Why Dont You Blog?

Well, you almost heard it here first. In an unusual turn of events, the always educational Ben Goldacre has managed to scoop the BBC with the ridicule of the fish oil “trial” in Durham.

On the BBC news website, there is an article titled “Fish oil brain study laughable” (yeah, great headline…) that sort of breaks the story. Interestingly, in typical BBC fashion, they are very reluctant to actually say anything really negative. As a result we get things like:

Durham County Council said children who took the Omega-3 supplements during the school year performed better in exams.
It claimed out of 3,000 students who took part, almost a third showed significant improvements in GCSEs.
Dr Ben Goldacre said it was bad science because there was no separate study of pupils not taking fish oil. The council admits the trial was not definitive.

Now that is so wet as to be almost pointless. It barely qualifies for news when you see the real idiocy that has taken place in the Durham County Council offices.

Keen to show both sides of an argument, the BBC further waters down its news with:

However Dr Goldacre added that just because the study was poorly conducted, that did not mean there was no benefit to taking fish oil supplements.
“I do think it’s possible that fish oils might be helpful to improve school performance in children.”

What? Seriously? I would love to find the citation for that but in my short search now, I have failed. If you find it please let me know.

As the BBC seems so reluctant, I will give you some of Ben Goldacre’s quotes:

Dave Ford [promoter] said he knew the results would be positive before it even began. I’m not surprised: this “trial” was flawed by design from the outset.

Obviously the BBC dont want to know about this bit of bad PR for Durham. How about this even more relevant one:

This is appalling. 2,168 of their subjects dropped out [leaving 832] of the trial. They must count these people in the results. It is incompetent not to do so. This makes the rest of their claimed results even more meaningless.

Of the remaining 832, 80% are claimed to have done better than some unknown benchmark and this is heralded as a success…  Why on earth did the BBC decide to ignore that blinder?

Worse still, the BBC tries to explain the study off as if it was legitimate after all with this: [emphasis mine]

Dave Ford, from the council’s children and young people’s services department, carried out the initiative with the help of an educational psychologist.
They matched students who showed improved results to those, of similar abilities and backgrounds, who did not take the tablets.
However, the council explained that there was no controlled study of those children who were not given supplements as part of the study, which took place in the school year ending in summer 2007.
Mr Ford said: “This study has produced some interesting and possibly exciting issues that could be the basis for future scientific trials.
“There seem to be some very clear indications that pupils taking the supplement do significantly better.”
Mr Ford added that the council made no claim the results of its GCSE study could be attributed to Omega-3 supplements alone.

By Odin that is infuriating. It is complete nonsense. The BBC are not doing a service by showing both sides of an argument (sound familiar?). They are not providing the UK public with news by minimising Ben Goldacre’s quotes and emphasisng the woo.

This is a hideous combination of poor journalism and very bad science.

BBC - Shame on you.

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Ben Goldacre’s excellent badscience site has an update on the absurd “trial” (now rechristened an “initiative”) of the effects of fish-oil supplements in Durham schools. His piece starts:

I think it’s clear now that Madeleine Portwood and Dave Ford, the leading figures behind the Durham fish oil “trial”, will be providing us with comedy and teaching opportunities for many years to come.

There was no astonishing increase in the GCSE results of those kids who took the fish-oil capsules then? Blimey, what a shock.

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(I know it was a week ago, but I missed this first time round)

It seems that the Church of England has decided to apologise to Charles Darwin for heaping abuse and disbelief on him in the mid 1800’s. From the Daily Mail [Online version]:

The Church of England will tomorrow [14 Sep 08] officially apologise to Charles Darwin for misunderstanding his theory of evolution.

Wonderful. I know decisions are slow in large organisations but this is a bit weird. It has taken them almost one and a half centuries to decide to say “sorry, we were wrong.” Still, better late than never I suppose. In this instance, it is no better or worse than people apologising for the slave trade. It is just one of those things organisations need to do so they can feel better about themselves.

The Mail article continues:

In a bizarre step, the Church will address its contrition directly to the Victorian scientist himself, even though he died 126 years ago.

Now, this isn’t actually all that bizarre. Well, if you are a Christian anyway. Look at it from the truly faithful’s point of view. Darwin isn’t dead in the secular sense - he is just no longer on the Earth. He is either in Heaven or Hell so an apology to him personally is actually totally appropriate. If you really believe in an afterlife, why cant big old Charlie be reading the Church of England’s newsletter and watching their cermonies. I mean, the man was a minister after all…

As even the most dense of lifeforms could have predicted, such PR stunts dont always attact postive commentary. Take this bit of ironic waffle:

Former Conservative Minister Ann Widdecombe, who left the Church of England to become a Roman Catholic, said: ‘It’s absolutely ludicrous. Why don’t we have the Italians apologising for Pontius Pilate?‘We’ve already apologised for slavery and for the Crusades. When is it all going to stop? It’s insane and makes the Church of England look ridiculous.’

Poor old Ann, it isn’t even a good parallel but then, she is a tory minister so you cant expect too much. The thing that interested me the most, though, was why on Earth should she care? She is no longer CofE - she defected to the evil Catholicism. What makes her opinion on an organisation she spurned remotely valid? (Add to which, that is possibly the LEAST flattering photograph of a living person I have ever seen).

The only good “professional” comment comes from the National Secular Association (no suprise there, then): [Emphasis mine]

‘As well as being much too late, the message strikes me as insincere, as if there is an unspoken “but” behind the text. However, if it means that from now on the Church of England will say “No” to the teaching of creationism in school science lessons, then we would accept the apology on Darwin’s behalf.’

I couldn’t agree more. (continues below the fold) Read the rest of this post

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Now, I am sure every one knows that New Scientist is “pop science” - scientific news processed for laymen. In general this is great as is gives people an insight into the wonders of science without the tedium of years studying. Peer review is great, but only in its place. New Scientist is not the place.

Sometimes, this causes problems.

In this weeks issue, there is an article titled “Read my lips… and my voice, and my face” (online version titled “Software spots the spin in political speeches“) which is (at best) bad science being used for electioneering purposes. On the surface this is nothing more than the old idea that you can tell when people are lying by their gestures and use of language. This is a subject close to my heart and generally falls foul of the greatest of problems - it is sort of true. Body language, eye access, word selection and the like can give you an indicator of lies (for example) but only in the broader context of the persons behaviour.

Take the often cited example of people rubbing their nose when they lie. Yes, some people do this. But most of the time it means the person has an itchy nose and nothing else. The same with eye-access (as highlighted in The Negotiator), but the problem is people are different - not everyone looks the exact same way. Language choice is possibly the worst indicator as this is dictated by your background, education and the like. Simply put, there is no easy way you can use this information as a reliable indicator of deception or misdirection. You need to study the person in a variety of controlled circumstances and build up a pattern of their behaviour.

With this in mind, we can return to the New Scientist article. It seems someone has come up with an automated way of monitoring the terminology used, the voice and the facial expressions of politicians to measure how much “spin” there is in their speeches. Amazingly this has not resulted in 100% returns each time. This is how it is described:

The algorithm counts usage of first person nouns - “I” tends to indicate less spin than “we”, for example. It also searches out phrases that offer qualifications or clarifications of more general statements, since speeches that contain few such amendments tend to be high on spin. Finally, increased rates of action verbs such as “go” and “going”, and negatively charged words, such as “hate” and “enemy”, also indicate greater levels of spin. Skillicorn had his software tackle a database of 150 speeches from politicians involved in the 2008 US election race (see diagram).

Now, this strikes me as inherently flawed given that politicians have their speeches written for them by teams of “experts” (who are more than capable of concluding which words mean which things), and are nearly always well coached in delivering them in a manner to “stir” the audience. It strikes me that adding an arbitrary judgement as to what is, or is not, spin gives nothing that even resembles science. In an attempt to dismiss this, Skillicorn (the systems creator) says:

Additionally, [Skillicorn] says, little details count: pronouns such as “we” and “I” are often substituted subconsciously, no matter what is written in the script.

But you have no idea which ones are added by the script writers, which ones are subconcious and you certainly still haven’t proven that using “we” means there is a lot of “spin” in the speech. We still don’t really know what “spin” is - is it a good or bad thing?

The “Headline” results of this study are that Obama’s campaign has more spin than any of the other politicians (+6.7, where 0 is average for a politician) while McCain’s campaign had the lowest (-7.58). It states this supports McCain’s claim to being a “straight talker” (*cough*) and on the surface looks like it is a Republican Political Campaign masquerading as Science. In the articles defence, there is some balance:

So the analysis appears to back up McCain’s claim that he is a “straight talker”. However, for the purposes of political speech-making this may not be an entirely good thing for him. “Obama uses spin in his speeches very well,” says Skillicorn. For example, Obama’s spin level skyrockets when facing problems in the press, such as when Jeremiah Wright, the reverend of his former church, made controversial comments to the press.

Great from a science point of view. We would like to think that the readers of New Scientist are able to accept the idea that spin is a positive force for a politican.

However (and this is supported by a quick scan of the printed media that have picked up on this), the general population are not. We have been indoctrinated by decades of thinking politicians spin is an inherently bad thing. This article has generated several headlines in the free media about Obama being full of spin and McCain being straight talking. Both can translate into political capital. Shame on the New Scientist.

One funny bit which never quite made it into the free-papers is this nugget:

“The voice analysis profile for McCain looks very much like someone who is clinically depressed,” says Pollermann, a psychologist who uses voice analysis software in her work with patients. Previous research on mirror neurons has shown that listening to depressed voices can make others feel depressed themselves, she says.

Well, that pretty much summed up the effect his speeches have on me.

It is during the US Presidential elections that I thank Loki I live in the UK….

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Sorry, I had planned to stop going on about the comments on the Jamie Whyte article. However, on further reading there were some comments I couldn’t pass up on.

The first was just trivially funny, so I will kill it now. Several of the commenters came up with witty counter arguments along the lines of this one:

Surely this line of argument applies just as surely to atheists. What about the weight of living without a God? Your line of reasoning exposes you as one who does not believe either
David , London,

Erm yes. Being an atheist means you do not believe. It is kind of in the definition of the term. Being an atheist does not mean you “believe” in a hedonistic lifestyle of death and destruction (strikes me as being a bit too biblical to be honest). It does not mean you have be debauched and craven to fulfil your belief structure (again, this seems a bit like a few churches….). It simply means you do not believe in any gods. Easy isn’t it?

Anyway, onto the more important one - this time a commenter gets at the big problem faced in the west:

You were one of my philosophy lecturers when I was at Cambridge in the 90s. I reject your ‘realist’ view of science. Science doesn’t explain the origins of anything, it’s merely a useful construction to help us form judgements about the future. This view lets religion and science coexist.
andrew, London,

Now, I cant help but agree that Science does not explain the ultimate origins of some things, but to claim religion does so is a huge fallacy. I can only hope that Andrew learned more during his studies. “Religion” is not a solid body of information that can answer questions - every religion has a different creation myth and they can’t all be correct. Equally, the best that “religion” (ah, Loki, lets use Christianity as an example) can do is explain origins as “God Did It.”

Now, call me old fashioned but that isn’t an explanation. To claim that science can not explain the origin of something but saying “it was created by God” is an explanation is raving madness. The most basic example of this is the origin of life fallacy. While evolutionary theory makes no claims about the origin of life, the general scientific consensus seems to be along the lines of chance mixture of chemicals in the early Earth. The “Faithful” dislike this because it isn’t an answer to them - they want to know who created the chemicals to be mixed. Science can then bring in the creation of heavy elements in super nova, which leads to the question where did the early stars come from. We move to the “big bang” which leads to the question “what caused the time=0 event” at this point the Honest Science says “we do not know.”

Is this a bad thing? Not really. It is an honest answer. At best “Religion” can take it a stage further with “[deity of choice] caused it to happen” but still the question remains - who created the deity? Dishonest Religion weasels back with words to the effect of the “Uncreated Creator” but it is a screaming logical fallacy.

The last point “Andrew” made is also interesting. So interesting, I’ll repeat it here:

This view lets religion and science coexist.

How? While in an ideal world, and for some people, their particular religion and science can co-exist, as a general term it is impossible. Science demands its practitioners accept the evidence presented before them and dismiss even the most cherished notion should the evidence demand it. Religion is the exact opposite. It demands its practitioners cling to their notions in the face of evidence, no matter how strong.

In light of this, how can the two co-exist? One must always be corrupted by the other. If my religion dictated that the Earth was flat, could that co-exist with Science? No. Either I allow the evidence to alter my religion (either changing the interpretation of its canons or simply pretending parts of its holy book don’t exist) or I refute the evidence because my faith is strong.

That is not co-existing, one or the other must triumph. Personally I thought the enlightenment was when Science had taken the lead, but it seems a large portion of the world is trying to drag itself back to the middle ages.

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The Church of England’s Darwin site, as predicted in my last post is there now. Do I have uncanny psychic powers or what?

In this context, the BBC discussed the rise of creationism in the UK, reminding me of something I’d taken for granted for so long that I’d even forgotten it. Darwin’s portrait is on our £10 notes.

But in Britain, where a portrait of Darwin appears on the back of the £10 note, his theory of life evolving from primitive to complex structures by means of natural selection appears to be unchallenged orthodoxy.
Not so, say those on both sides of the creationist divide - a point amply proved by the existence of the Genesis Expo museum, to date Britain’s only creationist museum.

This laughingly-titled “museum” claims

The old National Provincial Bank on Portsmouth Hard is now home to CSM’s Genesis Exhibition, the first of its kind in the UK on this scale.

“On this scale”? The site of a former bank? That’s not a very large scale. It’s bigger than the average living room but nowhere near as big as the average open-plan office. And I suspect that the words “the only UK creation museum on any scale” might have the virtue of being a bit more accurate. (What am I thinking? Accuracy, creation museum? In the same sentence?)

There’s a giant 20 foot model of a dinosaur, called Boris, in a faux-affectionate way that might be taken as an ironic comment on London’s Tory mayor if it had originated from a more progressive source.

Plus there is the Genesis Expo.

This consists of 12 dioramas and a clutch of real fossilised dinosaur eggs.

What? This museum’s exhibits could be outclassed by the average primary school’s Parents’ Evening display. It’s not going to be much competition for the Natural History Museum in the scope of its exhibits. Nor, it seems in the quality of its content:

The topics covered include -
* The impossibility of life forming from chemicals.
* Chinese calligraphy refers back to Genesis.
* The present day forms remain unchanged from their fossil counterparts.
* Geological sediments are laid down rapidly.
* A study of genetics shows that all humanity came from one man and one woman.
* and many other subjects.

I don’t know about the”many other subjects”, but I think that list makes it 100% “made-up stuff.”

And, what a treat, it seems that the Expo is online, saving the tedious trek to Portsmouth Hard to see it. As you might expect, the Expo turns out to be unutterably dull as well as stupid. But there is still an evil joy to be found in the fact that it’s provided by a site called www.genesisexpo.co.uk which sounds a mite seedy.

There are also many books and videos on display for sale. Each has been selected to be of good quality and approved in that the creation information it contains is generally conforming to the views held by the CSM Council

Phew, that’s a relief. I was a bit worried that some of these books and videos might put forward other non-CSM-accredited creationist views. Then what would I have to believe? My brain hurts………

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Despite it being so late as to seem silly for the Church of England to apologise to Darwin for not believing in evolution, it’s still a good idea, given the efforts by creationists to hijack their religion.

There’s nothing on the Church of England’s website and it won’t let me in to the testbed area but The Times, the unpleasant Daily Mail and even more deeply unpleasant Conservapedia think the CofE is about to launch a pro-Darwin site.

Or as the morons at conservapedia - who think this is “socialist Britain” and that Christian Voice is a “leading Christian organisation” - say:

The Church of England sides with the Darwinists, misrepresenting biblical creationists in the process.(from conservapedia)

Anglican leaders fear that “noisy” advocates of a literal interpretation of the Bible - especially in the United States, where even the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, is a vocal supporter - are infecting the perception of Christianity worldwide. (from the Times)

Nice one, Church of England. Bravo. The same goes for the Roman Catholic Church where it has spoken out for science. Both major Christian denominations recognise that the Enlightenment happened. They also claim the adherence of most of the Christians on the planet, mercifully.

It’s one thing to have to disagree with their philosophies about the nature of the universe and the ultimate ground of being. Let a million flowers bloom, etc… It’s another thing altogether when religious institutions that underpin many people’s beliefs about the world give themselves over to arrant anti-scientific nonsense, like the disturbing stuff from fundamentalists.

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My understanding of the Large Hadron Collider could be written in longhand on the back of a postage stamp and there would still be a sizable space for you to lick it without getting your tongue covered in ink.

However, I’m pretty certain that it doesn’t operate over the internet.

There’s a black hole of non-connectedness between the LHC and a website that reports on it. Although you might not immediately assume this to be the case, if you are a journalist. Someone has hacked a Cern discussion website. This was presented almost as if it was a near miss hack of the LHC.

Hackers claim there’s a black hole in the atom smashers’ computer network
Hackers have broken into one of the computer networks of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). …..
The work of the scientists was not derailed and insiders scoffed at claims that the hackers were “one step away” from the systems controlling the experiment itself.

Of course, it is always possible that CERN are running a public webserver off the same computer that it uses to control the LHC. Just almost off the scale of “unlikely”…..

It truly would be “one giant step for mankind” if you could make elementary particles collide by writing really elegant php code.

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I am rubbing my eyes in disbelief. No, I can’t make the news item disappear. It’s still there but it still doesn’t make any sense. The Guardian reported David Reiss, director of education at the Royal Society (let me just put that in bold, director of education at the Royal Society)

Creationism and intelligent design should be taught in school science lessons, according to a leading expert in science education.

Reiss’s argument is that teaching real science puts off the supposed 1 in 10 kids from religious homes who have been taught creationism. I don’t even believe the spurious “one in ten” homes bit, but let’s accept it as true.

In that case, how urgently do schools need to teach real science? It would be an educational emergency. The reasonable response to such a horrific statistic would be to expand science teaching and do it right. Not to give up the unequal struggle to challenge ignorance.

Why stop at science if you accept the principle that “school subjects that conflict with idiots’ values should be changed to fit those values”? English lessons can be tough for kids who haven’t got any books at home. Why not just let them uncritically watch daytime TV shows, instead? No, that wouldn’t happen, because there are no vocal US-funded “pro-soap” groups demanding daytime TV instead of literature and claiming the spurious authority of “faith.” Unlike the case with evolutionary biology.

This Reiss guy is in the wrong job. He’s the Royal Society’s director of education and he doesn’t even grasp the role of the Royal Society or understand what science education is.

Reiss agreed that creationism and intelligent design are not scientific theories, but he said that did not automatically exclude them from science lessons. “Just because something lacks scientific support doesn’t seem to me a sufficient reason to omit it from the science lesson …”

It seems like a good enough reason to me. “Science lesson.” The clue’s in the name. (I think it means education about science, although I may be mistaken.)

If science lessons are to become a free-for-all, there are plenty of more engaging alternatives apart from the “magic man did it” claim in one particular old book. What about teaching numerology in the mathematics class? And how does physics get off so lightly when faith comes into the lab? The physics of angelic visitations has been heinously overlooked.

Blimey, my school geography teacher never even bothered teaching us the controversy between dull soulless-sciencey people who think the earth is a sphere and the view common at Unseen University that the world is a disk carried through space on the back of a turtle and giant elephants. The holy books of the Diskworld canon probably outsell the Bible. (They certainly get read more, with more attention.) So, how come this debate isn’t taught in science lessons?

New national curriculum additions to satisfy people (like me) who find real science too boring:

• Metaphysical chemistry
• Mythamatics
• Organic Alchemy
• Geomancy
• Astrology
• Long divination
• Theoretical Psychics
• The dark side of the Force

(I just realised that Harry Potter got there before me. What a pity that creationists don’t like Harry Potter, given that the Hogwarts curriculum would fill the educational bill so well for them)

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Sci-fi is fine as a genre. You’ll get no arguments against it from me, if you are thinking about comics or books or movies or TV series. Even the conventions and action figures and Klingon costume-wearing are endearing. But I draw the line at turning the real-world into the Matrix IV. (II was poor enough.)

Lockheed Labs and other military tech giants have an longterm project to bring art into life by creating battle droids.

The register has an ongoing thread, Rise of the Machines, that puts the battletech news in the public domain, in a tongue-in-cheek way. As the Register put it about the latest Lockheed tests:

‘Intelligent agents’ control droid legions: flee now
US aerospace colossus Lockheed Martin says it has taken an important step towards the inevitable rebellion of heavily armed, highly intelligent slaughter machines bent on the elimination of humanity. (We’re paraphrasing the company release, obviously.)
The arms globocorp announced yesterday that it had “demonstrated intelligent autonomous control of multiple unmanned systems” using its Intelligent Control and Autonomous Replanning of Unmanned Systems (ICARUS) kit. In other words, a small robot army was directed almost entirely by soulless machine intelligences, nominally overseen by a single human. The robots, in effect, were a heartbeat away from becoming fully independent.

(That’s like being “a heartbeat away from the presidency,” although these droids don’t yet come in a handy fundamentalist creationist soccer mom/bimbo format. )

This would be fair enough, if the droids are just going to fight each other. It would be a good idea the winner of a war being was decided according to which country’s team was the most successful in a round of Command and Conquer.

It might even be bearable to contemplate if there was much indication that human intelligence might ever be part of the war machine algorithms, with or without access to droid killiers. What are the chances of that?

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