Ranthropologist

Tag: science

  • Daily Reads: Labeling Knowledge

    Daily Reads: Labeling Knowledge

    This article in the Washington Post by Ilya Somin proposes an interesting idea about the scientific literacy of the general public: we don’t need to be highly knowledgeable about science – or many other topics, for that matter – to get by in our daily lives. So when a survey comes out such as the one with which the article opens, illustrating that 80% of the American public would support labeling of foods that contain DNA, it is misleading for us to assume that 80% of Americans are stupid. Yes, it pains me greatly to realize that that many people don’t know what DNA is and that it is present in just about everything we eat, but Somin is correct in concluding that with the vast quantities of information that exist, it is unrealistic to expect people to be knowledgeable of everything. (This principle is used in tongue-in-cheek “warnings” about the substance dihydrogen monoxide – otherwise known as water – and how dangerous it can be. This capitalizes on people’s lack of knowledge about chemical names and trades in the rather elitist assumption that people who don’t know the chemical structure and name of water are stupid, rather than merely untutored.) That said, I think this is why critical thinking is so important. People need to be taught to admit that they don’t know things and that they may need more information before coming to a conclusion. If we all realize and admit how much we don’t know, rather than forming opinions without doing more research, then I think perhaps a lot of our problems with scientific misunderstandings would end.

    Over 80 percent of Americans support “mandatory labels on foods containing DNA”

  • Daily Reads: Go To Sleep!

    Daily Reads: Go To Sleep!

    Do you wish you could get more sleep? Or do you brag about how you can manage on much less than the standard 8 hours a night? Or both? Then this article from Mother Jones by Indre Viskontas is for you. It summarizes nine main reasons why we should get more sleep. The information comes from an interview with sleep researcher Matt Walker conducted by the Inquiring Minds podcast (which I listened to this morning and which I highly recommend if you enjoy podcasts and science). I was surprised to hear some of the information presented in the podcast – especially about things like the effects of sleep deprivation on immune function and on regulation of blood sugar. So read the article, listen to the podcast, and don’t feel guilty for sleeping long nights or taking an afternoon nap. And if you feel like you just don’t have time in your life for more sleep – you have kids, long work hours, a social life to maintain – perhaps it’s worth looking at those obligations and seeing if you can find ways to make your own health a higher priority. I bet your ability to tend to those other obligations will improve!

    9 Reasons You Really Need To Go To Sleep

  • Daily Read: Get Your Kids Vaccinated

    Daily Read: Get Your Kids Vaccinated

    I haven’t written any posts specifically about this subject, but it should come as a surprise to no one that I am pro-vaccine. This is a great post by Jennifer Raff from her blog Violent Metaphors that covers the basic arguments for why vaccines are safe, effective, and important. The article is chock-full of links for further reading, and if you have time, I recommend that you click through and read up on the multiple studies that have proved the safety and efficacy of vaccines. The recent outbreak of measles at Disneyland, which has caused infections in at least 20 people so far, brought this always-simmering issue back to immediate public attention. I think it is something that should be constantly reiterated because the consequences of people not vaccinating their children can be severe – and not just for the kids who aren’t vaccinated. Personal belief exemptions for vaccines are becoming more and more common at schools, and I think this is dangerous. If you know anybody who is on the fence about vaccines, please encourage them to think critically and do their research – and as the article says, not just from the anti-vaccine side. You can also encourage people to learn how to assess arguments from a scientific, critical perspective so they understand the difference between testable scientific hypotheses and untestable conspiracy theories. I know a good place to start: right here at Ranthropologist!

    Dear Parents, You Are Being Lied To

    H/T to my friend Todd and IFLScience.com for bring this post to my attention.

  • Daily Reads: Home Cooking

    Daily Reads: Home Cooking

    Here’s an interesting little article on the link between home cooking and health by NPR’s Melissa McEwen that illustrates how we have to be careful about the assumptions we make. There is a tendency with science reporting in the media to simplify complex ideas. This, of course, is necessary when you have to contend with word limits. But that same simplification can bleed over into policy statements, as illustrated in this article. It has been taken as a truism that cooking and eating more frequently at home will lead to overall better health, especially in terms of conditions like metabolic syndrome, a precursor to type 2 diabetes. New research indicates that this may not actually be the case – but importantly, the article also  points out that more research needs to be done to see exactly what the connections really are. This is the scientific method and critical thinking in a nutshell and shows how important it is to be skeptical of broad claims.

    Is “Cook at Home” Always Good Health Advice?

  • Logical Fallacies: Appeal to Authority and the Tu Quoque Fallacy

    Logical Fallacies: Appeal to Authority and the Tu Quoque Fallacy

    The appeal to authority is probably one of the most common logical fallacies. You hear it and see it all the time: “The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the climate is changing. All those scientists can’t be wrong, so the climate must be changing.” It’s true that the IPCC’s research has revealed a great deal of scientific evidence that the climate is changing, and that the change is most likely caused by human activity. But simply saying it’s true because a fancy-sounding panel of scientists says so is not enough. It’s the research that supports the conclusion, so if you are going to make an argument about something, cite the research, not just the source.

    Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing to bolster your argument by touting the credibility of your sources. I am saying that you better be prepared to cite the conclusions of your sources as well. The reason an appeal to authority by itself is not enough is because it can be extremely misleading. Just because a person, group, or study is associated or affiliated with a highly-respected institution or researcher does not mean that the conclusions themselves are sound. Linus Pauling, a Nobel laureate in chemistry, was rightfully lauded for his work in explaining complex molecular bonds (and he was also awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-war activism). Pauling is routinely listed as one of the most influential American scientists of the 20th century. However, in his later years, he did work on vitamin C, among other things, that fell short when critically analyzed by other scientists. Nevertheless, even today people will cite Pauling’s work to bolster claims about vitamin C’s efficacy in treating certain diseases, such as cancer, even though none of his claims have stood up to testing. It is simply his authority as a Nobel prize winner that seems to give credence to disproved claims.

    Something similar happens with people who have the title of “doctor” (and I should know, being one of them); somehow, the Doctor is seen as an authority simply because of her title. I claim no specialized knowledge outside of my very specific research in anthropology, but when I talk, people who know I’m a PhD tend to listen… and to ask me about things I really know nothing about! Along similar lines, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, of conservative talk-show radio fame, earned the title of Dr. by virtue of her PhD in physiology… not in the psychotherapy she dispensed on her program. Yet “Dr. Laura” was able to trade on her title to enhance her credibility with her listeners: a perfect example of the appeal to authority. This is a fallacy we all have to be very careful of, not only because we use it in our arguments with others but because we fall for it ourselves when convincing ourselves of the rightness of our views. Always remember that it is not enough that somebody is “a Harvard Medical School neurosurgeon.” That by itself does not make the research credible. It is the scientific process, the peer review, the repeated testing, that gives a particular conclusion its credence. And on the flip side, reversing the appeal to authority – e.g., “how can we trust that research when it’s only from Bob State University?” – does not mean that the research is shoddy or its conclusions can’t be trusted. If it has gone through the same rigorous scientific process as the work of the Harvard neurosurgeon, then it should have equal credibility. Final flog of the dead horse: you should definitely be aware of the credentials and background of researchers, but you should not use that as the sole criterion by which to judge their work.

    And now our bonus fallacy: the tu quoque fallacy. It has a fancy name but the concept itself is simple. This is the classic child’s whine that “so-and-so gets to stay up until 10, so I should get to stay up too!” Just because someone else gets to do it doesn’t mean you get to do it! Even more specifically, the tu quoque fallacy is used to try to justify wrongdoing. I’m sure cops hear it all the time in the form of “Why didn’t you get that other guy who was racing past me at 95?” You know as well as the cop does that just because somebody else was going 95 doesn’t make it ok for you to go 90. I love tu quoque because it’s really so childish when used in this classic sense. But it does get used in other ways as well, in more of an “apples to oranges” way. You tend to hear the tu quoque fallacy when people can’t really refute an argument with logic, but they remember an example of something similar turning out not to be true, so they cite that instead. I’ve been hearing it regularly in discussions of global climate change when people refer to a brief, media-hyped panic in the 1970s that the world was about to go through a global freeze. As it happens, while a few papers suggested that a cooling period might be coming, the majority of research at the time found more evidence for global warming. But the media got ahold of the cooling theory and ran with it. The conclusion is that the climate scientists who proposed a potential global cooling period turned out to be wrong; therefore, climate scientists who are predicting global warming are also wrong. It’s a variation of the child’s whine: “science was wrong about something in the past, so it must be wrong now.” This is absurd. Scientific research is based on revising conclusions based on new information. If scientists gave up every time something they predicted turned out to be wrong, no scientific field would ever advance. So being wrong in the past has little predictive value for being wrong in the future.

    It’s exhausting to try to keep track of all these fallacies, committed by ourselves, the people we talk with, and the sources we rely on for information. It’s also exhausting to glean what’s important from a conversation and use care to establish credibility without tipping over into an appeal to authority, or to cite examples of previous, similar situations without falling into a tu quoque, or to refrain from the ad hominem of calling somebody a blithering idiot (or much, much worse) instead of actually deconstructing their argument. Of course, a lot of people don’t really want to try because the fallacies are so much easier… but I do hope we will all keep trying.

  • Football: Why I Won’t Be Watching

    Football: Why I Won’t Be Watching

    I was raised by parents who are baseball and football fans – not fanatics, but loyal enough to their hometown teams to be regular watchers and attendees at Padres and Chargers games. I would say we were more of a baseball family, and I count going to Padres games at San Diego Stadium (then Jack Murphy, and now, in this era of paid advertisements masquerading as sports fields, Qualcomm) as some of my fondest childhood memories. I followed the Chargers more peripherally, but you knew it was football season when you could hear the occasional shriek from my house indicating to the neighborhood that the game was on and my mom was watching. I started watching football more regularly in college and remained a Chargers fan. In the last few years I even started watching games not involving the Chargers, and I was really enjoying learning more about the strategies, the roles of the different players, and the intricacies of some of the plays. I sometimes felt a little tug of guilt on Sundays when I would schedule the day’s activities around the game, but even though the game might keep me at home I would often just keep the TV on in the background or listen on the radio while doing other things rather than glue myself to the screen for 3+ hours. But make no mistake, I enjoyed my football.

    On May 2, 2012, former Charger and frequent Pro Bowler Junior Seau committed suicide. Seau had been in and out of the news since his retirement for some minor brushes with the law, but his suicide was a blockbuster story and a heartbreak for all football fans, not just fans of the Chargers. Seau shot himself in the chest, and immediately comparisons were drawn to the February 2011 suicide of retired NFL player and four-time Pro Bowler Dave Duerson, who had also shot himself in the chest. Duerson left a note requesting that his brain be used in scientific research, which is why he had chosen to shoot himself in the chest instead of the head. Although Seau left no note, as the investigation proceeded it became clear that Seau’s wishes may have been the same. What was the link? Both Duerson and Seau, and as it turned out, a number of other retired players who had committed suicide, all exhibited symptoms of a condition called CTE – chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

    A few months into the 2013 season, I watched the PBS Frontline documentary “League of Denial.” This documentary explores the link between football and CTE, and investigates how the NFL was dealing with the problem. They found that the NFL consistently denied that football was dangerous to players and insisted that concussions, even multiple concussions, were not responsible for the degenerative brain disease that some former players were developing. The documentary is pretty damning in its conclusions that the NFL brass actively conspired to thwart research, intimidate the researchers, and cover up their lack of disclosure to players about the potential for developing CTE and the seriousness of concussive injuries to the brain. The implication is that the NFL was much more concerned about protecting its financial bottom line than it was in protecting the health and safety of players. I highly recommend watching the show to learn the full extent of the issues.

    In spite of being very impressed with “League of Denial” I was left with questions. Although the correlation between CTE and concussions in NFL players, especially those who commit suicide or otherwise die young, is very high, it’s always important to research cause and effect before drawing conclusions. I believe that much more research needs to be done to truly understand what is going on. A well-designed study of CTE in football players needs to control for multiple factors, such as length of time playing; behavior off the field (e.g. drug and alcohol use, non-football-related injuries); individual and family medical history; non-medical background factors (e.g. money problems, relationship problems, and other stressors); and genetics. It may well be that concussions and CTE are directly causally linked in football players and that there are no other factors involved. But research like this could determine if there are other factors involved, and if so, make the game safer by using those factors to determine an individual’s risk.

    Research on the incidence of CTE in boxers has established that boxers are at risk of developing CTE due to repeated blows to the head. This seems intuitive, since boxing involves head shots that are intended to render the opponent unconscious. But football, with its helmets and pads, has led to the assumption that it is intrinsically safer than a sport like boxing. Paradoxically, it may be that the more you pad a player, the safer he feels, so he ends up taking more risks than he would otherwise, resulting in a higher number and a worsening degree of injuries. Some people argue that actually reducing the pads and helmets, if not banning them outright, would make football safer. It’s an interesting idea – back in the day of leather helmets and no padding, football players tackled the body, whereas now, shots to the head are commonplace (though the NFL has made certain head-busting plays illegal). Still, if you watch “League of Denial,” you can see that the game has become more and more brutal, and that head- and body-crushing violence is glorified not just on the field and in the locker room, but by the league, the media, and the fans. Yes, beautifully executed passes and running plays are glorified too, but bone-crunching tackles are also looped endlessly on the sports shows.

    After its years of denials, the NFL did finally start putting some money towards research into concussions even though it still continues to deny a link between football head injuries and CTE. Plus, it settled a lawsuit brought by former players alleging that it had actively downplayed the risks of the game and concussions in particular. Interestingly, the terms of the $765 million settlement state that the NFL is not admitting to any guilt; instead, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said the settlement was the league’s way to “do the right thing for the game and the men who played it.” While $765 million is a lot of money, in reality it’s a very small sum for the NFL – it amounts to under 8% of the league’s annual revenue of around $10 billion. In fact, the league saw the settlement as a victory because it prevented a lengthy court battle and the risk of having to engage in a discovery process that could bring some very unsavory things to light. If you want to be cynical about it, you could call it a payoff – and for the former players (and their families) who are suffering, some money now is better than a long court fight during which some of them will surely die.

    So why am I writing about all this? Because I have decided that I cannot, in good conscience, support the NFL. After viewing “League of Denial,” I stopped watching or listening to games (although – full disclosure – I did attend the Chargers-Broncos game on November 10, 2013, because my sister bought the tickets for my birthday in September and I didn’t want to let her down). I have brought this up with several people, and every single one has said to me that the players know what they are getting into, and not only that, they are paid millions to take on the risk. I disagree. I think they are only just now starting to learn what they are getting into. I think they are not given the information they need to make an informed decision. Bear in mind, these athletes begin playing as kids. Do you think their parents were aware of CTE in the late 1980s and early 1990s when some of today’s players were in Pop Warner or high school? If they knew then what they know now, would they have allowed their sons to play? Parents today are better armed than the parents of current players, but even now not enough research has been done. That research must happen if players and their families are to go into this game with all the information – and the NFL has to pay for it if they want players to keep taking on the risks. As for the “millions of dollars” argument, it doesn’t sway me at all. How much is your future health worth? How much money does it take to sacrifice your brain? Is there really a number you can put on that? And let’s talk about league minimums. In 2013, the minimum salary for a rookie was $405,000. A 10-year vet makes at least $955,000. A lot of money? By minimum wage standards, you bet it is… but when you consider that the average NFL player’s career lasts about 3.5 seasons, it suddenly doesn’t seem like that much. Obviously not every player makes the minimum, but even if you manage to make $3.5 million for your 3.5 seasons of service, once you are cut from the team in your mid-20s, what comes next? Individuals are responsible for managing their own money and some of the players probably are well-advised and do okay for themselves, but 3.5 years of a low-to-medium six-figure salary (especially, sadly, for men who didn’t give much thought to how they’d support themselves once their football careers were over) will not last forever, and it certainly is not enough to compensate for repeated traumatic brain injuries (not to mention the overall body injuries that can keep many players in pain for the rest of their lives). And let’s not forget that most of these players played in high school and college, suffered the same injuries, and were not compensated at all (my beef with big-money sports in college is a rant for another time). So no, I don’t buy that these players are paid well enough to justify the risk, even if they are one of the few star players with a multi-million dollar contract.

    I know a lot of people who read this will disagree with me, and that’s okay. I’m not expecting anybody else to change their behavior, and I do not judge people who continue to watch and enjoy the game. The Chargers managed to squeak into the playoffs this year, and even though I’m not watching I am still happy to hear when my hometown team wins. But until the NFL admits their role in downplaying the risk of concussions and acknowledges the link to CTE, I won’t be watching. Until they put as much money as it takes into researching the correlation between concussions and CTE, I won’t be watching. Until that research either definitely shows that there is no link, or comes up with ways to quantify the risks and applies it to improving player safety, I won’t be watching. Until the NFL fully and thoroughly educates each player on the risks of the game (and if you watch “League of Denial” you’ll see that they currently don’t do much), I won’t be watching. And until the NFL prioritizes the lives and health of players over the bottom line, I won’t be watching.