This past week, I was watching one of my favorite TV shows House, and I was surprised when they mentioned The Wisdom of the Crowds(WOC). For the most part, the show got the main points of the theory correctly; i.e., the aggregation of knowledge from many diverse people can perform better than a single expert opinion. In the scene, the patient does not trust his doctors and posts a $25,000 reward to the person who first presents the correct diagnosis. After receiving many different opinions, he aggregates them, takes the diagnosis most often given, and demands treatment. Of course, this fails and everyone is given the impression that the theory is faulty. One problem - this is not a true example of the theory.
The problem is the style of the monetary reward - it encourages quackery opinions to stand-out more than normal. A fundamental principle that is often ignored when discussing WOC is the incentives for offering opinions are often small and are rarely monetary or form transitional wealth. An example of transitional wealth is money: I can give someone a dollar and they can now use that dollar to buy something. Non-transitional wealth only possesses value to the person who created it. An example is pride: I can create pride in myself and I may be able to find pride in the actions of others, but I cannot be proud and give that pride to someone else. Another good example is Last.fm. By labeling songs, I can recover them quicker, but someone else may find my choice in labels confusing, wrong, or meaningless. The wealth is entirely within me.
The reason it is important to monetize opinions and effort in this fashion is that it acts as a noise filter; i.e., The Wisdom of the Crowds does not mean every nut delivers an opinion. For example, if I poll the average person on the street (at least in America), I will find some very wrong answers. Most people do not know what a molecule really is. This might explain why many people have a fear of things with "chemicals," which is a rather ridiculous statement that I have previously ridiculed. Further, only 1/3 of people can state what the purpose of DNA is. In other words, the average opinion is, well, average.
We can actually think of WOC from a statistical sampling perspective. While it's true that on average the group opinion will be better than an individual, it does mean that this is occurs with probability of one. The purpose of the WOC is to remove bias, but not expertise. Or from a Bayesian perspective:
P(correct answer AND crowd) = P(answer|crowd)P(crowd)
If I have a bunch of creationists, I am not going to get the correct answer (evolution). Same for medical diagnosis. If I tell people that they'll get $25,000 if they guess the correct answer, then their monetary gain is high. Unless their monetary cost is high as well, they'll offer any crap-based solution they could get from a little bit of time on Wikipedia. Worse, in this particular example, it's the cranks and quacks who are more likely to respond. Who do you think will respond quicker to that reward, a guy going around selling reflexology out of his Winnibego or the Head of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins?
However, I must admit that my ears perked when I heard the phenomena cited on a primetime TV show.
I recently was amazed at the amount of crap that Bill Maher stated in this video:
First off, it is not true that you go to jail in the USA if you practice alternative medicine. Rather, alternative medicine is protected. For example, anything you consume can be protected as a "dietary supplement" under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which was pushed by the bipartisan team of Orrin Hatch (R) and Tom Harkin (D) (bipartisan does not mean good). The DSHEA states that it is up to the dietary supplement manufacturer to ensure the product is safe. There is no need to prove efficacy or safety in a controlled setting prior to marketing. Further, while it is true the manufacturer must ensure that any material on the label is true, any claim can be stated by using the catch-all phrase:
"These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent _______."
In other words, "we made all this shit up and didn't even bother to test it. Here, have seconds." The FDA only steps in if they can find evidence that it is harmful after people have been affected; e.g., Zicam. In fact, Zicam is a great example because it is even mislabeled as a homeopathic treatment, but is not one since the concentrations in Zicam are way too strong - strong enough to have any effect (whether good or bad) disqualifies it as being homeopathic. So, not only are alternative medicines not regulated as medicines, there is not a regulation on themselves.
Second, Bill Maher's statement that we have not improved in the cancer fight is a bold face lie. Cancer rates have been steadily declining for years. But why research when you can just make crap up?
Third, his statement that we have such a big health care system because "we are so sick" is absurd. I am going to refrain from the public/private debate because this blog is about science and engineering and not politics. But Maher's assertion about the size of our health care system is not correlated with any health markers. Rather, it is simply a matter of diminishing returns and efficiency. In fact, if our problem was simply tied to health, we would not be arguing over whether people are covered by insurance. Instead, we would be fighting about ways to make people healthier; e.g., tax on sugars, increased physical education in schools, anti-smoking legislation, etc. (Note: I am not giving any opinion on whether we should do any of these; I am just stating that we would probably be debating these topics.)Regardless of your stand on health insurance, this is largely absent from the debate, except as a way to raise funds for a form of public health. The reason is that our health is not tied to the increase in health care costs.
Next, Maher goes into the conspiracy theory that "Big Pharma" is only interested in treating symptoms is wrong on two fronts. First, several Western medicines and treatments are specifically designed to treat the underlying disease and not symptoms. For example, antibiotics are specifically designed to kill the bacteria causing the infection. You cannot get more offensive than that. If you have heart surgery, an improperly or non-functioning heart valve is either repaired or replaced. This is not to say that all Western medicines treat the underlying case. In some cases, there is no proven cure; therefore, we do the next best thing, which is to manage symptoms. This does not mean that research there is no research into fixing the underlying cause. For example, in 2007 we saw the first vaccine against bird-flu and in 2006 we saw Gardasil. Second, when did alternative medicines start treating diseases? For example, homeopathy was developed before Germ Theory and specifically treats symptoms. Like cures Like? That is treating symptoms. If I have a cold, homeopathy says that the cure is onion because both cause my eyes to tear and agitate my mucus membranes. These are not the cause for the cold - they are the symptoms. Not one homeopathic practitioner ever links onion to the death of viral rhinopharyngitis.
I have no idea why Maher gets a pass from the skeptical and scientific community. It's likely due to his non-religious beliefs. However, this is a gross mischaracterization. The truth is that Maher is religious, but not in the Westernized "only one God in the sky" fashion. He's religious in that he believes in unproven methodologies. Jeffrey Tobin is right: there is no such thing as alternative medicine; it's either medicine, unproven, or disproven. Acupuncture? It's not alternative; it's not medicine because it does not work any better than a placebo. Anytime you put faith in unproven methodologies, you are making a non-scientific statement about the world. Saying there is a "life force" called Qi is nothing more than a religious statement.
Even if Maher were correct about cancer rates not declining (and he clearly is wrong), it does nothing to validate his point. This is simply a straw-man argument. Just because we do not have a solution does not mean you get to make up whatever crap you want to fill in the holes. It does not work for Intelligent Design and it does not work for medicine. Of course, science does not know everything. If it did, we would not be running experiments because, we would already know the answer. But that does not mean that we do not know something. Is there a cure for all cancer? No, but that does not mean we have not found ways to cure some cancers, detect and treat earlier, and increase the life expectancy if diagnosed.
So, to sum up: Bill Maher has more in common with Creationists than he would probably like.
Wow. Imagine if you were stranded on a desert island, without a calculator, and you needed to quickly multiply two large numbers. I mean, when you are stranded on a desert island, life is fairly hectic. When you need something multiplied, you need it now!
Well, thank God, Albert Clay has found the code to mentally multiply two numbers. Actually, I should say "cracked" the code, since that is what the headline said. Funny, I do not remember anyone encrypting math. Was I given a key in third grade when I learned my multiplication table? Damnit! What did I do with that?
I think the opening line from the original article in The New & Observer was even more laughable:
"On a yellow scratch pad, Albert Clay works out a math problem that can stump a calculator -- and all of the ciphering occurs inside his white-haired head."
Wow, that's impressive if true. What was the problem? Fermant's Last Thereom? Maybe the Riemann Hypothesis? How to love? Surely, this must be difficult!
54,321 x 12,345 = ?
(Collective groan). Really? That's not special! What kind of crappy ass calculator couldn't do this? Apparently, the pocket calculator could not display enough digits. Again, not special. If you have a 10 digit display, then you can enter 10,000,000,000 x 10 and the calculator will be unable to display the result unless it can do scientific notation. And a pocket calculator!?!? Was his abacus in the repair shop? Ok, well what is the trick?
"Suffice it to say you multiply the digits on the right, cross-multiply and add the digits in the center, then multiply the digits on the left."
That's not a code! That's math! This is not a short-cut. It's just doing the problem in a different way so that you can remember the steps easier. It's almost as if you can't just create information from nothing. Damn you Shannon! But wait, this old fart will sell you his "secret" for only $33. Why? For what purpose? The only value this has is as a party trick for a really, really dull person at a really, really dull party.
"Dude, this party is so lame!"
"Not to worry braugh, I scored us some paper and #2 pencils. We can long-division the shit out of this party!"
Christ, I wish I could say that this was a just some small town paper in rural America, but this is my hometown newspaper and served the area known as The Research Triangle.
I love how every year, a survey comes out saying that college graduates in math and science fields earn more than other majors. What's more appalling is that some think this is news. The article here states that it is a matter of supply and demand, but this is not entirely true. However, this article inspired me to share a couple of stories from my own family and how the educational system in America is failing.
It is true that there is a "braindrain," which is largely the fault of the poor education in math and science being delivered by the public schools in The United States. Personally, my family has two stories: one from public school and the other is sadly, from private school. The public school story involves my little sister. Her calculus teacher was working through the details of a problem in class, and he must have been proud of his work because he stepped back from the board and stated, "You know, I should have taken calculus; I would have been pretty good at it!" The idea that someone can teach a subject by following along in the book or staying just a lesson ahead of the students is appalling. In order to teach a subject, you need to understand the subject on a level deeper than the book; otherwise, you will not be able to explain the subject in a different way than the book. One thing I've learned in teaching is to present the same subject material in several different ways because what works for one student may not work for another.
Another problem, which I find even worse, is that the teacher says he should have taken it solely because he would have good at it. If you only take on challenges because you are good at it, then you are not really challenging yourself. Imagine the impact of John F. Kennedy's speech if he said,
"And they may well ask why climb a small hill? Why, 35 years ago, fly from New York to Boston? Why does Rice play local high schools? Because these things are easy and we'd be really good at it!" (Original quote may be read here.)
Not exactly inspiring. Thankfully, JFK did not have such defeatist attitude, but believed we do things "not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal [of going to the moon] will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills." I get chills every time I hear this speech. No matter how many times I hear it, I am always inspired.
The other story, and maybe more shocking, involves my little brother. At a parent-teacher conference, his teacher told my mother that my little brother needed to stop working ahead of the class because "it wasn't fair" to the rest of the students. I am still amazed that mother did not bitch slap the teacher for saying that a student needed to stop learning.
There are more reasons that math and science majors earn more than liberal arts degrees than just supply and demand. I hope to discuss other reasons in a future post.
Note: The intent of this article is not meant to persuade one for or against a government, single-payer health care system. Rather, it is to address the specific application of tax dollars to medical methodologies that do not hold up to the rigors of scientific testing.
When I started this blog, I made a promise not to discuss politics unless it crosses the lines of promoting woo through legislation (note: I do not care if a politician believes in crap (for this blog), but I do care if they want to force taxpayers to pay or believe crap). Dennis Kucinich has given me just such a chance with a recent blog post on the Daily Kos. Specifically, this is to address the following comment:
"One amendment brings into standard coverage for the first time complementary and alternative medicine, (integrative medicine)."
This should make anyone who has an understanding of science shudder. What is wrong with this amendment? First, in order for something to be alternative to medicine means that it either has not been shown to be medically (i.e., scientifically) effective or has been disproven to be effective under numerous rigorous test. For instance, here are some examples:
Homeopathy. This is may be my favorite medically-based pseudoscience. Want to cure a cold? Take an a small amount of onion (because both onion and a cold cause you to tear up and affect the mucus membranes in your nose), dilute it with water to the point that you would need a container the size of the solar system to have a realistic chance of retaining just a single molecule of the onion, then ingest or drink a small amount of the diluted solution. How do the practicioners of homeopathy justify their treatment when there is zero probability that I have ingested a single molecule of the onion? Water has memory, which is strengthend by shaking the "mixture" at each stage of dilution. No joke. They really want to throw away everything we know of chemistry. Further, the more you dilute something, supposedly it gets more powerful. Take that physics!
Essentially, this legislation not only allows for any treatment to be used, but the government will now pay for it! While we are at it, why not allow for people to get energy tax benefits because they claim their car is a perpetual motion machine? Is it not bad enough that the government has spent $2.5 billion researching CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine) only to find it does not work? The only thing worse than spending this amount of money is to then ignore the findings and pay for people to get ineffective treatment!
Anyway, I encourage people to write to their congressman or congress woman to voice their concerns about any legislation that uses tax dollars to administer disproven medical methodologies.
I recently got an email about the frequency of washing my dog from the kennel where I board my dog, Marley. Needless to say, the brought in some naturalist veterinarian, to recommend shampoos and gave the standard crap advice. I'll forgo my rant on the obvious appeal to nature logical fallacy and go to my response to their call to avoid "chemicals." Here is the letter:
Dear Wag-A-Lot,
In your recent e-letter, you mentioned an article about the proper frequency we should wash our dog. In addition, you mentioned that we should use natural shampoos and "avoid artificially produced shampoos that contain chemicals as their major ingredients." I have had a hard time finding a shampoo that fits your description. The problem is that every natural or artificial shampoo has some form of chemical as a major ingredient. For example, most shampoos, such as the ones you mentioned (Spa and Earthbath), contain water, which is a chemical. Specifically, this is a molecule and all molecules are chemicals, so I originally filtered the list to only elements. However, I then did a little more research and found out that elements are also chemicals! In fact, since chemistry is the study of matter and its interactions with other matter, a chemical substance is any piece of matter which can be described by an empirical formula which expresses the relative numbers of each type of atom in it. Since finding this out, I have tried various forms of energy to clean my dog. First, I tried radiant energy in the form of light. I tried several types of lights from strobe lights to flashlights at various intensities, but this just seemed to make my dog excited and not any cleaner. I could try other forms such as X-rays, but I am not sure of places that offer X-ray dog cleaning. Do you know of any? Next, I tried potential energy by balancing my dog on top of a tall ledge. Not only did my dog stay filthy, but he also seemed rather uncomfortable. Fortunately, my dog was in a perfect setup to try the next form of energy - kinetic energy. Let's just say that the fall made my dog leery of going near me and he was actually dirtier.
Magnetism was my next energy type to try. After giving my dog a few treats so he would trust me again, I waved kitchen magnets over him. Maybe they are not strong enough to clean effectively. Can you suggest some effective magnets that might help clean my dog? He's getting very filthy and annoyed. In the meantime, maybe you can suggest some improvements on some other approaches. Heat - how long and hot do I need to cook my dog? Also, I never thought of hot dogs as being particularly clean. Electricity - I'm not a fan of shocking my dog, but if you guys know of an effective voltage and amperage I'll try it. I am an electrical engineer by trade and I feel I can administer this effectively on my own. Nuclear - are there nuclear power companies that offer dog cleaning? The ones I've contacted thought I was crazy.
I realize that I could also maybe try dark matter and dark energy, but if I'm not mistaken, scientists are still trying to detect these and there have been no attempts to harness them or put them into a dog shampoo. Please, let me know of any advice you can give me. My neighbors are complaining about my dogs stench and his howling over my treatments.
I have not used this blog to criticize many of the worthless or harmful causes of musical artists, actors, and other celebrities because, well, I would never get any work done. However, I could not resist this. That's right, The Bee-At-els have decided that a worthwhile cause is to teach meditation to stressful children through transcendental meditation with the help of the David Lynch Foundation. On the surface, this seems harmless enough. How can one be against teaching stressed-out kids a way to relax?
The problem is that transcendental meditation (TM) is pure pseudo-scientific nonsense. I want to distinguish it against the regular idea of meditation, which is basically a "deep" form of relaxation. Transcendental meditation is supposedly hundreds of years old, but there is little evidence to support this. It was "introduced" to the Western world about 50 years ago by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It has spawned many ridiculous and unfounded claims such as levitation and The Maharishi Effect, where it said that if just 1% of a population is practicing TM, then crops will improve, the area will become a haven from crime, and automobile accidents will decrease to abnormally low levels. Further, this effect is supposed to be scientifically proven. However, all of these claims have been debunked by James Randi in his book, Flim-Flam! Further, the evidence of this effect comes from the most dubious of source - The Maharishi International University and these claims have been further disproven or found to be poor science. My favorite example in the link is the study that did not have a control group because "not one person was willing to be part of the control group." The whole point of the control group is to account for the placebo effect where people will believe they are better just because they feel they have gotten treatment.
Simply put, TM reduces stress as much as any other relaxing activity and is by no means special. Again, I have no problem with teaching children ways to cope with stress, but let's be honest, that's not what the David Lynch foundation is really doing. The reality is that they are using the "think of the children" argument to indoctrinate children into an illogical belief and promoting bad science. If it's stress reduction they are after, then they should be open to any types - sports, reading, talking, going for a walk, etc. My problem with this is the same as if Creed taught religion and prayer behind the disguise that this would prevent kids from hanging out on the streets and developing drug habits. It might, but so would an afterschool basketball league.
Note: Creed is an example since they are the most famous religious group I can think of. As far as I know, their humanitarian efforts are as successful and spirited as their music.
My fiancee and I both think the coolest science story as of late is the Large Hydrogen Collider (LHC), even though neither of us are physictists. That's why I was a little discouraged to see this obviously biased science press release. Just from the headline and first sentence, I thought, "Uh-oh, they are spending money on unnecessary safety measure just to please the scientific-illiterate."
For those who may not know, the LHC is a giant particle smasher, which scientist hope will answer many pressing questions, such as the existance of the Higgs boson, many particles predicted by supersymmetry, and how dark matter and dark energy work. However, many people are frieghtened over essentially ignorance because they fear the LHC will produce stable micro black holes and strangelets (and I'm sure many other things). Safety studies were conducted and stated that there was no danger. You can read more on this here. Fox News even goes so far as to show an artist's illustration of a black hole (note: they don't even show a micro black hole since there are galaxies swirling around the black hole... which is weirder still black holes are generally in galaxies).
So, when I saw that the LHC was being delayed due to "safety," naturally I thought this meant that they were going to devise someway to stop something that wouldn't happen anyway. It's kind of like Lisa Simpson's tiger repellant rock. Anyway, after reading the article, I found out that "safety" was in regards to the EQUIPMENT. It had nothing to do with any type of safety for humans!!! Of course, you wouldn't know this unless you read the whole article, but most people only read, especially when posted online.
And this is not to fault FoxNews, since the story came from the Associated Press. So what are the morals of this tale:
All reporting is biased, even if unintenionaly.
You really do have to read the whole article.
Scientists need to be careful about the words they use. They never should have used the word "safety." Instead, they should have said something along the lines of "taking measures to protect equipment."
In arguing for a soda tax, the NY Governor, David Patterson, borrowed a page from defendents of alternative medicine, by saying:
"A study by Harvard researchers found that each additional 12-ounce soft drink consumed per day increases the risk of a child becoming obese by 60 percent. For adults, the association is similar."
The study the NY Governor cites is by Dr. David Ludwig, which by his own admission has limited statistical power. Larger, better studies have come out documenting that snack foods and soda are not linked to obesity. Rather, it appears that physical inactivity is to blame. This is straight out of the alternative medicine playbook: find some small study which validates your claim and then ignore any larger, blinded studies that disprove your claim.
To quote Homer Simpson, "Oh, people can come up with anything. 14% of people know that."
Disclaimer: This blog is non-political, but can discuss how science, journalism, and politics interact. I will try my best to simply state the facts and point to where I see a misinterpretation or omission of scienctific principles. As such, I intentionally did not post this until after the election.
Recently, I wrote about the new responsibilities engineers have when describing technical findings with science journalists. Shortly after my post, I began to see many articles stating that a committee put together by The Department of Homeland Security found that data-mining technology should not be used to track or identify terrorists because the technology would not work and privacy-rights would be violated due to false-positives. At first, I did not pay attention to this story, but I started to see more and more stories saying that ultimately, this task is futile.
Futile? Really? This implies that we know the limits of data-mining as a science. I guess we can cancel all those conferences next year. Unlike many of the journalists, I chose to actually read the report beyond the Executive Summary and found the comittee's objectives and conclusions were mischaracterized. First, the committee said that such technologies should not be used right now "given the present state of the science" (italics added) and should never be trusted in a fully automatic sense. The report also says (in a few places), that research should continue.
Second, this report is mostly a legal report and only uses the technological aspects as background. One common theme in the report is that false positives will occur, which results in privacy violations. However, the report fails to give the conditions under which a particular invasion may be justified. Clearly, the answer is not all or none, since privacy violations occur legally in non-terrorism contexts. For example, many common law-enforcement techniques such as DNA testing, witness accounts, and even confessions have a false-positive rate. Where are the calls to dismiss these technologies or to stop investigating crimes in general?
So what were the real conclusions in the report in regards to using data mining techniques for counter-terrorism efforts?
1. No fully automatic data-mining technique should be used.
Specifically, the document says that since there is always the possibility of false-positives, data-mining techniques can only be used to identify subjects for further investigation. This is not really new.
2. Technology can be used to reduce the risk of privacy intrusion.
Specifically, the technology can be used as a filter. The report gives an example, where only images with guns detected automatically are seen by humans for further investigation.
3. "Because data mining has proven to be valueable in private-sector applications... there is reason to explore its potential uses in countering terrorism.
Once again, proving my point that engineers and scientists need to be careful about how they describe their research and findings to journalists.
4. Programs need to be developed with specific goals and legal limitations in mind. In addition, programs must be subject to continual review.
The truth is that many of laws or legal understandings are based on judicial precidents and are rarely cleaned up by Congress. This becomes an issue when technologies change and new laws are not written. Any legal decision is largely based on the facts in the particular case and will not encompass the facts to apply a law in a broader context. A similar problem is seen in our obsolete copyright laws.
For what it's worth, I do not blame the reporters entirely. Reading a 372-page document is a lot to accomplish with a ever-shrinking new cycle. But this does demonstrate that engineers and scientists need to be careful about how they state their finding, since public perception and even legal policies can be altered by their mischaracterization in the media
The music information retrieval (MIR) community has seen an increasing amount of press time in the past couple weeks (see here and here). As this type of research gets more press coverage, an important issue is how the researchers interact with the press. Recently, my favorite podcast, The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe interviewed Sharon Begley, the Senior Science Editor at Newsweek, about how science and media interact (podcast #166).
First, she discussing that relying on journalists to get the word out is sure-fire way to never get any press. Surprisingly, for someone in "Big Media," she applauds The New Media paradigm. Self-promotion, however, raises many ethical considerations since a few researchers are apt to over-publicize their results and well before any peer-review process has taken place. I think it is key that researchers limit their publicity until after some form of peer-review. For example, you will not hear any results about my research on this blog until it has been approved for publication.
Second, the press is a profit-making machine. Therefore, the fantastical will always get more press than the consensus. The same pressures that apply to other media types, especially in the face of The New Media. Generating readers will be the main point of any major media outlet. Generally, the story will be modified to be mostly true, but the key point may still be lost. It is up to the researchers to keep their message intact.
Third, researchers cannot expect the press to understand everything in their. At best, you can hope for some amount of scientific knowledge from the press, but they will always trust a Ph.D. in some science, even if the guy is crank (e.g., creationists, homeopathy, etc.). Being able to describe research in comfortable layman's terms is an essential skill for any scientist/engineer.
Professor Whittle at the University of Virginia has put together the first sound every created: that of the Big Bang. The sound file and a very full and insightful description can be found here.
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