Cortical Hemming and Hawing

Best Illusions of the Year

2011-06-05T22:47:00.000-04:00

A little while back I posted that I was reading a very interesting book called Sleights of Mind by Stephen L. Macnik and Susana Martinez-Conde. In the book, the authors describe an online contest to determine the best new illusions every year. The contest is in its 7th year, and recently, the winners were announced. Personally, I liked the "Grouping By Contrast" and the "Mask of Love" illusions the best, but then, to each his own I guess.

The Mask of Love: Do you notice anything unusual about the mask in the center? Look closer and you may see a photograph of two faces rather than one, a man and a woman kissing.

A new class of antidepressants has been identified...

2011-04-10T11:08:00.000-04:00

They're called books... Okay, that's a bit of media sensationalism there, but according to a recent study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine adolescents who reported reading more print media (books, magazines, newspapers, etc.) were less likely to be diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD), while adolescents who spent more time spent listening to music had an increased likelihood of a diagnosis of MDD. The study took advantage of a fairly new technique known as ecological momentary assessment, which basically allows researchers to take a bunch of individual "snapshots" of people's behavior as if they were animals in the wild. Rather than invite people to come into a university lab or office and fill out a survey where the subjects might over- or under-estimate how much time they spent on a given activity, study participants agree to be called randomly on their cell phones and answer a small, instantaneous survey. In this particular study, researchers called more than 100 adolescents over a period of about 2 months, calling each participant 60 times and asking whether they had, at that moment, been watching television, playing video games, surfing the internet, listening to music, or reading a book (or magazine, etc.). The results suggest that the more time adolescents spent listening to music, the more likely they were to be diagnosed with MDD. Conversely, the more time they spent reading books or other print media, the less likely they were to get such a diagnosis. Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that books have any antidepressant properties (or that music will make you morose or melancholy), rather it is likely that adolescents who are depressed are more apt to spend their time listening to music and less likely to spend it reading books. Still, it will be interesting to see what comes from this line of research.
And, in case you were wondering, time spent watching tv, surfing the web, or playing video games did not appear to strongly correlate either way with MDD diagnoses.

Primack BA, Silk JS, Delozier CR, Shadel WG, Dillman Carpentier FR, Dahl RE, & Switzer GE (2011). Using ecological momentary assessment to determine media use by individuals with and without major depressive disorder. Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine, 165 (4), 360-5 PMID: 21464384

You might think that Charles Darwin was obsessed with money and beer

2011-04-02T01:42:00.001-04:00

Since he is on a 2 pound coin in England and the 500 Sucres Note in Ecuador (at right) and since there is (apparently) a Darwin beer:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Darwin's+ale+is+top+of+the+hops;+SCIENTIST+CELEBRATED.-a0193457529
I can think of no better tribute to one of the greatest scientists of all time... though, to be fair, I suppose we need some Alfred Russel Wallace guineas and maybe a ginger beer in his honor?

Random roundup

2011-03-20T20:17:00.001-04:00

Whenever I find interesting things on the web, I try to leave the tabs open on my browser until I get the time to go back and post or write something up on the blog. Lately, I have been keeping so many tabs open it has been causing the browser to freeze and crash, so I figure I'll put up a handful of the links and maybe I'll be able to surf the internet unhindered again...

Gonorrhea can acquire human DNA... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110213174143.htm that’s right, when someone gives you gonorrhea, they’re really just giving you a piece of themselves.

Finally, science explains why Santa Claus is so jolly:
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2011/01/fat-genes-make-you-happy.html

A fairly long list of science jokes can be found here... http://blog.the-scientist.com/2010/07/06/a-biologist-a-chemist-and-a-physicist-walk-into-a-bar/comment-page-1/#comments

My favorite so far: The artist, architect, and scientist are discussing the merits of having a wife versus a girlfriend. The artists says, “A girlfriend is preferable, because of the mystery and romance”. The architect says, “A wife is preferable, because you can build a lasting foundation for a good relationship”. Finally, the scientist says, “Having both is preferable!”. The other two say, “Both?”. “Yes, because the wife thinks you are with the girlfriend, the girlfriend thinks you are with the wife, and you can go into the lab and get some work done.”

More evidence that women don’t suck at math and science... apparently we just keep telling them they do, and for some reason, they listen...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/11/25/15-minute-writing-exercise-closes-the-gender-gap-in-university-level-physics/

Like the comedian Kyle Kinane so eloquently stated: “This is America, which means that I have a God given right to be loudly opinionated about something that I am completely ignorant of.” http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/10/19/when-in-doubt-shout-%E2%80%93-why-shaking-someone%E2%80%99s-beliefs-turns-them-into-stronger-advocates/

An apple a day keeps the grim reaper away?

2011-03-12T20:17:00.000-05:00

Apparently, there may be some truth to the old adage that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. A recent study suggests that polyphenols found in apples can extend the lifespan of fruit flies by ten percent. Extrapolate that to humans and you could be talking about adding 7 years to your life. And while some caution is warranted in comparing fruit flies to humans, it is important to remember that most of our knowledge about human genetics comes from studies originally done in fruit flies. Indeed, the authors of the apple study examined the expression levels of several genes, from superoxide dismutase to the methuselah gene, that were up or down regulated in response to the apple polyphenol diet, and homologues of all of these genes are found in humans as well as fruit flies, suggesting that the findings may have some relevance to human health.

Sunday Comics: Random Thursday night edition

2011-03-10T23:26:00.000-05:00

So, clearly I have not been posting very much lately, and while I could make the usual excuse that I am swamped while still trying to balance the new(ish) post-doc and work left over from grad school, it occurs to me that there is no excuse for not posting the occasional link, video, or cartoon... Apparently I have just been lazy. Anyway, this one comes from the blog Drawing Flies. Click on the link and see a whole bunch more.

Wow! Have I been out of touch!

2011-02-15T22:31:00.001-05:00

I know I haven't been posting much lately, but you know it's bad when I forget to celebrate Charles Darwin's birthday! Which, if you don't know was on February 12th. As a biologist, I owe everything to Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. Without it, not only would I have a hard time coming up with hypotheses (i.e. good ideas to test), but so much of genetics and developmental biology (which heavily inform my current work) would likely be decades behind where they are today. Though others have certainly done Darwin much greater honor on his birthday (by putting him on currency, or making beer in his honor) tonight I will honor the father of modern biology by drinking a celebratory beer or two and, of course, by putting a silly picture of him up here on the blog

Happy Birthday, Charles!

(At Left: Charles Darwin in proper birthday attire.
At right: On of our dogs, Charles Robert Darwin Walters, though we just call him Charlie)

A great collection of studies on why we believe and do things that are irrational

2011-02-08T21:51:00.000-05:00

So, it's a few years old, but I just came across this post over at Psyblog...
http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/11/10-piercing-insights-into-human-nature.php

It's a nice little collection of summaries pertaining to some interesting psychological phenomena.

What is it about fish?

2011-01-31T22:15:00.000-05:00

The evidence is definitely there, people who eat fish tend to have higher IQs (even at young ages) and less cognitive decline with aging
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/is-there-any-connection-between-what-you-eat

Of course, the evidence also seems pretty convincing that it is not fish oil that is responsible for these effects:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/11/03/two-studies-undermine-fish-oils-role-as-a-brain-food/

Most likely, I would hypothesize that diets that are rich in fish and other seafood, or even diets that simply include seafood, are likely to be leaner and healthier than those that include a lot of red meats or other foods high in saturated or trans fats. It may also be that people who eat fish simply have a healthier or more intellectually stimulating lifestyle. Since we already know that cardiovascular health is particularly important for cognitive function and staving off cognitive decline, this makes sense, and is at least, minorly supported by the first study that suggested lower IQ correlated with margarine consumption (meaning lots of artery clogging trans fats). Of course, this will have to be studied further, and, sadly, I am sure there will be many new supplements that come out in the meanwhile touting fish guts, or fish cartilage, or fish eyes, or who knows, as the new panacea.

How many scientists does it take to change a lightbulb?

2011-01-16T22:23:00.000-05:00

At least two, so that they know the results can be replicated.
Okay, that's not really a funny joke, but watching the show Modern Family on ABC the other night reminded me of an academic exercise my advisor used to have us teach the undergrads in his integrative biology course. On the show, one of the characters, Phil, is driven crazy by a smoke alarm that won't stop beeping. After changing the batteries in all of the smoke detectors in the house, the beeping continues. In the end, he discovers that he was replacing the old batteries with other batteries that he thought were new, but were really low on juice themselves (or something along those lines).
This brings us to the thought experiment of changing a light bulb. The problem is a common one: you walk into a room and flip the light-switch, but the light does not come on. Assuming the whole of the system consists of a power source (the electricity in your house), a circuit (the wiring in the walls), a switch, and the light bulb, how would you go about testing whether or not the lightbulb has gone bad? (Oh yeah, and assume that the lightbulb is one of those old school painted incandescent bulbs where you can't see the filament). A normal person (i.e. non-scientist) would say, just change the bulb out with a new one, and it should work. And they might be right. BUT, if the new bulb doesn't work, then what do you do? The most common answer when I taught this lesson in class was "call an electrician". Which sounds sensible, BUT, as the point of the lesson was, a scientific approach to the problem may save you the hefty cost of an electrician (and teach you a little something about how scientists see the world, and why we are such sticklers for properly controlled experiments). For example, how would you feel if you paid $80 or $100 for an electrician to come out and tell you that there was a defect in the new bulb you bought from the store, and simply tried another bulb and it worked. Or, how would you feel after paying that bill only to find out that it really wasn't the bulb, but a "short" circuit that allowed the electrician's new bulb to work for a little while, but then stop working as soon as he left and you paid the bill? How could this all be avoided? Simple, by actually testing the bulb. And how one would do that is by setting up a positive control, that is, a situation where you can be relatively certain that if the bulb is in working condition, it will work. What I mean by this, is that you must take into account the entire system within which you are working. In this case, you have 4 components: the power supply, the circuit, the switch, and the lightbulb. A defect in any of these 4 things could cause the light not to work. The first hypothesis is that the lightbulb has burned out. This is a good hypothesis since observations and experience teach us that burned out lightbulbs are a fairly common occurrence. However, as we have seen, the test of replacing the lightbulb only works if we get a positive result (that is the new lightbulb works), BUT, we are at a complete loss if the new bulb does NOT work. If that happens, then we still have no idea whether the problem lies in the power supply, the circuit, the switch, or the light bulb (even though it is new, and we assume it should work, there may be a factory defect, or it may have been damaged in shipping, etc. etc.) To test the lightbulb hypothesis, a scientist would go to another room in the house where he or she is reasonably sure the light works. Then he or she would flip the switch, and verify that the light in this other room does indeed work. Once it has been verified, the scientist now has a positive control. That is, he or she should be able to take the lightbulb from the other room that didn't work, put it into this new socket and, if the lightbulb is still functional then it should work. If it does not work in this other room (and assuming the scientist then switches out the bulbs again, and the one that originally worked in this socket still works) then the scientist can now conclude that the bulb is broken. However, this still doesn't answer the question of whether or not the remaining components in the system are still in working order (as it is possible that there could be a problem with the switch and the bulb, or the circuit and the bulb, or any combination of two or more things that could all go wrong at the same time). However, if you have a working circuit (and working bulb) in the other room, you now have the means to test whether or not some other component of the system is faulty. You do this by taking the bulb that worked in the other room, and placing it into the socket of the circuit that was not working. If this bulb does not work (and you go back and test it again in the other circuit and it still does) then you can conclude that something else must be wrong and it is time to call the electrician. However, if this bulb does work, then, you can rest (relatively) assured that a new bulb (so long as it is not defective) will work in the circuit. This may seem like a lot of work just to change a light bulb, but if you have ever done science, you have probably learned long ago how much time and effort the proper controls can save you (in addition to giving you certainty about your results), and if you haven't, well, I hope you never find yourself replacing a lightbulb only to find that the new one still doesn't work. Or, if you do, I hope you remember this post, and it helps out, even if only a little bit.

Andrew Wakefield is a Fraud

2011-01-11T22:29:00.000-05:00

An editorial in the British Medical Journal has been getting some press here in the States lately for claiming that Andrew Wakefield, the man who originally claimed that there was a link between vaccines and autism, was perpetrating a fraud by making that claim. The article doesn't really bring anything new to the table, other than it is in a medical journal, and it uses strong language, like the word "fraud" to describe Wakefield's actions. I say that this isn't anything new because Brian Deer, the reporter who first drew attention to Wakefield's conflicts of interest and unethical practices, has been writing with equally strong language since 2004. And many scientists and science bloggers have been making similar assertions of Mr. Wakefield's motives and actions. Not to mention the numerous scientists who have written peer-reviewed, journal articles that clearly demonstrate, that, if Wakefield wasn't a fraud, his science was severely flawed, and flat out wrong. Still, I don't mind that the rebuking of such bad science is getting some time in the spotlight. As the editorial points out, our public health is at risk from this fraud, as numerous childhood illnesses and deaths in the U.S. and in the U.K. have demonstrated, and given the fact that many of the unvaccinated may put the rest of us at risk for years to come, we may not have seen the worst of it yet. So, here's to the BMJ for raising the profile on this fraud, for using the language that most accurately describes the situation, and for continuing to promote truth and public education in science.

PhD stands for Pretty Hair Doctor

2011-01-04T22:47:00.000-05:00

A story on ABC's Nightline last night revealed that, at a single company, there are more PhDs hard at work on research than at MIT, Berkeley, and Stanford... combined. In and of itself, I suppose that's not so impressive. Large pharmaceutical companies can probably boast similar claims, BUT, this particular company doesn't research drugs to treat or cure diseases like arthritis, cancer, or Alzheimer's, it researches shampoos, conditioners, and other hair care products...

I didn't really know what to make of this at first. I can't help but feel like this is an indicator that, as a society, we may have our priorities all wrong. But then, maybe I'm the crazy one. Working for probably less than half what these researchers are making... and I do really like this new shampoo I got... it makes my hair so thick and shiny.

Another Demotivational Poster for Success

2010-12-29T16:09:00.000-05:00

In light of yesterday's post,

A bit of advice from a fellow Memphian...

2010-12-28T13:06:00.000-05:00

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57895/
If you click on the above link, it will take you to an opinion piece by Douglas Green, a researcher at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital here in Memphis, TN. The point of the piece is to provide some advice for those of us just starting out in science and looking to become successful, which I take to mean: get lots of papers and grants which are the currency that can be used to purchase a PI position at a college or university of good standing. (PI by the way stands for Primary Investigator, but, for all intents and purposes, it usually means tenure-track, or tenured, faculty). I agree with Green on several points, I think that being passionately curious is a great driving force that can keep you motivated regardless of the many setbacks one too often faces in the process of scientific investigation. However, this passion can also make it that much more disheartening if your grant proposal fails to convince your peers that what you so ardently want to know is something the rest of the world should want to know as well. It is here that Green boils down what he thinks is the essence of academic success, which appears to be, to paraphrase: "wow me." Or, rather, "wow us". "Us" being the members of the study section reviewing your grants, or the fellow scientists selected to review your papers and determine whether they are worthy of publication. I think this is a wonderful sentiment, and something that I believe we all try to do in coming up with original research ideas. Most of the scientists I know hope that their ideas will bring something completely new to the table, or that they will someday change the way people think about a particular idea in their field, BUT, I also think this idea is too simplistic to be complete in offering substantive advice for burgeoning scientists. The reason for my dissent is simply that "wowing" your audience of scientific peers is a somewhat limited goal. Not only is it poorly defined (some ideas are truly great, but may be seen as too risky) but also it seems that there may be numerous ways to garner such approbation from scientific peers, yet Green provides little road map for how to get there, nor does he address the road blocks one might find along the way. He diminishes "grantsmanship" in favor of astonishing or important ideas, and, while I agree with him that a really great idea would strike me as more favorable than a flawlessly put together grant for a lesser idea, grantsmanship (or salesmanship) can definitely mean the difference if your proposal floats dangerously close to the cutoff line. Similarly, dumb luck all too often plays a role in one's success in science. First, there is the fact that many important discoveries come from unforeseen results from sometimes unrelated fields of research (Thermus aquaticus and Taq polymerase, CFC refrigerants and Teflon, Staphylococcus and Penicillin, etc.) and thus those avenues initially proposed can only be identified as groundbreaking after the fact. Even if we leave serendipity aside, consider how important luck can be just in the sense of relying on fellow human beings for funding and for approval. If the political climate favors fiscal conservatism, then public funding for science will be scarce, and many very good ideas will fail to get funded, regardless of how "wowing" they may be. Conversely mediocre ideas can get funded or accepted in important journals simply because a particular field is getting a lot of attention in the media, where whole issues of Science and Nature get devoted to something like "swine flu" and any paper that happens to be ready for submission that month gets published. Often the fate of one's science can rest less on its merit and more on a reviewer's mood, how much time and attention they have to give, how open they are to contradictory ideas, or how well they can sell your idea to other scientists on the panel. As scientists, or perhaps as academics, we like to believe that we exist in a true meritocracy, where there are no corporate politics, no game playing or salesmanship, and certainly nothing so fickle as chance. We would believe that if you have great ideas you will be rewarded, if you work hard and support your ideas through grants and publications, you will be rewarded, and if your work truly impacts the field, you will be rewarded. And while this is true to some extent, an academic career is still a human endeavor, and like all human endeavors, an ability to play politics, an ability to be a good salesperson, and a bit of dumb luck are all likely going to be essential supplements to hard work and ingenuity if one hopes to be truly successful.

A hectic time of year...

2010-12-26T22:07:00.000-05:00

So, now that I have a few days "off" around the holidays, it occurs to me that I have been neglecting the blog, and that maybe I should get to writing. The good news is, a lot has been going on in the past month or so, and so I have a lot to post about, like the Society for Neuroscience conference, and a couple very interesting lectures I have attended on neuroethics and Alzheimer's disease. Now that I have a little bit of time, these, and other posts will be forthcoming... in the meanwhile, here is some of the online content for the book I am currently reading: Sleights of Mind: what the neuroscience of magic reveals about our everyday deceptions. So far, the book is a very good read, with lots of examples of illusions that take advantage of weaknesses in human perception. For example, if you go to the website, you can see numerous examples of illusions, like the ones in the following video, which take advantage of our limited ability to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. If you watch the video below, you will see a magician who is playing a different version of three card monty, or the shell game with you. He begins by placing a green ball under a clear glass and moving it around with two other glasses that are empty. Of course, we focus intently on the glass with the ball and track its position as it is moved around because we are expecting, like in a normal version of this game, that he is somehow going to make the ball disappear. Since we are focusing all of our attention on the one glass, we are not really able to pay attention to the other two, which allows for some slight of hand, and all of the sudden, it appears as if another ball has magically appeared in each of the other two glasses. Psychologists call this inattentional blindness or, conversely, our attentional spotlight. Outside of the spotlight, we think we are paying attention, but really we are not, and this makes things that are placed in our midst seem to have appeared by magic even though they have not.

A paper in 1999 by Simons and Chabris (pdf) demonstrated this principle quite clearly by presenting the following video to a group of subjects. They asked the subjects to pay attention and count how many times the ball is passed amongst the team members wearing white jerseys. Go ahead and try it...

If you watched the video to the end, you may have fallen for the same illusion that most people do when taking this test... That is, not being able to see someone in a gorilla suit walk directly in front of the camera. Now, if most people miss that, when it is right in front of them, imagine what a magician can do when they really try to sneak something by you.

The Truth About Santa Claus...

2010-12-19T11:30:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry kids, but there comes a time in all of our lives when we are old enough to understand the truth about Santa Claus. You knew this day would come, you brought it on yourself really as you started to ask the questions that demonstrated you were growing up and beginning to think critically: "How can one man visit so many homes in just a single night?" you asked, "Even if he travels from east to west to take full advantage of time zones, it's just not possible!" And of course, we told you it was magic, but you only bought that for a little while, hesitant to expose the lies and possibly miss out on the next year's presents. But no more, it's time for you to know the truth, there is no magic, in fact, there is a very simple and logical explanation for how all those presents end up under all those Christmas trees... Santa uses science. That's right, apparently in the off season, the elves, much like workers at Google, are given time to work on whatever projects they want to. The result of this innovative management style has been that, for the past hundred years or so, North Pole Industries Inc., LLC. has developed technology so advanced that we are only now beginning to understand it. At least, that's the claim of author Gregory Mone in his new book, The Truth About Santa: Wormholes, Robots, and What Really Happens on Christmas Eve.

According to Mone, our view of Santa has long been distorted by Arthur C. Clarke's third "law" which states: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." For example, Santa is able to travel to so many homes in one night by using wormholes and other means of bending spacetime, allowing him to travel around freely, while, to us, it seems that time is standing still. Also, if you've ever wondered why you could never catch a glimpse of the jolly old elf no matter how late you stayed up, it's because Santa's suit possesses cloaking technology, making him all but invisible. And, no branch of science appears to be off limits. Wonder why lumps of coal stopped making appearances in "naughty" childrens' stockings? Well because clearly the elves have been reading up on their psychology research and come to the realization that punishments are much less effective than positive reinforcement. And the list goes on. For more of Santa's gadgetry, check out the book, or this brief review and excerpt over at NPR, or here at Discover Magazine.

Does watching too much TV rot your brain?

2010-12-11T10:26:00.000-05:00

Well, not really, but a study brought to attention by the newly designed Barking up the wrong tree blog suggests that watching too much TV is correlated with increased anxiety and decreased life satisfaction. Of course maybe watching TV is soothing, or helps people to forget how unhappy they are, and so unhappy or anxious people are therefore more likely to watch too much TV.

Currently writing, just not here....

2010-12-07T08:15:00.000-05:00

So one of the things you have to do as an academic is write grant proposals. Usually, you get all of your data lined up, plan things out, and spend a few weeks, or maybe even a few months writing up the proposal (and then wait 6 months to a year to find out how you did). Of course, sometimes, your boss tells you about a funding opportunity 5 days before the deadline and then asks you to write a proposal... from scratch. This is what I have been doing over the past 4 days... that, and taking a "break" to run a half marathon. Anyway, I sort of feel like this...

However, I should be back to normal and blogging again soon.

Brain development and football.

2010-11-29T23:41:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I posted about decision making in football, and apparently I wasn't the only brain blogger to be thinking about the pigskin over the holiday weekend. Jared Tanner, over at BrainBlogger, put forward the hypothesis that one of the reasons most college teams don't start freshman quarterbacks has to do with their underdeveloped prefrontal cortices, which leaves them less able to make good split-second decisions. It is an interesting idea, and there is some basis to think that the brain of an 18 year old would look a bit different from a 22 year old's. Still, there are numerous experiments that would need to be done just to demonstrate that junior or senior quarterbacks really perform that much better than freshman or sophomores, and that any difference in performance is not related to experience with the team, the coaches, the types of plays being run, etc. After all, my alma mater, Penn State, started a freshman QB named Rob Boulden this year, and he played pretty well, up until he got a head injury... which would be another variable that would have to be controlled for in any study of the brains of football players.

Sunday Comics

2010-11-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

Another good one from SMBC....

Thanksgiving Re-post

2010-11-28T11:00:00.000-05:00

Since some people may not think a football related post is "thanksgivingy" enough, here is a re-posting from last year: Does turkey on thanksgiving really make you sleepy?

Since Turkey-day is around the corner, I thought I would bring up the very popular myth that tryptophan in turkey is what makes us all feel groggy on Thanksgiving. In an earlier post, I talked about how the amino acid tryptophan gets converted into serotonin, and then melatonin. Melatonin, as you may or may not know is the "sleep hormone". It is secreted by the pineal gland to help regulate our sleep/wake cycles which follow a circadian rhythm of about 24-25 hours. During the day, when it is bright and sunny we feel awake, then, as the day turns into night, we start producing more melatonin, and we get sleepy. Considering this, it's not too hard to see why tryptophan became the scapegoat for our Thanksgiving day sleepiness, but the truth is tryptophan, or really turkey in general has gotten a bad rap. First, tryptophan is a fairly prevalent amino acid, and there is actually plenty of it in most of the protein containing foods that we eat. Furthermore, turkey does NOT contain a higher level of tryptophan than most other common meats, fish, and poultry. For example, per 200 calorie serving, duck, pork, chicken, soy, sunflower seeds, several types of fish, and turkey all have about 440 - 450 mg of tryptophan, with turkey being the lowest in the group. Of course, that being said, even if turkey did have significantly more tryptophan than other meats, it is still questionable as to whether normally consumed levels of tryptophan can make you sleepy. While at first glance, the research seems to back the idea that tryptophan has sedative properties, these studies have used very large quantities to test for these effects. For example, one study from 1975 suggested that consuming 5 grams of tryptophan (so, about 11 servings of turkey) did increase self-reported drowsiness, and a study conducted in 1989 found that a dose of 1.2 grams of tryptophan did NOT increase measures for drowsiness, but a dose of 2.4 grams did. These studies suggest that you would have to eat a lot of turkey (like, over a pound and a half) to get an effective dose. So, while it is possible that you may eat that much turkey on our most hallowed of gluttonous holidays, it is more likely that thanksgiving day drowsiness is the result of a coming together of many factors, a perfect storm if you will, of:
1. lots of food (which diverts bloodflow to the digestive tract),
2. carbohydrate loading, where much of the food is carbohydrate heavy stuffing and sweet foods like cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and desserts (which can cause an overproduction of insulin resulting in low blood sugar, and thus sleepiness, later on),
3. and then of course there are usually a couple of alcoholic beverages involved (with obvious sleep inducing effects).
Add all of that up with being in a nice, warm home, on a comfy couch, with football or parades or a fire flickering in the background, and what you have is a recipe for a nap. I'm kinda sleepy just thinking about it.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving and Football: Why you should always go for it on 4th and short

2010-11-25T13:49:00.002-05:00

Today being Thanksgiving, it's pretty reasonable to assume (if you live in the U.S.) that you will likely be sitting down to a large meal involving lots of turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. It is also pretty likely, that somewhere in the house, football games will be on the television. Which brings us to one of the quintessential questions in football: It's 4th down, your team is on the opposing team's 30 yard line and they have only one yard to go to get a first down. Should they go for it? Most people would probably say no... that they should try for a field goal and at least get the 3 points. But most people would be wrong. At least according to a study in the Journal of Political Economy (pdf), which suggests that the payoff for "going for it" is more than twice as much compared to trying for a field goal.
To completely over simplify the study, economist David Romer determined the payoff of each decision (either to kick or to go for it) by looking at thousands of NFL plays and calculating the average costs and benefits of each decision depending on where the team was positioned on the field. In this case, the benefit would be the likelihood of scoring a touchdown (valued at roughly 7 points*) or of scoring a field goal (valued at 3 points). So, if teams that decide to kick when they are on their opponents' 30 yard line make the field goal an average of 33% of the time, then the benefit of kicking is assigned a point value of 1 (since a field goal is worth 3 points, and 33 percent of 3 points is 1 point). Since teams that only have one yard to go when they are on the 30 yard line convert for a first down 64% of the time, and teams that are inside the 30 yard line score a touchdown about 40% of the time, the benefit of going for a first down is assigned a value of 1.8 (0.64 x 0.40 = 0.24, or a 24% chance of scoring a touchdown by going for it on 4th and 1, and 0.24 x 7 points = 1.8 points). This means that "going for it" should result in scoring almost twice as many points than kicking, and this difference becomes even more exaggerated when we consider the costs. In this case, a failed attempt either way results in giving the other team the ball on their own 30 yard line. Scoring the field goal, or eventually a touchdown, will result in a kickoff which, on average, results in the other team getting the ball on their 27 yard line. This means that, no matter what your team does in this situation, they are going to ultimately give the ball to the other team at about the 30 yard line, which gives the other team a chance at scoring relating to an average value of 0.62. Thus -0.62 points is the cost associated with either kicking or going for it. This means that the net benefit of going for the first down is 1.18 points, while the net benefit of kicking the field goal is 0.38 points. So, while there is less of a chance that "going for it" will result in a touchdown, compared to a greater chance that your kicker will make the 40yard field goal, on average you will get more than THREE TIMES as much benefit if your team goes for it every time they have 4th and 1 on the 30 rather than kicking it every time you were in this situation.
So, why do coaches so rarely go for the first down? It may be that, in these instances, coaches (and likely fans) fail to take into account the differences in values of touchdowns and field goals, seeing all types of "score" as being roughly equal in value even though touchdowns are more than twice as valuable as field goals. Additionally, the costs are also poorly estimated. For example, turning the ball over by a loss of downs seems to carry greater cost than turning it over in the form of a kickoff after scoring, even though the point values of these in our hypothetical are roughly the same. These ideas tie into the explanation that Romer offers in the paper, suggesting that coaches may be succumbing to "loss aversion" type thinking. Loss aversion is a phenomenon in psychology where people generally avoid a more rewarding choice when the lesser of the two options seems more like a sure thing. For example, when offered a fifty percent chance of a $100,000 prize or a 100 percent chance for a $30,000 prize, most people choose the $30,000 prize because it is a sure thing. However, the value of the first option has an average value of $50,000 compared to only $30,000 for the second option. So, if you are only offered this choice once, it might make sense to take the sure thing, BUT, if, as in the game of football, you will face a choice like this many different times in a game or over the course of a season, it makes more sense to choose the option that has the higher average outcome. And, of course, most people do realize which decision is the better one if you take away the "sure thing" aspect of one of the options. For example, if you ask the same group of people whether or not they would go for a 5% chance at $100,000 or a 10% chance at $30,000, more people choose the 5% chance at $100,000, even though the relative difference between winning the prizes is the same as in the previous situation. (If you want to know more about loss aversion, I suggest this post over at Jonah Lehrer's blog.)
In the case of football, most coaches (and fans) see a field goal as much more of a "sure thing" because the probability of a successful try is higher than the probability of ultimately scoring a touchdown, particularly if you are less than 30 yards away from the goal line. BUT, this neglects to take into account the point differences between a field goal (3) and a touchdown (7), and the costs associated with the opposing team's resulting field position. To provide another example, Romer presents the situation of having a 4th down and goal on the 2 yard line, where a field goal really is a sure thing, but the chances of scoring a touchdown are about 3 in 7. Here, the benefit is about the same (an average of 3 points per field goal attempt, and an average of 3 points per touchdown attempt). However, the cost for both of these is NOT the same. Since the field goal is all but guaranteed, that means that on average, the opposing team will then get the ball on their 27 yard line after the kickoff. Whereas, if you go for the touchdown, there is a 4/7 chance that you will fail and leave the other team with the ball on their 2 yard line. When you calculate the cost and benefit of each of those field positions, the kickoff results in a positive chance of 0.62 points for the opposing team, thus costing your team 0.62 points (on average), leaving a resulting net benefit for a field goal try at 2.38. Leaving the other team on their own 2 yard line however, puts them at a serious disadvantage where they are more likely to turn the ball back over or get sacked in the endzone giving your team 2 points for a safety. The average value of this position is therefore actually negative (-1.5), and thus, the benefit of going for the touchdown is (3/7 x 7 =) 3, and the "cost" is (4/7 x -1.5 = -0.857), which, subtracting the cost from the benefit, yields a net benefit of 3.857 going for the touchdown (versus the net benefit of only 2.38 if you kick the field goal).
AND this calculus doesn't just apply to being on the thirty yard line, or the 2 yard line. According to Romer's extrapolation, no matter where you are on the field, except for maybe behind your own 15 yard line, it makes more sense to go for the first down on 4th and short (less than 2-3 yards to go) than it does to punt or to kick a field goal. Romer estimates that teams who adopt a strategy of "going for it" in these situations would be 5% more likely to win each game, and would at least win one extra game per season than they normally would for 3 out of every 4 seasons. So, maybe Bill Belichick, who has a reputation for "going for it" on 4th down, has done his math, or maybe he has intuitively stumbled on to something. Either way, his career coaching record of almost twice as many wins as losses, 3 Super Bowl rings and 4 AFC championships, support the idea that going for the first down conversion on 4th and short might just give your team the winning edge. Just something to keep in mind while you are watching the games later this afternoon. Happy Thanksgiving!

*Since point after touchdown ("extra point") kicks are successful 98.5% of the time, the actual value of a touchdown used in the study was 6.985, not 7, but for us, to keep the math simple, I'll just use the full 7.
__________________________________________________________________________________
And if you want to learn more about what various fields of research can tell you about your favorite sports, check out some of my earlier posts:

How the flash lag illusion may have cost Armando Galarraga his perfect game in baseball.

How magnetic necklaces and hologram bracelets may actually affect athletic performance.

How watching your favorite team win (or lose) might affect your testosterone levels.

Do you run a higher risk of getting a concussion playing boys" football or girls' soccer?

Where the students sit in the stadium could enhance your school's home field advantage.

Romer, D. (2006). Do Firms Maximize? Evidence from Professional Football Journal of Political Economy, 114 (2), 340-365 DOI: 10.1086/501171

The Top 7 research papers in Neuroscience

2010-11-23T22:28:00.000-05:00

The Faculty of 1000 have come out with their rankings (for the year I guess?) and in the category of neuroscience,you can find summaries of the top 7 here.

Where art meets neuroscience

2010-11-20T13:32:00.000-05:00

Last week's issue of the journal Nature had such a striking cover, that I couldn't help but pick one up off of the newsstand despite that fact that I can view the articles electronically at work. The cover revealed that the focus of the issue would be schizophrenia, a disease where the causes remain poorly understood in the scientific community, and the symptoms even less so in the mainstream. Many people often confuse schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder despite the fact that the most prominent symptoms of schizophrenia are paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations, not multiple personalities. Also, most people are generally unaware of the fact that schizophrenia typically manifests itself during late adolescence or early adulthood, which means that many who have schizophrenia can feel perfectly normal throughout their teens and even twenties before descending into the throes of this terrible disease. There are, however, some promising discoveries being made, and, hopefully, they will lead to progress in treatments or even prevention of the disease, which is estimated to affect nearly 1 percent of the world's population. At the nature website, you can check out many of the articles from the issue online which do a good job of summarizing some of the progress and many of the obstacles to understanding schizophrenia. Of course, I started all of this by talking about art and neuroscience, and the cover of the magazine, the main portion of which is shown above. The painting, which is credited to Rodger Casier, is an example taken from the NARSAD Artworks program which provides "museum quality art by artists whose lives share or have shared the bond of mental illness". The program is an interesting one, not only raising awareness of mental illness by showcasing the artwork of those who have suffered or still suffered from some form of mental illness, but also raising money for mental health research as well. I will have to check out the site a little more to see what's available (even just to look at), but in the meanwhile, with the holidays coming up, it may be a good place to go if you need to get some greeting cards (like the ones pictured below).

Cholesterol isn't all bad...

2010-11-15T00:12:00.000-05:00

We've actually known this for quite some time, cholesterol does a lot of important things in cells and in your body, it just gets a bad wrap because when a lot of it gets carried around by low density lipoproteins, it can clog your arteries. But cholesterol does lots of good things too, it improves the integrity of the cell membranes in all of your cells, and in many of the organelles within those cells. It is also the molecule from which all of the steroid hormones are made (including estrogens and testosterone). Some recent studies have also shown how critical cholesterol is for the development of the brain (an organ that is very rich with cholesterol) and the normal functioning of neurons. The first study mentioned here shows how oxysterol (a metabolite, or breakdown product of cholesterol) seems to be important for the production of midbrain dopaminergic neurons (the type of cells that are lost in Parkinson's disease). The other study shows how cholesterol is important to normal brain function and the ability of neurons to communicate across synapses. Some other important things that cholesterol does for us? Well it is necessary for making vitamin D, it can have antioxidant properties (thus helping to prevent cell damage and cell death), and it can help our digestion of fat and fat soluble vitamins as a critical component of bile acids. Of course, this doesn't mean that you should go out and start eating bacon and eggs for every meal. Chances are that you are already getting plenty of cholesterol from you diet, and eating too much cholesterol in your diet can still be bad for your cardiovascular health, but the cholesterol that is made by the cells in your brain gets put to good use (as does the cholesterol made in most of your cells), it's just when you have to transport the stuff in your blood that it becomes a problem. Also, there have been some studies to suggest that decreasing cholesterol synthesis with statins can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, and there are other studies that suggest that high levels of cholesterol are correlated with a higher incidence of certain cancers, and there are even a couple new studies to suggest that even cholesterol that is being carried by high density lipoproteins (HDLs, or "good cholesterol") may be harmful if you have conditions such as diabetes, arthritis, or kidney dysfunction. So, I guess the point is that cholesterol is a complicated molecule with lots of functions in the body, some good, some bad, and in the end we have to weigh what we know about the good and the bad to determine how we treat various diseases, though, given the effectiveness of lowering cholesterol on treating and preventing heart disease, and the prevalence of hear disease (it being the number one killer in the U.S.) I think we will still have to keep the general mindset that cholesterol is bad (at least that too much cholesterol is bad), but we don't want to completely eliminate it, because some cholesterol can be good (at least for your brain, and your cell membranes).

Society for Neuroscience Meeting

2010-11-14T01:00:00.000-05:00

I am currently in San Diego for the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. I will hopefully be able to post some of the more interesting things I see here, but probably not in any sort of detail until after the meeting is over. In the meanwhile, there are several bloggers who will be updating regularly as the meeting goes on (like maybe they will blog about the talk given by actress Glenn Close who hopes to promote research and treatments for mental illnesses). Anyway, you can find the list of bloggers (and tweeters) for the meeting here.

The Psychology of Climate Denialism

2010-11-11T21:29:00.000-05:00

Probably more than anything else on this blog, I have posted about the denial of certain scientific facts (like global warming, evolution, and the safety of vaccines). Second to that, I tend to post about the psychology that underlies such disbelief, like this post, where I recommend the ultimate resource in understanding why we tend to reject certain types of data. Along these lines, I have been curious for a long time why research and data concerning how to persuade people, or to disabuse them of these mind blocks, is not more prevalent in discussions about things like global warming and the safety of vaccines. While for most scientists, the data are the data, and these facts are readily accepted as such, there is clearly a disconnect with a substantial portion of the population. For most scientists, myself included, simply repeating the facts, or shouting louder and louder, or finally name calling in frustration are the most common recourse when we are confronted with those who flatly deny the evidence (or worse, refuse to listen to or look at the evidence, claiming instead that it has all been fabricated). Of course, hammering home the facts tends to work in lab meetings or at scientific conferences, but it doesn't seem to work at all in with climate deniers, evolution deniers, flat earthers, whatever. So how do we convince the general public (or this proportion of it) that policies need to be enacted to stop global warming, or that they need to get their children vaccinated, etc. It seems to me this problem is just as critical, if not more so, than the problems of global warming and autism themselves. Because if people don't think global warming is real, they won't support public policies for change or for more research. If people believe that the cause for autism is vaccines, they will harm others by not getting vaccinated, and, again, they may refuse to support publicly funded research to find the real causes of autism spectrum disorders. So what can be done? Well, I don't have any solid answers, but there are two interesting items I have come across recently that offer some hope. The first is the cultural cognition project at Yale law school. If you click on the link and go to the website, you can find several articles and scientific studies that have been sponsored by the program, like this one, which reviewed some of the experiments and showed that people's core beliefs are a major factor in determining how they view a particular scientific or technological issue. This effect is particularly strong when the issue requires some additional level of expertise, causing us to rely on experts to explain things to us, or to tell us how to feel about a particular issue. In these cases, the average person is much more likely to believe the "experts" that they feel they can identify with on core values. This is very clearly illustrated by the fact that many will take Rush Limbaugh's opinions on global warming as fact despite his complete and utter lack of any scientific credentials. People who identify with Limbaugh's conservative political and religious values see him as more of an "expert" than scientists who they may see as elitist, overly liberal, or atheistic, even when the issues at hand are scientific in nature. Which, I guess, debunks the "shouting loudly and calling people stupid" method for persuading people of the veracity of scientific facts (sorry, PZ Myers).
Anyway, the second item that I found was much more directly related to climate denialism. Recently, the American Psychological Association put out a report including "studies of human responses to natural and technological disasters, efforts to encourage environmentally responsible behavior, and research on the psychosocial impacts of climate change." If you don't want to read the whole report (and I don't blame you) you can listen to an interview with a couple of the psychologists who helped to put together this report, here. I don't know if this report really offers any solid answers, but it seems to do a decent job of identifying the problems we face with a public that does not accept or does not want to accept the consequences of it's polluting lifestyle. It is encouraging to see that researchers are identifying these problems and trying to find solutions. Hopefully, this type of research and the resultant findings will gain a higher profile, and scientists and science reporters will have the tools they need to communicate most effectively with the public. And beyond that, hopefully we will see a brighter future where society acts upon factual information (backed by mounds of scientific evidence) to make our world a better, safer place for future generations.

More evidence against the "Grumpy old men" myth

2010-11-08T21:34:00.000-05:00

A while back I posted about the idea we have in this country that the elderly are more likely to be sad, grumpy, curmudgenly, etc. Despite this widespread belief, there are a handful of surveys that suggest that older people are generally happier than their young and middle aged counterparts (and generally more well adjusted). Of course, since these surveys always asked different people (one group above a certain age versus another group at a middle age, etc.) one could hypothesize that times were simply better so many decades ago, thus arguing that the reason older people tend to be happier is because they grew up in some idealized "Leave it to Beaver" type culture, and the younger people are not as happy, not because of their age, but simply because they have had to live and grow up in a different world. Well, a recent longevity study, that is, one that followed the same people as they aged, suggests that it really is age that confers feelings of well being.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101028113819.htm
I guess they really are your golden years.

Magnetic necklaces, Holographic bracelets, and Other Totems in Sports

2010-11-03T08:56:00.000-04:00

If you have watched any of the Major League Baseball playoffs recently, you can't help but notice the twisty, braided necklaces that have become an all too popular fashion accessory for many of the players. Or maybe you have caught a glimpse of a shiny "power balance" bracelet on your favorite, baseball, football, or basketball player. Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that any of these things actually have any of the amazing effects they claim (enhanced balance or stamina or overall athletic performance). But then again, pro athletes have always been a superstitious bunch. According to an article over at ESPN.com:

"SINCE THE BEGINNING of sport, athletes have looked outside themselves for an edge. In ancient Greece, Olympians sacrificed oxen to satisfy the gods. Roman gladiators entered the arena with their dominant foot first. Yogi Berra used the same Yankee Stadium shower during any winning streak.Michael Jordan wore UNC shorts under his Bulls uniform in every game for 13 years. And before Wade Boggs stepped to the plate, which he did more than 10,000 times in his 18-year career, he carved the Hebrew letters for the word chai ("life") into the dirt with his foot. And Boggs isn't Jewish."

Of course, as the article goes on to discuss, there may be some benefit to these superstitions, a la the placebo effect. Basically, the placebo effect can be described as something like succumbing to the power of suggestion, or a self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea is that if you tell a bunch of people that some experimental treatment is going to have an effect, like pain relief, then a certain number of those people are going to report feeling less pain, even if you don't give them the treatment. As the ESPN article points out, there are some research articles out there that have looked at the placebo effect as it pertains to sports, and much like in biomedical studies, one can see that the placebo effect can yield better performance on both physical and mental performance, and may explain why many athletes believe in "lucky charms" or other superstitions. Anyway, the article does a pretty good job of dealing with these aspects of the "magical bracelets" and other charms that seem to be so popular these days. And apparently, a new episode of Outside the Lines will be featuring research done at the University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse, that determined how effective, or rather, ineffective the "power balance" bracelets are...

PS. If you read the article over at ESPN, you will see that the author makes mention of two articles pertaining to placebo effects and superstitions on performance. However, the articles were not referenced, so I can only assume they are the ones that I linked to above (and here): one where cyclists were told that they were getting a carbohydrate supplement, and performed better than baseline, even though they only got a placebo, and another where "lucky" totems increased participants' performance on puzzles and memory games (as well as on 1 meter golf putts). While tracking those two down, I also found this one, which again used cyclists, and similarly showed that the placebo effect could improve performance, though the participants were told they were getting caffeine rather than carbohydrates. And, of course, the interesting thing about this last study was that, not only was there a placebo effect, but the effect was correlated with the amount of caffeine that the participants were told they had received (i.e. telling someone they got a little bit of caffeine made them perform a little better, telling them they got a lot of caffeine made them perform a lot better, even though neither group got any caffeine).

Clark VR, Hopkins WG, Hawley JA, & Burke LM (2000). Placebo effect of carbohydrate feedings during a 40-km cycling time trial. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 32 (9), 1642-7 PMID: 10994918

Damisch L, Stoberock B, & Mussweiler T (2010). Keep your fingers crossed!: how superstition improves performance. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21 (7), 1014-20 PMID: 20511389

Beedie CJ, Stuart EM, Coleman DA, & Foad AJ (2006). Placebo effects of caffeine on cycling performance. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 38 (12), 2159-64 PMID: 17146324

More Halloween Stuff

2010-11-01T21:30:00.000-04:00

So, I know it's a day late, but I came across this post over at Discover magazine listing some of the more unusual, spooky reports to be found on the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) research search engine. Like the "haunted" scrotum pictured to the right...

Sunday Comics

2010-10-31T13:03:00.000-04:00

Real Life "Lie To Me"

2010-10-30T16:32:00.000-04:00

You may be familiar with the new-ish show on Fox called "Lie To Me" where the incomparable Tim Roth plays a psychologist who can detect when people are lying (and numerous other emotions) through revealing facial expressions he calls "micro-expressions" or, my favorite, "deception leakage". The show is based on the work of psychologist Paul Ekman, and now, in the real world, so are some airport security screening techniques (or via the MindHacks blog).
Of course many experts question how reliable these techniques are, particularly in light of the fact that Ekman's research seems unreplicable, and since he has shied away from publishing in peer reviewed journals in recent decades. (I'm always so disappointed when real life differs from Hollywood.) Anyway, my own take goes something like this: The principle is obviously intriguing. After all, anyone who has played poker quickly learns that their facial expressions can betray what kinds of cards they are holding. However, if you play cards a lot, you may also know that it can take some time to learn what each individual person's "tell" may be. And experienced gamblers can obviously manipulate the situation by intentionally displaying their facial tick or other betraying behavior when they want you to think they are bluffing. Like this scene in Casino Royale:

More Casino Royale (2006) (Three-Disc Collectors Edition) Videos

What this tells us is that any system of "deception detection" would have to rely on either an intimate knowledge of the person being interrogated (to know what their specific "tells" are) OR on a set of facial expressions and/or body movements that are common to EVERYONE when lying. Since different people have different emotional responses to telling a lie (or even to the type of lie they are telling) and since different people often have different "tells" regardless of the extent of guilt or shame they feel, it seems to me that coming up with a system that provides cues used by everyone would yield some (likely unacceptable) level of false positives (i.e. thinking that someone is lying when they aren't) and false negatives (i.e. thinking that someone is not lying even though they are). Anyway, if you read the article over at Nature you will see that the Department of Homeland Security is promising a "rigorous review" of the scientific merit of the programs they have put in place, so maybe we will get some data to support Ekman's ideas, or maybe we will just get more that debunks them.

Book Review: Fifty Great Myths of Popular Psychology

2010-10-26T22:27:00.000-04:00

So you may or may not have noticed that this book has been listed under the "Currently Reading" heading for, well, forever. To be fair, that had nothing to do with the book itself, but more to do with me having to write and defend my thesis, graduate, move to a new city, and start a new post-doc. However, I am happy to announce that I have finished the book, and I must say, I cannot recommend it highly enough. When I started this blog, my intent was to post about common myths and misperceptions in neuroscience. After having numerous conversations with people who would say things like " we only use 10 percent of our brains" or "I'm more of a right-brained kind of person", I felt that someone needed to write up the research that debunks these ideas... and luckily, someone has, and well. While the book has a bit of an academic feel (design-wise this seems inevitable because the publisher, Wiley, is an academic publisher), BUT, aside from the fact that all of the research is meticulously referenced, the book reads like popular-non-fiction. There are references to modern films, music, and even to episodes of the Simpsons. The writing style is informal and the explanations are simply written, and there is even a bit of humor running throughout. Of course, for me, the information was key, and while I wouldn't have stopped at just 50 myths, the authors did a good job of pointing out some really popular myths and debunking them clearly and eloquently, while also listing many more popular misconceptions at the end of each chapter. As I said above, I highly recommend it. And if you want an example of content from the book, you can check out an earlier post I had when I first started reading the book.

Halloween Post: The "Bloody Mary" illusion

2010-10-24T12:22:00.001-04:00

When I was a kid, a popular ghost story that we would all tell around this time of year was the story of "Bloody Mary". The story is actually very widespread here in the U.S., to the point that it has a Wikipedia page, a post on the mythbusting/fact-checking site Snopes.com, a plethora of YouTube videos devoted to the subject, and numerous mentions in movies and television shows. If, somehow, you have never heard this story, it goes like this:
In Colonial times, there was a beautiful woman named Mary Worth who found herself in the unfortunate position of being an expecting, but unwed, mother. The fact that Mary didn't seem to be bothered by her sin, and that she still seemed to capture the wandering glances of many of the men in the town, infuriated her Puritan neighbors. When Mary had her baby, the townspeople stole it away from her. Claiming that it was the spawn of Satan, they buried it alive as it flailed and screamed. The townsfolk then accused Mary of being in league with the devil and decided she must be burned as a witch. Mary was dragged to the center of town and tied to a stake as the townsfolk beat and slashed her face with the sticks that they would use to burn her. One woman held a mirror up to Mary's face, taunting her to look and see how she was no longer beautiful, she was dirty, and broken, and bloody. "Bloody Mary" she called her, and as the pyre was lit and the flames began to climb, the crowd chanted the name over and over again. Mary screamed as the flames licked her legs and her thighs, and as the acrid smell of burning flesh filled the air, the crowd became hushed. In the lull, Mary cursed the townspeople for what they had done and claimed she would visit vengeance upon them and all of their future generations, they would know the anguish they had put her through. As the flames climbed higher, the form that had been Mary Worth began to disappear, but the last words of the curse lingered in the ears of the townspeople, seemingly echoing off of the surrounding trees and buildings. Then, suddenly and without explanation, the mirror that had been held up to Mary's face shattered, slicing the hand of the woman who had initially taunted her. About a week later, the woman fell ill and died. Soon after, many of the townspeople who had taunted Mary began to meet with ill fated deaths, all in rooms with broken mirrors. It is said, that Mary still seeks vengeance to this day. All you have to do conjure her is to light a dark room with a candle, stand in front of a mirror, and say the name "Bloody Mary" five times in succession. Her face will appear in the mirror in front of you, and if you are descended from one of the townspeople that taunted her, or if she believes that you are taunting her, she will reach through the mirror and slash your face as hers was, or break the mirror cutting you all over, or, she may even pull you into the mirror with her so that you will never be seen again...
At this point, other people would usually chime in about how they heard about a girl from the next town over who had conjured Bloody Mary and was cut all over by shattered mirror glass, or about a boy that tried it and disappeared, never to be found, etc. etc.
Of course, at some point, we've all tried it, and, of course, nothing bad happens. So, how does a story like this get started. Well, a report that was published earlier this year, describing an interesting illusion (pdf), may shed some light on the subject. The author of the paper, Giovanni Caputo describes what he calls the "Strange Face in the Mirror Illusion", and it may be that this illusion spawned stories like this one that revolve around ghosts in the mirror. To characterize this illusion, Caputo got 50 volunteers, who had no idea what they were supposed to see, and had them stare at themselves in a mirror in a dimly lit room. At the end of a ten minute period, the volunteers were asked to write down what they saw. Two thirds of the participants reported seeing huge deformations of their own face, and nearly half reported seeing "fantastical" or "monstrous" beings. Smaller proportions reported seeing the faces of parents, or of ancestors, and some saw the faces of strangers, including old women and children. In all 50 cases, the participants reported some form of dissociative identity effect, which is to say, they felt like what they saw in the mirror was someone (or something) other than themselves. Many felt like they were being watched by the "other" in the mirror, and some reported getting scared or anxious because they felt that the face in the mirror looked angry. Caputo offers some speculations as to what might be causing these effects, but as yet, there is no complete explanation for all of the phenomena that were reported.
Likely, there are several things at play. First, is the Troxler effect, which is an illusion where focusing on an object causes objects in the periphery to seemingly disappear (nicely illustrated by the following figure: stare at the + in the middle for about 20-30 seconds, and the purple dots should start to disappear, though you may still see the moving "green" dot that is the negative image your brain perceives when a purple dot disappears...)

While Caputo discounts the Troxler effect because it should predict the disappearance of one's face rather than the appearance of a new face, it may be that an incomplete Troxler effect (due to lack of a solid fixation point) could lead to skull like apparitions (where the eyes and nose disappear) or other changes that could result in an unrecognizable face (when I tried this experiment myself, the Troxler effect was the first thing I noticed, and the strongest effect throughout, sometimes causing it to seem like my whole face had disappeared). Also, it may be that the disappearance of one's own face causes the brain to fill in the void with imagined faces since it is expecting to see a face there.
Instead of, or perhaps in addition to, the Troxler effect, Caputo points to the "Multiple faces phenomenon" (pdf) which is an illusion that plays upon both the weaknesses of our peripheral vision, and the higher order neurons that integrate facial features to make the faces that we see recognizable. When black and white photographs of familiar faces are viewed so that the face is centered on a blind spot, people have reported seeing different features and even different faces (i.e. white eyes, facial hair that's not present, upside down faces, the subject's own face, other faces than what is shown, etc.). Many of these characteristics were similar to what was reported in the "strange face in the mirror illusion", and many of the same conditions appear to be necessary for both illusions to work. For example, the "multiple faces phenomenon" works much better with black and white photographs than with color photos, while the "strange face in the mirror" illusion relies on low level lighting that makes it difficult for subjects to perceive color information. Additionally, the multiple faces phenomenon seemed to work better when the photos were of faces familiar to the viewer, and the mirror illusion relies upon the most familiar face of all, the viewer's own.
Regardless of the cause, it is clear that these illusions are pretty common (84% of respondents for the multiple faces, and 66% for the face in the mirror), and they can be pretty spooky. So if you want to give yourself a scare this Halloween, you can try it out and see for yourself. All you need is a 25 watt incandescent light placed behind you so that you can't see the light directly or it's reflection, and five to ten minutes of staring at yourself in the mirror (from about 1.5 - 2 feet away). If you get the conditions right, it might even be a lot of fun to convince your friends or family that your bedroom mirror is haunted, all you have to do is tell them to stare into the mirror for a few minutes and wait for the ghosts to appear. If you do try it out, feel free to leave descriptions of what you saw in the comments, and have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Caputo, G. (2010). Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion Perception, 39 (7), 1007-1008 DOI: 10.1068/p6466

de Bustamante Simas, M., & Irwin, R. (2000). Last but not least Perception, 29 (11), 1393-1396 DOI: 10.1068/p2911no

The Ig-Nobel Prize for Economics: Should companies promote people at random?

2010-10-20T22:14:00.000-04:00

This year, the nobel prize for economics was awarded to/shared by Peter A. Diamond of MIT, Dale T. Mortensen of Northwestern University, and Christopher A. Pissarides of the London School of Economics. These three economists were honored for their work relating to government policies and employment and economic growth during recessions. Among some of the many contributions in these areas are the finding that greater unemployment benefits can lead to longer periods of unemployment and the finding that obstacles to matching (in this case employers finding potential employees) are a critical factor in determining the levels of unemployment. In fact, the research showed that problems in matching are so important to unemployment that even with extensive government spending and works programs and even in economic boom times there will always be some level of unemployment due to the difficulties of matching employees with employers. Of course, meanwhile, the Ig-Nobel prize for economics this year went to the big Wall Street Banks for creating hard to value derivatives and credit default swaps and other financial instruments that led to the overinflated bubble that ultimately burst. Since that really isn't research related, I am going to claim that the Ig-Nobel prize for management serve as a proxy for the prize in economics (since there is no Nobel prize for management, and business and management are related to economics so...) This year's Ig-Nobel prize for economics/management went to Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda, and Cesare Garofalo of the University of Catania, Italy, for "demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random." The premise is an interesting one, and perhaps we've all experienced this to some degree, especially if you've ever worked for a big corporation. Companies promote managers largely based on performance (assuming you ignore any nepotism, backstabbing, or other political gamesmanship), and so the best assembly technician, data entry specialist, scientist, factory floor sweeper, etc., gets promoted to manager. The problem is, being good at floor sweeping or science (or at most any other task) has absolutely nothing to do with being a good manager, and so, despite any individual person's great performance at their first job, they may be the worst manager the world has ever seen. Believe it or not, this observation has been somewhat codified by Canadian psychologist Laurence J. Peter, and is thus named the Peter Principle, which states: "Every new member in a hierarchical organization climbs the hierarchy until he/she reaches his/her level of maximum incompetence". If this is true, or happens somewhat regularly, it begs the question of whether or not companies should promote the best person from any given level, or, perhaps instead simply promote people at random. In the paper by Pluchino et al., the authors tested this idea questioning whether the "common sense" method of promoting the best people (i.e. promoting those who excel most at their current level) might make a company less efficient than if it were to promote people at random. Of course, they didn't try this in a real company, but ran computer simulations, allowing them to test the idea over and over and average out the results. Essentially, they designed "companies" that had a pyramidal structure: lots of low level employees, slightly less middle managers, even less upper level managers, and ultimately one person who would be in charge (see figure above).

They then had the computer software randomly generate "individuals" who had "competence" values ranging from 1 to 10, and ages ranging from 18 to 60. If an individual was incompetent (a value less than or equal to 4) or of retiring age (60) they were removed, a spot opened at that level, and an individual from the next level down was promoted to fill the vacancy. Several strategies were applied: 1. the "best" approach, where the most competent at a given level was promoted, 2. the "worst" approach, where the least competent person was promoted, and 3. the random approach, where the individual that was promoted was chosen at random. Each of these strategies was applied for the two hypotheses being tested: 1. The common sense hypothesis, where an individual's level of competence transfers from one level to the next (i.e. it is assumed that good floor sweepers generally make good managers, though the authors did build in a possible swing of plus or minus 1 point allowing that some floor sweepers could be slightly worse, or even better, managers than they were sweepers.) 2. the Peter principle, where a person's competence did not transfer to the next level with their promotion, but rather competence at a new level was again randomly assigned. Finally, the measure of success for each of these methods was a valuation of the company's "global efficiency" which was calculated by adding up the competence values at each level and weighting them more as the level approached the top of the company (basically assuming that better or worse performance at the top of the company would have more of an effect on the overall performance of the company than competence or incompetence at lower levels). What the computer simulations showed is that when the common sense outcomes applied (that is, when competence was basically the same from one level to the next) and you promoted the best people at each level, not surprisingly, you got very good global efficiency for the company. When the worst person was promoted, the company had pretty lousy efficiency. What was surprising was that if competence at one level had no effect on competence at another level (the Peter principle) then promoting the "best" person at each level actually resulted in the worst global efficiency, and promoting the "worst" person at each instance resulted in the best global efficiency. Finally, under both hypotheses (common sense and Peter principle) promoting people at random resulted in small increases in global efficiency. From this, the authors conclude that, if you don't know whether common sense principles or the Peter principle is at work, your best bet would be to promote individuals at random because even though the effect was small, you would always get an increase in global efficiency rather than risk the loss in efficiency that would result from using the best strategy if the peter principle really is at work. And, of course, since we don't know if the Peter principle really is at work, you wouldn't want to risk promoting the worst candidates only to find the common sense principle was right. Of course, there are definitely some considerations that need to be made before instituting the random promotion policy. First, I think the assumption that a highly competent person at one level (a 10) could be so inept at the next level to be randomly assigned a 1 and then be fired (even if the probability of this is small, since the re-assignment is not totally random, but falls along a normal distribution). To me, if you excel at one job, you likely have skills that apply at every level (being punctual, organized, responsible, hard working, smart, easily trainable, etc.) Therefore, I would like to see the simulations re-run with promotions in the Peter principle assigning random values between 4 and 10, rather than 1 and 10 (or at least skew the distribution more to the right). Second, I think that even if you tweaked the game this way, and it still came out that randomly promoting people was the better strategy, one still has to consider the repercussions of a random promotion policy that might kill the incentive for workers to excel at their job (since they know it will have no impact on whether or not they get promoted). Ultimately, I think that this would lead to the majority of employees operating at a level of competence just high enough to not get fired. Still, the article is interesting, and suggests that the Peter principle is something that companies and other hierarchical institutions need to be wary of, and perhaps, look for a better way to assess the skills that will be needed at each new level and base promotions off of a combination of excellence at the current level and this potential for excellence at the next level.

Figures were taken from the article, the reference for which is:
Pluchino, A., Rapisarda, A., & Garofalo, C. (2010). The Peter principle revisited: A computational study Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 389 (3), 467-472 DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2009.09.045

Sunday Comics

2010-10-17T22:43:00.000-04:00

I think maybe they forgot to define all quantities. (If you were curious, the Beer-Lambert law relates to the absorption of light by a solution and is the basis of spectrophotometry... though I don't think I could write out the actual equation from memory. Guess I'll just Google it.)

Same story as the last post, but with a twist

2010-10-16T18:52:00.000-04:00

So, apparently a new article is out touting the benefit of exercise for preventing Alzheimer's and cognitive decline. Basically it's a correlational study where they interviewed people on how much they walked per week and tracked them over time to measure how much their brains did or did not shrink with age (yes, our brains shrink with age, and this shrinkage may, on average, reflect our cognitive ability, or loss thereof). They also tested the subjects for cognitive impairment 13 years after the study began (a much better measure than brain shrinkage in my opinion). As it turns out, walking 72 blocks per week (about 7 miles) is correlated with less brain shrinkage and with less cognitive impairment. The authors also reported that walking greater than 72 blocks did not seem to confer any additional benefit. As Dennis Fortier over at the Brain Today Blog points out, the good news in this story is that you may not have to go to the gym or run marathons or take up some other grueling work out routine to keep your brain healthy, a simple, one-mile walk everyday should do it.

Actually, a pretty good Op-ed on "preventing Alzheimer's"

2010-10-13T22:17:00.000-04:00

CNN has a piece about what we can all do to reduce the pace and severity of cognitive decline. Unlike most articles one finds on the web that claim some preventative measure for Alzheimer's, but are really just touting some supplement with little to no evidence of any real benefit, this article offers some pretty good advice. Though you may be surprised at what that advice is. It is not a supplement or anything so simple as a pill or new antioxidant filled fruit because the bottom line is that Alzheimer's disease is a complex disease that results from several genetic and environmental factors, many of which still remain unknown. So what can you possibly do to combat such a complex disease: keep your heart healthy. That's right. I have written before that the number one thing you can do for your brain is exercise regularly (healthy body, healthy mind), and most of the other advice in the article follows along these lines: don't smoke, try to keep stress and blood pressure low (i.e. positive attitude and lots of friends and social networks), and try to eat a diet that will keep your circulatory system healthy (again keeping blood pressure and LDL cholesterol low). I know it's not nearly as appealing as taking a pill every morning, but if you have a history of Alzheimer's or dementia in your family, you may want to consider taking a morning jog instead and a good hard look at what you eat. (And get some of your friends and family to join you.)

Today, automatic cars, tomorrow, we are at war with the machines...

2010-10-11T22:18:00.000-04:00

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-were-driving-at.html

The Ig-Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine

2010-10-06T22:49:00.000-04:00

While this is the time of year for the Nobel prizes (arguably the highest awards in science), it is also the time of year for the Ig-Nobel prizes which, according to the website "are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology." So, while the King of Sweden may be honoring Robert Edwards for his research leading to in vitro fertilization (IVF), the Ig-Nobels are honoring researchers in the Netherlands who discovered that symptoms of an asthma attack can be alleviated (sort of) by hopping on the nearest roller coaster. While it is funny to think about researchers in white coats buckling people in to a roller coaster and then surveying them on their symptoms, there is a good scientific rationale behind the study...

Asthma is caused when the bronchial tubes become inflammed or swollen, constricting the airway and making it hard to breathe. For a long time, we have known that a hormone called epinephrine can reduce this inflammation and open the airway, which is why it is a common ingredient in over the counter asthma inhalers. Of course, epinephrine is known by another name: adrenaline, which gets secreted by the adrenal gland in high stress situations, like riding a roller coaster or bunjee jumping, etc. Of course, this study didn't look at levels of adrenaline, but rather they measured the lung function of the participants (using a spirometer to measure the volume of air that the subjects could inhale and exhale) and they measured the subjects's self reported description of how bad they thought their symptoms were. As it turns out, there was no difference in lung function before and after riding the roller coaster, BUT, the subjects, on average, reported feeling like they could breathe better after riding the loop-dee-loop than they could before. What this tells us is that it wasn't the adrenaline, or even any real improvement in lung function that made the subjects feel better, and yet they felt better. So rather than actually alleviating the symptoms, riding the roller coaster seems to have changed how the subjects perceived their symptoms. A minor distinction, perhaps, after all, if you feel better, does it matter whether or not you actually are better? One might argue that having trouble breathing while unaware of this difficulty is a bad thing, but I will leave that up to you, as well as any questions about how changes in mood might bring about these changes in perception (endorphins immediately come to mind, but then, there could be so many other things).

Reference:

RIETVELD, S., & VANBEEST, I. (2007). Rollercoaster asthma: When positive emotional stress interferes with dyspnea perception☆ Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45 (5), 977-987 DOI: 10.1016/j.brat.2006.07.009

Holy Crap! A habitable planet! Besides this one!

2010-10-01T20:09:00.000-04:00

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/real-habitable-exoplanet/
I guess I don't have to worry about global warming anymore. We can just destroy this planet and move on... like intergalactic locusts. Of course, we'll have to figure out a way to travel the 20 light years it takes to get there (so, if we could travel at a constant 600 miles per hour, it would only take us about 18 TRILLION years to get there).

Brain basics

2010-09-29T22:22:00.000-04:00

There's a fun little interactive tutorial on the brain over at National Geographic:
http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/brain-article/
If you don't know much about the brain and want to learn a bit (or like interactive pictures of the brain) I recommend it.

Sunday Comics

2010-09-26T21:47:00.000-04:00

And I thought it was just my birthday...

I have been saying that someone should do this for a long time...

2010-09-21T20:47:00.001-04:00

Wired science has a story about how a simple contraption is using dog poop (yes, that's the technical scientific term) to power the lights at a local park in Cambridge, Mass. Most people don't think about the carbon footprint that their pets can have, but it is pretty substantial. In fact, it has been estimated that owning a medium sized dog is twice as bad for the environment as owning a gas guzzling SUV. The main reason for this is that dogs (in fact all animals, including us) take in carbon in the form of food (think CARBOhydrates and fats, which are made of long carbon strains) and expel carbon dioxide and methane when we breathe, fart, and poop (yup, again, all accepted scientific terms). Of course the carbon dioxide that we breathe out is not so bad, but the methane that we produce, is pretty bad. In fact, the EPA estimates that methane is 21 times more harmful to the environment than carbon dioxide. So what can we do about the methane released by dog poop? We can burn it. That's right, burn it. When methane is burned, it not only produces energy, but water and carbon dioxide, thus, reducing the environmental impact. Put all this together in a dog-friendly park and here's what you get:

"Dog owners collect their dog waste in a special biodegradable bag and throw it into the digester –- an air-tight cylindrical container, where the dog feces are broken down by anaerobic bacteria. A byproduct from that process is methane, which can then be released through a valve and burnt as fuel. In this case it is being used to power an old-fashioned gas-burning lamppost in a park."
Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/dog-poop-powers-park-lights/#ixzz0zehGO9Zz

I'm just sayin'

2010-09-20T20:33:00.000-04:00

This summer was the 4th hottest summer on record for North America. And this year is on pace to be the 2nd HOTTEST YEAR EVER (and by ever, I mean in recorded history, perhaps before life existed on earth and we were still a molten ball of magma it was hotter)...

Anyway, remember all those people who were saying global warming isn't real because there was a blizzard in February in Washington D.C.? Ummm... where are they now? Oh, wait, they're still stubbornly denying global warming despite the still ever mounting evidence.

Sunday Comics

2010-09-19T10:26:00.000-04:00

WTF?

2010-09-16T20:46:00.000-04:00

Just when I think that I cannot be any further surprised at the things that people will believe...
http://www.galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/

Yeah, you read that right. A whole conference devoted to the notion that the Earth is the center of the universe... I would write a rousing article about why this is so wrong, but apparently Phil Plait over at the Bad Astronomy blog has it covered...

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/14/geocentrism-seriously/

Of course, I suppose I should be happy that these people at least think the earth is round.

Unlike some other people:

http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/

If you want to read an article on this particular group, may I recommend the following article over at the BBC (you should read the comments as well, they are quite good):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7540427.stm

My favorite part of the story:

What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? "The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit," says Mr McIntyre.

Because when I think NASA, I think "vast profit".

Bug Brains and Antibiotics

2010-09-14T23:51:00.000-04:00

So, the paper for this isn't out yet, but there is a story over at ScienceDaily about how researchers have found several new antibiotics lurking in, of all places, the brains of cockroaches:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100906202901.htm
A big problem in hospitals (and in general) is the resistance of certain strains of bacteria to traditional antibiotics. One of the biggest offenders is a strain called MRSA (pronounced Mur-suh), which stands for Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus. As the name implies, MRSA is particularly resilient to treatment with narrow spectrum antibiotics like Methicillin (an antibiotic not too different from Penicillin). In this report, researchers from the University of Nottingham have discovered that tissue from the cockroach nervous system is particularly good at killing MRSA, offering hope that potential antibiotic drugs may be developed from these tissues.
Of course, this isn't the first time that scientists have discovered antibacterial properties in the tissues of an unusual animal. For example, several years ago, researchers reported on the remarkable ability of Komodo dragon saliva to keep the more than 50 strains of toxic bacteria that live in its mouth from killing it. But the really good news in the case of the cockroach brain is that the researchers have already characterized several compounds that that have antibiotic properties. Unlike in the case of the komodo dragon, from which no specific antibiotic compounds were ever isolated, these compounds may eventually be developed into usable antibiotic drugs that can help to fight the spread of bacterial infections in hospitals, particularly MRSA, which can kill thousands of patients each year.

Penn and Teller's take on the Anti-vax movement

2010-09-12T14:23:00.000-04:00

Warning: this is definitely not safe for work...

You kids and your hippity hop...

2010-09-11T10:28:00.000-04:00

This is actually pretty good. And I'm not just saying that because I am a huge nerd and this is a rap song about the brain. But then I guess you can just judge for yourself.

Sunday Comics

2010-09-05T17:33:00.000-04:00

I need to keep better track of these, I can't remember if I posted this one before or not... oh well, another good one from SMBC

More reason to be cautious when choosing to use supplements

2010-09-02T21:29:00.000-04:00

There is no doubt that dietary supplements are one of the most popular forms of modern "snake oil". They are available almost everywhere (from grocery store shelves to online outlets), they are poorly regulated (loosely by the FDA, not the DEA as some argue they should be), and they generate more than 150 Billion dollars each year (that's right, Billion, with a B). One of the more amazing things about all of this is that there is little to no evidence to suggest that most of these supplements do any good at all (here and here and here and here), and, in some cases, taking supplements can do more harm than good, or be downright dangerous (see table 1). But perhaps the most striking problem with the supplement industry as a whole is the fact that it is so loosely regulated. Unlike the pharmaceutical industry which is heavily regulated by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), the supplement industry is only loosely "regulated" by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), which is prevented from taking a stronger regulatory stance by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (of 1994), that requires manufacturers to be self-policing and the FDA to "regulate dietary supplements under a different set of regulations than those covering "conventional" foods and drug products (both prescription and Over-the-Counter)." While these regulations technically require that supplements be safe, and that product labels and other marketing materials be "truthful and not misleading", a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggests that these requirements often go unmet. While almost all supplements skate around the requirement of truthful product labels by simply adding the disclaimer: "These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA", the GAO's investigation found that many popular supplements contained trace amounts of heavy metals and other toxins, and, perhaps even more disturbing, that marketing materials and sales representatives commonly made unsubstantiated claims that certain supplements could cure or reverse certain diseases, or worse that they could replace doctor prescribed medications, or worse yet, be used safely with other medications for which they are contraindicated. The GAO obtained this information by sending elderly volunteers to retail outlets to purchase popular supplements, obtain marketing materials, and ask questions of the retail sales associates. They also sent 1600 samples (40 different popular supplements from 40 different manufacturers) to an independent lab for analysis. Here's what they found (parentheses added):

"We found trace amounts of at least one potentially hazardous contaminant in 37 of the 40 herbal dietary supplement products we tested, though none of the contaminants were found in amounts considered to pose an acute toxicity hazard to humans (the long term effects of these are unknown). Specifically, all 37 supplements tested positive for trace amounts of lead. Thirty-two also contained mercury, 28 contained cadmium, 21 contained arsenic, and 18 contained residues from at least one pesticide...

The levels of contaminants found do not exceed any FDA or EPA regulations governing dietary supplements... because EPA has not set pesticide tolerance limits for the main ingredients of the herbal dietary supplements we tested, (however,) the pesticide contaminants exceed FDA advisory levels. FDA agreed that 16 of the 40 supplements we tested would be considered in violation of U.S. pesticide tolerances if FDA, using prescribed testing procedures, confirmed our results."

Additionally, they found many misleading marketing practices and statements, like when sales staff informed an individual that Ginkgo biloba supplements pose no threat if you are also taking aspirin, even though, taking Ginkgo with aspirin (or with other blood thinners) may increase the risk of internal bleeding or other bleeding disorders (1, 2).
Other misleading statements on labels and from interviews of sales staff are summarized in the following table:

A teary eyed plea for basic science

2010-08-29T21:40:00.001-04:00

Sunday Comics

2010-08-29T09:40:00.000-04:00

Why we think things work when they don't... and don't work when they do.

2010-08-25T12:32:00.000-04:00

One of the most common reasons for false beliefs comes from the non-intuitive nature of mathematics and statistics. Often the true nature of randomness is misunderstood, as is the notion of central tendency (that is the propensity of bits of data to cluster around their average). The main reason for this is that we are hardwired to assign causes to the things that happen around us, even when they happen randomly, or when they are simply a reflection of the natural properties of data. Why do so many ships and planes get lost in the Bermuda triangle? Not because it is cursed, but because of randomness (the percentage of vessels lost in the Bermuda triangle is no different when compared to other similarly sized areas). Why is it that pro football players who grace the cover of the Madden NFL video game appear to suffer from bad luck? Again, not because they are cursed , but because they have likely had a sustained period of great performance and good luck leading up to this honor, and now, they have nowhere to go but down. In essence, this latter is an example of a property of data known as regression toward the mean. For example, many people believe that if a company reports record high earnings for a given period that they should immediately invest in that company because it will continue to improve its earnings. Or, some very driven people who do exceptionally well on a standardized test like the SAT, LSAT, or MCAT exams may feel a strong desire to re-take the exam to try and bump up their score a little bit. These people are often disappointed when the company they invested in reports less earnings the next quarter, or when the second MCAT or SAT score is actually lower than the first. The reason for these disappointments may not be due to poor performance, or to "slacking off", but rather to a property of data known as "regression toward the mean". (And there is a great, and rather intuitive explanation of this property over at neuroskeptic that I highly suggest you read).

Basically, regression toward the mean is a property of data, or a property of things that occur when there is some intuitive level of what can be considered extremely high or extremely low. Let's take the example of SAT scores. The scores range from 600 (extremely low) to 2400 (extremely high). If you were to take the test and get a 2300 (extremely high) you should be content with your score and NOT take the test again. The reason for this is that data points tend toward the mean, or the average (which is why it is the average). The trick is, knowing what that average is. In this case, let's assume you took a test prep course during which you took several practice exams with the average score for those being 1900. If this is true, then taking the actual test again will most likely result in a score that is lower than 2300, and closer to your average score of 1900 (thus regression toward the mean). Of course, the opposite is just as true, if, for some reason, you get a 1400 on the test, you should definitely re-take it, as you will most likely score higher (and closer to 1900) the next time around. This is the phenomenon of regression toward the mean, and it is an important thing to be able to recognize because there are many more instances where not recognizing this property can be costly. When this happens, it is called the regression fallacy, and it can lead us to assign cause to things where there is none. For example, let's say you suffer from headaches or from back pain. Most of the time the pain is bearable and so you go about your daily life paying no notice. BUT, at some point, the pain becomes unbearable... it is extremely high and thus demands your attention. So you go to the store and you buy some homeopathic "treatment" or you go to the chiropractor, or whatever. Some time after the "treatment" you feel a little bit better, and thus, you think that the treatment is working, and that it must be the cause of your alleviation. HOWEVER, what is most likely occurring is simply a regression toward the mean, that is, the pain you are feeling is simply regressing toward your average level of pain. The cause of your feeling better is simply the nature of things, not necessarily the supposed treatment, and understanding this can help to prevent the unnecessary expense of time and money on treatments that don't really work.
Another classic example of the regression fallacy occurs in parenting. Most people think that punishments are the only effective way to discipline children. However, years of research are conclusive in showing that positive reinforcement, that is, rewarding good behavior, is more effective than punishment of bad behavior. The reason most people don't believe the data is because "good" and "bad" childhood behavior represent a classic example of regression toward the mean and the regression fallacy. Let's assume that a child's behavior can be quantified and placed on a scale of good and bad, with really good behavior (say bringing you breakfast in bed and the morning paper before quietly going about doing all the daily chores) being a 10 and really bad behavior (say setting the cat on fire) as a zero. Now, most children will probably maintain some average level of good and bad behavior that hovers around, oh, let's say a 6. BUT sometimes, the child may do something really bad, say around a 2. You naturally respond in anger and yell at or even spank the child. Later, the child is behaving around a 6 again, and so you assume that the punishment worked. HOWEVER, this is most likely NOT the result of the yelling and spanking, but simply the child returning to its average level of behavior (regressing to the mean). Conversely, let's say you read somewhere that positive reinforcement is the way to go, and want to try it out. You come home from work, and the cat is thankfully not ablaze, and little Timmy is sitting quietly doing his homework... let's call this an 8 or 9. You decide to reward Timmy by taking him out for ice cream or letting him stay up a half hour later (of course the critical part for this to work is that you explain to Timmy why you are rewarding him). Now, you fully expect that every night you will be greeted by Timmy acting on his best behavior. INSTEAD, however, you come home the very next night and find Timmy running around like a crazy person. What happened? That positive reinforcement is a load of crap! Right? Well, the more likely explanation is that the positive reinforcement is working (though it will likely take time to see real results), and ultimately, Timmy will always regress to his average (and occasionally below average) levels of behavior. The trick is try and raise that average level over the long term, and to be mindful that periods of extreme behavior (either good or bad) will occur and will almost always be followed by more moderate or average behavior.
So, if you think you've got it, excellent! If not, or if you'd like to read more, I would suggest the post over at Neuroskeptic to learn more about regression to the mean. And to learn more about the regression fallacy (and other examples of where it might be at play) I highly recommend this book. And, if you want to learn more about the power of positive reinforcement and communication in parenting, then I recommend this book.

More iPhone Apps for biomedical scientists...

2010-08-24T10:46:00.000-04:00

I posted a while back on some of the apps that are available for scientists in general and neuroscientists in particular... now you can find another great list of apps for biomedical researchers, including the pubmed app and the PLOS and Nature publishing apps. Now you really don't ever have to stop working, or, at least, you can pretend that you are working when goofing off on your iPhone... either way, having some of these should make your advisor very happy and your significant other much less so:
http://www.walterjessen.com/12-must-have-iphone-apps-for-biomedical-research/

How to give your baby a bigger brain....

2010-08-23T11:20:00.000-04:00

No, it's not Baby Einstein videos, it's verbal abuse. That's right according to this study:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2010/07/28/ncbi-rofl-belligerent-berating-builds-bigger-baby-brains/
children who endure more being yelled at by parents have larger auditory association cortex. Of course, before you think that maybe you're not scolding enough, realize that bigger is not always better, particularly in this case, where these increases in gray matter are associated with increased anxiety and anxiety/depressive disorders NOT with intelligence.

Sometimes the "accepted wisdom" is right: Dogs as wingmen

2010-08-22T11:10:00.001-04:00

This blog, and science in general, tends to be all about debunking false ideas. The main reason for this is the way that science works... it is much more simple and direct to disprove something than to prove it (the latter of which, most would argue is impossible, and that we must merely accept the failure of numerous, rigorous attempts at disproof as proof). After all, every good experiment should be the best possible attempt to disprove one's hypothesis (just ask Karl Popper). The other reason we don't hear much about things we already know (or think we know) being "proved" (or rather supported by objective data) is because they lead us to say "yeah, but we already knew that!", and thus quickly dismiss it. Though, sometimes, it's entertaining to hear that the science backs up something you always suspected, and this is one of those studies: if you are a guy, and you have a dog, having your puppy pal around when you ask girls for their phone numbers will increase your success (that is, in the experiment, the same guy got more digits with Fido than when he was out there without his furry wingman by his side). Now, you may wonder, is this because having a dog around has some effect on the guy (making him more confident or act nicer, talk in a different tone, etc.) OR, is it that the presence of the dog has an effect on the person with whom the experimenter is interacting (i.e. do women perceive men in a different light simply because they have a dog?). To try and answer this question, the researchers conducted several variations of the experiment, and in one such iteration, the experimenter dropped his change in a bus station and recorded whether or not anyone stopped to assist him. When he had a dog with him, many more people stopped to help him pick up his change than when he did not have a dog. While this still doesn't rule out that the experimenter could be acting differently in the presence of the dog (perhaps in terms of body language), it does suggest that the effect of the dog's presence is more likely felt by the respondent rather than the dog owner. Of course, regardless of the means, the end result appears to be that people are more likely to be nicer or in a more giving mood if they meet you with a dog rather than without one (here for another summary of the article).

Sunday Comics

2010-08-08T21:52:00.000-04:00

via SMBC...

Good timing...for an article on brain injury

2010-07-29T08:58:00.000-04:00

So, I recently defended my thesis which centered around the research I have done examining the neuroprotective effects of estrogen synthesis and transforming growth factor proteins following traumatic brain injury. As part of the public lecture I mentioned how brain injury is a severe problem for the human race, 1. because we put ourselves into many precarious situations where severe brain injuries can occur (like driving cars and motorcycles at high speeds, or playing full contact sports, or using nail guns, regular guns, and other potentially harmful technologies), and 2. because our brains are not very good at repairing themselves (unlike some other tissues in the body like our bones for example... a few weeks in a cast, and they're all healed, but not so with a brain injury that can result in a permanent loss of tissue and possible losses of behavioral function for the rest of one's life). It is for these reasons that traumatic brain injury is the number one cause of death and disability worldwide, and a leading cause of death and, for those who survive, long term disability here in the United States. What I did not address in my talk were the third and fourth reasons why brain injury poses such a problem for us, and those are... 3. research for traumatic brain injury gets less funding than many other areas of biomedical research, and 4. clinically, brain injuries have been lumped together as if they were all the same thing, differentiated only by the severity of the coma (or loss of consciousness and other factors on the Glascow Coma Scale) rather than by other important factors such as location of the injury, age of the patient, time between injury and treatment, injury type (concussive vs. penetrating), etc. etc. Luckily, it seems like these last two factors are being addressed, and this excellent article over at "The Scientist" provides a wonderful overview for anyone who might be interested in learning more about traumatic brain injuries, how they are diagnosed and treated (or rather not really treated), and the promise that another steroid hormone, progesterone, may hold for finally having a successful clinical treatment for brain injuries. Check it out.

Sad but true

2010-07-21T20:11:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not referring to the fact that a few days of snow got dubbed "snowmageddon" and people shouted from their rooftops that global warming isn't real, while this June was the HOTTEST JUNE EVER, and not just here in the northeast United States, but ALL AROUND THE GLOBE.

Actually, I'm referring to the all too accurate depiction of life as a graduate student as seen on the Simpsons:

Sunday Comics

2010-07-18T21:37:00.000-04:00

I can totally sympathize.

An epidemic of an easily preventable disease

2010-06-25T07:55:00.000-04:00

This is the cost of not getting vaccinated:
http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/parenting/whooping-cough-is-declared-an-epidemic-in-california-1828859/

For Real This Time...

2010-06-17T08:01:00.000-04:00

I will not be posting for the next few weeks. Thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll see you back here sometime in July.

A new avenue in Alzheimer's research?

2010-06-15T08:28:00.000-04:00

While most of the work on Alzheimer's has centered around the amyloid hypothesis (or here), another possible set of proteins involved in the disease seems to be yielding promising results:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100525103935.htm

I'm always interested to hear about ideas that don't involve amyloid beta proteins, not because I don't believe they are important to Alzheimer's disease pathology, but I am not convinced that they are the only players in the story (or even the main character).

Sunday Comics

2010-06-13T11:03:00.000-04:00

A Letter to Andrew Wakefield

2010-06-12T09:02:00.000-04:00

From the ever hilarious "anthropomorphic personification of Science" (a.k.a. Dr. Dean Burnett over at Science Digestive). The latest in the series addresses the unfortunate case of Andrew Wakefield, the now discredited doctor who started the whole (completely baseless) vaccine and autism scare. Check out the whole series of "from: Science" letters, which tackle everything from astrology and advertising to chiropracty and homeopathy. You can start with this one , and of course check out this one (to the anti-vaxxers themselves).

A Fantastic Six Word Memoir

2010-06-11T20:35:00.000-04:00

I remember discussing poetry in one of my literature classes as an undergrad. For some reason, I distinctly remember us talking about how a lot of the power and beauty of poetry derives from brevity. Thus, one could view truly great poetry as that which says the most using the least amount of words, and a perfection of the art would be summed up by an ability to always find "le mot just". (This is probably why I am a loquacious scientist, and not a poet... that, and a complete lack of literary talent.) Anyway, at some point, summing up one's life in 6 words or less became a trendy sort of challenge, a "6 word memoir"so to speak. I wasn't really aware of this until recently, when I was listening to a talk by Dr. Lyn Clemens of Michigan State University, who ended the talk (which was something of a retrospective of his career) with one of these brief memoirs:

"Followed Dreams, Not Rules, No Regrets."

It seemed fitting to me to share this, since it's graduation season and people are making commencement speeches and looking for good advice to give new grads.

Memory is Not Like Instant Replay

2010-06-10T08:22:00.000-04:00

A little bit ago, Slate magazine did a week's worth of articles on the life and work of Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who has done more than anyone to show us how imperfect our memories are. And thankfully so... while it is certainly interesting how she debunked the myth of perfect recall by showing that we can be easily manipulated to remember things differently from how they happened, or even "remember" things that never happened at all, her work has also debunked the idea of "repressed" memories, and helped many wrongly accused victims avoid severe criminal penalties and jail time. Her work certainly makes one question how much weight eyewitness testimony should be given in legal cases (particularly in the absence of strong corroborating evidence), or, at the very least, it makes a strong case for statutes of limitations...
Check it out...
http://www.slate.com/id/2251883/

This is why science is hard...

2010-06-09T13:57:00.000-04:00

Flawed assumptions. In my last post, I proposed an experiment to test whether or not the flash-lag illusion might be at work in mistaken calls made by baseball umpires (like the one made by Jim Joyce that cost Armando Galarraga a perfect game). In this, I proposed that a batter running toward first base presents the moving stimulus, and the ball hitting the glove of the firstbaseman (or pitcher as the case may be) represents the instantaneous, or flash, stimulus. However, it occurs to me that it may be just as likely that an umpire might track the incoming throw, and thus the baseball would be the moving stimulus, while the runner’s foot hitting the base would become the “flash” stimulus. Since these variables can be so easily reversed, it is likely that the involvement of the flash-lag effect would not necessarily be revealed by any differences in the proportion of errors where the runner was called “safe” versus those where he was called “out”. What we would need to do is to get umpires who would volunteer to wear head-mounted cameras so that we could know which object they were tracking (or which one they track most often), the runner or the baseball. Granted, this makes the experiment more difficult, but it is not much different from what was done in this study, which could be claimed as the study that initiated the whole discussion on the potential role of the flash-lag effect in sports officiating.

Galarraga's Almost Perfect Game and the Flash Lag Illusion

2010-06-09T11:08:00.000-04:00

There's been a big sports story that has been getting a lot of press lately. Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers was on his way to pitching a perfect game, that is, he had pitched 8 and 2/3 innings and hadn't let a single person get on base (no hits, no walks, just 3 batters up and 3 down, every inning). Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay recently pitched a perfect game against the Florida Marlins, but don't be fooled... his perfect game was only the 20th in the history of Major League Baseball! (definitely no small feat!) Galarraga's would have been the 21st perfect game ever, but the 27th batter hit a little infield blooper and was called safe on a very close play by first base umpire Jim Joyce. In the old days this would have led to a lot of debate that would have lasted for years over "what might have been", or eve "what should have been", but we live in the age of instant replay, and just seconds after the call, the instant replay showed that the runner was actually, and quite clearly, "out". Just like that, Galarraga had been robbed of his perfect game, by a bad call. Of course, part of the appeal of this story to the media, and to many of us watching, is the grace and sportsmanship with which all of this has been handled. Galarraga, for his part, rather than blowing up and screaming, or complaining, simply laughed and shrugged it off, finishing the game and getting the win for his team. And the umpire, Jim Joyce, rather than making excuses or stubbornly claiming he was right, or that it was a tough call (which it was), owned up to making a mistake and costing Galarraga his perfect game.

Well, I would like to suggest that, grace aside, there is another reason Galarraga was right not to get upset because the blown call may not have been entirely Jim Joyce's fault. In fact, if anything is to blame, it is our flawed human perception, or perhaps Major League Baseball for not using instant replay or other computer and video asssisted techniques for officiating, but rather relying on human umpires whose perceptions are flawed. I would like to propose this instance as an excellent example of where having a human umpire will almost invariably lead to bad calls, and hypothesize that the reason for this is a simple visual illusion that most of us are susceptible to. That's right, Jim Joyce, take solace in the suggestion that (I believe) many umpires may have made the exact same call in your place. And what is to blame you might ask? The Flash-lag illusion.
We are all familiar with visual illusions. They occur when what you perceive in your "mind's eye" doesn't agree with what you see with your actual eyes. For example, we have all seen images like this one that appear to be moving even though everything in the image is perfectly still.

The flash-lag effect, or flash lag illusion, is a similar illusion in that the brain is "seeing" (perceiving) something different from what is actually there. Probably the best way to describe it is to say that when you are watching something that is moving, your brain is paying attention to that movement and anticipating where the object will move to next. In this way, your brain can compensate for the time it takes the "message" of what is being seen to travel from your eyes to your brain by perceiving that the object is slightly leading in front of where it is actually located in time and space. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, except when you need to compare something that is moving to something that only happens in an instant. In the flash-lag effect, you are distracted for a split second by an abrupt, instantaneous event, usually a flash of light, and your brain tries to fill in the information about the moving object that it has missed while being distracted. As a result you "see" the object leading its actual position, or, you see it moving farther than it actually has. To help illustrate the point, watch the following YouTube video. You will see a yellow dot (the "flash") appear, and momentarily block your view of the moving baseball. After the video plays a couple of times, the still images of each frame will play in slow motion, and you will be able to check and see if the baseball is where you think it is.

(If the illusion worked, it should look like the pitch drops off to the side after the yellow dot because your brain perceived the ball as being closer to you than it really was. If you need more of a tutorial, check out this page, or this brief video.)
Now that we understand what the flash-lag illusion is, let's try to figure out if it might explain what happened to Jim Joyce in his mistaken call. It has been proposed that umpires, or rather referees, experience something similar to the flash-lag illusion when they are trying to make a call about tracking something that is moving and something else that happens in an instant. For example, in the case of Jim Joyce calling the runner safe at first, he had to be paying attention to the runner's feet moving pretty quickly as they charged toward first base, BUT, he also had to look up for a brief instant to see when Galarraga caught the ball. This check to see when, or if, the ball was caught could act much like the yellow dot in the example above which would result in Joyce "seeing" the runner's foot lead its actual position, and appear to be over the base before it actually was.

To me, this seems like a pretty classic example of the flash-lag illusion. BUT, in order to support this idea we would have to find a way to test this. One way might be to go back and examine lots of footage from similar close calls and look at the mistakes that were made. If the flash-lag effect is at play in these instances, then we would predict that disproportionately more mistaken calls would be in favor of the runner being "safe" rather than being mistakenly called "out". In a way, this is almost exactly what several researchers have done in examining the errors made by soccer referees when calling offside penalties (1, 2, 3). Being "offsides" in soccer means being closer to your opponent's goal line than anyone on the other team (aside from the goalie) when your team has the ball, and the ball is also not closer to the goal line than you are. (It is basically a way to prevent players from "cherry picking" the opponents' goal.) Two competing explanations for when referees make errors on these calls were the "optical error" hypothesis and the "flash-lag" hypothesis. In the first case, one would predict that referees would make just as many offsides calls when players were not actually offsides (a "flag" error), as they would miss calls when a player actually was offsides (a "no flag" error). The flash-lag hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that referees would make more "flag" errors than "no flag" errors because movement is almost always in the same direction (toward the goal line) in an offsides call. Therefore, the player in question would be perceived to be leading his or her actual position, thus appearing closer to the goal line, and more likely to be called "offsides". This is exactly what has been found. The unequal proportion of "flag" to "no flag" errors suggests that the "optical error" hypothesis does NOT explain the majority of mistaken offsides calls, but rather, the disproportionate number of "flag" errors is consistent with the "flash-lag effect". Of course, this does NOT "prove" that the flash-lag effect is definitely at work, it merely disproves the idea that "optical errors" are the primary cause, and suggests the flash-lag hypothesis as a more consistent alternative. Since this type of analysis does not rule out other possible explanations for why referees might make more "flag errors" than "no flag errors", the researchers can't say for sure whether the flash-lag effect is definitely to blame, or, say, that maybe referees are biased toward wanting to be seen as proactive and authoritative, and thus are more likely to make a call (even if it is the wrong one) rather than not make a call. Still, it is an interesting hypothesis, with some, if not overwhelming, evidentiary support (see this article for a good description).
It certainly is interesting enough of an idea that I think it would be wothwhile to conduct a similar analysis of close calls (like Jim Joyce's) in baseball to see if we might get similar results. Additionally, I think that baseball might add a control condition that is lacking in the analysis of offsides penalties in soccer... According to my hypothesis, the instantaneous event of the baseball being caught by the firstbaseman acts as the "flash" stimulus. But in baseball, runners are not always "thrown out". In some cases, like when the ball is hit between the pitcher and the firstbaseman, the pitcher fields the ball and then runs over and tries to step on the base before the runner does (so the batter is "run out" or "out run"). This condition is identical to "being thrown out" EXCEPT now, 2 very similar moving objects are being tracked and compared as they move to the same location, rather than one moving object and a "flash" stimulus. I would predict that umpires would make many more mistaken "safe" calls when players are being "thrown out" than when they are "run out", and we could even analyze mistaken calls at first second and third base (and even home plate) to control for the angle of the umpire's view (which would help us also analyze the "optical error" hypothesis). Sounds like fun... somebody get me Bud Selig on the phone... we've got science to do.

References:

1.Baldo, M., Ranvaud, R., & Morya, E. (2002). Flag errors in soccer games: the flash-lag effect brought to real life Perception, 31 (10), 1205-1210 DOI: 10.1068/p3422

2. Helsen, W., Gillis, B., Weston, M. "Errors in judging 'offside' in association football: test of the optical error versus the perceptual flash-lag hypothesis." (2006). J. Sports Sci. 24(5):521-528.

3. Catteeuw, P., Gillis, B., Wagemans, J., Helsen, W. "Offside decision making of assistant referees in the English Premier League: impact of physical and perceptual-cognitive factors on match performance." (2010) .J. Sports Sci. 28(5):471-481.

More on Autism and Vaccines

2010-06-07T08:53:00.000-04:00

An op-ed last week from the LA Times gives some frightening stats and stories about Measles and children dying from such an easily preventable disease. In a way, the effectiveness of vaccines seems to be partly to blame (with, of course, the whole bogus autism scare bearing most of the blame). As the author recounts, one parent she had seen in her practice didn't get the MMR vaccine for her child more because she didn't see getting measles (or mumps or rubella) as much of a threat since you never hear of people dying of measles anymore, at least not in the U.S. and other countries with widespread vaccination programs.

Sunday Comics: Who Needs a Wizard?

2010-06-06T10:22:00.001-04:00

Who knew that the tin-man was such a deft surgeon... (via See Mike Draw, where you can see some other funny and disturbing cartoons).

Einstein's Brain

2010-06-05T18:27:00.000-04:00

NPR has a great little story about Einstein's brain. As I mentioned in a previous post, Einstein's brain wasn't any bigger than your average brain. What did differentiate Einstein's brain however was that he had more glia than normal. Glia (from the Greek for "glue") were originally thought to be nothing more than the cells that hold neurons in place, but more and more we are finding out that glial cells not only moderate (and modulate) neuronal signaling but many of these cells form networks throughout the brain and signal to each other across large distances much like neurons do. Anyway, check out the story, and, if you want to learn more about Einstein's brain and the crazy journey it has been on since it was removed from the physicist's cranium, check out Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti.

More on Andrew Wakefield, autism, and inflammatory bowel disease

2010-06-03T20:44:00.000-04:00

There is a great correspondence section from an issue of The Lancet in May of 1998 (the same year that Wakefield et al.'s "seminal" paper was published). The first four pages are contributions from other medical practitioners and researchers pointing out many of the flaws in the report... the most commonly cited being the selection bias I pointed out in my last post. Also, many take issue with the claims that were made about the MMR vaccine for which the paper only presented very limited anecdotal evidence. (As I like to say, in experimental science, the plural of anecdote is NOT data). Anyway, this makes it pretty clear, that many people saw the poorly done science in this paper right from the outset, but the media frenzy, rather than any real or reliable findings, vaulted Wakefield to cult hero status and somehow gave his viewpoint an artificial sense of credibility. You can read the correspondence here. (and if you don't want to read all of my last post, basically I compared Wakefield and colleagues' selection bias to asking for all of the red M&Ms out of a bag, then looking closely at just those M&Ms and falsely concluding that all M&Ms must be red.)

The Future of Science...

2010-06-03T08:38:00.001-04:00

Well, the future of biomedical science at least, is in good hands. The Scientist has a quick article about the recent BIO convention, and the International BioGENEius Challenge. This year's winner comes from... right down the hall from me, Raina Jain has spent the past few years working in the lab of Matthias Faulk, a faculty member in the department of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University. To hear about the types of research projects being tackled by these enterprising high schoolers, one can't help but be impressed, and take comfort that, at least a sizeable group of kids are getting access to high quality science education. Congrats to all who took part, and to Ms. Jain (the left-most student in the photo) and Dr. Faulk.

The four winners with Allan Jarvis of sanofi-aventis and Paul Hanle, head of the Biotechnology Institute
Image courtesy of The Biotechnology Institute

Read more:The world cup of science fairs - The Scientist - Magazine of the Life Sciences http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57452/#ixzz0pnEOb898

NBC Dateline: Vaccines and Autism Edition

2010-06-02T08:59:00.001-04:00

The other night, Dateline had a special about Andrew Wakefield, the man who started the whole anti-vaccine movement. In the latest in a string of events that can only be described as the complete discreditation of Dr. Wakefield, the general medical council in the UK has struck his name from their register, a move equivalent to revoking his license to practice medicine. Dateline did a pretty good job with the issue, and it is worth watching if you aren't too familiar with the supposed "controversy" (you can check it out below).
I really do think the whole thing is such a shame. I understand why people want to believe in Wakefield's claims, because he offers hope for an otherwise hopeless situation, and he seems so genuine and sympathetic, I almost want to believe him myself. But there are 2 things (mainly) that prevent me from taking him at his word...
First, as you can see in the video, there were a few issues with potential conflicts of interest... Wakefield was being paid (about $750,000 U.S.) by lawyers who were bringing a civil case against MMR vaccine manufacturers. Also, he held a patent for a treatment to be used either in place of MMR, or in children who had an adverse or unsuccessful reaction to MMR. Thus, it was in Wakefield's financial interests to present a story that MMR was either dangerous in some way, or, ineffective. Having these financial interests is not necessarily bad in and of itself, but what bothers me is that they were never disclosed... at least not until after they were exposed by Brian Deer's investigative reporting. All scientific journals have a form you have to fill out if your manuscript has been accepted, and most, if not all of them, ask you to disclose "ANY POTENTIAL conflicts of interest". In my experience, honest scientists put down anything and everything they think might even be remotely considered a conflict of interest, and they usually list ALL of their sources of funding regardless. Which is why Wakefield's excuse that the lawyers were paying him for another study, and that he used the money for research only doesn't excuse him in my mind. These things should have been reported initially to the editors of the Lancet, by Wakefield himself, in the interest of transparency and full disclosure. I believe that any scientist worth his or her salt would do so, and thus, I can't help but to find Wakefield's behavior to be deceitful. But even if he didn't know better because he was more of a clinician than a researcher, there is a much more convincing reason to disregard Andrew Wakefield's claims, and that is bad science.

This is my second major point of contention, and for me, it is far more important than character issues. If you take a look at the original paper from the Lancet (now retracted) you can see that there is a very large disconnect from what the study showed and what Wakefield is claiming. First, Wakefield and his colleagues only examined 12 children, which is a very small sample size for a disease that affects anywhere from 1 in 110 to 1 in 150 children in western countries. Ignoring the size of the sample, however, there is also a glaring selection bias in this study in that ALL of the children in the experimental group were selected based on the fact that they had been previously diagnosed with autism-like symptoms, AND, they had come to the Royal Free Hospital with gastrointestinal complaints. After examining the patients for bowel inflammation, the researchers found that the autistic patients, who had been admitted complaining of gastrointestinal symptoms, did have signs of inflammation in the large intestine. Go figure. It's kind of like selectively removing all the red M&Ms from a bag of M&Ms, then taking a closer look at them, and concluding that all M&Ms must be red. And, in fact, the authors of the manuscript say as much in the discussion: "We describe a pattern of colitis and ileal-lymphoidnodular hyperplasia in children with developmental disorders. Intestinal and behavioural pathologies may have occurred together by chance, reflecting a selection bias in a self-referred group..." (emphasis added)
The point is, at the time, this paper presented a small set of observations that suggested an hypothesis that can be paraphrased like this: "swollen lymph nodes, or other inflammatory processes in the intestinal tract may be related to autism pathogenesis". In fact, that is how the scientific community took it, and since 1998, many studies have disproved this hypothesis (a couple of which can be found here and here). And since Wakefield tried to extend beyond this hypothesis to implicate vaccines as causing autism, several groups set out to test this idea as well, and it has also been disproved (here and here for just a couple examples). Ultimately, the problem here is that Wakefield is treating his hypothesis as if it were proven fact, and the end result is that children may not be getting much needed vaccines and Wakefield is exploiting parents of autistic children by selling them snake oil (or a pipe dream) and accepting their money for his books, lectures, etc.
I plan to post a more thorough review of the evidence at some later point, as well as an examination of all of the various permutations of the anti-vax hypotheses (thimerosol, etc.) but for now, here's the Dateline video...

(Click here to watch the whole episode)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Quote for the day

2010-06-01T20:15:00.000-04:00

"We didn't send you to Washington to make intelligent decisions. We sent you to represent us."
- Kent York, a Texas pastor, to Rep. Bill Sarpalius (D-TX)

Sunday Comics

2010-05-30T23:16:00.000-04:00

"THE DIFFERENCE"

from http://www.blogohblog.com/funny-comic-strips/

An "Intelligent" Action Movie

2010-05-27T07:49:00.000-04:00

Dana Carvey is "DARWIN" - watch more funny videos

(Not So) Grumpy Old Men

2010-05-26T07:31:00.000-04:00

So, I have started reading a new book, and it couldn't be more appropriate for this blog. The book is called "50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology" and tackles many of the same issues I have been blogging about here, like: whether or not we only use ten percent of our brains (we don't, we use all of it), and whether or not lie detectors work (they don't, or at least not well enough to be truly reliable). Of course, there are numerous other myths that I haven't gotten to, or didn't know about myself. For example, it is a pretty common conception that old people are grumpy, crotchety, miserly, and easily upset. Just look at the films "Grumpy Old Men", "Up", and "Gran Torino". Or picture a person who might yell: "Hey, you kids get off my lawn!" Does the person in your mental image have gray or white hair? Well, as "50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology" points out:
"One team of investigators surveyed adults between the ages of 21 and 40 or over the age of 60 about their happiness and (their perception of) the happiness of the average person at their current age, (at) age 30, and at age 70. The young adults predicted that people in general would be less happy as they aged. Yet the older adults were actually happier at their current age than were younger respondents (Lacy, Smith, & Ubel, 2006)
Population-based surveys reveal that rates of depression are actually highest in individuals aged 25-45 (Ingram, Scott, & Siegle, 1999), and that the happiest group of people is men aged 65 and older (Martin, 2006). Happiness increases with age through the late 60s and perhaps 70s (Mroczek & Kolarz, 1998; Nass, Brave, & Takayama, 2006). In one study of 28,000 Americans, a third of 88 year-olds reported they were "very happy", and the happiest people surveyed were the oldest. The odds of being happy increased 5% with every decade of life (Yang, 2008)."
Of course, general happiness may not account for instances of irritability, but it does seem likely that isolated encounters, and small numbers of individuals (as well as Hollywood caricatures) are what's really driving this stereotype. As the data suggest, most elderly people don't see themselves as "grumpy" but rather, they are quite content... more so than the rest of us young whippersnappers, anyway.

A good warning sign...

2010-05-25T20:28:00.000-04:00

In my last post, I lamented not having enough time to write a proper book review of Richard Dawkins' latest work. The reason being that I am trying to graduate and finish my dissertation/thesis. I have been wanting to put up a "website under construction" warning sign or something like that for a couple of months now to warn people that my posts may be infrequent at best as I write manuscripts, finish experiments, pack and move, etc. Instead, I found this great t-shirt at phd comics. I will still try to keep posts coming, but I think I may have to put this pic up on the header or somewhere more permanent... at least for the next month or so.

Book Review (sort of): The Greatest Show on Earth

2010-05-25T10:24:00.000-04:00

I just (finally) finished reading Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth. Normally, I would write a bit of a book review, but I am kind of swamped right now with trying to finish my graduate career and move on to a post-doctoral fellowship that is waiting in the wings. I will say that the book was excellent and very well written. I am always amazed at Dawkins' ability to distill important concepts in biology and evolution and convey them so simply and elegantly. If you want a book that gives you numerous readily understandable explanations of the evidence for evolution (and instances of UNintelligent "design") it is certainly a must read.
And though it took me a while to finish, I imagine someone not writing a dissertation would be able to read it cover to cover in a week or less (I know some who took it all in in one sitting.)
All said, a great book, I highly recommend it, and, if time permits, I will post a more thorough review of the book in the near future.

Sunday Comics

2010-05-23T20:00:00.000-04:00

It is, after all, "just a theory".

Just because I find it....

2010-05-22T00:28:00.000-04:00

Sad and humorous all at the same time. Cigarette companies pumped money into fighting the science that linked several types of cancer and heart disease to smoking, just like many companies are pumping money into fighting climate science. With cigarettes, several decades passed before the science won out, and countless people died. I'll leave it at that.

Fish Oil and Cognitive Decline

2010-05-22T00:25:00.000-04:00

Following the recent study that showed Ginko Biloba's purported effects to be overblown, another study has looked at fish oil supplements and found that they were neither effective in boosting brain power nor in preventing cognitive decline. Here's a summary at Brain Blogs:
http://brainblogger.com/2010/05/13/nothing-fishy-about-preventing-cognitive-decline/

While I am always skeptical of the real power of nutritional supplements (usually because rigorous study finds them minimally effective at best, or because scientific studies that do show promise are almost always epidemiological or in vitro, the former being limited by an inability to control for numerous other factors, and the latter being limited by the stark differences between the environment in a dish and that inside the body), this isn't a "nail in the coffin" in terms of fully debunking the potential of fish oil, but it is a strong case for not forcing your grandparents to choke down cod liver oil in hopes that it will stave off dementia.
That being said, I am out of town at the moment, and not really able to read up on other studies on the purported benefits of fish oil supplements. So, it may be true that fish oil still has some cardiovascular benefits. Or, since olive oil was used as the control supplement in this study, it may be that it, or any other unsaturated fat is just as good for protecting the brain from decline, and perhaps a better control would be to compare unsaturated fats (like olive oil and fish oil) to saturated fats (like butter and bacon fat). Also, since the background for this type of study is epidemiological, it may mean that fish oil needs to be taken throughout life, rather than just for 2 years during old age (though that's a pretty long time to not see an effect). However, fish oil may be beneficial in people who are more susceptible to cognitive decline (or already experiencing symptoms of dementia). Since this study tested healthy adults, and none of them experienced cognitive decline, we can't say it has absolutely no effect, just that it has no effect in healthy individuals.
So, while I will try to do some more research when I get home, and see if fish oil really does anything, the one thing I can say for sure is, if you are healthy and in your 70s, fish oil isn't going to help you any more than olive oil, and I don't know if either is going to help you that much (at least not as a supplement).
__________________________________________________________________________________

Thanks to Bill Nelson for giving me the heads-up on this study.

Sunday Comics

2010-05-16T20:42:00.000-04:00

Another good one from SMBC. If you don't get it, you should read this post.

Underscoring the Importance of Publicly Funded Science Research

2010-05-12T08:06:00.000-04:00

It is clear that (financial) incentives can motivate and alter our behaviors. This lies at the core of free market capitalism (just ask Ayn Rand or Adam Smith). And scientists, sadly, are no exception. Almost all peer reviewed journals ask authors to disclose any financial interests or potential conflicts of interest in what they are attempting to publish... and with good reason. A recent study (pdf) shows that research that is funded by pharmaceutical companies is more likely to be biased to give positive results. Now this isn't to say there is outright fraud, but the difference between a truly significant finding and a weak trend may not be all that much. For example, if you are a researcher who is getting paid to conduct this research, give lectures, etc., and you are relying on money from a company to keep your lab funded, you may be more likely to make small concessions to keep that company happy and keep the money flowing. For example, you might let the company have some input in the experimental design or in determining what types of statistical tests should be run. Something like this is not overt "fudging of data", but it can affect the results and skew them in favor of the pharmaceutical companies' interests. (Or it could be overt fraud in the interest of personal financial gain, as in the case of Andrew Wakefield who ignited tremendous and unwarranted fears over vaccines and autism.) Of course, all of this doesn't mean that we should throw out all findings from research that was funded by private interests, but it should be evaluated with added scrutiny, and any claims of veracity should be withheld until an independent research group (or groups) can replicate the findings.

We Are...

2010-05-11T08:34:00.000-04:00

PENN STATE!!!

Finally, two of my favorite things, together at last, science and Penn State Football. Anyone who has ever been to PSU's Beaver Stadium knows that it can get pretty loud. So loud, in fact, that the fans dress in white to add a visual effect to all the white noise that is now known as the "Penn State White Out". Visiting quarterbacks have a tough time calling plays on the field, and the effect of this home field advantage can be seen pretty readily in the team's record over the past several years: Since 2005, the Nittanny Lions have won 32 games at home and lost only 4 (while their record on the road is 22 and 9). Now, a graduate student at Penn State has mapped the acoustical properties of the stadium and figured out a way to make the roar of the cheering fans almost 50 percent louder down on the field. You can read about it here or here.
And if you were wondering why an overall increase in volume wouldn't hurt the home team just as much as the visiting team, the answer is because the fans tend to be less noisy when the home team has the ball... so there still might be an effect, but hopefully it will be more pronounced on the visiting team.

Where do I sign?

2010-05-10T08:57:00.000-04:00

255 members of the National Academy of Science put out a statement on why scientific consensus should NOT be undermined by political or other non-scientific ideological attacks. I don't know how much good it will do since it was published in Science and I doubt that most of the general public will ever see it (as I think most politicians will also never see it). But, at least, if you're reading this, then you'll see it (here) and hopefully it will have some effect. Of course, if I could add one thing, I would say, you won't do a lot for the cause of Climate Change by throwing its lot in with The Big Bang Theory, Evolution, and the Age of the Earth. While scientists clearly see that these are well established facts, they are among the most contested by certain groups of non-scientists who have been successful in persuading a large part of the (American) population that these things are not true. Personally, I think it would be more helpful to show that Climate Change is on par with theories the public does accept, like the Germ Theory of Disease or the Theory of Gravity (Gravitation).

Want your surgeon to use antibiotics and wash his or her hands? Why? I'm sure you'll be fine. After all, Germ Theory is "just a theory".

Anyway, the letter is still solid, and I thoroughly endorse its sentiments, particularly this:

"there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact."

Some interesting things about motherhood...

2010-05-09T11:00:00.001-04:00

Men and women may both be as likely to want to get married and have kids (at least in the state of Virginia), but both sexes perceive that women want both marriage and kids more than men do.

Pregnancy causes deficits in memory that may be long lasting: We know that steroid hormones affect cognition and memory, and pregnancy is a time of varied and high levels of estrogens, progestins, and corticosteroids. A study due out next week suggests that the result of this hormonal exposure on the mother is diminished memory performance.

Perhaps that effect on memory has something to do with the fact that mothers tend to have less Testosterone than non-mothers (at least in the Phillipines). And not to be left out, men show a similar trend, in that, males who are fathers and/or in long term committed relationships have lower levels of testosterone than single men who have no children.

Have high blood pressure? Maybe you should have kids... it seems that men and women who have children tend to have lower blood pressure than those who do not have kids (and that's both systolic, the higher number, and diastolic, the lower number). Interestingly, the difference was larger in women than in men, where mothers had the lowest average blood pressures and women who were not mothers had the highest blood pressures. So, if you forgot to get mom a gift this year, just go ahead and tell her she owes you thanks for her low blood pressure.

Sunday Comics: Deja Vu?

2010-05-09T10:19:00.000-04:00

This one is a classic.

Of course, the last bit, about having brains the size of walnuts is not true. As this article points out immediately,

"Stegosaurus is often said to have had a brain the size of a walnut. This is grossly unfair – it was probably the size of a lime."

So, dinos still had pretty small brains, but then, as I've pointed out before, bigger doesn't always mean better (at least not when you're talking about brains).

The Power of the Press

2010-05-06T10:06:00.000-04:00

It seems pretty obvious that our behavior would be different depending on whether or not we are in public or in private. For example, I often find that when I go for a run in the park by my house, I run faster when there are lots of people around than when the park is deserted (say on a Wednesday morning)... basically, I am shamed into pushing myself harder because I don't want to appear slow or out of shape. This same principle applies to politicians, except, for them, the other onlookers are usually news reporters, and if there are no reporters (or no news stories reaching their home districts), then the politicians behave differently. Rather than being shamed into trying harder, the politicians do what you'd expect, or what I do when no one is around to see me run... they slack off. A study that I came across via the Barking up the wrong tree blog concludes:

"Congressmen who are less covered by the local press work less for their constituencies: they are less likely to stand witness before congressional hearings, to serve on constituency-oriented committees (perhaps), and to vote against the party line. Finally, this congressional behavior affects policy. Federal spending is lower in areas where there is less press coverage of the local members of congress."

This is particularly interesting and perhaps troubling as newspapers (especially local newspapers) find themselves unable to stay afloat financially, and are thus cutting back on constituency-oriented political coverage.

A lot of buzz about Oxytocin lately

2010-05-04T21:52:00.000-04:00

Just in the past couple of days I have come across two different posts (1,2) about the hormone Oxytocin, and its use in a nosespray. These new studies are all really good examples of why we shouldn't pin down hormones or genes to a single function. For example, estrogens had been thought of for years as the "female hormones" and yet, it is estrogens that are necessary for male sexual behavior. In the case of oxytocin, it had long been called "the love hormone" because it, along with the closely related peptide vasopressin, has been shown to be involved in pair bonding (which is the scientist's rough equivalent of "falling in love and getting married"). Also, oxytocin is involved in childbirth and "labour" (which is why doctors give injections of it, or the analogue pitocin, to induce labour), and accordingly with its "love" moniker, it is believed that this surge of oxytocin helps the mother to bond to her offspring. Now, however, oxytocin is being linked to feelings of empathy, and trust, and it may even help autistic children who have difficulty with these emotions, leading them to interact more with their peers.
For more of a well-rounded, if off the wall, background on the subject of oxytocin, check out this site:
http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/oxytocin/oxytocinh.htm
which reports on oxytocin as if it were a scandal in a tabloid.

Poor Grades? Maybe It's All That Red Ink.

2010-05-03T21:13:00.000-04:00

A recent paper in the European Journal of Social Psychology suggests that teachers who use red pens to grade assignments might be more stringent than if they were to use blue or black pens. We all know that red ink is the standard for making corrections to a school exam or paper, and apparently that association is not lost on the person wielding the pen.
In the first study, participants were given a series of word completion tasks that could be completed in several ways, but could also spell a word related to poor performance. For example "FAI_" could be "FAIL" or "FAIR", and "WRO_ _" could be "WRONG" or "WROTE". Participants were given either red pens or black pens, with those wielding the red ink being more likely to finish the word-stems with words related to errors. In a second experiment, a group of participants were given an essay to grade, and either a red pen or a blue pen with which to grade. Again, those with the red pens marked more errors than those with the blue pens. Of course, the counting of marks was done by experimenters "blind" to what was actually being tested, so no one scored how accurate the marks were. That is to say, it is possible that using a red pen simply makes you more likely to mark things wrong (regardless of whether or not they actually are), or, it is possible that the red ink heightens awareness or attention to detail, resulting in more marks that are deserved. To try and determine whether or not red ink leads to deserved or undeserved scrutiny, the experimenters conducted a third experiment where they gave a group of participants an essay to grade that contained no spelling or grammatical errors. As predicted, the subjects who used red pens gave the essay a lower grade than those who used blue pens. So, if you're a student, I guess the appropriate gift for your teacher is not a shiny red apple, but a nice blue (or black) pen.

Of course, there were some other interesting tidbits in this paper:

"In addition to the many experiments demonstrating the behavioral impact of various subliminal and subtle presentations of words and images (e.g., on computer screens), a small but growing body of research has shown that physical objects and environments can also influence cognition and behavior. For instance, the presence of guns can intensify aggression (Berkowitz & LePage, 1967), the trappings of the business world induce more competitive behavior (Kay, Wheeler, Bargh, & Ross, 2004), and merely seeing a sports drink leads participants to perform with greater endurance (Friedman & Elliot, 2008). The presence of funeral homes can increase charitable behavior (Jonas, Schimel, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2002), and even the height of a room’s ceiling can influence cognitive processing (Myers-Levy & Zhu, 2007). These examples of object priming show that, in essence, any object that is closely associated with a concept could potentially influence behavior by making that concept more accessible."

Along those lines, a recent study showed that just seeing a fast food logo can make us impatient and agitated.

Sunday Comics

2010-05-02T10:19:00.001-04:00

What the future holds for neuroscience...

2010-04-29T22:07:00.001-04:00

Wired magazine asked a handful of neuroscientists:
"What will transform our understanding of the brain in the next decade?"

Among the answers:
-the death of mind/body dualism, that is, the idea that the mind is something completely separate from the body. We already have a lot of convincing evidence that the brain is the physical substrate that provides us with all the aspects of what we call the "mind", but, of course, this idea is still widely debated, and given the fact that most people equate (certain aspects of) the mind with the soul, I don't think mind body dualism is going to be eradicated any time soon. I mean, we're over 150 years in with evolution, and almost half of the (adult) population of the United States still rejects it.

-lots of techniques have been developed recently that will allow us to peer deeper and in more detail at the workings of the brain. tools like: optogenetics, which allow us to activate small groups of cells (or even individual cells) and record their responses, and see them inside of a living brain all at the same time (using lasers! how cool is that?). tools like: advanced neural imaging, whether it be multiphoton or MRIs, and magnetic stimulation and inhibition which allow us to turn on and off different parts of the brain in real live people and then see how they behave or how their abilities to think or solve problems may be affected. The bottom line is, we have only had limited access to the brains of people who are alive, awake, and behaving (and able to talk about what they are thinking or feeling). In the past there were really only a few ways for us to do this: fMRI (with limited resolution that is now getting much better), surgeries like those conducted by Wilder Penfield while trying to treat epileptics, and electrode arrays in epileptic patients that are really just the next evolution of Penfield's crude experiments. Now, we have several new ways of looking a living human brains and this will undoubtedly push our understanding of the brain well beyond where it has been up until now.

Though, a decade is such a small amount of time in the world of science... I can't wait to see what the next 50 (or 100) years brings.

Dateline NBC: Social Psychology Edition

2010-04-28T08:39:00.001-04:00

The other night, Chris Hansen, of "Dateline: To Catch a Predator" fame, recreated some social psychology experiments to expose how susceptible we are to manipulations such as being "taken in" by confidence scams, and obeying authority even when asked to do things against our morals. I love that the show starts with Hansen in the American Museum of Natural History, that they put a lot of the findings in an evolutionary context, and that he interviewed Michael Shermer (who rocks!). The downside: they made it sound like a lot of these behaviors are completely understood, and presented the prevailing hypotheses as fact. Despite these failings, I still think it's good to get this information out to a broader public who may never take a psychology course and, therefore never otherwise hear about the Milgram experiments. Hopefully, once you know how easy it is to be manipulated in the name of authority, you will be more likely to listen to that nagging "voice in your head" when it tells you you are being asked to do something that is reprehensible, and thus, you will be less likely to do it.
The video is now online, unfortunately it is broken up into 5 minute bits, but you should be able to click on each new video through the embedded video.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Sunday Comics

2010-04-25T20:30:00.000-04:00

Do Clear Alcoholic Drinks Give You Less of a Hangover?

2010-04-23T08:45:00.000-04:00

It appears to be true. Research as far back as 1960 suggests that drinking whiskey is more likely to give you a worse hangover than if you were to drink vodka instead (1). A more recent study replicated this finding (2), and both seem to suggest that it is the presence of congeners, impurities that result from the fermenting or aging process, that are to blame. The latter study, which came out just last year, tested sleep quality, performance on cognitive tasks (the day after drinking), and self reported measures for hangover symptoms (headache, upset stomach, etc.). What they found was that people who drank bourbon reported suffering from more severe hangovers than people who drank vodka (with both groups ingesting quantities that gave them equivalent scores on a breathalyzer). While drinking either type of alcohol resulted in poorer sleep and poorer cognitive performance, there did not appear to be a difference in these measures when comparing the bourbon drinkers to the vodka drinkers.
Of course, to truly know if it is the congeners that are to blame for the hangover severity, rather than some other difference between vodka and bourbon (like the former is made from potatoes while the latter is made from corn), perhaps another study comparing silver to gold tequila, or "grain" ethanol (distilled to be 95-100% pure) with varying levels of acetone, aldehydes, or other congeners added in.
However, if you want to know which drinks contain the most congeners, the generally accepted list goes something like this, Brandy and Red wine contain the highest levels of congeners, followed by brown and dark Rums, and Bourbon and other whiskeys (including Scotch). White wine, clear Rum and Gin have pretty low levels of congeners, but Vodka has the lowest levels of any spirit (except for "grain"). That being said, you should avoid the cheap stuff and go for the "top shelf" selections, which are likely to have been distilled 3 or 4 times and thus contain less impurities.