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"XKCD: Correlation" via Jyrinx on flickr
Ok, there are a couple of things that crop up in the “main-stream” media that have just rubbed me the wrong way for quite a while, so I’m gonna take this opportunity to sound off a bit…. from a working scientists perspective.
First thing is all of the news stories that we hear about this medical study and that medical study, all of which seem to eventually be at odds with each other or that tell us “eating rutabagas appears to lessen your chance of getting eyebrow cancer by 0.4%” First of all, I’m not going to rag on the people who do the studies. They work hard and are generally intelligent people (maybe not the whiny, cry baby pre-meds who used to take my non-calculus physics classes, but most of them). They do good work and uncover interesting things.
The problem lies in the P.R. people and the media people who grab hold of their results and plaster them (National Enquirer style) all over the papers, magazines and TV, misrepresenting the actual research findings. What do the researchers REALLY do and what do they find? Well, this kind of research mostly involves sending questionnaires to a whole bunch of people, or asking for anonymous medical records from doctors and clinics. The researchers then pour over the mass of stuff and record who had cancer of the whatever, what did they usually eat for breakfast, what was their shoe size, how often did they drink, and on and on, recording a whole lot of details.
All of this is then fed into a program that calculates lots and lots of esoteric statistics and tells the researchers when there are “correlations” between things. This means something like “of the people who had bladder cancer, more than we would expect had larger than average feet”. That’s a correlation. Unfortunately, it’s not what is known as a “causal” relationship.
A “causal” relationship is something like “because the Earth has a gravitational field, the ball I dropped just hit the ground”. Causal relationships are just like the word sounds…. an affect that happens because of a KNOWN and UNDERSTOOD cause. In my previous example (big feet and bladder cancer), there is no “cause”. I have a friend who does research on plant growth. Whenever he reviews a scientific manuscript and encounters something like “It was observed that time plays a key role in the growth of soy beans”, he turns beet red and starts to rant “Time!? Time!!? Soy beans don’t wear damn wrist watches! Time has nothing to do with it!” That’s a case of mistaking a correlation (time and growth) for a causal one. In actuality, the real causal relationship is probably between growth and accumulated sun light.
So the next time that Scott Pelley or Charles Gibson or Brian Williams reads a story that says “researchers today announced that a study found people who travel more tend to live 3 months longer than home-bodies” Don’t run out and spend the retirement funds on airline tickets! That’s a correlation, not a causal relationship! It’s quite likely that something else is responsible for those extra 3 months…. like the fact that people who can afford to travel have better health care!
Second thing. I’m sick and tired of grand standing politicians, PAC spokes-critters, and the like “flagging” government waste in so-called ridiculous research projects. It’s yet another case of people who know little or nothing about the actual science, telling everyone what the science is!
The latest case in point is the flap about a federal grant which funded some cancer research. The researchers wanted to know how nicotine levels and their changes affected cancer rates. THAT is the science. The TeaBaggers, however latched on to a portion of their methodology and twisted IT to be the science behind the grant.
The traditional way for this research to be done would be to recruit a large number of subjects, have them all report to a clinic where blood and tissue samples are taken and stored until they could be analyzed. This would involve lots of inconvenience to the subjects (who would have to schlep themselves to the clinic site or sites). It would require hiring med. techs. to take the blood and tissue samples. It would require freezing and preserving the samples until they could be analyzed. All of this would have been costly…. very costly!
Instead, some clever person on the research team realized that the nicotine levels could be deduced by analyzing hair samples and that finger and toe nails were essentially the same thing! Instead of all the fuss and muss I described above, they simply asked their subjects to clip, save, and mail in their finger and toe nails every month. HUGE saving of money, time, and effort! A++ for creativity in my book!
But Nooooooo! The ever so smart TeaBaggers, Grover-worshipers, and Koch-heads saw the words “toe nail” and their great big brains said “Why that’s silly! I’ve never learned anything from my toe nail clippings and since I’m the smartest person god ever made, no one else can either!” Thus they went on a rampage against wasteful “guvmint” spending. Toe nail clippings INDEED! Not with my money!
"Grasshopper Sex" by Ben Garland on flickr
Another example that I’ve heard was outrage about a federal grant to study “the sex life of grasshoppers”. Do they (the outraged) know just how much crop damage grasshoppers do in the U.S.? or Africa? or China? If we could “interrupt” their reproductive cycle (I meant the grasshoppers, but maybe we should try it on the TeaBaggers too!), we might get a leg up on some of the famines that seem to happen every few years!
Okay, that was pretty snarky. They were really trolling for silly sounding phrases like “mailed in toe nail clippings” or “grasshopper sex” just to cause a fuss and get ANYTHING and EVERYTHING de-funded. Still, it just baffles me that people hear this outcry about wasteful and silly research from people who’s closest association with science is as a fund raiser for The Center for Intelligent Design and take it for truth. DON’T LISTEN TO THEM! They don’t know what they’re talking about!
Getting federal research money is a very tough thing. I know, because I try to do it all the time. I also review research proposals for NASA, DOE, DOD, NSF, EPA, and a few others. The bad and silly ones don’t get funded! So the next time that you hear someone in an expensive suit rail against wasteful government research projects, just ask them “Why do you like the cancer that killed my Grampy” or “Why do you want all of gods little African babies to die from famine?”
39 Comments
I think that science gets caught up in the more fundamental struggle going on in our society, the one where powerful elites are increasingly grabbing control over every aspect of life. When science gets swept up into that control system, people start to see it as the enemy, even though it is not in and of itself inherently either good or bad. Then they start distrusting any science. If scientists sincerely want to change this, they need to be the first ones fighting the growing system of elite control, but most of them are, in my opinion, totally inured to that system, having been brought up and nurtured in earlier versions of it.
This is a great post and so important. Of course the corporate media in essence wages war on science because of the “inconvenient truths” scientists are always turning up, like that tobacco kills and that global warming is real. In general, it’s more convenient for the powers that be to dumb down the population as much as possible in all ways, not just in understanding science.
What you mention about studies eventually being at odds with one another is part of how MSM damages the reputation of science. They almost NEVER put studies in a proper context, or make it clear that science works by lots of people doing studies on a given topic until, over time, a consensus emerges. From time to time, individual studies will contradict one another, or seem to, until differences in how each one was conducted become clear, explaining the differing results. As you know, doing science can be very tricky and results don’t always mean what you think they do. Science is very much a communal enterprise, as shown by the example of Darwin and Wallace coming up with the idea of natural selection almost simultaneously, both of them having been guided to it by Malthus.
I always remember reading an article in around 1970 that stressed that a sound understanding of how science is done and what is being discovered was essential education for voters. Lacking this understanding handicapped voters in making sound political decisions. But since then, as far as I can see, it has all gone downhill, and scientific illiteracy is rampant in the US.
Anyway, thanks, OMB, and recced.
SOMEONE UNDERSTANDS ME!!!!! Yeeeeaaahhh! Thanks for the rec.
The media is partly at fault, but a lot of times the press releases themselves are sensationalized. I honestly think there should be a completely different type of journalist for science – people who know how to read full texts, follow citations, and look for conflicting evidence that might have been ignored in the discussion or background sections.
I was lucky enough to work for a number of years at the Mary Imogen Bassett Research Institute in Cooperstown, NY. I’m not a scientist but I helped with the kind of studies you mention, sending out questionnaires and doing medical record audits, and also some writing of papers. I learned a lot about how scientific research is done, first hand. Also, I’ve read a lot about various scientific subjects, even though I’m an English major arts type. So I’m really in sympathy with your frustration!
I always remember an argument I listened to between one of the scientists, who was doing basic research, and a staff member. He couldn’t make her understand why basic research without a concrete clinical application in mind was more than a waste of time. This is another thing the general public doesn’t get.
Right on! A lot of books about science by non-scientists suffer from the same problem.
Excellent post!I’m married to a scientist who is truly concerned that through the deep penetration of corporatism into academia, REAL science is being diminished. From the time he finished his Ph.D. until he returned to the academic laboratory, he witnessed significant changes in the atmosphere of universities. Corporate funding became the be-all, end-all necessity for continuation; ‘competition between’ rather than ‘cooperation among’ scientists was omnipresent; and self-aggrandizement (including both money and notoriety) was the primary motivator. Consequently, the work product is often little more than pseudo-science.
I recently read a psychiatric blog that detailed how a single study garnered more than 100 papers for the primary investigator. Oftentimes, the titles were slightly changed, but content remained the same. Yet the fact that the author’s CV was enhanced 100-fold garnered him a position as a key opinion leader in his field and had a significant impact on the mental health/education model.
Fortunately, real scientists will continue to ask questions and seek answers. It’s what they do! Today’s environment cannot change the nature of a true scientist . . . merely slow their work.
Yes, the infiltration of corporate money into academe is a serious problem. And as federal funding, like from the CDC or NIH, dries up it will get worse.
Good one OMB! Keep ‘em coming. We like scientists here.
Although I do agree with what you said in general, I think youare over-generalizing on some points.
“If scientists sincerely want to change this, they need to be the first ones fighting the growing system of elite control”
Replace “scientists” with any occupation or just with the word people. No difference.
“but most of them are, in my opinion, totally inured to that system, having been brought up and nurtured in earlier versions of it.”
Replace “them” with the phrase vast majority of Americans. More accurate.
Cathy: “He couldn’t make her understand why basic research without a concrete clinical application in mind was more than a waste of time. This is another thing the general public doesn’t get.”
Sadly this is the way it is. And with education declining and set to decline further in this country, don’t expect any changes, except for the worse.
Science is riddled with examples of things that may not have had a “practical” application except for adding to our understanding. And later …
“Protamine sulfate is a drug that reverses the anticoagulant effects of heparin by binding to it.
Protamine was originally isolated from the sperm of salmon and other species of fish”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protamine_sulfate
Just one example. Heparin is blood thinner. Too much, you bleed out, because the heparin is a powerful anti-coagulant, ie. no more clotting.
And someone found protamine sulfate. In salmon sperm. Were they looking for a Heparin “antidote”? Of course not.
And what funding did this receive? I don’t know. But I don’t think some private business paid some dude to look at salmon “junk” just because. Sounds like a pinko-commie, hippie, kinda thing to do, like the NAE.
Bonus points: Can anyone tell me where the name Warfarin comes from?
Great post and recommended OMB but you’re using a really broad brush to paint human subject research. Sure, there are studies that rely on anonymous medical records and some that involve questionnaires being sent to people, patients usually or both. Most human subject research I’ve been involved in, (I was a database administrator for the Henry Jackson Foundation), is based on direct interviewing of patients upon entering the clinic for diagnosis and treatment, (if necessary). Then the cases are followed up on and entered into a database. Of course the larger the sample, the better the results. It isn’t as slipshod and random as you seem to suggest, though that could just be my misinterpreting your phrasing.
I agree about the media. They actively “dumb down” science in order to make it “more appealing” or “more understandable” to the general public. The trouble with that is that they not only “dumb down” the language, they oversimplify the results and methodology and otherwise treat their readers as if they were four years old. My opinion is that if somebody is interested in science, they will take the steps required to understand the subject matter, the methodology and the results and thus can understand the context, (which the media is notorious about ignoring), and if they aren’t interested in science, they aren’t likely to complicate their thoughts by even looking at an article about science. Thus, the media serve nobody’s interests by doing what they do unless like many, you believe that they are advancing a narrative, in which case no amount of journalistic integrity or respect for the reader matters.
Spot on. Now corporations want to pay for “science” that achieves a predetermined result and if you can’t produce that result, well I guess you didn’t really want to be funded any longer, did you? It’s been that way in pharma for ages.
Oh, exactly. This is why Carl Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World; he could see the forces of conservative reaction, spurred on in large part by oil and coal companies (hint: where does the Koch family get its money?), pushing all sorts of unreason at us in the guise of “morality”.
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and the ending -arin, indicating its link with coumarin.
From Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin
@Margaret: I didn’t mean to demean clinical research. It isn’t the kind of work that I do, so I necessarily had to use a big broad brush, but I wanted to make the point that perhaps “mailing in toe nail clippings” was an innovative, effective, and cost-saving research method, and may have been peripheral to the actual research goals. As to the media dumbing down science, it seems to have had a cumulative effect. Nowadays, I hear many people poo pooing some of the latest clinical research because it apparently contradicts earlier “scientific truths”. The media tends to treat scientific “results” as if they were written stone. No evolution of science allowed! Back in the 50s and 60s scientists were perceived to be among the most truthful and respected people in the country. Now, many people don’t trust scientists and science at all anymore. I worry that this distrust may be caused by the sort of things I was writing about. Anyhow, thanks for the support!
There’s something else that I forgot to mention on the media vs science: The media also tends to treat people like Rick Perry, who has no science background with the same credibility as say James Hansen. Over and over I see them bring on some political hack and put them opposite an actual climatologist and treat it like a debate. The scientific facts they treat with skepticism while the unfounded and unsupported pronouncements are given just as much, (and usually more), weight than the reality. Like the money in politics, that has to stop before we can go forward and restore good science.
Amen to that!
As a scientist active in human subject research for about half my working career. I certainly attest to the corruption and monetization of science. To the point little science is getting done now. Most reports are outcome motivated and just junk correlations to get corporate money and what little government money is out there.
Don’t trust any of it.
We live in evil times.
I suspect many many folks at FDL understand you – indeed like myself I am sure they loved the comic strip on statistical inference.
Indeed it was a Dems – liberals like Dingill of Michigan, he that stopped car mileage rules so Detroit and big oil were happy, but found the $600 toilet seats at the Pentagon ( real price – but that reflected an allocation of overhead that resulted in other numbers being an “underpricing”) – that chased science research waste and fraud in the 80′s and 90′s.
Science makes a good whipping boy.
One of the best defenses to the “if I can’t see it I don’t believe it,” I posted the other night in part. For a lot of years science told us the earth is round but it wasn’t until the 1970s that astronaut Pete Conrad, having shot his Gemini capsule into high earth orbit, looked out the window and shouted “The earth is round!”
Ohmigosh, thank you for this post.
I am reminded of a blog post I once read making fun of a study of whether talking on cell phones (I think, it might have been using another kind of technology, or texting) while driving increased the likelihood of a car accident involving a phone user. It turns out such behavior did increase the likelihood of an accident, so the blogger had a good time. Cheap, but o.k. The comments, though, were so intensely anti-science. One of the comments said something like: ya, duh, using your cell phone gets you into accidents. Ditto talking to people in the car etc.
The thing is when I read an article about the study to which the blogger had linked, it said precisely the opposite of this “ditto” comment: while using your cell phone increased your likelihood of getting into a car accident, according to this study, having an interlocutor in the passenger seat actually decreased the likelihood of your getting into an accident.
This is the the tricky thing about science: sometimes it tells us that what we assumed was true is in fact true, and sometimes it tells us that what we assumed was true is not.
The weird thing to me at the time was that it was not a right-wing or explicitly anti-science site. I’m sure the blogger and most of those who commented accept the theory of evolution as good science. Which I think may mean that science education in this country is in an even worse state than I thought.
I’m glad someone else in the universe understands that. Many years ago I got trapped in a hundred dollar screw. It took freaking forever to convince them, we were not stealing.
GREAT post, thanks, rec’d
good comments too
“This is a great post and so important. Of course the corporate media in essence wages war on science because of the “inconvenient truths” scientists are always turning up, like that tobacco kills and that global warming is real. In general, it’s more convenient for the powers that be to dumb down the population as much as possible in all ways, not just in understanding science.”
A little issue with the use of gadolinium during MRI examinations is a great example of GE and Big Corporations are hiding the truth about their products..
“The second row relates to single agent used which I guess is more reliable.
Reported NSF cases as of December 2009
Omniscan Magnevist Optimark Prohance Multihance
929 654 427 325 335 Domestic NSF Reports in
AERS
382 195 35 0*** 1 Domestic Single Agent NSF
Reports in AERS**
Tinky -maths to work out percentages of cases per brand
total single agent reports 613
Ominscan 382 = 62%
Magnevist 195 = 31%
Optimark 35 = 6% approx
Multihance 1 = 1% approx”
All these MRI infused contrasts cause NFS… With disastrous results by those affected by it…
Propublica has a lot to say about it:
http://www.propublica.org/article/fdi-advised-to-restrict-general-electric-omniscan-drug
OOPS Definitely recommended!! OMB ☺ ☺
I just finished an interesting SF book with a big subplot on science in a world where the government is failing: Distraction by Bruce Sterling.
The drive to learn is so overwhelming in some of us that even dystopia won’t stop them.
Love the quote! I gotta remember that one.
otchmoson August 25th, 2011 at 12:22 pm «
That is very interesting ~ about the 100 citations from one study/paper re-published with slightly different titles. I have always wondered how these academics/researchers develop such prolific oeuvres that would overtax a team of 100. Ah, the tricks the “betters” have to create and sustain their “status.”
I know there are good and true scientists for whom it is a labor of love, but there are also far too many for whom it’s a business, just like any other business. That’s the capitalism virus.
And the psychologists and psychiatrists (some of whom wind up torturing in service of their business model …), well, …
#dontgetmestarted.
“science education in this country is in an even worse state than I thought”
Talk abut understatement of the century.
Couldn’t agree more.
Also note that it’s also a very complicated problem within the scientific community.
The blatant and obvious conflict of interest seen now days (and usually plainly stated in each article, small print at the beginning or end) is so common place and considered the status quo.
Interestingly enough this same issue would prevent the publication of articles 3-4 decades ago. The scientist would have been laughed out of his scientific circle and all would consider it bad, not-even-science and consider that person a fraud.
But now, … well that’s how it works. And all those scientific journals are paid by their advertisers and so they also have a significant conflict of interest. Everyone in the scientific field knows about this.
Imagine the problems if a ratings agency was paid by those it rated … oh wait …
Imagine if government officials, especially those at various departments had a revolving door with those they “police” … oh wait …
Ok, I got it, imagine if the police worked for crooks when they retired for much higher salaries BECAME THE NEW NORM.?
“The blatant and obvious conflict of interest seen now days (and usually plainly stated in each article, small print at the beginning or end) is so common place and considered the status quo.”
How about you back that up with 3 or 4 citations? From reputable Journals? I’ve never seen what you claim to be commonplace in JAMA or Scientific American.
Back up your claim.
It’s not my field, but it may be much more prevalent in medical journals than in other branches of science. A much higher fraction of medical research is funded privately (i.e. from pharmaceutical or other companies) than other disciplines.
Did anybody see the Op-Ed by Sol Garfunkel and David Mumford in today’s New York Times?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/opinion/how-to-fix-our-math-education.html
There’s a lot to be said for the approach they took, one of teaching skills that would enable numeracy and math/scientific literacy for the general public.
What you say is true. I`ve seen it happen in my own discipline (economics), which is a science only by serious deformation of the term, but aspires to the status. The competition is extremely tough among young people. I seem them coming up with a meager idea and exploiting it for all it’s worth to get ahead in the game. In my particular subfield, the older guys with clout still manage to maintain the ethos among the younger (they need us more than we need them), but in areas like theory and econometrics the dynamic is producing a terrible waste of brainpower. And yes, people simply sell out to become shills. It’s very tempting. Good money, lots of international exposure in groups that are self-appointed to lead the way. Low-level examples of what the banksters and high government officials and top CEO’s do at their annual meeting at Davos.
We know who they are, though, and they know we know.
It hasn’t just gone downhill; many people that I know these days are actively hostile to science. Just listening to my coworkers talk about naturopaths tells a story; these folks have no clear understanding on disease courses and a massive distrust of doctors and “the medical establishment,” which they believe is basically only interested in making money by selling them drugs. Of course, the fact that “the medical establishment” often IS only interested in making money by selling people drugs doesn’t help.
I firmly believe that our failure in science education has deeper roots, which is our failure to properly teach our young people (and now, adults) critical thinking skills. Because, at the root, science is just good critical thinking put into action; it is both science and critical thinking to, when you have a hunch, TEST that hunch before acting upon it; after all, if you’re wrong about your hunch and you make an important decision based upon it, you may produce disastrous results. This is both fighting the confirmation bias (critical thinking) and testing a hypothesis (science).
Yet many people are actively hostile to critical thinking, because it does not produce the sort of pat, warm-fuzzy answers that they prefer. It slaughters sacred cattle, and we can’t have that.
This is why I propose that we instigate critical thinking classes as mandatory in primary school through college. If our young folks can’t spot the errors in their own (and others) thinking, what hope do they have of ever becoming productive citizens — let alone scientists?
“… if you’re wrong about your hunch and you make an important decision based upon it, you may produce disastrous results.”
Yeah, like if you have a “hunch” that Sadam has WMDs and is in cahoots with al Qaeda, you cause a disaster by acting on it, untested!
Oh, BRAVO, OMB!
Sorry I missed this yesterday, glad it was front-paged.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! From a hard-working, generally intelligent laboratory type (who was never a whiny pre-med, but did take a quarter of calculus-free p-Chem before seeing the light.)
Kelly–
One of my favorite sites that discusses conflict of interest not only in medical publications, but in for-profit and non-profit healthcare organizations is http://hcrenewal.blogspot.com
There is a site search-engine that should allow you to locate relevant articles.