Category Archives: Science

Sunshite

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This is an interesting article highlighting yet another example of health advice promoted by governments worldwide which may turn out to be causing people harm:

[W]e’ve been taught to protect ourselves from dangerous UV rays, which can cause skin cancer. Sunscreen also blocks our skin from making vitamin D, but that’s OK, says the American Academy of Dermatology, which takes a zero-tolerance stance on sun exposure: “You need to protect your skin from the sun every day, even when it’s cloudy,” it advises on its website. Better to slather on sunblock, we’ve all been told, and compensate with vitamin D pills.

 

Yet vitamin D supplementation has failed spectacularly in clinical trials. Five years ago, researchers were already warning that it showed zero benefit, and the evidence has only grown stronger. In November, one of the largest and most rigorous trials of the vitamin ever conducted—in which 25,871 participants received high doses for five years—found no impact on cancer, heart disease, or stroke.

 

How did we get it so wrong? How could people with low vitamin D levels clearly suffer higher rates of so many diseases and yet not be helped by supplementation?

As it turns out, a rogue band of researchers has had an explanation all along. And if they’re right, it means that once again we have been epically misled.

 

These rebels argue that what made the people with high vitamin D levels so healthy was not the vitamin itself. That was just a marker. Their vitamin D levels were high because they were getting plenty of exposure to the thing that was really responsible for their good health—that big orange ball shining down from above.

I can’t help thinking we’d see less of this sort of thing if the health “experts” advising governments showed a little less gluttony for power and a lot more humility. The same goes for the politicians who listen to them.

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Lewis and Snark

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Recently one or two people in the comments have directed me towards a Jordan Peterson interview at the hands of Helen Lewis on behalf of GQ magazine. Joe Rogan, who’s podcast I listen to, believes Lewis does a good job of it, far better than the hapless Cathy Newman managed in her interview with Peterson. This weekend I decided to watch it, and although Lewis did indeed do a lot better than Newman, it’s still a woeful performance on her part. Here is the interview:

Something Peterson says around the halfway mark sums Lewis up. He says that when she speaks, he doesn’t learn anything about her, he just hears unoriginal, utterly predictable mantra she’s been taught to say. It’s painful to watch in places, what passes for a journalist reciting feminist dogma as if it’s incontrovertible truth. You get the impression you’re watching a spoiled, middle-class brat who thinks she has the right to reshape the world in the image of the bubble she’s been raised in.

Now Lewis is undoubtedly one of the best and brightest in her contemporary field. Like Cathy Newman, she’s a graduate of Oxford University (where else?) so on some measures she’s not thick, but I think her interview with Peterson shows being brightest in the field of modern journalism isn’t saying very much. In terms of observable intellect, the interview is like watching a pub footballer turn out in an El Clasico match. This is not necessarily a problem: Joe Rogan isn’t the brightest either, but he acknowledges it and allows his far brighter guests to speak, which is partly what makes him an excellent podcast host if not a good judge of intelligence in other people. But Lewis clearly believes she’s on an equal footing with Peterson. At around the 40:50 minute mark she confidently states the rationale behind Peterson’s remarks on behaviour in lobsters is “scientifically bollocks”. This from someone who studied English at university. The clearly irritated Peterson, a clinical psychologist, explains to her it is neuroscience 101.

Lewis, being a feminist, believes modern-day societies are organised in patriarchal hierarchies of power, whereas Petersen believes they are more akin to hierarchies of competence. It’s easy to see why the two differ so wildly in their views. In Peterson’s field you need to be competent to rise to the top, whereas in Lewis’ you don’t need to be competent at all. Lewis has looked at her own career path, and those of her peers, and assumed the whole world works like that.

She’s not the only one. James D. Watson, one of the biologists who won a Nobel prize for discovering DNA, uttered wrongthink in 2007 by suggesting ethnic groups differ in IQ levels. His subsequent ostracism forced him to sell his Nobel medal to eat, and for some reason he’s been in the news again recently. This has given progressive journalists an opportunity to condemn him all over again. Steve Sailer summed up one such attempt nicely in the tweet below:


The trouble with modern journalism, as with modern politics, is the brightest people don’t go into it any more. Unfortunately, those who do think they’re the smartest people on the planet, capable of taking on clinical psychologists and offering critiques of the scientific opinions of Nobel prize winners. And they wonder why nobody wants to pay for their output any more.

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The Risks of Drugs Trials

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This is tragic:

The death of 11 babies born to women who were given sildenafil during a drug trial has led to the termination of the experiment – and an anxious wait for other mothers involved. Sildenafil is sold by Pfizer as Viagra, but the pills used in the study were not ones produced by the pharmaceutical giant.

The trial was designed to test whether the medication could help boost babies’ growth in the womb.

The research was carried out at 10 hospitals across the Netherlands and involved women whose placentas had been underperforming.

Viagra, which dilates the blood vessels, is used for erectile dysfunction in menand is prescribed for people with high blood pressure. The hope, backed up by experimental research on rats, had been that the drug would encourage a better flow of blood through the placenta, promoting the growth of the child.

The women taking part in the trial all had unborn babies whose growth had been severely limited in the womb. The children’s prognosis, given a lack of available therapy, was regarded as poor as a result.

The trial was terminated last week when an independent committee overseeing the research discovered that more babies than expected were being born with lung problems.

The problem with any new medicine or treatment is, no matter how much research you do on rats, monkeys, and in simulations eventually you have to try it out on humans. Until then, you’re never sure what the results will be and sometimes, as in this case, they’re not good.

Back in 2006 a human drugs trial went catastrophically wrong and turned into a full-scale medical emergency, leaving the victims disfigured for life:

On a hospital ward, patients were writhing and screaming in agony. Their organs were failing, their heads swollen and many were projectile vomiting as their immune systems began to completely shut down. It looked like a scene from a horror film, yet this was the appalling reality for six young men who had been in perfect health until they signed up to take part in a drugs trial a decade ago.

It was, they believed, a chance to make some easy money and do their bit for medical science at the same time.

But what should have been a routine trial in a private clinic at Northwick Park Hospital, North-West London, soon spiralled into one of the most infamous medical emergencies, and became known as the ‘Elephant Man’ drug trial because of its shocking side-effects. Now a BBC documentary is to revisit the dramatic events that resulted in the young men fighting for their lives.

Human drugs trials take place every day, and horror stories like the ones above are rare indeed. But until someone can come up with a robot which can exactly mimic the human body’s reaction to any drug, they’ll remain the price to pay for modern medicines.

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Another casualty of identity politics

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This story is worth reporting, but not in the way the Washington Post has chosen:

The three D.C. students couldn’t believe the news. They’d developed a method to purify lead-contaminated water in school drinking fountains, and NASA announced last month that they were finalists in the agency’s prestigious high school competition — the only all-black, female team to make it that far.

…

The NASA competition called on students to find creative ways to use space technology in their everyday lives. The teens said they considered dozens of ideas but settled on a water purification system because they noticed some water fountains in their school could not be used because of potential lead contamination.

They worked at the Inclusive Innovation Incubator — a technology lab focused on diversity and entrepreneurship near Howard University — where they volunteer, and their mentor at the incubator encouraged them to compete and supervised them on weekends as they built a prototype.

The teens purchased two jars, placing meters in each to test the purity of the water. In one jar, the teens place shards of copper in the water — with the copper acting as the experimental contaminant. An electric fan spins the water while filtering floss — a type of fiber — collects contaminated particles. Once clean, the water is transferred by a straw into the second jar. The meters verify that the water is clean, and the teens said they trust their system so much, they drank the water.

This is a fantastic achievement for which the three girls ought to be extremely proud. Here’s their picture.So what’s the rest of the story? This:

The next stage of the science competition included public voting, and the Banneker High School students — Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner and Bria Snell, all 17-year-old high school juniors — turned to social media to promote their project.

But while the teens were gaining traction on social media and racking up votes, users on 4chan — an anonymous Internet forum where users are known to push hoaxes and spew racist and homophobic comments — were trying to ensure the students wouldn’t win.

The anonymous posters used racial epithets, argued that the students’ project did not deserve to be a finalist and said that the black community was voting for the teens only because of their race. They urged people to vote against the Banneker trio, and one user offered to put the topic on an Internet thread about President Trump to garner more attention. They recommended computer programs that would hack the voting system to give a team of teenage boys a boost.

Which is pretty appalling however you cut it, but I suspect it is a symptom rather than a cause. In the era of affirmative action and identity politics, a lot of people would assume these three girls had advanced in the competition because they were black and female, rather than because their invention was any good. If you are going to promote people on the basis of their membership of a minority group rather than their competence, pretty soon people will question whether any member of a minority group is competent and deserving of their position.

As I’ve argued on this blog before, what is so insulting about efforts to help women in STEM fields is that it ignores the millions of women who have done very well in STEM without affirmative action or other patronising policies which lower the bar. The real losers from affirmative action policies aimed at helping minorities is not people who fall outside the designated groups but genuinely competent minorities who not only have to sit alongside less-capable colleagues of the same sex or skin colour, but now have their own competencies called into question. Some time ago a very capable female engineer was invited to attend a management training course reserved only for the best and brightest in the organisation. She confessed she felt uncomfortable because she found it full of women, and she hoped her being female wasn’t the only reason she’d been asked to attend. She wanted to be there wholly on merit or not at all, and I could understand why.

The online abuse targeting the three girls in the story above is unsurprising given how gender and race have been elevated above human achievement in the era of identity politics. At some point, those who fall outside the designated victim groups will start to push back and much of it will be unpleasant. Not so long ago few would have doubted these girls deserve to reach the finals of the NASA competition, and they would have been held up as an example to aspiring black and female students. Instead their achievements are being doubted and the competition, along with everything else, turned into a political circus. It’s a shame the Washington Post chose to make the story about idiotic racists on obscure web forums rather than the appalling effects on society of the poisonous identity politics they’ve done so much to promote.

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Whisky Stones and Physics

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Recently, for no real reason, I decided to buy myself some whisky stones.  These are little cubes of rock which you put in the freezer before adding them to a drink (usually alcoholic) which you want to be chilled.  The advantage over ice is that the rocks do not melt and dilute your expensive whisky (not that I drink that).  I have used them a few times and was quite disappointed to discover they don’t cool a drink very well at all, at least compared to ice.  The best they’ll do is stop it getting any warmer, but they are no substitute for ice cubes.  Now I’ve thought about it, I should have figured out why: a drink is cooled mainly by the process of ice cubes melting rather than their being cold, and I learned all about this in physics class at school.

There is a physics term called Specific Latent Heat which is defined as the amount of heat energy required to change the phase of a substance, i.e. turn it from a solid to a liquid, or a liquid to a gas.  This amount of heat is usually a hell of a lot more than that required simply to increase the substance’s temperature, and I remember my physics teacher telling us why you feel so cold when you step out of a shower: the heat taken from your body to evapourate the water is 2,265kJ per kg (which is, of course, why we have evolved to sweat to cool us down).  He also gave us an example of the effect in reverse: burns from steam are so much worse than those from boiling water because that 2,265kJ per kg is being transferred from the water onto the skin.

I remembered this reverse effect when I was in Sakhalin, and I noticed that the air temperature dropped right down when the snow on the ground was starting to melt.  Of course it would, because to change snow into water takes 334kJ/kg heat energy out of the air.  But somehow I’d forgotten this when I ordered the whisky stones and expected them to work like ice cubes.  My old physics teacher, wherever he may be now, would have given me a right bollocking for this.

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Creationism

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There has been an awful lot of fuss recently about people believing in, or not being sufficiently sceptical of, creationism.  Sarah Palin has drawn huge amounts of criticism for saying she believed in creationism, and the director of education at the Royal Society has been forced to resign for stating that creationism should be discussed rather than excluded from school science lessons.

My question is: why all the fuss about creationism?

Now let me first state, I think the whole notion of creationism is barking mad and goes against a whole raft of scientific evidence not to mention basic common sense.  And I don’t think it’s a subject which should be taught in science lessons, although I think the outrage expressed at the mere suggestion that the subject should be discussed says more about creationism’s critics than its proponents.

But of all the stupid, ignorant, and unscientific ideas that are out there, creationism doesn’t strike me as being any less stupid, ignorant, or unscientific than a lot of ideas that pass for conventional wisdom.  Socialism being a viable form of economic management over market capitalism, for instance.  How many instances of teachers believing in and teaching the virtues of socialism over capitalism occur in our schools?  It’s not like there hasn’t been full-scale experimentation carried out on the subject, when we consider the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, and North Korea.  I remember being taught by a Glaswegian geography teacher that agricultural communes in China – the type which ensured Chinese never grew enough to eat – was a viable alternative to the type of farming practiced in the west.  Is this any more stupid, in the face of all the evidence, than creationism?

Sarah Palin believes in creationism, and she might one day be president.  Yet the incumbent president, and our own glorious leaders, believe in trade tariffs.  Putting all the evidence together on a table, which belief is more irrational?  And which belief causes more harm?

Sarah Palin chooses to defy scientific findings, close her ears, and believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago.  Most of the world’s leaders choose to defy an awful lot of scientific findings, close their ears, and believe the earth is heating up uncontrollably, and we the public must stump up billions in taxes to do something about it.  Which is the more irrational?  And which is most likely to cause me, you, and everyone else serious harm?

Yes, Sarah Palin is ignorant of scientific methods and findings.  As are most people.  The average Brit’s understanding of science is bordering on non-existent.  Last time I looked at a GSCE science paper, it required students to look at a picture of a thermometer and write down the temperature it read.  I believe that a requirement to balance a chemical equation disappeared from the chemistry syllabus years ago, and I have little confidence that a majority of the public would know the chemical formula of water.  Ask people how long ago they think dinosaurs lived, and calculate the variance of the answers.  Who do you know who can explain why the sky is blue?  Or leaves are green?  And what’s the difference between wavelength and frequency?

Just for fun, I’ll throw in this anecdote.  When I was staying in Owens Park hall of residence in Manchester the TV reception in my room was awful, but was okay if I dangled my small internal aerial out of the window.  One of the tutors collared me and told me to bring it inside.  Because it was dangerous.  Apparently, if it rained, sparks could come off the wire and cause a fire.  I fear that in general people’s understanding of science and engineering isn’t much more advanced than this.

So I find it a bit ironic that people who inhabit a country where scientific ignorance is rife amongst the general population and its politicians (who endorse expensive regulations to eliminate substances in quantities proven for centuries not to harm us) should castigate a vice-presidential candidate for believing in something unscientific.

But I find it baffling that it is creationism which, out of all the stupid beliefs which are out there, gets held up as the one which demonstrates unsuitability for public office.  Whereas economic idiocy is no barrier to entry.

Like I said, I’m baffled.

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Carbon Confusion

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Even though I suppose I’m an engineer of some description, I still consider myself to be more of a scientist than the average bloke in the street.  I feel sort of entitled to think this having sat through 2 years of the most mind-numbingly boring A-level chemistry lessons which would have made watching paint dry seem like an adrenaline sport.

At any rate, I consider myself clued up enough to spot glaring errors in Guardian articles on the environment: 

Yesterday the holiday company Airtours launched what it claims is Britain’s first round the world package holiday: a 23-day whistlestop tour of 10 countries at a cost of £4,499. Scheduled to take off from Manchester airport on February 27 next year, the Airbus will carry 329 passengers, three pilots, 10 cabin crew, 10 holiday reps and a doctor.

…

As environmentalists were quick to point out, they will also emit a staggering 2,289 tonnes of carbon – equivalent to the weight of 286 double-decker buses.

Sorry?  They’ll emit carbon?  As in soot?  Product of unburnt fuel?  I never knew aeroplane engines burned so rich.  Maybe they should get under the engine cowlings and play with the mixture screw a bit.

Or maybe they are on about carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas they are all so worried about, too much of which is going to cause the earth to heat up a bit.  Sitting on Sakhalin Island watching the thermometer plumb to minus six this morning I fail to see what the problem is.  But whatever my meteorological preferences, the terms “carbon” and “carbon dioxide” are not interchangeable any more than “hydrogen” and “water” are. 

Not only are they very different substances, but the manner in which these terms are used are completely arse about face.  Contrary to the article quoted, no carbon is emitted during an aeroplane flight (a miniscule quantity of partially burned fuel notwithstanding).  The carbon is locked inside the fuel combined with other elements, chiefly hydrogen.  When the fuel is burned, the carbon and hydrogen separate and join with the oxygen in the air to form carbon dioxide and water respectively.  Carbon as a substance on its own doesn’t come into it.

So all this talk of “carbon credits”, “carbon sinks”, and “weights of carbon emitted” leaves me all rather confused.  If people are going to able to sell carbon credits, then the Yanks must be laughing all the way to the bank because they have greater coal reserves than anyone else.  And when environmentalists talk of aircraft emitting 2,289 tonnes of carbon, are they talking about large piles of graphite or are they talking about carbon dioxide gas?  Because if they cannot manage to get even the basic terminology right, why should we bother listening to anything else they say?

(via J.F.Beck)

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