Brian Clegg's Blog, page 10

Letter from the Dead - Jack Gatland ****

Jack Gatland (real name Tony Lee) has an extremely slick writing style - it feels almost like an American crime writer producing a novel set in the UK. The setting is reminiscent of a police version of Mick Herron's Slough House intelligence service novels, televised as Slow Horses. Where that series involves a set of misfit, but in their odd way highly capable, spies, here we get the brilliant rejects of the police service, collected as 'The Last Chance Saloon'.

Herron's series predates Gatland's by five years - yet despite only starting it four years ago, the prolific Gatland has already produced 20 titles in the DI Walsh series, with other books alongside. You might imagine this would result in sub-standard writing. There are certainly more little errors than I would usually expect in a professionally published series, but Gatland has some excellent over-the-top plotting, and really keeps the tension up and the action flowing. 

To illustrate, I can give an example of each from the second book in the series, which I'm currently reading. A trivial but irritating example of the little mistakes that frequently occur is that we have a Catholic referring to a priest as a vicar. But, to counter this, there's a brilliant bit of plotting in book 2 (Murder of Angels) where a body is discovered and forensically identified, only to have another body with the same forensic markers dug up somewhere else.

As well as Herron's books I was also reminded of Ben Aaronovich's Rivers of London series. Letter from the Dead isn't fantasy, but it does have that same feel with the camaraderie of outsiders in the police unit. In this first book in the series, the main character Declan Walsh is in danger of being suspended after both hitting a clergyman and uncovering corruption at a police station. But instead he joins the Last Chance Saloon to help solve a murder from years previously after new evidence comes to light. The main suspects were MPs at the time, but are now a contender for Prime Minister, a TV evangelist and a homeless drunk.

At the same time there is an underlying suspicion that Walsh's recently deceased father was killed, though there is as yet no evidence, giving an extended story arc that will no doubt run across several novels. It's a genuine page turner and I'll be back for more.

You can buy Letter from the Dead from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com 

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The unnerving nature of collider bias

Not for the first time, I was inspired by listening to the excellent The Studies Show podcast. In their 26 November edition, Tom Chivers and Stuart Ritchie introduced collider bias, which is a horrible statistical anomaly that can make it seem that a study shows something entirely different from reality. What's particularly worrying is that, as the podcast demonstrates, many scientists aren't aware of this potential issue.

I had assumed collider bias would be something to do with the kind of huge statistical analysis necessary to interpret what's going on in a piece of equipment like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN - but in reality the 'collision' in question is simply down to the way a pair of arrows point to the same location on a kind of flow diagram. What this statistical anomaly can produce, though, is the kind of result we love to hear (and scientists love to find) - results that make you go 'Huh? That's surprising.'

Examples given included that of those hospitalised with COVID-19, smokers were more likely to survive than non-smokers; amongst cardiovascular disease sufferers, obese patients live longer; success at basketball is not linked to a player's height; and PhD candidates who have high scores in the tests often used to decide if someone should start on a PhD are not more likely to succeed than those who score badly.

To understand this, Tom and Stuart ask us to imagine a study of Hollywood stars. They suggest you get to be a Hollywood star because you are either beautiful or a talented actor (or both). Assuming more actors major on one attribute than both, then, for the population sample that is 'Hollywood stars', you will find that beauty is negatively correlated with acting talent. Actors with talent, it would seem, tend not to be beautiful, and vice versa. This would be statistically true, but there is no causal link. The real danger is then to apply the same reasoning to the population at large and think that to be a great actor, a person should be ugly. But it's an artefact of the way Hollywood stars are chosen, not a true causal relationship.

In the surprising examples mentioned above, where this has occurred in real studies (often resulting in convoluted arguments as to why, say, being obese gives better survival from cardiovascular disease), it's because in each case we are looking at a sub-population - for example professional basketball players or PhD candidates, not considering people at large. So, for example, successful PhD candidates tend to be either highly intelligent or very hard workers (or both). But by only looking at successful PhD candidates, those two groups will dominate, where looking at the population at large, highly intelligent (and hence high scoring) people will be more likely to gain a PhD.

In their podcast (to be honest, one of their more meandering episodes, as this is a really difficult effect to describe), Tom and Stuart point out that this is relatively easy to spot when the result is so counter-intuitive, a reasonable flag to check if there is something wrong with the analysis. But the error can be missed if it's less stand-out. 

Arguably a starting point should be that if you are studying a group that isn't typical of the population at large, then you need to be aware of this danger. This should be of particular interest, for example, to psychologists, who often do studies using university students as participants, because they are cheap and readily available. Unfortunately, though, they may well beg a collider bias population just waiting to happen. Take a listen to the podcast to find out more.

Image by Brandon Style from Unsplash... but it's not that sort of collider.

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Homeopathy revisited

REVISIT SERIES - 

Edited posts from February 2010 and March 2015I've long marvelled at the success of the wonderfully unscientific concept of homeopathy. This is a double-length post pulling together two homeopathic adventures.
Just over a week ago there was a mass overdose of medication sold by responsible companies like Boots. [I'm pleased to say, since this post, Boots has stopped making homeopathic remedies, though they currently still sell a handful of products.] Across the world people took vastly more than the recommended dose. And nothing happened. The reason? They were overdosing on homeopathic medicine.

The campaign was known as 10:23. The strange numbering refers to Avogadro's number. This is a number that delights chemists - it's the number of atoms in a mole of a substance. The actual number is around 6x1023, where 1023 is 1 with 23 zeroes after it. The reason this is of relevence to homeopathic medicine becomes clear when you realize how these medications are made.

The idea of homeopathy, which has no scientific basis whatsoever, is that you treat an ailment with a poison that produces a similiar effect. But to avoid finishing off your patients, you dilute that poison with water. In fact you dilute it over and over again, so much so, that you have reduced it by more than Avagadro's number. The chances are there is not a single molecule of the poison left - it's all water. You then drip the water onto a sugar pill, and that's your homeopathic remedy.

When homeopathy was first devised this wasn't a problem, as no one knew about atoms or Avogadro's number, but now we do, homeopaths have had to devise a reason for the medicine to work. They say it's because during the dilution process they bash the container against a leather strap, and this, in some mysterious way, enables the water to have a memory of the poison even after it has entirely gone. (You couldn't make this stuff up.)

So homeopathic remedies are sugar pills with no active ingredient, and all the evidence is that the positive results some people ascribe to homeopathy are down to the placebo effect. I was very careful not to say 'only the placebo effect', because placebos can really deliver results, particularly on the supression of pain. A good example is the internal mammary artery ligation operation. This used to be regularly performed to reduce chest pain as a result of angina.

It was an invasive procedure involving opening the chest and tying off the artery. Pain was reduced for a number of months. But in the 1950s, a surgeon tried a series of placebo operations. As far as the patients were concerned, they were undergoing the procedure, but in fact the surgeon just made an incision and closed up again. The result was exactly the same. The pain relief was not due to the operation, but to the natural painkillers released by the body when the brain assumed there would be pain relief - it was a placebo.

This same thing can happen with homeopathic remedies, to the real benefit of patients. But there is no active ingredient causing the outcome. While it's clearly totally unacceptable for homeopathy to be used for anything life threatening in place of real medicine, there's a difficult moral decision when it comes to, for instance, pain relief. Is it acceptable to lie to someone in order to make them feel better? We certainly do this all the time, but most would argue it's unprofessional to do this for medical reasons. And hence the 10:23 protest.

You will almost certainly have heard people say 'Yes, but there is scientific validation of homeopathy. It has been tested.' I'm afraid there is some misleading information floating about. See this article on the misrepresentation of scientific evidence on homeopathy to a House of Commons committee.

The sad thing is that most homeopaths won't accept reality and continue to insist that their medications do have a non-placebo effect. I want to leave you with a quote from a homeopathist in response to the 10:23 protest. Try not to fall off your chair.

Of course homeopaths know that one dose of however many pills taken together in one go, is the equivalent of only one dose, because it is the time frame that counts.  So if they had repeatedly taken a dose every hour for the rest of the day, the skeptics would most certainly have felt the effects.  Therefore this little stunt ‘proves’ little, although I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them sheepishly confess that they did experience some symptoms later, because after taking a homeopathic remedy, especially 30c or above, the effects can be felt for days afterwards.

'It's the time frame that counts.' Oh, that'll be okay, then. Sigh.

Five years later, I had some fascinating responses to another item I wrote:
A couple of weeks ago I put up a blog item on Huffington Post, suggesting that it would be a good idea if alternative remedies, like cigarette packets, had to carry a health warning.

In some cases this was because there were reports of a high percentage of herbal remedies not containing the requisite herb, and sometimes containing fairly dubious contents that could be harmful. And in others, such as homeopathy, it was more because there was a danger of using a homeopathic remedy, and as a result not taking medication that actually does something. So I suggested a suitable warning for a homeopathic product might be something like:

WARNING -- contains no active ingredients. If taken in place of medical treatment could result in harm or death

Now it would be disingenuous of me to suggest that I didn't expect a certain amount of negative response. I was sure it would bring the homeopathy supporters out of the woodwork and it has. I'll go into some of the specific kinds of response in a moment, but the thing I was really quite surprised by (but probably shouldn't have been) was how close some of these responses were to someone defending their religious faith.

In a contentious area of science, there will be arguments. So, for instance, if I were to say that I rather hope MOND (modified Newtonian dynamics) can be made to work rather than particle dark matter as an explanation of the gravitational effects blamed on dark matter (which is true), I could sensibly expect cosmologists/astrophysicists to weigh in with the scientific arguments as to why dark matter is a better bet. But that's not what happened here at all. What I should have been seeing is a) a good explanation for the mechanism of homeopathy (as I claimed there wasn't one) and b) a good collection of large scale, double blinded trials undertaken by experienced professionals that came out in favour of homeopathy being more than a placebo effect. Neither of these things happened.

In practice, the science isn't contentious about homeopathy - it's very straight forward. And so, instead, arguments fell into these broad categories:
The report you mention only uses big studies - and this is a bad thing because? Good big studies give more statistically reliable results that good small studies - that's inevitable. If you don't understand this, take a statistics course, please.Making snide remarks - ad hominem attacks are the last resorts of those who have no good arguments. When I see things like 'Thanx [sic] for embarrassing yourself even more' and 'pointing out your egregious ignorance and prejudice in regard to the topic' I know I've hit a raw nerve: resorting to personal attacks means there clearly is a total inability to answer my two key points above.Attack allopathic [sic] medicine - there's a technical term for 'allopathic medicine': it's 'medicine'. However the real point here is that you can't defend something by attacking something else. (E.g. 'Rx drugs are toxic, and RCTs have proven that 50% of the drug trials cannot explain the method of action.') I know the huge amount of good done by modern medicine, and know plenty of people whose lives have been saved or improved by it. But even if every real doctor doing real medicine made all their patients worse, it wouldn't make alternative remedies any better. It's a bit like responding to a restaurant critic who says the food in your restaurant is bad by saying 'Yes, but the food in McDonald's is really bad.' So?It was also fascinating that at least four of the comments were by the same person, someone called Dana Ullman who strangely enough, according to Google is a 'proponent in [sic] the field of homeopathy. Ullman received his MPH from the University of California at Berkeley, and has since taught homeopathy and integrative health care.' So he's not at all biassed, unlike me, as I don't make any money from either alternative remedies or real medicine.
The sad thing is that in all those comments, none of the supporters of homeopathy could address my two key points (or even tried - randomly mentioning the existence of trials without citing them, when meta-studies like the Australian government one have a very clear outcome is not trying). And none seemed to actually realise the point is not that we need a warning that homeopathic remedies (unlike some other alternative therapies) can harm you, but that using them instead of things that work to treat dangerous diseases (there are homeopathic remedies for malaria, for instance, one of the world's biggest killer diseases) really does put people's lives and health at risk.
In the end, as I mentioned above, these weren't logical or scientific arguments I was presented with but rather statements of faith. And that should be a bit embarrassing for those concerned.

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A murderous time of year

Most of my book reviews are either science or science fiction. But December tends to be a month when I stray more into a different genre: somehow murder and Christmas make excellent bedfellows. 
I know this doesn't work for everyone - I'm reminded of Paul F.'s kind words when using the link below to buy me a coffee 'I enjoy your reviews, particularly those areas in which I'm interested. 🙂'
I hope that many of you will enjoy the increased number of murderous reviews (there will still be some science/SF articles) - but if it's not your thing, I can reassure you that normal service will be renewed in the New Year... and have a great December, however you celebrate (or don't).

Image by Girl with red hat from Unsplash.

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Sometimes you need to let go

When you really get engaged in a scientific theory, just as when you support a particular political viewpoint, it can be very difficult to let go. This might run counter to the theoretical nature of science, which supposedly delights in overturning old theories - but the reality is that scientists are human beings and don't like to change deeply held views.

This need to sometimes push through a major change of viewpoint is behind Kuhn's concept of a paradigm shift - for a considerable time the old guard cling onto their theory until it become untenable and suddenly the consensus undergoes a heavy duty shift, which can be distressing to those left behind.

It happened to me, not as a scientist but as a young science enthusiast, when my passionate support for Fred Hoyle and the steady state theory had to be swept aside for the Big Bang theory. Now, it's entirely possible that something similar is happening to upset the equilibrium of supporters of the existence of dark matter particles.

There is no doubt at all that there is an effect, resulting galaxies not being under gravity as expected and that is commonly assumed to be due to dark matter. But the particles have stubbornly failed to turn up in experiment after experiment. There are alternative theories based on modified gravity: the original, MOND or MOdified Newtonian Dynamics, has some issues, but arguably fewer than those arising from attempts to explain the effect with massive particles that don't interact electromagnetically.

The Big Bang triumphed when evidence came to light that the early universe was very different to the way it is now. It may be that a similar failure of expectation of the early universe will do for dark matter particles, as it has turned out, thanks to new data from the James Webb Space Telescope, that there were massive galaxies in the early universe - something predicted by modified gravity theories, but not by dark matter particle theories.

Of course, we could still discover dark matter - but this is certainly a major blow. To find more details on this, please take a look at this summary in Stacy McGaugh's excellent Triton Station blog.

Image by Alexander Andrews from Unsplash - it's not directly relevant, but it's pretty...

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Social fragmentation

Despite all its faults, as a science writer I have found social media wonderful - it allows me to tap into both the science and writing communities, which is excellent for someone working in a job where you don't have much opportunity to meet others in your line of work.

I've been involved in this kind of thing for a while, beginning with an ancient forum (I can't remember where it was hosted) set up by the Society of Authors. I'm still in contact with quite a few writers from this, who can share a wry smile when remembering the lack of foresight from whoever set it up, that a forum titled Writers' Exchange might look a little misleading when the words are run together without an apostrophe.

Until recently, by far the most useful social media site for me was Twitter. It probably still is, but X is declining in value because a number of my long-standing contacts have abandoned it out of dislike for its owner. Personally, I think this amounts to cutting off your nose to spite your face, as it would take a long time for any alternative to generate the same following - and some, such as Mastodon, seem to me too technical and user-unfriendly for mass adoption.

So, I'm not leaving X - but I do now also post on both Bluesky and Threads, and would be very happy to build up my contacts if anyone would care to follow me. My full social broadside is:

Twitter/X - https://x.com/briancleggBluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/brianclegg.bsky.socialThreads - https://www.threads.net/@briancleggauthorFacebook - https://www.facebook.com/briancleggauthorLinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianclegg/I usually post any new stuff on all of them, though the best way to see all my output is to subscribe below.

Image by Nathan Dumlao from Unsplash

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Keep an eye on your direct debits

Direct debits are wonderful things. They make it far easier when dealing with, say an energy company, where payments are regular but potentially variable. But I've reasonably discovered a downside, at least if you are involved in a charity or small organisation.

I'm treasurer of a small local charity. The other day I was glancing at the bank accounts online and noticed something odd. Two direct debit payments had been made from our account, both for relatively small amounts. Each had a reference starting DVLA- followed by a car registration number. When I had a look at our regular payments there were in fact three direct debits of this kind, though one hadn't had any money taken yet. This was from an account only used for incoming payments.

We had not set up any direct debits - certainly not with the UK's DVLA, which handles car licensing as there are no vehicles associated with the charity. I rang the bank and, to their credit (or, rather, ours) they had refunded the money with 2 hours. But this should not be able to happen.

Traditionally, direct debits could only be authorised with a mandate that had a signature (in the case of our charity, two signatures), which would be checked at the branch against a signature card. Now, though, this is all handled centrally, and direct debits can be set up online. All you appear to need to set one up is the sort code and account number.

After mentioning it on a group for similar charity officials, several others came back and said they'd experienced the same thing. While the bank was very quick to act they have also said '[DVLA reference] must have your permission to take a direct debit... We've asked them to provide proof they had your permission... if they did we may take back the refund.' Now clearly there's a flaw in that statement. They didn't have our permission but still allowed the payment to go out.

I've now been into the bank and they tell me that with an electronic direct debit, set up by someone like the DVLA, no checks are made by the bank at all. They don't even have a mandate - they just rely on the DVLA to ensure details are correct before taking money. Keep an eye on your direct debits!

Image by Museums Victoria from the 1980s on Unsplash - banks aren't like this anymore...

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Putting sport into perspective revisited

REVISIT SERIES - 

An edited post from October 2013

There was a lot of fuss in some sections of the news recently about runner Mo Farah having problems because someone pushing a child's buggy in the park where Mo was trying to train wouldn't get off the path to keep out of Mo's way.

Now I'm sure Mo is a nice guy, and was very polite, and there certainly shouldn't have been the fight that ensued. But I also am sure that the media outrage that poor old Mo had to suffer so much by not having the path to himself because of this unreasonable father was ridiculous.

Let's get the picture in perspective. Mo is very good at a game, the playground game of 'Who can run fastest?' He's one of the best people in the world at this particular game, and that's lovely for him. But compared with keeping a baby or toddler safe, it is a totally worthless activity. It's fine in its place. If he had been training on a running track and the father and started pushing his pushchair round the track, then of course Mo would have had every right to ask him to get out of the way. But this was a public park, paid for by public money so the public could enjoy using it for, say, pushing prams - not a sports training facility. And for that matter, feet are much better at getting along on grass off the path than buggies are. If anyone was going to get out of the way, it should have been Mo.
When our twins were young we had a double buggy and quite often it would be difficult to get along the footpath because some idiot had parked on the pavement far enough in that there was quite a narrow gap between the car and a wall or a hedge. Well, I'm sorry, again the children came first. Rather than go into the road, I would happily scrape my buggy along the side of their car, bash into their wing mirror and generally be as vigorous as possible, because I was in the right place and the car wasn't, and because babies matter more than cars.
So don't ask me to have any sympathy for Mo. He did not have priority because he was the 'big I am' sportsperson. In the right place - and this was the right place - children should always come first.
Image by the author

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Radio 3 has it right

I am a big fan of BBC Radio 3 - their serious music station*. Of late I've seen a few people complaining about it dumbing down because more of their programming has parts of longer compositions, rather than playing, say, a whole symphony or concerto. However, I think that those who moan have got it wrong.

The accusation of dumbing down is partly because this is what the lighter commercial rival, Classic FM, does, and partly on the assumption that serious music lovers should stick with a whole piece as the composer intended not just listen to an edited highlight. The comparison with Classic FM, which almost always plays 'classical favourites' doesn't make much sense - Radio 3 continues to play a much wider range of music, from tudorbethan through to contemporary composers. But, for me at least, the sampler approach of often not playing a whole piece makes a lot of sense.

Like many music lovers I subscribe to an all-you-can-eat music streaming service. For me, Radio 3 does a real service by giving me a chance to hear a part of a long composition so I can then decide whether nor not to add it to a playlist on Apple Music to hear the whole thing. This isn't about dumbing down, it's about fitting in better with the way we listen to music while upholding the range that Radio 3 has always had - and surely that's a good thing.

* I say 'serious music' rather than 'classical music' as strictly 'classical' refers only to a period approximately from 1750 to 1820 - and I personally prefer music that's either earlier or later than this period.

Image by Manuel Nageli from Unsplash

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But is it art revisited

REVISIT SERIES - 

An edited post from October 2014

I find it interesting the way that the media gets in a state of outrage when someone defaces a Banksy artwork. It feels a touch hypocritical. The image shown here has according to Wikipedia been 'defaced by a paintball gun’. Actually the 'defacing' is quite effective as it looks as if someone has shot at the people with a paint gun, which itself could be interpreted artistically (in fact, I didn't know it was 'defaced' until I looked it up). Admittedly if all someone does is scrawl a tag over it, it's not a great contribution. But even so, I'm not sure we have any right to complain. The artists in question need to expect that their audiences may abandon the reverence that is adopted by the audience for traditional art.

This occurred to me when a friend was describing attending a play at Bristol's fairly avant garde Old Vic Theatre. Apparently the performance was of a Samuel Beckett radio play, and as Beckett had specified it should never be staged, they told the audience that they had to wear blindfolds. Thinking about this, I realised that my immediate reaction, had I been in the audience, would have been to have cheated and taken the blindfold off once they got started. Because once you break the rules as an artist, why should your audience be forced to stick to rules? It seemed to me that it was just as acceptable for me as an audience member - as art, if you like - to take off my blindfold as it was for the performers and/or the late Mr Beckett to insist that I wear it.

As I wasn't there, I don't know how the artists would have reacted. I do know that on other occasions when the audience has not behaved as expected, the answer has been 'not very well.' This was certainly the case in one of the early performances of one of Stockhausen's more approachable pieces, Stimmung. In the piece, lasting about an hour, a cappella performers sing a single chord. However, it is a genuinely interesting piece because they vary how they sing the notes throughout - using different octaves, sounds and words, tones - I rather like it. At the performance in question, the audience members started to join in, singing in their own notes in the chord. Now, to me, that's brilliant.

In an ordinary concert, this would have been disruptive. But given the way Stimmung (it means 'tuning' by the way) corrupts and opens up the form, it seemed both a natural and creative thing to do. Yet Stockhausen was apparent furious and stopped the performance. It might be structured disorder and chaos, but it had to be his structured disorder and chaos. Which makes you wonder, is this about art, or is it about ego? Who was to say that the version with the audience joining in wasn't better? It was certainly likely to have been more enjoyable for them.

So to Banksy. It's interesting that a Metro article on a different modification was titled New Banksy artwork attacked by vandals. It would have been just as accurate, but would underline the potential hypocrisy better, had it been headed New Banksy graffito has more graffiti added. Interestingly, in the case of Banksy, the motivation for the hypocrisy is likely to be more about money, now his pieces are worth a lot, rather than about ego. But even so there is something here that really gets to heart of what art is and what art isn't.

What is the difference between Banksy spraying on a wall and someone else? Because Banksy's art looks prettier? That's hardly a good way of making a distinction in modern art. No one ever accused a Tracy Emin piece of being pretty. Neither is the fact that Banksy's picture takes more skill that the other graffiti artist's scrawl - if you make that suggestion I have two words for you. Jackson Pollock. Does something have to have a message to be art? Arguably the 'vandalism' graffiti have more of a message (however unwanted) than this particular Banksy. As far as I can see, the only difference is that Banksy's graffito was witty. But is that enough? Should that really transform vandalism into art?

Don't get me wrong, I like Banksy's work. I think it genuinely is art. But I suggest that it underlines the way we need to get the skill back into modern art. Banksy is very skilful. His work looks good and gets the message across. It shouldn't be enough that any old tat can be interpreted as art if you give it the right label. A true artist needs more than that. Otherwise, perhaps, he or she is just a piss artist.

Intrigued at the thought of Stimmung? Take a listen (darkened room and medication recommended):



Image by the author

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