What's been happening?

I almost forgot my password to this blog. Dang it has been awhile. Let's get right to it:

- First of all, my good friend K revealed himself to be 'openly hostile' by sending me a link to the game tower defense. I'm going to warn you that clicking on that link is like clicking on crack cocaine. I'm serious. I didn't look up from my computer screen for three days, and that was only because a catastrophic flood inundated the biological station, forcing the loss of internet, phones and septic systems (ew!).

- About that flooding: Lake Texoma, she is over her banks! I may not be teaching a class on Invasive species this summer after all, since the profs are supposed to arrive in 17 days and right now the road to the station is flooded over in 4 places, the phone and internet is out, the septic systems are backed up, and there's a pretty good chance one of the dorms is going to be flooded out momentarily. I'm conflicted about this. Overall it is a bad thing. The station needs the money from such a class, I need the money (and experience), and I've spent a ton of time and effort getting everything ready.
On the other hand, I am extremely busy and I would love to not leave my very pregnant wife for two weeks. I'm also not sure what exactly I'm going to do if the floodwaters are still high, as a big part of my plan revolved around surveying boaters...and all the boat ramps have been under water for the last month.

- Job stuff: Did anyone not get the memo about my new job? I'm officially leaving academia after about ~10 years of collegiate life. Regrets? Yeah, a few. On the whole I think I've had a good run at attending and working at colleges, but I wish this last had gone a lot better. The job I left was, without a doubt, one of the most depressing times I've had since I left high school. This, fortunately, was in sharp contrast to my wife's experience working at the same place (in a very different capacity), so there's been some weird feelings about leaving.
Basically, I felt as if I was living in a dark tunnel for the last 6 months and seriously debated seeking professional assistance while the wife was enjoying her job, her co-workers, and the great joy of not having to drive to work.
The new job is in state government. I really have no idea what to expect.

- Looking for a house stuff: So I'm living in my parent's basement. This is not good times. Don't get me wrong, the basement is wonderful. There's a lake out the back where I can go fishing, there's a cute dog that is extremely happy to see us, and there's a really, really big TV (talk about a culture shock after 8 months of no cable).
But we need to get our own place. The problem is there is literally nothing available to rent that is remotely affordable. There was a tornado and over a thousand people were displaced into the area we're moving. The rentor's in the area have apparently responded by raising the rent to astronomical levels. A 2 br, 1 ba, 800 square foot house costs $800 a month! The house is ugly, doesn't come with any appliances, and the kitchen is a piece of shit. $800 a month. And this is in a tiny little town in Kansas. We could buy the house with no money down, and pay less than 500 a month on the mortgage. Annoying.
We will probably end up buying something.

- Harry Potter: So as some of you know, I have not read the Harry Potter books, and I had only seen the first Harry Potter movie. I've been generally dismissive of the entire idea, believing it to be A) annoying and B) a cheap version of Lord of the Rings. However, anyone who continued listening past those initial reasons would have heard me also say that I suspected I would love the books and didn't want to get involved until they were all out.
Particularly tuned in readers may be recalling that the final book in the series hits bookstores this month.
I'm sure we can all see where this is going. On Sunday we watched all 4 of the movies available to rent, and today we saw the latest movie (Order of the Phoenix). I read the first book in 3 and a half hours on Monday, and the second over a slightly longer period on Tuesday. I've held off on buying another book today.
Let's sum this up: These movies are unprecedented. There has never been anything like a 5-part movie that remained cohesive. Unless you want to count TV shows (in which case Firefly looks beautiful), the movies alone are unique. I have no idea how this has happened, but I suspect it has to do with the writer having unprecedented control.
Secondly: The books are a little disappointing. The movie paints a rich tapestry that appears to be just barely explored. I anticipated this being like the Lord of the Rings. The Tolkien books contained an astounding amount of information, from which the movies could include maybe half (often much less). The first two Harry Potter movies contain 90% of what is in the books, to the point I was surprised when anything was even slightly different. My usual rule is Watch the movie before you read the book because books are almost always interesting even if the movie has given something away. In the case of Harry Potter, I'm not how the book became so popular without the movie. The book leaves a lot to the reader's imagination, which of course for me is now tainted by the movies. I can't imagine what I would have 'seen' if I had read the books without seeing the movies, but it wouldn't have been what the movies show. Basically, I'm astounded that this stuff became so important that they had to make movies about it.
In summation: The books are ok, but the movies are fantastic. And yes, I'll still be reading all the books.

Jobs and such

(yeah, a drunken post)

Anyone have a job for me?

I only ask because I hate the world of employment. I don't want to work at all.

This isn't because I don't like to work actually.

I just have problems swallowing my ethics enough to work with some people.

I realize I'm going to have to do that, but at least if I'm going to have to do so, then maybe I can get a job working somewhere that I don't have to work all day long, all weekend long, all the time.

I understand now the appeal to farming. Imagine, working for yourself! Answerable to only yourself, motivated only by your own needs....That's starting to sound pretty good.

Except, of course, that I'd make an absolutely horrible farmer. I can't do it. I know this about me.

So barring my miraculous transformation into a farmer (maybe an aquaculture farmer? Anyone want to help with startup capital/ideas?), I need to find a job I can tolerate.

If I'm going to work with bastards, I want to at least have one of the following two things:

1) The ability to walk away from the job at the end of the day guilt free. You know, like when I worked at a book-store or as a waiter. When you leave work, you leave work! Imagine that!

2) Well-compensated. I don't know if anyone noticed, but graduate school doesn't end up giving you a particularly high reward in terms of hourly wage. You're going to get a job where you work all the time and get paid mediocre wages. Unless you get a tenure-track position, when you'll work all the time an get paid more money than you'll have time to spend.

I'm depressed... Thank goodness the sun was out today or else I'd be really depressed.

So send me those job offers. I'm available for the right price...

And if I can get a job writing, then I'd be infinitely happy.

The Beat and the Blog

The late 1940 through the late 1950s were to writing what the mid 70s were to music.

What am I talking about?

Punk rock and Beat poetry.

These two forms of expression took an established concept (artists create art), and turned it upside down. Jack Kerouac wrote a book that, on its surface, was nothing more than the mad ramblings of a guy who traveled too much and hung out with a bunch of crazy people. The style and form of the Beat writers was a reaction against the main-stream literary establishment of the day, but the message most commonly received was:
”You don’t have to be some academic elitist sitting in the ivory tower espousing the value of Lord Byron and the Bard all day in order to write compelling poetry and prose.”

The fact that these Beat writers were, often, skilled, academically educated, and spent an absurd amount of time honing their craft changed the context of that message, but not what people heard.

The punk rock movement was similar. Bands like the Ramones and the Sex Pistols sent the message that you didn’t have to be (or pretend to be) some kind of musical poet or modern composer in order to have a good time. Like the Beats, punk rockers were reacting against a main-stream, rock n’ roll scene that was increasingly dominated by complex acts, extravagant musical solos, absurd style, and an increasing aloofness suggesting rock musicians were more than ordinary people. People heard essentially the same thing from the Punk movement that they heard from the Beats:
”Anyone can do this. You can do this.”

Let’s call this the Anyone realization.

Let’s cut ahead to the internet revolution. The internet isn’t exactly as cheap as many people think it is (you usually have to buy a computer and procure an internet connection EDIT: or go to a library...whatever), but the ability to publish an idea where essentially anyone with a computer can see it is unique. Compared to the cost of self-publishing books or music, the internet offers a virtually unlimited ability to send ideas out to an infinite number of people.

This medium has been exploited by the same people who started writing spontaneous poetry and random music. You can now go online and partake of a virtually unlimited library of poetry, music, etc. There’s no possible way people like me, who have been surfing the web since middle school, could possibly understand how different this is than how material was made available in the 50s or 60s.

In a sense, the sheer volume of available material has diluted the astounding nature of this revolution. Nobody thinks much of online poetry when a simple Google search reveals 10,000 poems by people who, I’m putting this kindly, have the poetic ability of a horse. The one or 10 of those poems that actually sound amazing is considerably diminished as a result. We’ll return to this in a moment.

The meme that has continued the tradition of punk rock and beat poetry is the blog. I often think of blogs as on-line diaries. Authors are writing about their own experiences, jobs, joys, hardships and anything else to an audience that may number from few to many. These posts may be daily or weekly or hourly and share the common feature that they are updated more often than a book. The whole concept is a little fuzzy, since journals and diaries were traditionally private and a blog is, almost by definition, available to a practically infinite audience. Numerous people who write blogs have not been properly appreciative of that fact and as a result have been fired for saying things online (to the public) that they would never say in person to anyone.

However, when I say that blogs are continuing the tradition of punk rock and beat poetry this is not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the ‘Anyone’ realization in regards to news.

24-hour news agencies have always had “experts” who offered their opinion. Newspapers have long had columnists who spoke with some measure of authority regarding the world, the media, celebrity, or humor on a weekly basis (the mere idea seems quaint). Other media outlets paid people to talk/write about the cultural, political, and economic ramifications of everything from daylight savings time to Jennifer Aniston’s hair.

The blog changed the relevance of the “expert.” No longer were you required to have anything resembling a qualification in order to espouse your viewpoint to a large audience. Nobody was vetting Anyone’s ability to say things. You could read an opinion on CNN.com and then head over to randommonkeys.com and get another opinion: They were both being broadcast to the same audience! This is the Anyone realization. Anyone can be an expert.

The exchange of information over the internet further started spreading the ideas of other experts. The guy on NBC who said that pollution-induced asthma was killing babies was now being contradicted by a guy on coal-industry websites who was spreading a very different interpretation of research.

And here we see the difference in these revolutions. With Beat poetry and Punk rock, the elitist attitudes being rejected by the movement were based on a rather flimsy foundation: That the ivory tower of academic criticism was the arbitrator of good and bad.

Who, ultimately, is the arbitrator of ‘good taste’ or talent? Why should Roger Ebert’s thumbs down for Scorpion King really mean anything more than a 17-year-old’s exuberant thumbs up? Why did academic literary critics routinely pan science fiction as the former became increasingly popular?

The emergence of the Anyone expert is a slightly different beast. While ‘expert opinion’ on matters of artistic expression no longer carries much weight within mainstream society (Oprah is far more influential) due to that ridiculous foundation, expert opinion on matters of technical knowledge resides on an entirely different foundation. When discussing the ability of a foundation to support a 30 story building, the “experts” actually have access to an understanding of objective reality that not just Anyone possesses. Engineers, scientists, and doctors do, in fact, carry a special knowledge about a particular area of expertise that does inform the advice and opinions they offer. People without that special knowledge are often not capable of offering better advice. The Anyone realization in relationship to ‘expert opinion’ is not likely to improve the world, but rather likely to cause confusion and poor decision making.

This isn’t to say that blogs are universally bad or inherently unlikely to aid the development of human culture. Another revolution being driven by blogs is something I think of as ‘directed’ news, or news that centers solely on a particular subject or theme. Whereas stories about a particular subject may rarely penetrate the front page or television portion of traditional news outlets, blogs may often highlight all the stories relevant to a particular subject.
Ultimately the Anyone realization in regards to expert opinion on matters of technical expertise will either work itself out somehow, or will fade away. Over the long-term, reliance on unqualified experts will reveal itself to be a flawed premise (if in fact it is the case) and such ‘experts’ will be left to shout to an audience that no longer exists. Even now the emergence of blogs analyzing blogs, or experts analyzing experts, may ultimately lead to popular acceptance of only those experts who can demonstrate the special knowledge that is vital to a valuable opinion. Sports blogs, and NBA blogs in particular, are already doing this, by constantly redirecting traffic to sites with useful and intelligent analysis and opinions and ignoring sites without. Such meta-criticism among the community of experts on more important topics (science, politics, law) seems to have a rich history in journals and print already, and as a result is being translated (in spurts) to the digital realm.

Where am I going with this? I really don’t know. I just started thinking about this and wrote it down as I went. I’m pretty sure none of these thoughts are particularly novel, and I’m pretty sure you’re reading this on my blog. I suspect that blogs will becoming increasingly regulated by advertiser dollars, traffic redirects, and search engine results, and as a result, the role of individual experts for technical expertise will probably be diluted by more experts, but eventually the quality of those opinions will be unchanged.

Scientific Misconduct (Part I)

Ok everyone. As I'm sure many of you are aware, I like to write. I write a LOT. As in, I write this blog, another blog, dozens of poems, short stories, and little snippets of randomness every day. This is in addition to the grants, papers, and proposals that I write in my work. I'm trying to channel this writing into somewhat productive outlets that incorporate both learning and teaching. I'd like to make a career out of writing.

Towards those ends I present my first ever Popular Science article. I decided upon the topic of scientific misconduct because I find it a fascinating subject (I can go into that more later). However, I'm not just publishing this here for fun, I want feedback. Ok? Seriously. I feedback. I have little way of knowing whether my writing style here is good, bad, ugly. Whether non-scientists will find it interesting and whether scientists will find it appropriate. I really need to know if this is any good. If it isn't any good, I need to know that too (and why). So please, please, let me know what you think. This is part 1 of a 3 part series. Feedback please!

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The use of the scientific method has, to put it succinctly, completely revolutionized the modern human experience. However, the underdiscussed backbone of this method is its dependence upon two critical components: A larger scientific community and a generally honest set of scientists. The larger community is necessary to provide critical review and to duplicate results. The honest individuals are necessary to prevent tremendous amounts of time and effort from being wasted running down dead ends.

These two critical components have, on occasion, broken down. The primary question is: What can we learn from these cases of scientific misconduct?

Scientific Misconduct by Individuals

In 2001, Jan Hendrik Schön (along with Hong Meng and Zhenan Bao) published a paper demonstrating that a thin layer of organic dye could be used as a transistor at the molecular scale. In this paper Schön claims “The fabrication of monolayer transistors and inverters might represent an important step towards molecular-scale electronics.” The paper is compelling, offering demonstrations of molecular structure and transistor characteristics of the materials he used.

Unfortunately, the results were a complete fabrication. In an editorial published along with the retraction of this paper, Nature questions what was going through Schön’s mind when he decided to fabricate his results.

“Was he trapped in a spiral of expectations that could only be fulfilled by deception?” (“Reflections on scientific fraud”, Nature, 2002, Vol. 319, p 417)

In the case of Schön’s work, the first hint that something was suspect came when someone noticed that the figures from several of his papers were identical. Following a lengthy investigation by Bell Labs (Schön’s employer), Schön’s was fired, his co-authors were exonerated, and journals were informed of the results. At the end of the 127 page report detailing these findings (which is no longer available through Bell Labs website), Schön responds to these findings:

“Although I have made mistakes, I never wanted to mislead anybody or misuse anybody’s trust. I realize that there is a lack of credibility in light of these mistakes, nevertheless, I truly believe that the reported scientific effects are real, exciting, and worth working for.”

The case of Jan Hendrik Schön is probably the most extreme form of scientific misconduct available to an individual, but it is certainly not the only form. Scientific misconduct generally falls into one of three larger categories: Fabrication, plagiarism, or ethical misconduct.

Fabrication such as that practiced by Schön has been rarely reported. Data on misconduct is scarce, but of 30 cases of scientific dishonesty reported by Denmark, just 2 were labeled ‘fabrication’ (Riis, 2001, J. of Clin. Pathology). A survey of just over 3,200 scientists being funded by the National Institutes of Health found that 0.3% had falsified data and 6.0% had failed to present data that contradicted one’s previous research. Even within the category of fabrication, often the kind of fabrication taking place is not as severe as that seen in the Schön case. Take, for example, the case of Dr. Robert Millikan.

Dr. Millikan was a physicist born in 1868 and prominent throughout the turn of the century. His greatest claim to fame is the oil drop experiment he did that established, once and for all, the charge on an electron. The experiment consists of balancing a small droplet of oil between a manually adjusted electrical field and the gravity of the earth. Since the gravitational field is known, and the electrical is known, the charge of the oil droplet can be calculated. What Millikan found was that the charge of the droplets was always a multiple of a single value: The charge of an electron.

When Dr. Millikan originally published his results, another scientist, Felix Ehrenhaft, published contradictory results suggesting a charge smaller than the electron charge existed. Millikan returned to the lab to obtain more precise results, and that is exactly what he got.

As it turns out, those precise results were partially the result of subtle data manipulation. Millikan measured close to 175 drops over the course of several months, but he reported the data of only 58 and claimed they were measured over 60 consecutive days. Some of the 175 could be legitimately removed due to obvious malfunctions in the machine used to conduct the experiments, others seemed to be removed solely to reduce the error in his final measurement. That these drops had gone unreported was not discovered until years after his death and upon closer examination of his lab notebooks. Millikan’s motivations were clear: He wanted to establish his reputation as a premier scientist. By selectively choosing the data he presented, he reduced his error by an order of magnitude and dismissed the objections of other scientists. In this case, his theories and results have proven accurate.

Another example of scientific misconduct demonstrates just how difficult it is to ascertain whether or not anything inappropriate has occurred. Gregor Mendel is commonly called the father of modern genetics. He lived in the latter half of the 19^th century and raised pea pods in a garden in his monastery. Mendel’s primary contribution to science is the description of how traits are inherited. In 1865 Mendel published “Experiments on Plant Hybridization” in the Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brunn, a minor journal in Moravia. For the next 35 years it was almost completely ignored, then in 1900 Carl Correns rediscovered the work and forced other scientists to acknowledge its significance. Gregor Mendel’s place in history was firmly establish over a decade after his death.

Almost immediately the scientific community noticed that the results Mendel got were too good to be true. W.R.F. Weldon, in a 1902 paper, noted using the newly developed χ² test revealed Mendel’s results to be astonishingly close to the predicted values. In 1936 R.A. Fisher (in Annals of Science), showed rather convincingly that Mendel’s data must have been altered in some way. For the past 70+ years the debate has continued. Various explanations both plausible and apologetic have been put forth, from an eager-to-please assistant to selective acquisition of data to random chance. A review by Fairbanks and Rytting in the American Journal of Botany (2001) noted:

“There is substantial disagreement about his objectives, the accuracy of his presentation, the statistical validity of his data, and the relationship of his work to evolutionary theories of the day.” (p. 737)

Fairbanks and Rytting conclude that no real evidence that Mendel conducted misconduct exists, but this is far from a universally accepted interpretation. Other recent cases of fabrication can be similarly difficult to uncover. As authors Montgomerie and Birkhead lament in their 2005 article entitled “A Beginner’s Guide to Scientific Misconduct”:

“Indeed it should be possible for a clever scientist in our field [behavioral ecology] to fabricate all of their data without raising even the slightest suspicion...” (p. 21, Bulletin of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology)

Clearly, data fabrication is a problem of unknown extent upon which the scientific community can find little agreement. However, fabrication is hardly the only form of scientific misconduct that has been uncovered.

(Stay tuned for part II “Plagiarism” in the near future)