Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• fMRI bugs could upend years of research

  This is what your brain looks like on bad data.

  The problem is simple: to get from a high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging scan of the brain to a scientific conclusion, the brain is divided into tiny "voxels". Software, rather than humans, then scans the voxels looking for clusters.

  When you see a claim that "scientists know when you're about to move an arm: these images prove it", they're interpreting what they're told by the statistical software.

  Now, boffins from Sweden and the UK have cast doubt on the quality of the science, because of problems with the statistical software: it produces way too many false positives.

  In this paper at PNAS, they write: "the most common software packages for fMRI analysis (SPM, FSL, AFNI) can result in false-positive rates of up to 70%. These results question the validity of some 40,000 fMRI studies and may have a large impact on the interpretation of neuroimaging results."

• One striking chart shows why pharma companies are fighting legal marijuana

  They found that, in the 17 states with a medical-marijuana law in place by 2013, prescriptions for painkillers and other classes of drugs fell sharply compared with states that did not have a medical-marijuana law. The drops were quite significant: In medical-marijuana states, the average doctor prescribed 265 fewer doses of antidepressants each year, 486 fewer doses of seizure medication, 541 fewer anti-nausea doses and 562 fewer doses of anti-anxiety medication.
  ...
  The tanking numbers for painkiller prescriptions in medical marijuana states are likely to cause some concern among pharmaceutical companies. These companies have long been at the forefront of opposition to marijuana reform, funding research by anti-pot academics and funneling dollars to groups, such as the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, that oppose marijuana legalization.

• In clinical trials, for-profit review boards are taking over for hospitals. Should they?

  Institutional review boards -- which review all research that involves human participants -- have undergone a quiet revolution in recent years, with many drug companies strongly encouraging researchers to use commercial boards, considered by many more efficient than their nonprofit counterparts.
  ...
  "IRBs are hired by the sponsor," Schreiner said. "They are paid by them. And so if they turn down the study, then I think they're unlikely to get repeat business."

• Highest-paid CEOs run worst-performing companies, research finds

  Research firm finds businesses led by lower-paid CEOs earn greater shareholder return.

  In fact, even after adjusting for company size and sector, companies with lower total summary CEO pay levels more consistently displayed higher long-term investment returns.

• Why the D.N.C. E-Mails Aren’t Scandalous

  Do these e-mails strike anyone as appalling and outrageous? Not me. They strike me as . . . e-mails. The idea that people might speak casually or caustically via e-mail has been portrayed as a shocking breach of civilized discourse. Imagine! People bullshitting on e-mail!

  Here are the latest, most damaging things in the DNC’s leaked emails.

• Donald Trump"s Ghostwriter Tells All

  "The Art of the Deal" made America see Trump as a charmer with an unfailing knack for business. Tony Schwartz helped create that myth--and regrets it.

  People are dispensable and disposable in Trump's world." If Trump is elected President, he warned, "the millions of people who voted for him and believe that he represents their interests will learn what anyone who deals closely with him already knows--that he couldn't care less about them."

• Transgender people: 10 common myths
  1. Myth #1: Transgender people are confused or tricking others
  2. Myth #2: Sexual orientation is linked to gender identity
  3. Myth #3: Letting trans people use the bathroom or locker room matching their gender identity is dangerous
  4. Myth #4: Transitioning is as simple as one surgery
  5. Myth #5: All trans people medically transition
  6. Myth #6: Transgender-inclusive health care is expensive
  7. Myth #7: Children aren't old enough to know their gender identity
  8. Myth #8: Transgender people are mentally ill
  9. Myth #9: Transgender people make up a third gender
  10. Myth #10: Drag queens and kings are transgender

• 'Healing' detected in Antarctic ozone hole

  Researchers say they have found the first clear evidence that the thinning in the ozone layer above Antarctica is starting to heal.

  The gains have been credited to the long term phasing out of ozone-destroying chemicals.

More on a topic I've blogged about before, Problems with Science.

• John Oliver mocks misleading scientific studies with fake Ted Talks

  His solution? 'Todd Talks'

  The reason for all the confusing findings? According to Oliver, "Scientists are under constant pressure to publish, with tenure and funding on the line. And to get published, it helps to have results that seem new and striking. Scientists know nobody is publishing a study that says, 'Nothing Up With Acai Berries.' And to get those results, there are all sorts of ways that -- consciously or not -- you can tweak your study."
  ...
  Per usual, Oliver has an amusing solution to the problem: Scientists' sourcing and methodology should be explained when their results are shared everywhere from viral stories to news segments. "I know what you're thinking: `Hold on, if that happens, where where am I going to get all my interesting bulls-- from?" says Oliver. "Don't worry -- we have you covered.'"
  
  Video

• Physicists Must Accept That Some Things Are Unknowable

  The next logical question about our origins, of course, then becomes that of where did inflation come from? Was it a state that was eternal to the past, meaning that it had no origin and always existed, right up until the moment it ended and created the Big Bang? Was it a state that had a beginning, where it emerged from a non-inflationary state in spacetime some finite time in the past? Or was it a cyclical state, where time looped back on itself from some far future state?

  The difficult thing here is that there's nothing we can observe, in our Universe, that allows us to tell these three possibilities apart. In all but the most contrived models of inflation (and some of those we can rule out), it's only the last 10^(-33) seconds or so of inflation that impacts our Universe. The exponential nature of inflation wipes out any information that occurred prior to that, separating it from anything we can observe by, well, inflating it beyond the portion of our Universe that we can observe.
  ...
  The total amount of information accessible to us in the Universe is finite, and hence, so is the amount of knowledge we can gain about it. There's a whole lot left to learn and a whole lot that science has yet to reveal. But some things we will likely never know. The Universe may yet be infinite, but our knowledge of it never will be.

• Why is So Much Reported Science Wrong, and What Can Fix That?
  • 1998: Year in which the British medical journal The Lancet published a study suggesting a link between autism and vaccines.
  • 2010: Year The Lancet published a retraction of the discredited study.
  • 33: Percentage of American parents surveyed by The National Consumers League in 2014 who believe vaccines are linked to autism.
  • 10: Factor by which retraction notices in scientific journals increased between 2000 and 2010.
  • 44: Percentage of retractions attributed to "misconduct," including fabrication and plagiarism.
  • 44: Percentage of health care journalists who said, in a 2009 survey, that their organization sometimes or frequently reported stories based only on news releases.
• How do we fix bad science?

  Independently verifying research can help science regain its credibility, argues Laurie Zoloth.

  Richard Horton, the editor of The Lancet, wrote in April: "Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness."
  
  Something needs to change. In this spirit in November 2011, a group of American scientists led by Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, began The Reproducibility Project.

• Why String Theory Is Not A Scientific Theory

  Although there was an entire conference on it earlier this month, spurred by a controversial opinion piece written a year ago by George Ellis and Joe Silk, the answer is very clear: no, string theory has not yet risen to the level of a scientific theory. The way people are trying to turn it into science is -- as Sabine Hossenfelder and Davide Castelvecchi report -- by redefining what "science" is.
  ...
  If you want to rise to the level of a scientific theory, you have to make a testable -- and hence, falsifiable or validatable -- predictions. Even a physical state that arises as a consequence of an established theory, such as the multiverse, isn't a scientific theory until we have a way to confirm or refute it; it's only a hypothesis, even if it's a good hypothesis.

And related to the problem:

• Why Critical Thinking Is in Short Supply

  While information is cheap and getting cheaper, meaning is increasingly expensive. We are beset by confirmation bias, our tendency to look for and accept evidence that supports what we already think we know and ignore the rest. Per motivated reasoning, we tend to reject new evidence when it contradicts our established beliefs. Sadly, the smarter we are, the more likely we are to deny or oppose data that seem in conflict with ideas we deem important. Finally, bringing true believers together in a group tends only to compound the problem.

• On skepticism, pseudo-profundity, Deepak Chopra, and bullshit

  And sometimes even bullshit is made to sound scientific.

  Of all the slick woo peddlers out there, one of the most famous (and most annoying) is Deepak Chopra.
  ...
  Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous.