What is it about fish?

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?

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

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

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

In light of yesterday's post,

A bit of advice from a fellow Memphian...

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...

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.