Pseudoscience

From theonion.com

Risk Assessments and Feeling Safer

This is a sign I could not resist taking a picture of while exiting a restaurant on my recent trip to California. I am not sure whether I would have ate any differently had I seen this picture before entering the restaurant (maybe they should say a little more on what foods are dangerous?). The sign seems to be aimed at creating fear without providing any real information. It reminded me of the topic of risk assessment and how people go about making decisions.

People are generally very poor at making risk assessments. For example, some people are very afraid to swim in the ocean because of a fear of being bitten by a shark. There are thousands of people swimming in the water at any given moment of the day and there are on average 3 or 4 shark attacks a year. A person who is afraid of swimming in the ocean because of a fear of a shark attack is greatly overestimating the probability of a shark attack. There is actually a much greater chance of being killed in an automobile crash on the way to the beach than there is of being bitten by a shark.

The more grisly the image of the feared event, the more likely one will make a mistake in overestimating the probability of the event happening. For example, being in an airplane crash is a very frightening image. Being swallowed by an alligator is also very vivid.

Gary Becker, a well-known economist, put it very succintly in discussing the fear of flying:

“The terrorist plot to blow up from 7-10 planes with liquid explosives will once again increase the fear of flying. After the 9/11 horrendous attacks, U.S. domestic air travel was down by over 10 per cent for two years, and international travel on American airlines declined much further. The magnitude of this response went far beyond what could be explained by either the increased objective risk of flying or the greater time spent going through security. For even assuming that 3 planes a year on American airlines continued to be exploded by suicide bombers, air travel would still be a lot safer than traveling by car and bus, two major alternatives to air travel.”

Another factor in our risk assessment is our exposure to the feared stimulus. That is, the less exposure we have to the feared stimulus, the more we will be afraid of it. I believe one of the reasons we don’t overestimate the risk of being in a grisly car accident is because we are frequently in cars. By constant exposure to a feared stimulus, we make more accurate risk assessments (probably most people who surf daily have little fear of sharks).

People with anxiety have specific difficulties with risk assessment. For example, someone with social anxiety estimates the odds of making a social blunder much higher than is actually so. Asking someone with social anxiety the likelihood they will make a social blunder will be much higher than someone without social anxiety (Paradoxically, by avoiding social interactions they reduce their chance of practicing social skills and maybe actually increase the risk of social blunder.) A proven treatment for social anxiety (or other anxieties) consists of learning more about actually risks, so that a person can make better estimates of the actual risks involved. It also includes exposing him or her to the feared stimulus. With repeated exposure to what a person fears, he or she will become less anxious in those situations.

Conclusive Findings?

A recent New England Journal of Medicine article discussed that estrogen may reduce the risk of arterial sclerosis. Maholonobis' blog discusses how one article does not lead to conclusive findings on any topic:

last week, the (Wall Street) Journal did a story concentrating on how the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) misread the data by focusing on the increased heart attack risk for women over 70, While neglecting the lowered rate of heart attack for women under 60 (since the WHI's 2002 report arguing that estrogen therapy actually raised heart disease--opposite sign to previous findings--hormone sales plummeted 30%). The WHI shot back in a letter to the WSJ, arguing they stand by their interpretation of the data, which they think is somewhat mixed, and in their words, the differences in heart disease between the older and younger (one up, one down!) is not 'statistically significant'. If the difference isn't statistically significant, I can't see how the old cohort can be thought to have a higher than average risk (eg, if the sample estimate for the old is +14%, for the young, -30%, if the difference is noise, the +14% is certainly noise). As Paul Feyerabend argued, there are no definitive tests in science, as people just ignore evidence that goes against them, emphasizing the consistent results.

...
I think most big policy issues in science have a strong political subtext, and you don't have to dig very far to see a group use science to rationalize their 'bigger picture' concern. This is why credibility is so important to science, because you just can't trust a scientific paper, and it often takes too much time to read all the empirical literature in a debate.

Monitoring moving objects

An excerpt from Livescience.com:

Deciphering curveballs from fastballs and balls from strikes requires that a player's eyes precisely lock onto the ball, as described in recently published research on humans' ability to track balls and other moving objects.

"Our results show that individuals vary tremendously in this ability to lock their eyes onto a moving object, called smooth pursuit, and that this variation relates strongly to a specific type of motion perception ability, so-called high-level motion perception," said study co-author and University of Pennsylvania cognitive psychologist Jeremy Wilmer.

Humans use two skills to see bodies in motion. First, our eyes first need to catch up to a moving object, a skill called low-level motion perception, when we sense something fluttering before we can recognize exactly what it is. Next, high-level motion perception occurs, at which point our eyes lock on, identify and examine the object.

Wilmer and his colleagues conducted two tests on the low- and high-level motion perception abilities of 45 participants. In one test, study participants were unable to move their eyes and had to describe the speed at which they saw objects zooming by. The second test tracked the movement of people's eyes and measured their ability to follow moving objects.

Some volunteers excelled at low-level motion perception and easily caught up to a moving object with their eyes—they perceived motion more quickly out of the starting block. Meanwhile, a different group of volunteers exhibited more skill at high-level motion perception and were better at locking onto a moving target once their eyes caught up to it (smooth pursuit).

The two different aspects of perceiving motion drive different stages of smooth pursuit, Wilmer said.

The distinct brain mechanisms for high-level motion perception are separate from those used to recognize and analyze color, faces and even low-level motion perception, Wilmer said.

"Our experience of the world normally appears quite seamless, but in fact our brain sees many aspects separately and knits them together into one experience of the world," he said. "Our study shows that substantial differences exist between individuals. As with most abilities, presumably an individual's skill at smooth pursuit is due to some combination of their genes and experiences."

Batters with a heightened ability at high-level perception may have eyes better skilled at locking onto and smoothly pursuing a pitch, and could especially have an advantage in analyzing a baseball's spin during the first third of a ball's trajectory, says Wilmer.

Wilmer's results, detailed in a recent issue of the journal Neuron, suggest that training focused on high-level motion perception could possibly improve a player's ability to lock onto and analyze an oncoming pitch.

However, he says, it's not yet known whether the trait runs in families and whether "particular genes contribute to making one a smooth pursuit expert."

Of course, locking onto moving objects is important for others besides ball players. The skill also comes in handy in complicated social situations.

Say you're walking down the street as someone approaches. You want to be able to lock onto their face to tell if they're looking at you and determine what kinds of emotions they may be expressing.

If they're angry, you'd probably want to get out of their way.

Hypothetical Scenarios

An excerpt from Slate.com:

On May 15, Fox News host Brit Hume brought excitement to an otherwise dull presidential debate with this question:

"Here is the premise: Three shopping centers near major U.S. cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured off the Florida coast and taken to Guantanamo Bay, where they are being questioned. U.S. intelligence believes that another larger attack is planned and could come at any time. First question to you, Senator McCain. How aggressively would you interrogate those being held at Guantanamo Bay for information about where the next attack might be?"

Here are questions that should be posed at upcoming Democratic and Republican debates.

Gentlemen, here's the scenario: As you are flying home from Moscow—having told the world you will never deal with terrorists—hijackers, posing as reporters, seize Air Force One. They vow to kill a hostage every half-hour, including your wife and daughter, until you release a murderous Russian general. I'll start with Senator Obama. Do you negotiate with the hijackers in the hope of saving lives, or do you flee into the bowels of the craft, then pick them off, one by one, with makeshift shanks and your bare hands?

*

Candidates, pay attention: An international financier has smuggled an atom bomb into Fort Knox. He loves only gold. Only gold. After an amazing sequence of events, including car chases, sexual conquests, and your defeat of the assassin known as Oddjob, you find yourself staring at the interior of a nuclear device. The final seconds are ticking down. This goes to you, Senator Clinton: Do you cut the blue wire, or do you cut the red wire?

...

A tornado has transported you to a magical land, where a jubilant throng of midgets greets you as liberator. They direct you toward a road paved with yellow bricks. We'll start with you, Mayor Giuliani. Would you consider capturing one of these exotic creatures and subjecting him or her to enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding and electric shock, if it means extracting vital information that will determine whether the yellow route leads home—or into a trap?

...

Three criminals from Krypton, freed by a nuclear blast in outer space, have come to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal man. Worse, Superman has disappeared. The criminals' leader, General Zod, orders you to kneel before him as a symbol of America's defeat. I'll start with you, Senator Brownback. If the act means saving millions of lives, and perhaps buying time until the Man of Steel returns, would you forsake your belief in Jesus Christ and bow before this evil alien?

What we almost know

From Mahalonbis' Blog:

Take the idea that we thought we would crack the origin of life. Stanley Miller did an experiment showing you could create simple amino acids in an environment that seemed to mimic an early earth atmosphere. That same year, 1953, Crick and Watson discovered the structure of DNA. It seemed the essence of life itself would be revealed. But it didn't work out that way. Miller admitted later in life that his results weren't so clear, because the primordial soup created so many right and left handed organic molecules, the latter being toxic to most cells. Crick and Watson's DNA is proving far more complicated than thought, , in that at first we thought there were 150,000 genes, but now only 30,000, or only twice as many as a nematode.

But here's the problem. Humans have perhaps 300,000 proteins, so the method by which the cell creates protiens from genes is clearly not the original one gene --> one enzyme formula we originally thought. There is something else going on, some interaction among genes, or enzymes, that creates the essence of organisms.

This all highlights that in science, like in math, almost is almost nothing. Until you actually prove some interesting result, potential is very difficult to assess, and best viewed with skepticism.

Simponsize me

I couldn't resist the site that allows you to make yourself into a Simpson's character. Maybe not as fun as the Church Sign Generator, but still a good way to procrastinate.

Testosterone and Decisions

From Livescience.com:

In a new study, 26 male Harvard students were presented with ultimatums. Each was offered $5 out of a possible $40 by another person. A student could either take the $5 and leave the rest to the offerer, or both parties got nothing. The experiment was played for real stakes—the students got to keep the money.

Before the experiment began, Harvard economist Terence Burnham took saliva samples from the students and later tested it for testosterone levels. He found that while 20 men took the $5 offer, six higher-testosterone men rejected it.

"It's strange but it's true—people at times walk away from free money," Burnham said. "If you knew the testosterone levels of these people, you didn't need to know much more to predict behavior. Not what culture they were from, not their political beliefs."

Economists have long found that people reject offers of free money if they feel they are getting the short end of the stick.

"In a standard rational analysis, no one would ever reject free money. If you can get $5 or nothing, how smart do you have to be to figure that out?" Burnham said. "Most economists were so sure what would happen, no one actually ran an experiment with real people until 1982. That was the big surprise finding—people do reject free money."

At first researchers thought these early findings were mistaken. "But it's true, verified hundreds of times now," Burnham said. "If you go around the world, it's true for everyone. They've found it in 15 cultures, even cultures that don't use money often, like hunter-gatherers."

People will even reject relatively large sums of money, such as two weeks' wages, if these offers are roughly one-fifth or less of the stakes involved, Burnham said.

Examples of such behavior are found everywhere in life if one knows where to look, even in popular culture. "In 'The Godfather, Part 2,' there's a senator who says to Michael Corleone something like, 'You're going to pay all this money for licenses for casinos in Las Vegas, because you have no choice,' and Corleone says something like, 'I'm not paying you 1 cent,'" Burnham said.

Science and proof

From livescience.com:

For years, there has been clear scientific consensus that Earth’s climate is heating up and that humans are the culprits behind the trend, says Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at the University of California, San Diego.

A few years ago, she evaluated 928 scientific papers that dealt with global climate change and found that none disagreed about human-generated global warming. The results of her analysis were published in a 2004 essay in the journal Science...

But even if there is a consensus, how can scientists be so confident about a trend playing out over dozens of years in the grand scheme of the Earth's existence? How do they know they didn’t miss something, or that there is not some other explanation for the world’s warming? After all, there was once a scientific consensus that the Earth was flat. How can scientists prove their position?

Contrary to popular parlance, science can never truly “prove” a theory. Science simply arrives at the best explanation of how the world works. Global warming can no more be “proven” than the theory of continental drift, the theory of evolution or the concept that germs carry diseases.

“All science is fallible,” Oreskes told LiveScience. “Climate science shouldn’t be expected to stand up to some fantasy standard that no science can live up to.”

Instead, a variety of methods and standards are used to evaluate the viability of different scientific explanations and theories. One such standard is how well a theory predicts the outcome of an event, and climate change theory has proven to be a strong predictor...The effects of putting massive amounts of carbon dioxide in the air were predicted as long ago as the early 20th century by Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius...“Why don’t you trust a psychic? Because their predictions are wrong,” he told LiveScience. “The credibility goes to the side that gets these predictions right.”

...Besides their successful predictions, climate scientists have been assembling a “body of evidence that has been growing significantly with each year,” Mann said...Isaac Newton had something to say about all this: In his seminal “Principia Mathematica,” he noted that if separate data sets are best explained by one theory or idea, that explanation is most likely the true explanation.