ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 653
October 28, 2015
Thawing Ancient Permafrost Shown To Rapidly Become Carbon Dioxide
Photo credit:
katalinks/Shutterstock
The Alaska permafrost is melting. Although you may not have heard of permafrost – hydrated soil that has remained below freezing 0°C (32°F) for two or more years – it is in actual fact a vanguard against one of the most potent greenhouse gases: methane. Large methane stores are locked up beneath the world’s permafrost, and increasing atmospheric temperatures is unleashing it on the world.
GM Tomatoes Contain 50 Red Wine Bottles’ Worth Of Resveratrol
Photo credit:
stockcreations/Shutterstock
Resveratrol, a compound produced by a range of plants, has been making headlines over the last year or so, with studies sharply divided on how beneficial said molecule may or may not be to human health.
Scientists Map Out The Awkwardness Of Physical Contact With Others
Photo credit:
Tom Waterhouse/Flickr. (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Scientists from the University of Oxford and Aalto University, Finland, have created “body maps” that show where we feel most uncomfortable getting touched by different people.
Ion Engine Breakthrough Could Take Us To Mars At A Fraction Of The Fuel
Photo credit:
A prototype wall-less Hall thruster firing in a vacuum chamber. CNRS/LAPLACE and CNRS/ICARE
A group of French physicists has optimized a type of ion thruster to significantly extend its lifetime: the new development made it sturdy enough to be able withstand a long trip into deep space. Such a thruster would require 100 million times less fuel than common thrusters that use chemical reactions to propel a spacecraft forward.
October 27, 2015
Can you solve this boat puzzle?
You throw a rock in water from your boat. Can you figure out what happens to the water level?
physicsgirl.org
instagram.com/thephysicsgirl
facebook.com/thephysicsgirl
twitter.com/thephysicsgirl
Host/Writer/Editor: Dianna Cowern
With help from:
Jimmy Wong
https://www.youtube.com/user/jimmy
Jake Roper
https://www.youtube.com/user/Vsauce3
Meg Chetwood
https://instagram.com/megatronvolley/
More information:
http://people.umass.edu/~clement/pdf/NARST09ExtCasePaperLS.pdf
Searle vs Lawson: After the End of Truth
A head to head from two combatants in the recently released IAI tv debate ‘After the End of Truth’ which has caused something of a storm. The debate was not short of disagreement. On one side one of the world’s most influential analytic philosophers, John Searle, was defending realism and philosophy’s classical values: objectivity and truth. On the other philosopher and director of the IAI, Hilary Lawson, argued that realism had failed and an independent reality was a fantasy. So we’ve given both of them a right to reply. Read John Searle in Searle vs Lawson: After the End of Truth - part 1Read Hilary Lawson in Searle vs Lawson: After the End of Truth - part 2
Scientists Study Nomophobia — Fear of Being without a Mobile Phone
My dependence on devices reached an embarrassing low recently. As I hurried to leave for work one morning, I patted my back pocket and realized I did not have my phone. Seconds later, in a fully automatic behavioral response, I patted my back pocket again, this time reaching for my phone in order to help find my phone. Shame washed over me as I realized the thought process I had just went through: “I don’t know where my phone is! I’ll just get my phone to help me find it.”
This unfortunate incident reveals two important aspects of what new research has called “nomophobia” (or, no-mobile-phone-phobia): (1) the feelings of anxiety or distress that some people experience when not having their phone (“I don’t know where my phone is!), and (2) the degree to which we depend on phones to complete basic tasks and to fulfill important needs such as learning, safety and staying connected to information and to others (“I’ll just get my phone to help me”). Smartphones have increasingly become the tool we use to navigate and organize our daily lives. From keeping our calendars, getting directions, and communicating instantly with others, to helping us answer any questions we might possibly have about the state of our world or the people in it, our dependence on devices is clearly increasing.
This dependence has important psychological consequences. For example, research on transactive memory finds that when we have reliable external sources of information about particular topics at our disposal, then this reduces our motivation and ability to acquire and retain knowledge about that particular topic. In other words, if my wife is an expert on tennis statistics then I will be worse at remembering facts about tennis, since I know I can always ask her. In the past, the primary sources of information on which we could depend to outsource our knowledge have been other people. But now we have a source of near omniscience in our pockets. Why bother remembering anything when you can always just ask Siri? Indeed, this research finds that when it comes to the acquisition and retention of information, our brains treat our devices like relationship partners. So perhaps it is not surprising that we should experience such distress when this relationship is lost because your partner has slipped out of your pocket and on to the movie theater floor.
It’s hard to study a phenomenon like nomophobia, though, if you don’t have a good measurement of it. This is what researchers at Iowa State University tried to create in a recently published paper: they designed and validated a 20-question measure called the Nomophobia Questionnaire (or NMP-Q). The questions on the NMP-Q were developed first by interviewing undergraduates and asking them questions about their thoughts and feelings regarding their devices (e.g. For what purposes do you usually use your smartphone?, How would you feel if you left your smartphone at home and had to spend your day without it?, and Would you feel anxious if you could not use your smartphone for some reason when you wanted to do so?). The researchers coded participants’ responses in these interviews in order to develop the questions that they thought would best represent the idea of nomophobia. This process resulted in the 20-item measure that asked participants to imagine how they would feel if they lost access to their devices. For example, participants indicate the extent to which they would agree with the following statements: I would feel uncomfortable without constant access to information through my smartphone; If I were to run out of credits or hit my monthly data limit, I would panic; I would feel anxious because I could not check my email messages; I would feel nervous because I would not be able to receive text messages and calls.
Participants in a separate study then responded to these items on 1-7 scales ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The researchers calculated NMP-Q scores by simply summing up responses to each item and then categorizing the total score as either “mild nomophobia” (scores of 21-59), “moderate nomophobia” (scores of 66-99), or “severe nomophobia” (scores ≥ 100). Analysis of these data also led researchers to identify four components of nomophobia: (1) not being able to communicate with people, (2) losing connectedness in general, (3) not being able to access information, and (4) giving up on convenience. These represented reliably distinct concerns that all contributed to participants’ general distress over not having their mobile devices.
Before you start taking this test or administering it to friends and family, remember that this research has only developed and validated the scale. No work has yet investigated what other kinds of psychological variables correlate with the NMP-Q. And maybe it’s not all that bad. Maybe the nomophobic have higher quality relationships. Maybe the nomophobic have greater life satisfaction. Maybe they have more successful professional lives.
Or maybe I should admit this is wishful thinking and try to detach from my device for a while.
Searching for a Pseudoscience Shibboleth
The Brick Testament's illustration of Judges 12:5-6
And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.
—Judges 12:5-6
There’s a lot of bad science in the world, and sometimes it can be tricky to recognize it. Consider the case of The Dr. Oz Show, much criticized by scientific skeptics, and ultimately exposed by a Congressional investigation headed by Senator McCaskill. How is the viewer to know whether Dr. Oz is now staying the course on his revamped and more accurate show? There’s a temptation sometimes to turn to a trick with Biblical pedigree, a special word or phrase that only (or never) get used in real science (as the Ephraimites couldn’t pronounce the “sh” in shibboleth). It would be an elegant solution to a complex problem and has obvious appeal.
Sometimes it works. The antievolution “equal time” laws of the early ’80s, for instance, often used the term “evidences,” rather than treating “evidence” as a collective noun. They defined “creation-science” as “the scientific evidences for creation and inferences from those scientific evidences,” while “evolution-science“ referred to “the scientific evidences for evolution and inferences from those scientific evidences.” That’s not what scientists usually do, but it’s a common feature of religious apologetics (carrying forward a usage common in the 19th century), clear evidence of the religious origin of the bills, as Jay Topkis observed in his oral arguments against the laws before the US Supreme Court. He told the Court:
Now, this bill was of course drafted by a theologian, or somebody versed in apologetics. There's an amusing bit of evidence on that subject in the very language of the bill. The bill keeps using...the Act keeps using the term “evidences” in the plural. We lawyers never speak of "evidences" in the plural. We speak of “evidence,” the singular. And I got nagged by it, and I looked it up the other day. And of course the only dictionary reference to “evidences” is to Christian apologetics: the evidences for Christianity. This is a matter of theological disputation.
Of course, in the aftermath, creationists stopped saying “evidences” quite so much.
Other times, the hunt for a shibboleth goes astray. Ed Brayton calls out a meme circulating in some atheist circles, showing various editions of the Bible and asserting “only a lie has different versions.” Methinks that’s a standard likely to backfire. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species went through 6 editions, and is available now from multiple publishers in different versions. As with any good science, Darwin’s argument changed in light of new evidence, becoming stronger as evidence grew, and addressing counterarguments and new scholarship. Those multiple versions are evidence of the author’s honesty and willingness to engage evidence (new versions of the Bible often reflect similar changes in scholarship on ancient texts and ancient language use).
Abby Hafer took a different approach in a recent paper for The American Biology Teacher. She counted references to “data” and various cognates of the term “argue” (“argument,” “arguing,” etc.) in real science and pseudoscience publications. She found that works purporting to be scientific papers favoring intelligent design creationism had fewer uses of words like “data” and more uses of forms of “argu-” than a group of papers from a Smithsonian research facility. This is offered as evidence that creationists rely more on argument than on data. But can we be sure that people who say “data” have data, or that people who don’t say “argue” aren’t arguing? (I know for a fact that scientists argue, as well they should; argumentation is part of the scientific process.) The comparison works for those two bodies of text, but I wouldn’t recommend this as a general test.
Two researchers took a further step down that path recently by comparing the text of a climate change consensus statement and a climate change denial ripoff of the statement. They found (quoting the paywalled journal article), the legitimate climate scientists “used more conservative (i.e., more cautious, less explicit) language to present their claims compared to” the deniers. The scientists were more formal and more tentative, and by various measures less readable. They conclude, “the language style used by climate change skeptics [sic] suggests that the arguments put forth by these groups warrant skepticism in that they are relatively less focused upon the propagation of evidence and more intent on discrediting the opposing perspective.”
Discussing that paper, my colleague Emily Schoerning suggested these four signs of a good scientific argument:
a lack of emotion, a scarcity of absolute statements, tentativeness in conclusions, and supportive references to many external documents. Scientific arguments generally spend more time building up than tearing town, and direct their use of resources accordingly.
Except for the last of the four, these aren’t necessarily appealing language characteristics.
Indeed, I would not want tentative, unreadable, formal, milquetoast writing to be seen as a sign of scientific credibility. There’s some unreadable dreck in the denialist literature, and while deniers are generally overconfident, scientists do not sacrifice credibility by expressing justified confidence or by making their discoveries accessible. Good writing is a valuable skill which scientists should cultivate, not something they should think they need to avoid to seem credible.
So where does that leave a search for pseudoscience shibboleths? Alas, probably doomed. What separates good science from bad is not some linguistic tic, but the approach to evidence. With training and practice, we can pick out logical fallacies, and look carefully at whether the evidence offered really justifies the conclusions drawn or might equally support some other conclusion. We can evaluate how someone uses evidence: does it seek to test claims, pursuing counterexamples, or simply to confirm presuppositions? But often we have to rely on experts to tell us whether a new finding is plausible or not. That’s why Dr. Oz’s promotion of bogus supplements was so damaging. It’s why measures of scientific consensus matter so much on contentious issues, and why scientists need to be active participants in public discussions. Even the smartest scientist is a non-specialist on something, and needs guidance to separate some kinds of science from pseudoscience. The more good scientists we have in the public square, the harder it will be for nonsense to go unaddressed.
October 26, 2015
Un-intelligent Design: No Purpose for Vestigial Ear-Wiggling Reflex
by Stephanie Pappas
Around the human ear are tiny, weak muscles that once would have let evolutionary ancestors pivot their ears to and fro. Today, the muscles aren’t capable of moving much — but their reflex action still exists.
These muscles are vestigial, meaning they’re remnants of evolution that once had a purpose but no longer do. However, humans may be able to repurpose these useless muscles for their own uses, according to Steven Hackley, a psychologist at the University of Missouri and author of a new review of research on the forgotten muscles in the journal Psychophysiology. For one, these muscles activate in response to positive emotions, for reasons nobody truly understands. This odd fact creates a handy tool for psychologists seeking an objective way to measure emotion.
And then there are the educational implications: This muscle reflex is new evidence against the notion of creationism or intelligent design, Hackley said.
“According to intelligent design and creationism, our body was designed by a being with perfect intelligence,” he said. “If that were the case, why would he put circuits in our brains that don’t work? Why would you put circuits in our brain which are useful for lemurs that are useless for humans?”
Mysterious muscles
Another question: Why study these useless muscles at all?
The use of tiny muscle responses to study emotions goes way back, Hackley said. Researchers have found that people have an elevated “startle” response — measured by the twitching of muscles below the eye — when they’re experiencing a negative mood rather than a positive mood. This makes sense, he said, if you think about watching a horror movie late at night and hearing a sudden crash from outside. You’re likely to be far more spooked than if you’d been watching a romantic comedy.
About a decade ago, psychologists tried to find this same response in the vestigial auricularis posterior muscle, which sits right behind the ear and attaches at the ear’s base. Unexpectedly, the auricularis posterior doesn’t respond more strongly when a person is in a bad mood; instead, its response is strongest when people are at their happiest.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Hackley said. “There’s nothing intuitive about it.”
Even in people capable of wiggling their ears, the auricularis posterior reflex is too weak to actually move the ear. At first, Hackley said, researchers thought this muscle’s engagement during happiness had to do with nursing: Perhaps some ancestor’s infants learned to pull their ears back and out of the way while suckling, thus associating the muscle movement with the pleasure of food.
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Sorry, Einstein. Quantum Study Suggests ‘Spooky Action’ Is Real.
Image Credit: Frank Auperle/Delft University of Technology
By JOHN MARKOFF
In a landmark study, scientists at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands reported that they had conducted an experiment that they say proved one of the most fundamental claims of quantum theory — that objects separated by great distance can instantaneously affect each other’s behavior.
The finding is another blow to one of the bedrock principles of standard physics known as “locality,” which states that an object is directly influenced only by its immediate surroundings. The Delft study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, lends further credence to an idea that Einstein famously rejected. He said quantum theory necessitated “spooky action at a distance,” and he refused to accept the notion that the universe could behave in such a strange and apparently random fashion.
Einstein was deeply unhappy with the uncertainty introduced by quantum theory and described its implications as akin to God’s playing dice.
But since the 1970s, a series of precise experiments by physicists are increasingly erasing doubt — alternative explanations that are referred to as loopholes — that two previously entangled particles, even if separated by the width of the universe, could instantly interact.
The new experiment, conducted by a group led by Ronald Hanson, a physicist at the Dutch university’s Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, and joined by scientists from Spain and England, is the strongest evidence yet to support the most fundamental claims of the theory of quantum mechanics about the existence of an odd world formed by a fabric of subatomic particles, where matter does not take form until it is observed and time runs backward as well as forward.
The researchers describe their experiment as a “loophole-free Bell test” in a reference to an experiment proposed in 1964 by the physicist John Stewart Bell as a way of proving that “spooky action at a distance” is real.
“These tests have been done since the late ’70s but always in the way that additional assumptions were needed,” Dr. Hanson said. “Now we have confirmed that there is spooky action at distance.”
According to the scientists, they have now ruled out all possible so-called hidden variables that would offer explanations of long-distance entanglement based on the laws of classical physics.
The Delft researchers were able to entangle two electrons separated by a distance of 1.3 kilometers, slightly less than a mile, and then share information between them. Physicists use the term “entanglement” to refer to pairs of particles that are generated in such a way that they cannot be described independently. The scientists placed two diamonds on opposite sides of the Delft University campus, 1.3 kilometers apart.
Each diamond contained a tiny trap for single electrons, which have a magnetic property called a “spin.” Pulses of microwave and laser energy are then used to entangle and measure the “spin” of the electrons.
“I think this is a beautiful and ingenious experiment and it will help to push the entire field forward,” said David Kaiser, a physicist at M.I.T., who was not involved in the study. However, Dr. Kaiser, who is with another group of physicists who are preparing to perform an even more ambitious experiment next year that will soon measure light captured at the far edges of the universe, also said he did not think every scintilla of doubt had been erased by the Dutch experiment.
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