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Stardust, TWIWRD, Bones And Sperm, TWIBabies!, Gonorrhea Steals Genes, Pesticides and Parkinsons, Walk Like An Egyptian, Tyche Controversy, And Much More…
Show Notes:
Some of the stories we discussed…
Stardust Update
This Week in World Robot Domination:
Watson plays Jeopardy!
Evolution makes robots stronger.
This Week in Babies:
Interesting brain activity pattern found at 20 weeks
Counting kicks in at 18 months; earlier than previously thought (Thanks, Pamela)
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And join in with the bookclub: grab your copy of
Two pesticides linked to Parkinsons‘ Disease (Thanks, Pamela and Ed!)
Continuing on from last week’s news of jumping genes and horizontal gene transfer… first transfer of human genetic material to bacteria
Walk like an Egyptian…
Looking for Tyche – For and against
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I'm the host of this little science show. 
Just wanted to clear up something on Watson, it didn’t have a single microphone. So of course it couldn’t hear what the other contestants were saying and it can’t actually understand human speech. Clues were sent to Watson via text at the same time the clue was read to the humans and then after the question it was sent the right answer by text as well. The break through was in parsing the important parts of the question from all the word play that is used in the clue. There is a real nice documentary about Watson that can be found here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html
“… maybe there is something we don’t understand about non-ionizing radiation held close to cells for a long period of time…”
Oh, no! The qualifying word “maybe” is sort of inappropriate here…
This word communicates a range of uncertainty between, say, 10% and 90%.
(This is just a guess on my part, I’m open to other opinions on these numbers!)
For example, it is common to hear:
– “Maybe I’ll get into Hartford” (10%)
– “Maybe it will rain tomorrow” (50%)
– “Maybe the bus will be late” (90%)
The word “maybe” is inappropriate for probabilities outside the range:
– “Maybe I’ll win the lottery (0% rounded to nearest %)
– “Maybe God designed all living species” (0% rounded to nearest %)
– “Maybe the Sun will exist tomorrow morning” (100% rounded to nearest %)
– “Maybe non-ionizing radiation causes cancer” (0% rounded to nearest %)
Don’t feel pressured to use over-softening words when you don’t have to!
The scientific community has an important responsibility to communicate with the public.
Choosing words that most accurately communicate the probability is an important part of this responsibility.
The precautionary principal isn’t a license to be a fear monger.
(Sorry to split this one up, it was getting sort of long…)
Of course there isn’t any “something we don’t understand” about non-ionizing radiation held close to cells for a long period of time!
If there was “something we don’t understand” (the implication being it leads to an increased risk of cancer), the studies would have shown an increased risk of cancer!
Of course, no significant increased risk was demonstrated this (or any) study.
So, we can rule out the hypothesis that “something we don’t understand” is causing an increased risk of cancer.
Kiki, you’re presenting this dangerous argument that seems (sadly) thematic to TWIS:
This is anti-scientific and wrong!
The converse is true:
There is no good argument, based on evidence, that suggests cell phone radiation causes an increased risk for cancer. None.
Groveling at the foot of the mysterious and unexpected can be fun, but it isn’t right.
Sometimes we get lucky, and reasoned argument based on evidence points towards the mysterious and unexpected, this is a great joy!
But the sad theme on TWIS is this obsessive and desperate forcing of everything newsworthy in the direction of the mysterious and unexpected.
This is unwholesome. Can we please avoid it…?
I realize the article had all that Precautionary principle nonsense in it, but that isn’t science.
Like you guys said, it’s political. Boo.
But please do feed us, your minions, more wholesome science-y goodness!
We love it. 🙂
The Tyche story interests me the most, too bad not much time was dedicated to it.
Maybe next week?
The evidence for this hypothetical planet is (from what I gather) based on statistical analysis of comets flung towards the inner solar system from out in the Oort cloud.
I plan on reading the paper its self: http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.4584
So, you’re just deleting my posts now? Wow, nice job. I want my donation back.
The precautionary principle states that if there is “suspected risk”, the burden of proof falls on those taking the action.
Anyone can suspect anything of being risky!
A person might suspect that stepping on cracks in the sidewalk is a risk to their mother’s orthopedic health.
This makes the precautionary principle worthless, without an important amendment.
Instead of “suspected risk” we want to say ”a good reason to suspect risk”.
We require a reason (based on evidence) which must be falsifiable and is open to debate.
Scientific concensus on the mechanism for a risk is not needed, but obviously false fears can be ruled out scientifically.
Let’s apply this scientific version of the precautionary principle to cell phones causing a risk for brain cancer.
The hypothesis is that somehow, we don’t care how, cell phone radiation increases risk for brain cancer.
In this week’s show, you mentioned a study that shows no increased risk of brain cancer due to cell phone usage, ruling out the hypothesis.
It is UNTRUE that further investigation can EVER demonstrate a mechanism for significantly increased brain cancer risk due to cell phone radiation!
In other words, no correlation implies no causation.
(Not to be confused with the contrapositive, correlation does not imply causation!)
I think this is an important point left out of this week’s show. 🙂
Please, don’t jump to conclusions. Especially withing such a brief period of time. Nothing has been deleted. It takes time for me to approve comments. I am the only person approving comments at the moment, and I don’t live on my website waiting for people to post.
Actually, we’re going to discuss a story that suggests that there might be “something we don’t understand” about cell phone radiation on this week’s show. I don’t believe I ever said: “You never know, anything can happen, because this is science!”
I totally agree. NOT anything can happen, but we can’t make blanket statements and call them fact when we obviously don’t have all the information. There are scientific results that suggest a possible link between certain types of cell phone use and certain kinds of brain cancer. The results are not dramatic, which is throwing everyone off. Additionally, scientists can agree that the non-ionizing radiation from cell phones shouldn’t be causing any kinds of cancer. So, there is something still unexplored and unexplained.
To think that we know and understand everything based on a few studies is pompous and a conclusion reached in error.
Thanks, Davey. I’ll be sure to bring up your comments and the docu link on the show!
I think the recent story that prompted this renewed cell phone/brain debate was the one about cell phone exposure causing increased brain metabolism near the phone.
It looked pretty well controlled. The phones were muted so subjects didn’t know when/whether a phone was active and the increased brain activity should be due only to the phone’s radio emissions.
Yeah, I stupidly missed the whole “this post is being reviewed” thing. Sorry about that!
As for cell phones:
1. When you refer to “scientific results” it’s proper to to cite your sources! Please. Thank you. 🙂
2. My point is, in this case, the answer to the “unexplored and unexplained” is that the “scientific results” are wrong. Maybe they didn’t properly control for some variable, like skin contact with plastic cell phone cases (just a random – probably false – example off the top of my head).
If you decide to speak on the side of radical skepticism (Justin with his steady-state universe crack-pottery, or this precautionary principle insanity), you’ve stepped off the path of science into the realm of intellectual dishonesty.
It is intellectually DISHONEST to characterize the increased risk of brain cancer due to cell phone use as anything but zero.
Same with vaccines and autism. You might as well call the Earth flat, and replace Evolution with Intelligent Design.
I’m not just kissing up to our future computer overlords when I correct Justin’s assertion that Watson answering a question with the same wrong answer a human gave is a sign that Watson is a poor reasoner. Watson had no facility to hear or recognize the answers given by his opponents. I’d also have to take exception to the notion that Watson coming up with the same answer as a human being is evidence that Watson cannot reason like a human, since I’m guessing the human used human reasoning to come up with the same answer.