Month: August 2010

The Power of Hobbyists and the Impotence of Professionals

Seth Roberts3 Comments

One theme of this blog (I hope) is that it’s insider/outsiders — people with the knowledge of insiders but the freedom of outsiders — who can produce real progress. Ordinary insiders have the necessary knowledge but not the necessary freedom; ordinary outsiders have the freedom but not the knowledge. This article of mine makes this point in detail.

A similar point was made in a comment on a blog post by George Packer, the New Yorker writer. Packer had written an article about the U.S. Senate and his post was about how he’d written it. Someone commented:

I think Packer covered Washington with the refreshing take of a short-timer, one who didn’t have to make his living or sustain his career there. The disservice inherent in careerism connects with the Senate’s paralysis a la Tom Harkin’s quote about senators spending more than half their time fund-raising, one of the most troubling realities of the story. (Years ago, Bill Clinton said the House was ineffective because the members were “sleep deprived” from having to attend fundraisers every night. If a six-year term requires half-time fund-raising, imagine what a two-year term requires.)

I think the subtext is that journalistic long-timers, unlike short-timers like Packer, must spend a lot of time nurturing relationships, and this makes it harder to write unpleasant and unflattering truths.

Professional scientists spend a lot of time fund-raising, which in their case means applying for grants. A typical grant lasts three years. During those three years, because they need another grant when the current one runs out, they must publish several papers, recruit several grad students or post-docs (to do the heavy lifting), and avoid pissing off anyone in their field (because they might review your papers or grant proposals). Just as members of the House of Representatives never ever want to talk about how the constant need for money cripples them — it would make their job seem irrelevant and them appear impotent — neither do professional scientists.

Vitamin K2 and Fermented Foods

Seth Roberts8 Comments

We evolved to like sour foods, foods with complex flavors, and umami foods, I believe, so that we would eat more bacteria-laden food. Why do we need to eat such food? Perhaps to get enough Vitamin K2. Vitamin K1 and Vitamin K2 are quite different. A brief introduction:

The term vitamin K refers to a group of compounds that have a 2-methyl-1,4-naphtoquinone ring in common but differ in the length and structure of their isoprenoid side chain at the 3-position. The 2 forms of vitamin K that occur naturally in foods are phylloquinone (vitamin K1) and the group of menaquinones (vitamin K2, MK-n), which vary in the number of prenyl units. Whereas phylloquinone is abundant in green leafy vegetables and some vegetable oils, menaquinones are synthesized by bacteria; therefore, they mainly occur in fermented products such as cheese.

A 2004 study found a huge protective effect of K2:

The scientists at Osaka City University gave 21 women with viral liver cirrhosis [which greatly increases your chances of liver cancer] a daily supplement of 45mg vitamin K2 (menaquinone) for a period of two years. A group of 19 women with the disease received a placebo for the same time. Liver cancer was detected in only two of the 21 women given vitamin K2 but nine of the 19 women in the control group, reports the team in today’s issue of JAMA (292:358-361). After adjustment for age, severity of disease and treatment, the researchers found the women receiving vitamin K supplementation were nearly 90 per cent less likely to develop liver cancer.

A huge effect, suggesting that K2 is necessary for a repair system to work properly. This recent article is more support for the idea that K2 protects against cancer. The effect is weaker, perhaps because there was less damage needing repair.

Unnoticed Conflicts of Interest

Seth Roberts10 Comments

Gary Taubes pointed to this PNAS paper about climate change and noted that one of the authors, Stephen Schneider, had a big non-financial conflict of interest: If it turns out the whole argument is wrong, he looks like a fool. The accompanying statement (“The authors declare no conflict of interest”) is, if taken to mean the authors have no conflict of interest, wildly inaccurate. Readers unaware of Schneider’s history wouldn’t know this.

I came across a similar example today. A reader of this blog wrote extensive criticisms (here and here) of the idea that prenatal ultrasound may cause autism. He believed Caroline Rodgers, my source for that idea, misrepresented the evidence. In particular, Rodgers pointed to a study that found ultrasound disturbed neuronal migration in mouse fetuses. She said it supported her idea. The reader disagreed, saying,

The bottom line for me is that Dr. Rakic (from the mouse study) clarified, “Our study in mice does not mean that use of ultrasound on human fetuses for appropriate diagnostic and medical purposes should be abandoned. Instead, our study warns against its non-medical use.” Yes. Okay. No more boutiquey, keepsake ultrasounds. Great. But for Rodgers to skew this data (along with the FDA’s and others’) into claiming that ultrasounds under the care of an Obstetrics professional (and for medical use) are causing autism is disingenuous at best, unethical propaganda for the Midwifery Way at worst.

The reader is a professor who teaches composition. Maybe an English professor. He or she takes Rakic seriously, where I completely ignore his statement because of a conflict of interest. If Rakic questions “appropriate” ultrasound, he will be attacked in many ways, making his life unpleasant. I have no idea whether this swayed Rakic, but he would be only human if it did.

Of course developing neurons are unable to distinguish appropriate and inappropriate ultrasound. Rakic’s statement is ridiculous as Rakic and all insiders (neuroscientists) know, I believe. All insiders know that there are dozens of examples where findings from mouse brains have turned out to be true for human brains, in spite of the many differences between them, and that there are thousands of grant proposals in which mouse brains are claimed to be a worthwhile model for human brains. All insiders know this, realize the pressure on Rakic to say what he said, and, like me, just ignore it. As far as I can tell, Rakic pays no price for misleading outsiders because the outsiders don’t know they are being misled. (Just as with political lobbying: the public doesn’t understand what’s happening.) The composition professor doesn’t know this, as far as I can tell.

Rodgers is not claiming that ultrasounds “are causing autism”. She is saying they might cause autism, that there are several reasons to think so, and therefore (a) the ultrasound-autism idea deserves further scrutiny and (b) ultrasounds should be avoided as much as possible until more is known.

Too Much Murder in The New Yorker

Seth Roberts2 Comments

The title of Nicholson Baker’s chat about his New Yorker video-game article is “My Son is Killing Me”. Which is a far better title than the print title of the article: “Painkiller Deathstreak”. Why not give the article the much better title? Because another article in the same issue, a profile of Gil Scott-Heron, is called “New York is Killing Me.” Too late.

“Give Us Our Dammed Data”

Seth Roberts1 Comment

A large painting by Regina Holliday called “Give Us Our Dammed Data” shows 17 book authors, each holding the book they’d written about struggle with the health care system. For example, Lisa Lindell, who wrote 108 Days, which describes

her successful campaign to keep her husband alive. She was astounded when she read her husband’s medical record. The nurse’s notes specified that she had an “unreasonable” belief that her husband should live.

The Potti Scandal

Seth Roberts3 Comments

A Duke University associate professor named Anil Potti who does cancer research turns out to have fabricated numerous details on applications for research money. The first fabrication to be noticed was that he had received a Rhodes Fellowship.

This is interesting because Duke had previously investigated him:

Late last year [2009], there was a crescendo that caused Duke to stop clinical trials on three of his research programs, two involving lung cancer and one involving breast cancer. In each program, Potti was giving patients chemotherapy — determining what drugs might work best and in what dosage — based upon his genome research.

In January Duke let these programs resume after an internal review. [emphasis added] And these are the precise programs where Duke — for the second time — has now suspended new [emphasis added] enrollments. . . . In an official statement on the winter review, Duke said it had determined Potti’s approaches were “viable and likely to succeed.”

Someone who appears to be a total fraud is called to Duke’s attention — and they find him innocent! This is what happened with the SEC and Madoff and Memorial University and Ranjit Chandra. Chandra’s research assistant, a nurse, told Memorial something was wrong and Memorial did nothing, or very little. Chandra then sued the nurse. He went on to write the paper that Saul Sternberg and I investigated.

Someone lies on his resume — it happens. That a prestigious institution like Duke let him continue to get away with it, possibly endangering patients and surely wasting vast resources, after it’s brought to their attention — not so well-known. So far, the New York Times has only covered the false-resume side of the story. You may recall how poorly Duke responded to charges against its lacrosse team.

As this unfolded, Duke had the following headline on its website: “Crisis management 101: What can BP CEO Hayward’s mistakes teach us”. From a CNN story in which a Duke expert was quoted.

Duke.Fact.Checker notes that Potti’s papers have at least 26 co-authors! Many with M.D.’s, who have or will tell thousands of trusting patients “you should take Drug X”. The patient endangerment is not trivial.

The Cancer Letter on Potti. Another issue of The Cancer Letter about it.

The Joan Evans Scandal

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I came across the Potti scandal while trying to find out about the trouble faced by a woman named Joan Evans because a statistical analysis couldn’t be reproduced. Robert Gentleman had mentioned this in a talk at the Joint Statistical Meetings in Vancouver. Look for The Cancer Letter, Gentleman said.

I now realize that Joan Evans is Joe Nevins, who co-authored a major paper with Potti.

Speaking of Potti, members of the Duke administration are said to “have warned people not to even Google the name ‘Anil Potti.’”

The FBI Gets It Backwards

Seth Roberts3 Comments

The FBI recently sent a letter to the Wikipedia Foundation saying it should take down an image of the FBI shield — that is, a picture of an FBI badge — and threatened legal action. Supposedly the Wikipedia Foundation was breaking a law by posting it.

The Wikipedia Foundation responded that

The law cited in the F.B.I.’s letter is largely about keeping people from flashing fake badges or profiting from the use of the seal

If nobody knows what an authentic badge looks like it becomes easier to fool people with a fake badge.

High-End Kombucha

Seth Roberts3 Comments

I’m in Vancouver for the Joint Statistical Meetings. The local Whole Foods sells a small bottle of kombucha for $22. It’s in a refrigerator in the health section, next to flaxseed oil. I asked an employee how this kombucha was different than the kombucha sold in the drinks section. More potent, she said. The next time I give someone homemade kombucha I’ll say that it sells for $22 in Canada.

Kombucha, let me repeat, is extremely easy to make. Tea + sugar + store-bought kombucha + three weeks.