Gouda Cheese Did Not Stimulate Immune System

Seth Roberts2 Comments

A recent study in Finland found that cheese with added lactic acid bacteria (sold commercially) stimulated the immune systems of elderly subjects. Earlier studies had found similar effects when the bacteria were put in milk or yogurt. To me, the most interesting result was that the cheese alone (Gouda, a fermented cheese) had no detectable effect. I take that to mean that some fermented foods contain too little bacteria to make a difference. I’m going to have to stop using my umami hypothesis as an excuse to eat cheese — although cheese may also be good for the fat it contains.

Thanks to Anne Weiss.

Harvard Student Almost Gets Away With It

Seth Roberts1 Comment

If Adam Wheeler, a former Harvard student, hadn’t applied for a Rhodes Fellowship, it appears he would have gotten away with four years of academic dishonesty. While at Harvard, he won several prizes. On his Rhodes application, he listed “numerous books he had co-authored, lectures he had given, and courses he had taught”. “Numerous books”? Yet this is how he was caught:

A Harvard professor first became suspicious of Wheeler while reviewing his application for the Rhodes scholarship. He discovered that Wheeler had plagiarized his piece almost completely from the work of another professor.

His “piece”? What’s that? When you apply for a Rhodes fellowship you don’t submit an academic article as part of your application. Why didn’t the reviewer check if the “numerous books” that a college senior claimed to have written actually existed? What’s next, a sixth-grader says she’s won a Nobel Prize and a Harvard prof doesn’t notice a problem?

Like Wheeler, Ranjit Chandra was caught toward the very end of his academic career. My impression with Chandra is that, as he repeatedly escaped detection, the falsifications became more extreme.

Preventive Stupidity: An Example

Seth Roberts4 Comments

The very first comment on my preventive stupidity post said this:

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” This was a very useful concept to point out to those people who believed that because nominal national US housing prices had never dropped before that they wouldn’t drop in the future.

At 39:59 in this excellent podcast, Barry Ritholtz says, “It’s just not true [that US housing prices have never declined]. Obviously in the post-Depression era home prices really collapsed.” The saying absence of evidence is not evidence of absence kept those who said it from looking into the facts of the matter.

Restless Legs Syndrome, Niacin, and Web Search

Seth Roberts5 Comments

Gary Wolf and I have a post on Boing Boing today about how Dennis Mangan cured his mom’s Restless Legs Syndrome. I mentioned this accomplishment earlier. Mangan’s story is an example of what I call personal science — doing science yourself about something you care about.

More One comment on Boing Boing is that niacin is also known as Vitamin B3 and if we searched “restless legs syndrome AND Vitamin B3″ we’d get lots of hits. I tried that search and got zero hits.

Preventive Stupidity: A Nuanced View

Seth Roberts12 Comments

I learned something from the comments on my preventive stupidity post (also here). The best comment was from Kim Oyhus, whose earlier comment had started it all. Were I to discuss the subject from scratch, here’s what I’d add (mostly elaborating what Kim said):

Scientific discussions are usually about data and theory. From Data A, someone has “concluded” — more precisely, raised the plausibility of — Theory X. At this point, preventive stupidity often begins: Someone says “correlation doesn’t equal causation” or “the plural of anecdote is not data” or something similar.

Here’s what I think. More data are better. Two data sets are better than one. To go from one data set (A) to two (A and B) is a step forward. Less data are worse. To go from one data set (A) to none is a step backward. If you respond to the assertion that A supports X by mentioning more data that bears on the truth of X, that’s a step forward. The more convincing the new data (in either direction, pro or con), the bigger the improvement.

Likewise, more ideas are better. Two plausible explanations of A are better than one. To go from one idea (X) to two (X and Y) is a step forward. Fewer ideas are worse. To go from one explanation (X) to none is a step backward. If you respond to the assertion that A supports X by mentioning another plausible explanation of A, that’s a step forward. The more plausible the new explanation, the bigger the step forward.

The sayings I wrote about (e.g., “absence of evidence doesn’t equal evidence of absence”) make their users stupider because they push them from thinking about one data set to thinking about none (they dismiss Data A) or from considering one idea to considering none (they dismiss Theory X). They make the rest of us stupider because they prevent their users from making useful contributions. They really are preventive stupidity, as Orwell said.

If these sayings were used as transitions, as throat-clearing, fine. If somebody wrote, “Look, correlation doesn’t equal causation. Here’s another plausible explanation for what you observed . . . ” that would be okay. In my experience, that’s not what happens. They’re used to support an overall dismissiveness. Several months ago I wrote about my observations that connected socks with foot fungus. Some of the comments provided new relevant data — steps forward. A few comments, however, made this or that preventive-stupidity point (“ Sample size of 1, no control . . . . you can’t seriously think you’ve proved anything here“, “ your post is post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning“). The comments didn’t go on to make a step forward. They were steps backward.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Thanks to Anne Weiss, Tom George, and JR Minkel

More Anti-Science

Seth Roberts7 Comments

Professional scientists mostly ignore the slogans (e.g., “absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence”) I discussed in my previous post. For example, the professional-scientific conclusion that smoking causes lung cancer came mostly from correlations. This conclusion was criticized, sure, but not by saying “correlation does not equal causation”.

Professional scientists have a much worse problem, which is that they criticize much more easily and fluently than they praise. (Marginal Revolution is an excellent blog partly because it doesn’t suffer from this.) This can be depressing (lots of work is underappreciated), exciting (anyone who sees this has a big advantage), or merely amusing, as in this example to which Stephen Marsh drew my attention:

I just returned from the MS4 conference. It is the fourth year that a group of philosophers of science have gathered to try to tease apart the implications of computer simulation in science. . . .Several presentations gave harsh criticism of climate science models. Bayesian tools (a statistical technique) were given some especially harsh criticisms. Everyone agreed the models were problematic in some sense or another. That the results were subject to all kinds of errors and suspicions, and there were substantially difficult difficulties to sort out. . . . Despite this, everyone concurs the models are robust . . . No one disagreed that the planet was warming.

The poor ability of professional scientists to praise means that comparison of A and B (two theories, say, or two experiments) mainly consists of comparing how much A and B have been criticized. How much A and B would have been praised, had scientists been better at praise, is unknown. This is a very poor way to compare stuff. Inability to praise also means that there is too much criticism. In my experience, scientists have trouble separating serious criticisms from trivial ones. For example, that climate-change models haven’t been shown to predict correctly is a serious criticism not emphasized enough (e.g., at the MS4 conference).

Preventive Stupidity Exists

Seth Roberts67 Comments

In the world of Orwell’s 1984,

To the end of suppressing any unorthodoxy, the [ruling] Party inculcates self-deceptive habits of mind to the inner and outer members, thus crimestop (“preventive stupidity”) halts thinking at the threshold of politically-dangerous thought.

Three sayings popular in scientific discussions show that in our world, preventive stupidity exists — and works. In a comment, Kim Ayhus has brought my attention to this.

1. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Ayhus explains why this is wrong. That such an Orwellian saying is popular in discussions of data suggests there are many ways we push away inconvenient data.

2. Correlation does not equal causation. In practice, this is used to mean that correlation is not evidence for causation. At UC Berkeley, a job candidate for a faculty position in psychology said this to me. I said, “Isn’t zero correlation evidence against causation?” She looked puzzled.

3. The plural of anecdote is not data. How dare you try to learn from stories you are told or what you yourself observe!

Orwell was right. People use these sayings — especially #1 and #3 — to push away data that contradicts this or that approved view of the world. Without any data at all, the world would be simpler: We would simply believe what authorities tell us. Data complicates things. These sayings help those who say them ignore data, thus restoring comforting certainty.

Maybe there should be a term (antiscientific method?) to describe the many ways people push away data. Or maybe preventive stupidity will do.

“Psychology is the bridge between art and science”

Seth Roberts4 Comments

Yesterday I attended interviews of Tsinghua students who want to transfer from another major to psychology. Almost all of it was in Chinese, but at one point, as part of an explanation of her interest in psychology, a student said (in English), “Psychology is the bridge between art and science.”

Well put. Maybe she read that somewhere, but I doubt it. I’d never heard it before. Notice how we think art can be done by anyone yet science can only be done by scientists (in extreme cases, only by physicists). Psychology, especially self-experimentation, may lead us out of that desert.

The wisdom of Tsinghua freshmen.