Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• The natural selection of bad science

  Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, suggesting that they result from something more than just misunderstanding. The persistence of poor methods results partly from incentives that favour them, leading to the natural selection of bad science. This dynamic requires no conscious strategizing—no deliberate cheating nor loafing—by scientists, only that publication is a principal factor for career advancement. Some normative methods of analysis have almost certainly been selected to further publication instead of discovery. In order to improve the culture of science, a shift must be made away from correcting misunderstandings and towards rewarding understanding.

• Why is the scientific replication crisis centered on psychology?

  The strengths and weaknesses of the field of research psychology seemed to have combined to (a) encourage the publication and dissemination of lots of low-quality, unreplicable research, while (b) creating the conditions for this problem to be recognized, exposed, and discussed openly.
  ...
  It makes sense for psychology researchers to be embarrassed that those papers on power pose, ESP, himmicanes, etc. were published in their top journals and promoted by leaders in their field. Just to be clear: I'm not saying there's anything embarrassing or illegitimate about studying and publishing papers on power pose, ESP, or himmicanes. Speculation and data exploration are fine with me; indeed, they're a necessary part of science. My problem with those papers is that they presented speculation as mature theory, that they presented data exploration as confirmatory evidence, and that they were not part of research programmes that could accommodate criticism. That's bad news for psychology or any other field.

  Also see: What has happened down here is the winds have changed.
• Dear "Skeptics," Bash Homeopathy and Bigfoot Less, Mammograms and War More

  A science journalist (John Horgan) takes a skeptical look at capital-S Skepticism.

  I'm a science journalist. I don't celebrate science, I criticize it, because science needs critics more than cheerleaders. I point out gaps between scientific hype and reality. That keeps me busy, because, as you know, most peer-reviewed scientific claims are wrong.

  So I'm a skeptic, but with a small S, not capital S. I don't belong to skeptical societies. I don't hang out with people who self-identify as capital-S Skeptics. Or Atheists. Or Rationalists.

• How Big Sugar Enlisted Harvard Scientists to Influence How We Eat-in 1965

  Industry-funded research sought to discredit links between sugar and heart disease -- more than half a century ago.

  An article by University of California-San Francisco researchers, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, shows how far back such efforts go: In 1965, the Sugar Research Foundation, the precursor to today's Sugar Association, paid Harvard scientists to discredit a link now widely accepted among scientists --that consuming sugar can raise the risk of cardiovascular disease. Instead, the industry and the Harvard scientists pinned the blame squarely, and only, on saturated fat.
  ...
  In a commentary accompanying the JAMA Internal Medicine article, Marion Nestle, a nutrition and public health professor at New York University and the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, called the findings a "smoking gun" showing how those who fund research can heavily influence its findings.

• Statins or not? New study aims to help doctors and patients decide

  A new study reviews harms and benefits of statins treating patients with elevated LDL cholesterol

  But one concern among some experts, and opponents, is the eventual use of statins to treat people who have high cholesterol, but have not had previous cardiovascular issues and do not have diabetes of hypertension, meaning more people take them than needed. Fewer studies have shown that statins reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases in healthy people with high cholesterol.
  ...
  Among the 10,000 patients, the researchers found the drug would cause five cases of myopathy, as well as five to 10 hemorrhagic strokes -- caused by weak blood vessels bursting -- 50 to 100 new cases of diabetes, and up to 100 cases of symptomatic adverse events, such as muscle pain.

• High US health care spending is quite well explained by its high material standard of living

  These plots and the arguments that usually go with them give the strong impression that US spends about twice as much as it should. However, these are misleading for several reasons, namely:

  1. GDP is a substantially weaker proxy for "wealth" and a substantially weaker predictor of health care expenditures than other available measures.
  2. The US is much wealthier than other countries in these plots in reality.
  3. The arbitrary selection of a handful of countries tends to hide the problems with GDP in this context and, oddly enough, simultaneously downplay the strength of the relationship between wealth and health care spending
  4. Comparing these two quantities with a linear scale tends to substantially overstate the apparent magnitude of the residuals from trend amongst the richer economies when what we're implicitly concerned with is the percentage spent on healthcare.

• All Prostate Cancer Treatments About Equally Effective, Study Finds

  The first controlled study comparing three different approaches to prostate cancer -- radiation versus surgery versus "watchful waiting" -- shows there is no truly bad choice for most men, experts said Wednesday.

• Myths and realities about America's infrastructure spending

  America needs an infrastructure renaissance, but we won't get it by the federal government simply writing big checks. A far better model would be for infrastructure to be managed by independent but focused local public and private entities and funded primarily by user fees, not federal tax dollars.
  ...
  Infrastructure spending is a form of investment: just as building a new factory can boost productivity, laying down a new highway or opening a new airport runway can, at least in principle, generate future economic returns. But the relevant question is: How do those future returns compare with the costs? Just because infrastructure is a form of capital doesn't mean that spending a lot on it is always smart.

• Why the gender wage gap explodes when women hit their 30s

  In other words: The wage gap is largest during the years when men and women start families and raise children. And it shrinks about 18 years later -- right around when adult children are likely moving out of their parents' house.
  ...
  As I've written about previously, there is ample evidence that women are still responsible for the majority of child rearing and housework, even in households where both parents hold full-time jobs. That additional burden can become a significant obstacle to career advancement and higher salaries.

• The International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP)

  The International Association for Computing and Philosophy exists to promote scholarly dialogue and research on all aspects of the computational and informational turn, and on the use of information and communication technologies in the service of philosophy.

  Also see a view from Don Berkich:
  Should computer scientists and philosophers bother with one another?
  

• Unpatent

  On a quest against patent trolls.
  Unpatent is a crowdfunding platform to invalidate bad patents.
  

  Unpatent was born with the mission of fixing the innovation framework.

  Under the premise that the patent system is utterly outdated and is not serving the people who push humankind forward, we are building tools to empower them again.

  The first glich in the system that we are fixing are patent trolls - who are usually law firms that extort people and companies over totally stupid, obvious patents.

• Can Money Buy You Happiness?

  It's True to Some Extent. But Chances Are You're not Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck.

  In short, this latest research suggests, wealth alone doesn't provide any guarantee of a good life. What matters a lot more than a big income is how people spend it. For instance, giving money away makes people a lot happier than lavishing it on themselves. And when they do spend money on themselves, people are a lot happier when they use it for experiences like travel than for material goods.

Various web links related to health issues.

• A Medical Mystery of the Best Kind: Major Diseases Are in Decline
  Gina Kolata in The New York Times The Upshot
  

  Something strange is going on in medicine. Major diseases, like colon cancer, dementia and heart disease, are waning in wealthy countries, and improved diagnosis and treatment cannot fully explain it.
  ...
  Perhaps, he said, all these degenerative diseases share something in common, something inside aging cells themselves. The cellular process of aging may be changing, in humans' favor. For too long, he said, researchers have looked under the lamppost at things they can measure. Perhaps, he said, all these degenerative diseases share something in common, something inside aging cells themselves. The cellular process of aging may be changing, in humans' favor. For too long, he said, researchers have looked under the lamppost at things they can measure.

• You Can't Trust What You Read About Nutrition
  by Christie Aschwanden in fivethirtyeight.com
  

  Spurious Correlation: We found a link between cabbage and innie bellybuttons, but that doesn't mean it's real.

  When it comes to nutrition, everyone has an opinion. What no one has is an airtight case.
  ...
  Our foray into nutrition science demonstrated that studies examining how foods influence health are inherently fraught. To show you why, we're going to take you behind the scenes to see how these studies are done. The first thing you need to know is that nutrition researchers are studying an incredibly difficult problem, because, short of locking people in a room and carefully measuring out all their meals, it's hard to know exactly what people eat. So nearly all nutrition studies rely on measures of food consumption that require people to remember and report what they ate.
  ...
  Nearly every nutrient you can think of has been linked to some health outcome in the peer-reviewed scientific literature using tools like the FFQ, said John Ioannidis, an expert on the reliability of research findings at the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford. In a 2013 analysis published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Ioannidis and a colleague selected 50 common ingredients at random from a cookbook and looked for studies evaluating each food's association to cancer risk. It turned out that studies had found a link between 80 percent of the ingredients -- including salt, eggs, butter, lemon, bread and carrots -- and cancer. Some of those studies pointed to an increased risk of cancer, others suggested a decreased risk, but the size of the reported effects were "implausibly large," Ioannidis said, while the evidence was weak.

• How exercise is "rebranded" as complementary and alternative medicine
  Respectful Insolence in ScienceBlogs
  

  "Complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), now more frequently referred to as "integrative medicine" by its proponents, consists of a hodge-podge of largely unrelated treatments that range from seemingly reasonable (e.g., diet and exercise) to pure quackery (e.g., acupuncture, reiki and other "energy medicine") that CAM proponents are trying furiously to "integrate" as coequals into science-based medicine. They do this because they have fallen under the sway of an ideology that posits a false dichotomy: To practice true "holistic" and "preventative" medicine, physicians and other health care professionals must embrace the pre-scientific, pseudoscientific, or anti-scientific ideas about medicine that underlie much of the "alternative medicine" being "integrated."

• Medical errors may be third leading cause of death in the U.S.

  In fact, the study, from doctors at Johns Hopkins, suggests medical errors may kill more people than lower respiratory diseases like emphysema and bronchitis do. That would make these medical mistakes the third leading cause of death in the United States. That would place medical errors right behind heart disease and cancer.
  ...
  One reason there's such a wide range of numbers is because accurate data on these kinds of deaths is surprisingly sparse. That's in part because death certificates don't ask for enough data, Makary said. Currently the cause of death listed on the certificate has to line up with an insurance billing code. Those codes do not adequately capture human error or system factors.

• A Cavity-Fighting Liquid Lets Kids Avoid Dentists' Drills

  The Food and Drug Administration cleared silver diamine fluoride for use as a tooth desensitizer for adults 21 and older. But studies show it can halt the progression of cavities and prevent them, and dentists are increasingly using it off-label for those purposes.
  ...
  The main downside is aesthetic: Silver diamine fluoride blackens the brownish decay on a tooth.

• Seriously, stop with the irresponsible reporting on cellphones and cancer

  This is just one study (we shouldn't dismiss it, but it's possible the results were simply due to chance). The effects were only found in rats (and may not translate at all to humans). And this needs to be weighed against other evidence that cellphones aren't a big risk for people (we've been using phones for decades now with no uptick in brain cancer). This is an important bit of research and deserves careful scrutiny and follow-up. But it's not an occasion for fear-mongering.