Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently:

• The Discovery of Global Warming

  Hyperlinked History of Climate Change Science

  "To a patient scientist, the unfolding greenhouse mystery is far more exciting than the plot of the best mystery novel. But it is slow reading, with new clues sometimes not appearing for several years. Impatience increases when one realizes that it is not the fate of some fictional character, but of our planet and species, which hangs in the balance as the great carbon mystery unfolds at a seemingly glacial pace."
  -- D. Schindler

• The Evolution of Diet

  Could eating like our ancestors make us healthier?
  Some experts say modern humans should eat from a Stone Age menu.
  What's on it may surprise you.

  The notion that we stopped evolving in the Paleolithic period simply isn't true. Our teeth, jaws, and faces have gotten smaller, and our DNA has changed since the invention of agriculture. "Are humans still evolving? Yes!" says geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania.
  . . .
  More accurately, you are what your ancestors ate. There is tremendous variation in what foods humans can thrive on, depending on genetic inheritance. Traditional diets today include the vegetarian regimen of India's Jains, the meat-intensive fare of Inuit, and the fish-heavy diet of Malaysia's Bajau people. The Nochmani of the Nicobar Islands off the coast of India get by on protein from insects. "What makes us human is our ability to find a meal in virtually any environment," says the Tsimane study co-leader Leonard.
  . . .
  In other words, there is no one ideal human diet. Aiello and Leonard say the real hallmark of being human isn't our taste for meat but our ability to adapt to many habitats - and to be able to combine many different foods to create many healthy diets. Unfortunately the modern Western diet does not appear to be one of them.

• The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

  Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort - not on intelligence or ability - is key to success in school and in life

• Study questions need for most people to cut salt

  A large international study questions the conventional wisdom that most people should cut back on salt, suggesting that the amount most folks consume is OK for heart health -- and too little may be as bad as too much. The findings came under immediate attack by other scientists.

• The Case against Patents

  Journal of Economic Perspectives: Vol. 27 No. 1 (Winter 2013)

  The case against patents can be summarized briefly: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded -- which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity. Both theory and evidence suggest that while patents can have a partial equilibrium effect of improving incentives to invent, the general equilibrium effect on innovation can be negative.

• Extracting audio from visual information

  Algorithm recovers speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag filmed through soundproof glass.

  Researchers at MIT, Microsoft, and Adobe have developed an algorithm that can reconstruct an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. In one set of experiments, they were able to recover intelligible speech from the vibrations of a potato-chip bag photographed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass.

  Who would have thunk it?
• Why Psychologists' Food Fight Matters

  "Important findings" haven't been replicated, and science may have to change its ways.

  The recent special issue of Social Psychology was an unprecedented collective effort by social psychologists to do just that - by altering researchers' and journal editors' incentives in order to check the robustness of some of the most talked-about findings in their own field. Any researcher who wanted to conduct a replication was invited to preregister: Before collecting any data from subjects, they would submit a proposal detailing precisely how they would repeat the original study and how they would analyze the data. Proposals would be reviewed by other researchers, including the authors of the original studies, and once approved, the study's results would be published no matter what. Preregistration of the study and analysis procedures should deter p-hacking, guaranteed publication should counteract the file drawer effect, and a requirement of large sample sizes should make it easier to detect small but statistically meaningful effects.
  
  The results were sobering. At least 10 of the 27 "important findings" in social psychology were not replicated at all. In the social priming area, only one of seven replications succeeded.
  
  . . .
  Caution about single studies should go both ways, though. Too often, a single original study is treated - by the media and even by many in the scientific community - as if it definitively establishes an effect. Publications like Harvard Business Review and idea conferences like TED, both major sources of "thought leadership" for managers and policymakers all over the world, emit a steady stream of these "stats and curiosities." Presumably, the HBR editors and TED organizers believe this information to be true and actionable. But most novel results should be initially regarded with some skepticism, because they too may have resulted from unreported or unnoticed methodological quirks or errors. Everyone involved should focus their attention on developing a shared evidence base that consists of robust empirical regularities - findings that replicate not just once but routinely - rather than of clever one-off curiosities.

• Calm Hearts, Bad Behavior

  David Kohn in The New Yorker tech elements blog.

  There are several theories, but Raine tends to favor the fearlessness hypothesis, which says that some of those with L.R.H.R. remain undaunted by the threats that would keep most of us in check. When you get scared, your heart rate goes up, because your body activates to deal with the imminent hazard. By definition, people with less fear tend not to get activated in situations that others find threatening.
  . . .
  Raine's skeptics argue that L.R.H.R. and other biological factors play a relatively minor role in determining who becomes a criminal. "The evidence is pretty consistent that biological traits don't have a large effect," Robert Sampson, a social scientist at Harvard University who has studied the topic for more than two decades, told me. "Social and environmental characteristics have much more weight."

• When It's Bad to Have Good Choices

  Maria Konnikova in The New Yorker science blog.

  Unsurprisingly, when people were asked to decide between something like an iPod and a bag of pretzels, they didn't feel particularly anxious: the choice was clear and life was good. When both choices were low in value, the emotions were similarly clear - cut. No one was particularly happy, but neither were they anxious. But when multiple highly positive options were available - a digital camera and a camcorder, say - anxiety skyrocketed, just as Lipowski had predicted. The choices between those objects that they valued most highly were both the most positive and the most anxiety - filled. The more choices they had - the study was repeated with up to six items per choice - the more anxious they felt. "When you have more good choices, you don't feel better," Shenhav says. "You just feel more anxious."

Oligarchy: a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.

• Is America an Oligarchy?

  After examining differences in public opinion across income groups on a wide variety of issues, the political scientists Martin Gilens, of Princeton, and Benjamin Page, of Northwestern, found that the preferences of rich people had a much bigger impact on subsequent policy decisions than the views of middle-income and poor Americans. Indeed, the opinions of lower-income groups, and the interest groups that represent them, appear to have little or no independent impact on policy.

• US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

  The clear finding is that the U.S. is an oligarchy, no democratic country, at all. American democracy is a sham, no matter how much it's pumped by the oligarchs who run the country (and who control the nation's "news" media). The U.S., in other words, is basically similar to Russia or most other dubious "electoral" "democratic" countries. We weren't formerly, but we clearly are now. Today, after this exhaustive analysis of the data, "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

• How to Become an Oligarch
  by Simon Johnson

  If the new graduate in your life has the connections to join a very large brand-name private-equity fund, the path to immense wealth, political influence, or even power becomes much clearer. Without such initial connections, however, it is very unlikely that he or she will become an oligarch. But you knew that already.

• End the Export-Import Bank and Other Forms of 'Crapitalism'

  It's crapitalism when politicians give your tax money and other special privileges to businesses that are run by their cronies.

  Voters assume government handouts go to people who need help. But they usually don't. Most government handouts go to the middle class and the rich.
  
  Government has no business handing out loan guarantees to companies. Corporations can pay their own way. The Agriculture Department's Market Access Program gives millions of dollars to affluent groups like the Pet Food Institute, the Wine Institute, Sunkist, and Welch Foods. In return, politicians get campaign contributions. It's disgusting crapitalism.