CelestialFamily

"There is no place for dogma in science. The scinetist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any error."
J. Robert Openheimer

I think science is very cool. I’m not talking about technology or any of the applications of what science has discovered. Sure airplanes are cool. MRI machines are cool and on and on, but what I’m talking about is the process of science. I’m fascinated by the fact that human beings have developed a process that we can learn test and get answers to things that we didn’t understand before we started.
I reject the popular concept of scientists as just a bunch of know-it -alls sitting around gloating about everything that they already know. As Tyson said in my post the other day, “If you aren’t at the drawing board every day you aren’t in the game!” Science isn’t the list of facts that we collect it’s the process for learning those facts.
In Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us By Dan Agin Ph. D., Agin shows many of the ways that science gets perverted by politicians, the media, religious leaders and the scientists themselves. The book is very thorough and covers many of the recent popular scientific discoveries and media controversies. Agin gives his take on what real science is behind the discoveries and then explains where and when those involved went from real science to bad science and then to junk science.
He make clear distinctions too. In order for it to be called real science it has to follow all of the rules. It puts away presuppositions, uses strict controls to avoid unintentionally biasing the results, is open and encourages others to duplicate their process and find any mistakes, and many other things. Bad science is frequently just when some of those protocols and procedures get sloppy. If the input gets sloppy the output can no longer be trusted.
Most of the book focused on the last category, junk science. All too frequently people with agendas other than honest discovery use a process that some observers mistake for science. My daughter gets a kick out of these so-called Ghost Hunters who walk around with insterments they don't really know how to use and then when something, anything happens that they don't understand they call it, "something significant". Sometimes these people have financial motives for going to the dark side(Andrew Wakefield and the Anti-vaccination movement) sometimes religious motives (Michael Behe and the Discovery Institiute) and frequently political motives (the Global Warming denialists). But regardless of their motives they all too frequently start with their conclusion and then look for evidence to prove it. This is backwards. With this attitude they are no longer doing science. They are doing junk science.
Again believes as I do that science deserves more respect than it gets in the public perception. I worry that in many ways we are going backwards. We are allowing religion and politics to define and even to trump science. I think that all three can have a place in a civilized society. I have no problem with a civilized debate on how to respond to a scientific discovery. But let’s not corrupt the science or deny it just because it may not be morally or politically what we’d like to do.
Science is just now starting to understand some processes that may have profound impacts on humanity. Stem cell research, for instance. Now I understand many of the ethic and moral concerns that have been raised by those opposing it. I agree that this should be the subject of vigorous debate. But leave the science alone. It stands outside the debate and should not be a part of it. Years ago doctors discovered a link to testosterone and hair loss. Identical twins where one had been castrated and the other had not the intact twin lost his hair and the castrated twin did not. Now is anybody recommending castration as a way to stop hair loss? Not that I’m aware of. You see in that case we had the science and we understood it. But we simply chose not to act upon it for social, political, or ethical reasons. But the science was not corrupted to make the arguments. In my opinion we need to have similar respect for the science behind many of the issues that are happening today. We can’t even begin to have a decent political discussion on global warming because so much effort is being spent on denying the science. The same goes for stem cells and several other top hot button issues. Let’s take the first step and accept the science as valid. Then we can have an honest discussion about how to react to the discoveries or even if we need to react at all.
It took me a while to get through this book, primarily because it is so thorough. I have no criticism at all of his points or his logic. If you’d like to read more on this subject I’d recommend reading Voodoo Science by Robert Park first. It isn’t quite as though but it’s easier to read and covers many of the same themes. Then come back and read Junk Science.

Last Saturday, Aaron and I went down to DragonCon. It’s a science-fiction, fantasy and pop culture convention. As I grow older I don’t enjoy crowds nearly as much as I used to. So I have avoided these types of scenes for quite sometime. (I’ve been more claustrophobic at a movie theater than I’ve ever been in a cave.) However, a few years ago I got involved with an online community of skeptics, critical thinkers and rationalists. Piggybacked with all the actor autograph sessions, how to make cool costume classes and Dungeons and Dragons game sessions they a have a science and skepticism track too. This is only the second year for it and I wanted to get a chance to meet and talk with some of the folks I’ve been emailing, blog commenting, facebooking, listen to their podcasts and otherwise internet stalking for the last several years. So I braved the crowds and the chaos and Aaron and I went down.

I could only manage to squeeze in one day of the lectures so we were running back and forth to make sure that we saw the ones I wanted but I also had to make sure that Aaron didn’t feel like I was forcing him to sit through something he felt was boring. So I had to throw in several hours of shopping for costumes and looking at mangas and comic books. That was actually very fun too, but I was pleasantly surprised that Aaron had such a good time hanging out with me at the skeptical events and lectures.

The first lecture that we attended was Seth Shostak from the SETI institute. I’ve been listening to his podcast, Are We Alone for a few years. I’ve seen him on Colbert Report and so I knew that he’d be entertaining. Seth did a great job of explaining the “real” search for aliens and really showed that science and reality can but just if not even more interesting than the science fiction being show in neighboring rooms of the same hotel.

Next we saw Richard Saunders do a great little presentation targeted at teaching kids how to be critical thinkers. They did a live dowsing experiment and Aaron actually got to participate. I was very impressed with the relatively simple way that they showed the importance of making sure that any tests and experiments are blinded. Then they showed the added layer of making the test double blind. Saunders did a great job of making skepticism seem fun. All too often skeptics get portrayed as being cynics. Saunders and everybody else did a great job of debunking that notion.

Between lectures I was able to talk to the folks at the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. I would have loved to have stayed through Sunday to have seen their live taping of their podcast but I just couldn’t fit it into my already hectic schedule. I thanked them for saving me from talk radio. I like listening to news and information rather than just listing to music while I work and years ago their podcast was one of the first that I found to fill the void after I started boycotting the noise, illogic and repetition coming from talk radio.

The last lecture before we heeded home was a panel discussion With Seth Shostak, Joe Nichol, and Phil Plait that was moderated by Pamela Gay. Each panelist talked for about ten minutes about their own area of expertise and then opened the floor for questions. The questions were the most enjoyable part of the discussion. A few folks from the regular DragonCon crowd had wandered in and I’m not sure it was exactly what they expected. The phrase “alien hunter” was in the lecture description. All the members of the panel did a great job of explaining that it’s not that we don’t believe, belief has nothing to do with it. We just haven’t seen enough evidence to convince us that flying saucers are real.

Shostak made the comparison of aliens visiting Earth to Spaniards visiting America. 50 years after the Columbus everybody in America had mounds of evidence that Spaniards were here. It’s been 50 years since the first flying saucer and alien abduction stories jumping into the culture. Why don’t we have a comparable body of evidence? I thought the analogy was perfect and actually rather funny.

I knew that I would enjoy the skeptic events, but I was again, really surprised how much Aaron enjoyed them. Victoria and I have always been science geeks. We hardly watch any TV and the shows the kids really like are educational stuff on PBS. We check out Nova videos from the library. Even the few fiction series that we watch have a high level of science and rationality to them. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised that Aaron would enjoy it. After all he’s been hanging out with me for the last 15 years. I guess I just didn’t realize that so much was rubbing off.

Well I finally finished reading Charlie Pierce’s Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. Life got in the way of my reading schedule and in spite of how good the book was I had a hard time fitting it into my schedule.
After the first introductory chapters Pierce really got in stride and set aside much of the humor in favor of just a realistic portrayal of several different examples of America surrendering to emotion and what feels right rather than what actually was right. Whether it’s a dinosaur museum with saddles on the dinosaurs so they would be Biblically correct, a room full of terrorism experts whose opinion on Iraq was completely ignored because it didn’t fit the politics, an Island in Alaska that is literally disappearing because of global warming, a Supreme Court Justice referencing a fictitious T.V. character as evidence to support his position on torture, etc, etc, Pierce shows that somehow we’ve gotten things all screwed up. We’ve been mistaking religion for science, science for politics, and politics for entertainment.
This book really hit a nerve with me because I like to look at all issues objectively. I try to look at both sides of the issue before I take position. And even once I take a position I try stay flexible enough to change that position if more evidence arises. Lately I’ve been in a few internet and email discussions about politics and in every case the hardest people to have a rational discussion with were those that had put things in the wrong order. Just like in any conversation you have o at least agree on which language we are going to speak. You can’t have a science discussion is one party wants to use the language of religion, on the language of politics and the other the language of science. It would be just as hard if the three parties were speaking French German and Japanese. Yet time and time again you see exactly these arguments being made. Pierce effectively demonstrates the problem with this type of reasoning.
The scariest parts of the book are when experts in a certain field are called in for initial consultation and then quickly ignored when their advice conflicts with the conclusion that they had already made. The most dramatic example of this was when Al Qaeda experts we asked to provide justification for invading Iraq and they told the Pentagon that Iraq would be the wrong target. They were dismissed and their opinion was not sought again.
My biggest criticism with the book was that it did have a strong liberal slant. Much of this was unavoidable since any critique of government would be dominated by the party that is in charge. Although I do believe that the Republicans have been most guilty of forcing the evidence to fit their pre-drawn conclusion there is also plenty of blame to throw around. I can think of several examples of politicians on the other side of the aisle making similar errors in reasoning, many times on the same issues that Pierce describes. Anytime an author comes across overly sympathetic for one side and overly critical of the other he looses a little bit of credibility in my opinion. To be fair he did criticize some liberals, Jesse Jackson for instance, but the bulk of the criticism was at conservatives. I would have also liked for him to have examined the cult of the celebrety. Jenny McCarthy is a prime example. Her autism activism is seriously diverting attention away from those who really do know what they're talking about and peolpe are dying becasue of it.
I’d recommend this book to anybody who wants to better understand some of the flawed decision making that goes on in our country. Parts of it will have you laughing, parts will have you crying, and parts will have you fuming made. And sometimes all this happens in the same paragraph.

The book currently on my reading list is about a subject very close to me. The book is Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine and the Search for a Cure by Paul A. Offit M.D. To begin with, my father was a microbiologist at CDC and we used to discuss his work a lot. I even did a science fair project using some of the data that CDC collected. Although I am far from being an immunologist, I do have a working knowledge of the theory and the processes. So when Offit describes certain aspects of his work I understand the concept pretty quickly. Secondly, for the last fifteen years or so I’ve had a personal interest in the search for a cure for Autism. My brother-in-law is autistic. So this field is not just an academic pursuit for me. It’s somewhat personal.
If you are not familiar with the controversy around autism this book would be an excellent primer. Though far more than just a primer, it goes into great detail of the history of vaccines, the testing they do to insure and keep them safe, and the ongoing checks and balances in the field. In comparison to the patient, detailed, extensive research done on vaccines those who proclaim that vaccines are unsafe appear at best to be amateurs who are letting personal profit, opinion, bias, or just an unrealistic optimism cloud their judgment and research. Far from just being ad hominem attacks on his opponents, Offit takes each study and points out the flaws, deviations from protocol, biases and conflicts of interest.
Offit does an amazingly thorough job of explaining the big picture concept of vaccinations. If you think that the airplane, the internet, cars or any other technical marvel has most changed our world in the last century, Offit will convince you that they all come in as distant seconds in any comparison that includes vaccines. Quite literally, many of us would not be here today if it were not for the life-saving ability of vaccines.
There is a group of people out there who base their opinions on emotion, flawed research, conspiracy theories and the hope against hope that they can find a cure. While I share their frustration, I deplore their tactics. Offit details where many of these groups sidestep logic and proper scientific procedure and truly join the ranks of the lunatic fringe. Jenny McCarthy self describes those on her side as an “angry mob”. The prologue to the book details several of the death threats that he and his family have received in response to him testifying in favor of vaccines. How ironic that those claiming to be all about saving lives are threatening the lives and safety of an immunologist and his children.
To spoil the ending for you; there is zero correlation between the MMR vaccines and autism. None. Zero. There is zero correlation between the preservative Thimerosal and autism. None. Chelation therapy is expensive and deadly and does not cure autism. Vaccines work. They save countless lives every single year.
If you get your news on this subject from Oprah, Jenny McCarthy, politicians with an agenda, or your Homeopath you will likely disagree with most of this book. However, if you prefer to trust respected scientist in the field, decades of research, and thorough evidence-based research you will enjoy reading this book. Offit won’t convert Jenny McCarthy with this book. But, if you are still open-minded, and able to be swayed by the evidence he will show you the facts and the research and let you connect the dots yourself.

“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.”
Mark Twain