforces my view that their behaviour was essentially narcissistic and not uncommon in the burgeoning fields of psychology. In both cases inflated egos led to the creation of their “signature” hypotheses followed by the fabrication of data to prove their conclusions – which had already been reached! I am inherently suspicious of psychologists who are supposed scientists but who are seduced by the fame and fortunes of press adulation or tenure or who become Agony Aunts on TV.
Charles Gross writes in The Nation about the Marc Hauser affair and concludes:
The phenomenon of climate change will someday get back to science and leave the alarmist dogma behind. But we can expect that any moves in this direction will be resisted bitterly by the high priests of global warming and the carbon trading cabal.
The Guardian reports:
Climate change should be excluded from curriculum
Climate change should not be included in the national curriculum, the government adviser in charge of overhauling the school syllabus in England has said.
Tim Oates, whose wide-ranging review of the curriculum for five- to 16-year-olds will be published later this year, said it should be up to schoolsto decide whether – and how – to teach climate change, and other topics about the effect scientific processes have on our lives.
In an interview with the Guardian, Oates called for the national curriculum “to get back to the science in science”. “We have believed that we need to keep the national curriculum up to date with topical issues, but oxidation and gravity don’t date,” he said. “We are not taking it back 100 years; we are taking it back to the core stuff. The curriculum has become narrowly instrumentalist.”
But this is The Guardian and it must have been painful to report such a radical step!! Needless to say they provide ample space for global warming High Priest Bob Ward to voice his objections:
But Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, warned that Oates’ ideas might not be in pupils’ best interests and could make science less interesting for children.
“An emphasis on climate change in the curriculum connects the core scientific concepts to topical issues,” he said. “Certain politicians feel that they don’t like the concept of climate change. I hope this isn’t a sign of a political agenda being exercised.”
He said leaving climate change out of the national curriculum might encourage a teacher who was a climate change sceptic to abandon teaching the subject to their pupils. “This would not be in the best interests of pupils. It would be like a creationist teacher not teaching about evolution. Climate change is about science. If you remove the context of scientific concepts, you make it less interesting to children.”
But perhaps Bob Ward needs to be reminded that climate change has been happening for ever and will continue without caring very much about what our science purports to understand – or fails to understand. There is little science left in present day “climate science” – which has degenerated to be a dogma with the “consensus scientists” being little more than an advocacy group – and any return to science regarding the climate is welcome and long overdue.
(Reuters) – The United States still leads the world with its scientific clout, armed with highly respected universities and a big war chest of funding, but Europe and Asia are catching up, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Friday.
But U.S. influence is waning — not because the United States is doing less, but because other countries are doing more, Thomson’s Jonathan Adams and David Pendlebury found. “In 1981, U.S. scientists fielded nearly 40 percent of research papers in the most influential journals,” they wrote.
“By 2009, that figure was down to 29 percent. During the same period, European nations increased their share of research papers from 33 percent to 36 percent, while research contributed by nations in the Asia-Pacific region increased from 13 percent to 31 percent.” China is now the second-largest producer of scientific papers, after the United States, with nearly 11 percent of the world’s total. In 2008, Asian nations as a group passed the United States with $387 billion in research and development spending, compared with $384 billion in the United States and $280 billion in Europe.
Precisely half of U.S. research focuses on the biological sciences “just at the time when Asian nations are focusing on and investing substantial sums in engineering, physical sciences, and technology,” the report notes. In the United States, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology (MIT and Caltech) led in research, the report found. Outside the United States, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences lead.
Earlier this week the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, released a report showing similar findings. UNESCO said in 2002, almost 83 percent of research and development was carried out in developed countries but this dropped to 76 percent by 2007. It found China was leading the pack of emerging nations with 1.4 million researchers.
Retraction Watch reports on the retraction of a paper at Nature by the authors but where, once again, the lead author does not sign the retraction.
In this case the paper is:
The large-conductance Ca2+-activated K+channel is essential for innate immunity by Jatinder Ahluwalia, Andrew Tinker, Lucie H. Clapp, Michael R. Duchen, Andrey Y. Abramov, Simon Pope, Muriel Nobles & Anthony W. Segal, Nature 427, 853-858 (26 February 2004), doi:10.1038/nature02356; Received 18 July 2003; Accepted 20 January 2004.
The Retraction Notice reads
The authors wish to retract this Letter after the report of an inability to reproduce their results, later confirmed by another. The studies the authors then conducted led to an internal investigation by University College London, please see the accompanying Supplementary Information for details. The retraction has not been signed by Jatinder Ahluwalia.
The lead author is usually the researcher and the last name is usually that of the senior author. There have been a number of such cases recently where the authors retract a paper but where the lead author does not sign the retraction. The inference is that there has been some misconduct or alleged misconduct by the researcher which has been “discovered” by the other authors but where the alleged misconduct is not acknowledged by the lead author. (See the cases of Shane R Mayack and Hung-Shu Chang for example). Just the fact that some data can not be reproduced does not mean that misconduct has occurred. Experimental data can never be perfect. In addition to measurement errors and procedural errors, data may also be subject to errors of interpretation and analysis. In fact the scientific method requires the publication of such data – warts and all – which can then be tested by others and retraction would not be necessary or correct merely if different results were obtained later. Erroneous data does not have to be – and should not be – deleted from the record. A retraction – and especially by a multiplicity of contributing authors but not the lead author – carries a strong inference of misconduct.
This raises once again the question of roles and responsibilities between the different contributing authors, the reviewers and the journal editor for a published paper. Perhaps the number of retractions is at an “acceptable” level, but I am sure that the number of retractions must follow the “Iceberg Principle” and what is finally made visible can only be the tip of what must be there. The senior author must bear some responsibility and have some accountability for such events.
It seems to me that senior authors (as supervisors of the research reported) get away too lightly and merely pass the responsibility onto the researcher’s failings or his misconduct. They abdicate their responsibility for quality and integrity rather too easily. I would like to see a statement by the senior author whenever such a retraction is made “at the request of the authors”.
A follow up to the post about the Channel 4 programme with environmentalists beating their breasts is this very succinct cartoon from Josh which encapsulates the whole story very nicely:
DNA. image ichromatography.com
The Yoruba of West Africa have been exposed, historically, to the dry conditions of the Sahel on the edge of the Sahara desert. To find out whether they had evolved to cope, Andres Moreno at Stanford University in California and colleagues looked at the variation of a gene known to be involved in water retention in the kidney, called FOXI1, in DNA samples from 20 Europeans, 20 east Asians and 20 Yoruba.
(BMC Evolutionary Biology, DOI: 10.1186/1471-2148-10-267).
The team found that 85 per cent of the Yoruba had an identical sequence of genetic information that was longer than it would have been if it was produced by random recombination and genetic shuffling. Instead, they suggest that it had been naturally selected.The length of the genetic signature suggests that the change occurred in the last 10,000 to 20,000 years, which could have coincided with the initial stages of the desertification of the Sahara. They also analysed a region of the gene in 971 samples from 39 human populations around the world, including the Yoruba, and found that the same genetic sequence was found at higher frequencies in lower latitudes. Since lower latitudes are more likely to be regions of water-stress, this suggests that the selection pressure was climate-related, says Moreno.
“Over the long term, if the Earth keeps warming, I would not be surprised to see genetic shifts,” says anthropological geneticist Anne Stone at Arizona State University in Tempe.
While we may look like the finished article, there is plenty of evidence that humans are still evolving. John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison even argues that population explosions and rapidly changing lifestyles are causing humans to evolve faster now than ever before. Evidence includes:
(Thanks to Phil Score for pointing out the typos which have been fixed)
A few days ago the paper in Nature “Systemic signals regulate ageing and rejuvenation of blood stem cell niches” by Shane R. Mayack, Jennifer L. Shadrach, Francis S. Kim & Amy J. Wagers was retracted at the request of 3 of the authors. Then the Journal Blood issued a Notice of Concern regarding a second paper with Shane Mayack as the lead author and published with Amy Wagers.
In both of these cases, Shane Mayack who was the post-doctoral fellow at the Joslin Diabetes Center of Harvard Medical School was the lead author and the implication was that they could be something untoward with her work.
Now Retraction Watch reports that a Scientist raised serious questions about 2008 Cell study by Amy Wagers. The questions were of a scientific and technical nature and in themselves carry no implications of impropriety.
Shane Mayack was not involved with this paper but since Amy Wagers led the team at the Joslin Diabetes Center, the question that arises is one of leadership and of the environment within which research is carried out. As I have posted earlier this atmosphere and the pressure of publication for the researchers may be leading to errors of judgement and misconduct. Professors and leaders of scientific teams cannot, I think, abdicate their responsibility for the environment in which their teams work especially where their names are included as co-authors of the resulting publications. The senior author on any published paper must be the first quality gate to be passed and must provide the final assurance of the integrity of the work being reported.
Cases of plagiarism and other scientific misconduct is thought to be increasing in India. The rapid growth in the country in recent years has been mirrored by a growth in the number of research institutions, science publications and number of published papers. The pursuit of advancement of institutional reputations in newly established Universities and the development of personal careers has led to an increased pressure to publish. Scientific funding has not kept pace with the growth of institutions and numbers of people involved in research and this has led to increased competition in the seeking of limited funds. Quality assurance and oversight processes have not kept pace and in many young institutions may even be totally absent. There is little emphasis given to training for scientists or administrators regarding scientific rigour or ethics or integrity.
Indian graduates and scientists are generally highly regarded. There is an increasing focus from outside the country for establishing research and engineering centres in India and for commissioning research at Indian Research Institutions. But there is growing concern about standards and the proper selection and use of Indian scientists and Indian Research Institutions. A need has been expressed for an independent review of the level of integrity at various Institutions.
This need has only been emphasised by the recent high profile cases of plagiarism regarding GM crops where the Minister rejected a report by the 6 top Indian science academies including the Indian National Science Academy and the apparent, wide-spread plagiarism which has, for example, led to the retraction of 3 papers in the Journal Biotechnology Advances.
A survey and review to assess and rank Integrity at Indian Research Institutions has therefore been privately commissioned. The study is to be completed by 1st May 2011 and the first phase of information gathering is expected to continue through February 2011.
Institutions to be included in the survey will be requested individually to make a formal submission.
Institutions or individuals wishing to participate by making unsolicited submissions are invited to do so as detailed in the separate page established here.
science and funding
It is perfectly understandable, predictable and expected that the Science Establishment should find the idea of budget cuts unpalatable. Through the various recent financial crises Universities and Scientific establishments globally have come through relatively unscathed. But like all bubbles that have burst and are bursting it is perhaps time that the protected science funding bubbles took their share of the hit. It is also perhaps time for a return to the quest for scientific knowledge rather than the quest for science funding.
They cannot, on the one hand, use the excuse of “consensus science” to pour money down rotten drains and on the other demand a privileged position protected from the ills being suffered by the majority of society.
Democracy in Science to determine priorities and funding for paths of investigation is both inevitable and correct. But the science itself is indifferent to what the majority vote might think it should be.
In business and management it is almost a cliche that the greatest strides in productivity and effectiveness come at the time of budget and manpower cuts. I see no reason why this should not also apply to science and scientists. The weeping and the tearing of hair would be a little more convincing if it came from third parties and not the Scientific Establishment.
Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society and all University Vice Chancellors are most perturbed at the spending cuts that might be implemented by the new UK government.
The New Scientist’s Roger Highfield bemoans the damage that could be done to SCIENCE.
Rees was speaking with five university vice chancellors as scientists steel themselves for deep cuts at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.
The gory details will be laid bare in October’s Comprehensive Spending Review, in which all government departments have been asked to prepare for budgets to fall by up to 25 per cent, perhaps even more.
In their submission to the Treasury, the Royal Society has described the potential effects of the cuts, where “an X per cent cut would lead to a much more than X per cent decrease in output, because we would lose the most talented people”. They outline three scenarios:
- 20 per cent cuts are the “game over” scenario, which would cause irreversible destruction and be “very tragic”, said Rees.
- 10 per cent is the “slash and burn” option with “serious consequences”.
- Constant cash, a reduction in real terms, “could be accommodated”.
At the Royal Institution, during an event organised by the Campaign for Science and Engineering and the Science Media Centre, Rees also made the point that the UK will be less attractive to mobile talent and young people as other countries invest more in research.
Just to make sure that the Treasury gets the point, the Vice Chancellors also weighed in:
- Glynis Breakwell of the University of Bath warned about “short termism” and the perils of stop-go funding, which would be “fatal”.
- Malcolm Grant of University College London described how the cuts will damage research that “touches people’s lives”, squander the investment of the past two decades and damage an asset of great national importance.
- Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine outlined how the cuts would harm health research as competitors, such as the US and China, are investing more in these areas.
- Rick Trainor of King’s College London talked of the damage to long-term research capacity, and Simon Gaskell of Queen Mary, University of London once again underlined the harm to the pool of national talent.
The k2p blog 