I've moved!

My rambling is now over at lenagroegeretc.com.

Click here to add link

There's lots of talk about linking. Link, link, link – it's what Bora Z calls the "currency of the web" and a fundamental element in journalism these days. Link out to sources, to scientific papers, to interesting videos or more comprehensive explainers. Linking establishes credibility, trust, and with everything online, it's easier to do than ever before.

So linking is important, got that. But sometimes the writer of a story doesn't either a) know the best places to link, or b) care enough to fill his/her story with useful links. So why is there no easy mechanism for other people (not the original author), to add links themselves, after the story has been published? Someone could be reading the piece an think - oh! I know a great explanatory blog post on exactly that topic, or man, I know a great infographic that illustrates exactly that point, or wow, I wished she had linked to the original study, it took me 15 min to track it down. This wouldn't have to be a free-for-all link fest littering stories with useless spam – it could be moderated by the author.

Kinda like Facebook and photo tagging. Facebook lets you tag yourself or friends in photos that you didn't take, and the request goes to the original photographer, who then approves the tag or not. Couldn't links work the same way?

"So-and-so wants to add a link to your story." [Accept] [Don't Accept]

Seems simple enough to me, and for all I know this already exists in some way shape or form. But as long as stories can be edited and updated after the fact (they certainly can online) and as long as the author wants to make his/her story the most useful as possible, there should be some sort of "add link" mechanism, in addition to regular comments. Now... who knows how to make this happen?

All Wired, all the time.

The past few weeks have been, well, just slightly insane. I started working at Wired (a name that quite aptly matches the intensity of the office atmosphere), and getting used to deadlines that approach by the hour instead of the week has been, let's just say, a learning experience. Not to mention that satellites and DARPA aren't exactly my specialty. But now that my hands have finally stopped shaking, it's a blast. Learning something totally – I mean totally – new every day and having something published by the end of it is pretty cool (especially when I can Photoshop the picture). Here are some of the articles I've written so far.

Spies, Meet Shakespeare: Intel Geeks Build Metaphor Motherlode

A Digital Diet: Drop (Calls, Texting, Web) and Give Me 28 (Days of Peace)

U.S. Wants to Fight Afghan Corruption — With Chicken

The Pentagon Confronts New Enemy: Rust 

Barnes & Noble Slims, Simplifies Nook E-Book Reader

Air Force Wants Satellites Smart Enough to Fly Themselves

Augmented Reality for Army Medics in New Plan

Air Force’s New Target: Mojave Ground Squirrel

Patricia Churchland's science of morality

> It all began with a very adorable vole...

I've got a new post up at Rationally Speaking about what neuroscience can tell us about morality. I'll have more to say when I make it to the final chapter of Churchland's book (where she talks about religion). Here's the beginning:

A few weeks ago I went to a talk by philosopher-turned-neuroscientist Patricia Churchland about her new book Braintrust. The talk begins with the moderator turning to a packed audience in Columbia’s Havemeyer Hall and asking quite pointedly: “With a show of hands, can science tell us right from wrong?” 

Only about four hands go up. 

“All right,” he says, beckoning Churchland to the stage, “let’s see what you all think afterwards.” 

Presumably Churchland is about to change a few hundred minds on the science of morality. But as she proceeds through her lecture, it becomes increasingly clear that even she wouldn’t answer the moderator’s question wholeheartedly in the affirmative. She is providing the “yes” to another question, something more like “Can science tell us about right and wrong?” While the question is slightly less interesting (because it seems so obvious) her answer is fascinating. 

It all begins with me. Ok, not me, but the self. Each one of us is equipped with a neural circuitry that ensures our own self-caring and well-being — values in the most fundamental sense. As Churchland likes to say “we’re all born with systems that are very deep in the values business.” Neurons in the brainstem and hypothalamus monitor the inner state of our bodies to keep us alive; they also cause us to run from predators or eat when we’re hungry. Without these life-relevant feelings we wouldn't survive very long, let alone reproduce. 

The next step is to move from self-caring to other-caring. In mammals, this shift occurs not by some radical new engineering plan, but by slight adjustments to the neural mechanisms that are already in place. Modifications to the emotional, endocrine, stress and reward/punishment systems motivate new values, namely, the well-being of certain others. It’s as if the “golden circle of me” expands to include offspring, mates, friends and eventually even strangers.

The rest of the post is here.

Image: manual crank, flickr. com 

Less or equal to?

I love love love this. A huge, controversial, political, philosophical, racial, social and legal topic captured in three single marks. 

Less or equal to?

Amazing.

Unequally Free? The Social Limits of Liberty

Apr 19, 2011 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

20 Cooper Square, New York, NY

NYU Journalism 7th Floor Commons

Radiation Explained

Spent a good part of last week working on this radiation level infographic, for Studio 20's Building a Better Explainer Project. Check it out over at the Scientific American Guest Blog!

It's been a-lot-of-coffee kind of month...

Here's my past few weeks or so of blogging and writing! On the nature/nurture debate, musical epigenetics, bias (or not) in political psychology, and why we do science in the first place. 

So, what's science good for? How doing science can make you a better person. 

March 7, Rationally Speaking

Political – or politicized – psychology? Scientists combat the charge of ideological bias.

March 8, Scienceline

The tangle of the nature-nurture debate. The false dichotomy and why it persists. 

March 10, Nature Education

The sound of epigenetics. Using musical software to explain the expression of our DNA.

March 16, Nature Education

Image: Philipp Hilpert, flickr.com

What Wittgenstein can tell us about happiness

Here's my recent story on happiness and its many dimensions. 

Ludwig Wittgenstein, a famous 20th century philosopher, was miserable all his life. Depressed and anxious, he once wrote in his diary, “There is no happiness for me; no joy ever.” Yet minutes before he died, he muttered: “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life.” 

The concept of happiness is universally understood, yet escapes all comprehension. Can someone really be both unhappy everyday and happy over a lifetime? Does the notion of happiness change throughout the world, between communities, between people? Most importantly, do we have any choice in the matter?

Recent research in psychology, economics and public policy may help unravel this tangled knot of questions. 

“Objective choices make a difference to happiness over and above genetics and personality,” said Bruce Headey, a psychologist at Melbourne University in Australia. Headey and his colleagues analyzed annual self-reports of life satisfaction from over 20,000 Germans who have been interviewed every year since 1984. He compared five-year averages of people’s reported life satisfaction, and plotted their relative happiness on a percentile scale from 1 to 100. Heady found that as time went on, more and more people recorded substantial changes in their life satisfaction. By 2008, more than a third had moved up or down on the happiness scale by at least 25 percent, compared to where they had started in 1984. 

Headey’s findings, published in the October 19th issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, run contrary to what is known as the happiness set-point theory — the idea that even if you win the lottery or become a paraplegic, you’ll revert back to the same fixed level of happiness within a year or two. This psychological theory was widely accepted in the 1990s because it explained why happiness levels seemed to remain stable over the long term: They were mainly determined early in life by genetic factors including personality traits. 

Instead of existing as a stable equilibrium, Headey suggests that happiness is much more dynamic, and that individual choices — about one’s partner, working hours, social participation and lifestyle — make substantial and permanent changes to reported happiness levels. For example, doing more or fewer paid hours of work than you want, or exercising regularly, can have just as much impact on life satisfaction as having an extroverted personality.

The full story is here.

Image: Christiaan Tonnis, flickr.com

It's WHAT?!

My recent profile of Brooklyn artist Laura Splan, who paints with her own blood, embroiders pathogens, and thinks art shouldn't just be about beauty – it should be about ideas.

With a steady hand Laura Splan dips her paintbrush into a glass vial filled with red ink, brushing one, two, three times against the side to catch any excess drops. In a single sweeping motion, she stains the pristine white surface with a crimson brush stroke that looks an awful lot like…

Blood. It’s Splan’s blood, and it’s her ink of choice. She’s been combining horror and beauty, the biological and the familiar in her artwork for over ten years. For her current project she is using her own blood to paint over vintage doilies, which serve as stencils. When removed from the canvas, the doilies leave behind a series of overlapping, almost floating organic forms – created by the blood seeping into the negative space.

Splan’s sanguine artwork began on a curious whim. “I basically just scrounged up a needle in my house one day and pricked my finger, just to see what it would look like,” said Splan. “I liked what it was doing.”

Splan, 37, an artist and certified phlebotomist (technician trained to draw blood) lives in a small Brooklyn apartment that doubles as her studio. It was during her undergraduate years studying biology at the University of California, Irvine that she realized that “art didn’t have to be about beauty, it could be about ideas.” Scientific ideas continue to inform her art, often surfacing in unexpected ways – like the blood on her paintbrush.

The rest of the story is here. 

Please, do explain.

I recently had a chance to talk to Bora Zivkovic (master guru of the science blogging world), about the who, what, and how of science bloggers and explanation. The explanation part fits in with some of the communication/education issues within science that I've spent a lot of time thinking about. How to get people engaged with scientific stories, methods, ideas, ways of thinking? What is the role of a science journalist or writer – educator? truthteller? watchdog? Also, what are the best methods and approaches for telling stories about scientific topics and making these stories relevant to a wider public? How does the public experience these stories, and how do they participate in creating them? Finally, how do these stories and ideas lead to real action in the world?

Lots of thoughts. Luckily, they overlap with a project I'll be helping out on this spring, called Building a Better Explainer. It's part of the Studio 20 program at NYU, and the idea is to investigate the best practices for explaining complex issues (from infographics to timelines to clear prose), and experiment with creating some of these "explainers." Providing this type of context and background – on stories from the housing crisis to fixing the budget –  hopefully creates ways for people to enter into current news stories that they don't quite understand. So instead of the news being a constant stream of updates, it will be something a bit more useful. 

I saw the connection to science right away, since describing complex, technical issues, with context, in an accurate but understandable way seems pretty darn close to a scientist or science writer's job description. Who better to tell us about explaining (providing background knowledge, presenting intelligible data, providing a historical/contextual dimension), than the people who do it every day? So here are some highlights from my Q&A with Bora, who is very excited about the project and was a ton of fun to talk to.

• Explain until you’re done, and then stop. Don’t be afraid of length – long posts do well because they are useful, and people will come back to them again and again.

• A personal, conversational tone keeps people reading. Just like you wouldn’t walk out on someone in the middle of a conversation, you read an engaging piece through until the end!

• Metaphors can be useful in explaining complex issues, but it’s important not to get stuck with just one. A combination of metaphors is often the best way to help people understand.

• Images like graphs, cartoons, or even hand drawn sketches help people visualize and see the data. Images are not just decoration – they can convey important information.

• Sometimes complicating the picture is part of explanation. But one must find a balance between the overly simple and overly detailed.

• Explanation is also about sending people away. Articles become useful by linking out to the best information. Link, Link, Link!

Here's the full interview.


Image: zetson, flickr.com

Back to the basics of science & data viz

One of my goals for the new year is to take a closer look at the science/design connection – especially presenting lots of data in a coherent (and beautiful) way. To start off, here's a recent article I wrote for the Scientific American Guest Blog about designing and displaying information in science (it's also basically an ode to Tufte). 

Data visualization. Infographics. Ooh, better yet, make that interactive infographics. The recent buzz around the visual display of information makes it seem like everyone should be rushing to whip up some multi-colored cartogram, bubble chart or word cloud. Never before have we had both the tools and the vast amounts of raw data to play around with, and scientists and journalists alike are making fabulous use of this opportunity. From unemployment rates to air traffic patterns to the wealth and health of nations to blood test results, information has never been so fun to look at.

But before we get too carried away with swirling globes and animated charts, it’s worth going back to the basics – taking note of some simple methods for visually presenting data. This endeavor is particularly relevant to science and health, where visual information appears anywhere from diagrams in scientific research papers to public health campaigns. The field of information design is vast, but I’ll concentrate on just a few simple ways to approach the combination of words and pictures. Many examples come straight from Edward Tufte, the information design guru who put the serious study of infographics on the map, so to speak (the New York Times has called him the Leonardo da Vinci of Data). Since the publication of his first book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information in 1983, Tufte has demonstrated over and over how the right approach to visual displays can dramatically improve the clarity and effectiveness of data. And in fact, many of the classic principles of good information design can be found throughout the history of science...

The whole thing is here. I'm hoping to write more on this stuff in the near future!

Language and Lenses

Apparently I'm on a language/communication kick. The last two stories for Scienceline are both about some of the implications of language – on society and on our minds. First, the language of genetics clearly has a huge impact on how well people understand it, or don't. This includes specific words like "heritability," which has created a whole tangle of problems (don't ask me to explain it again here, it took me days to write that paragraph!) It also includes the metaphors used in describing concepts or ideas or processes, like the blueprint vs. mixing board metaphor to describe how genes relate to the environment. Second, language may have a profound influence on how we think (or it may not, depending on which way the evidence convinces you). At the very least, it seems that even critics admit there may be small ways that language can shape thought, producing certain habits or drawing attention to distinctions or particular aspects of the world, etc. Some past articles (and the sources of inspiration for the story!) on this issue: from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Economist. 

Also, lenses and glass imagery keep popping up:  the "Mendelian lens of heredity" and all the  looking glass, mirror, and window references in the language/thought debate. Huh. 

Anyways, here they are: 

Rethinking the Gene: The popular notion of genetics is wrong.
December 24, Scienceline

The World Through Language: What language can tell us about how we think. 
January 7, Scienceline


Image: D_P_R, flickr.com

Just Say No to Christmas Displays?

If you tend to like any and all things celebrating the Christmas spirit, this study may be a bit of a downer. Apparently, Christmas displays reduce feelings of well-being and positive mood in people who don't celebrate the holiday. (I know, I know, if your first reaction is anything like mine, it's – they actually did a study on this?! Seriously?) But I kid you not, here's the abstract: 

In two experiments we examined the differential psychological consequences of being in the presence of a Christmas display on participants who did or did not celebrate Christmas (Study 1), or who identified as Christian, Buddhist, or Sikh (Study 2). Participants completed measures of psychological well-being in a cubicle that either did or did not contain a small Christmas display. Across several indicators of well-being, the display harmed non-celebrators and non-Christians, but enhanced well-being for celebrators and Christians. In Study 2, we found that the negative effect of the display on non-Christians was mediated by reduced feelings of inclusion. The results raise concerns about the ubiquitous presence of dominant cultural symbols (such as Christmas displays) in culturally diverse societies. 

No, I don't think we need to go out and immediately eradicate all Christmas displays. But the study does challenge a few assumptions about the harmlessness of certain symbols in public spaces.

But, since Happy Holidays has a kind of empty ring to it, I'm still going to go ahead and say – all positive feelings and good cheer intended – Merry Christmas! 

Shoes, Politics, and Willpower

Two stories and a blog up on Scienceline (several more coming soon).
A few conclusions I have reached:

1. From now on, every difficult task is energizing. I have heaps of self control. And a will of steel. (I just gotta repeat this often enough and it'll be true, I swear)

2. "Scientific articulacy" is a pretty cool term. I think we should adopt it. 

3. Apparently every shoe recommendation I've ever read in Runner's World is wrong. I should really stop buying those expensive Asics Kayanos. Sigh.

The Reins of Self Control: Changing your expectations could change your willpower
December 15, Scienceline

Scientists, Get Political: To move forward on climate change, the illusory boundary between science and politics must come down
November 17, Scienceline

No Glass Slipper for Runners: Current running shoe recommendations won’t protect you from injury
November 16, Scienceline

Brains and Choices

Where my blogging effort has gone the past month or so:

The Architecture of Choice: How subtle cues in the environment can effect our decisions

November 11, Nature Education 

The Brain in the Voting Booth: How hidden biases influence our vote

October 27, Scienceline

What Neuroscience Has to Say about Gap's Logo Disaster: (and why designers already knew it)

October 24, Discover

The Brain Scan Appeal: Bringing neuroscience into the courtroom may influence more brains than we think

October 4, Scienceline

What You "Get Out of Reading"

What are you actually doing when you read a novel? What's the point of reading, and if you've forgotten what you read, did it really matter? I’ve noticed a few articles lately that deal with these questions about literature and the sort of knowledge you get out of reading. The most recent was a few days ago in the NY Times The Stone column, where philosopher Robert Pippin gave a “Defense of Naïve Reading.” After describing how an overly scientific “research paradigm” has infiltrated the modern study of literature, he says: 

"Literature and the arts have a dimension unique in the academy, not shared by the objects studied, or “researched” by our scientific brethren. They invite or invoke, at a kind of “first level,” an aesthetic experience that is by its nature resistant to restatement in more formalized, theoretical or generalizing language. This response can certainly be enriched by knowledge of context and history, but the objects express a first-person or subjective view of human concerns that is falsified if wholly transposed to a more “sideways on” or third person view. Indeed that is in a way the whole point of having the “arts.”

Likewise ─ and this is a much more controversial thesis ─ such works also can directly deliver a kind of practical knowledge and self-understanding not available from a third person or more general formulation of such knowledge. There is no reason to think that such knowledge — exemplified in what Aristotle said about the practically wise man (the phronimos)or in what Pascal meant by the difference between l’esprit géometrique and l’esprit de finesse — is any less knowledge because it cannot be so formalized or even taught as such. Call this a plea for a place for “naïve” reading, teaching and writing — an appreciation and discussion not mediated by a theoretical research question recognizable as such by the modern academy."

In "Reading in a Digital Age", literary critic Sven Birkerts suggests something similar – that the novel is not just a statement or message-driven device to allow an author to convey content to his readers. Not at all, in fact, literature is much more about creating an experience and fostering a new way of thinking:

"[The novel] is not, except superficially, only a thing to be studied in English classes—that it is a field for thinking, a condensed time-world that is parallel (or adjacent) to ours. That its purpose is less to communicate themes or major recognitions and more to engage the mind... it's inwardly experiential, intransitive, a mode of contemplation, its purpose being to create for the author and reader a terrain, an arena of liberation, where mind can be different, where mind and imagination can freely combine...

I read novels in order to indulge in a concentrated and directed sort of inner activity that is not available in most of my daily transactions. This reading, more than anything else I do, parallels—and thereby tunes up, accentuates—my own inner life, which is ever associative, a shuttling between observation, memory, reflection, emotional recognition, and so forth. A good novel puts all these elements into play in its own unique fashion."

Finally, author James Collins in "The Plot Escapes Me" struggles with the dreadful thought that all his reading might have been a waste of time, since he can't recall the plot:  

“But this cannot be. Those books must have reshaped my brain in ways that affect how I think, and they must have left deposits of information with some sort of property — a kind of mental radiation — that continues to affect me even if I can’t detect it. Mustn’t they have? …

 “It’s there,” Wolf said. “You are the sum of it all.”

This was very encouraging, and it makes intuitive sense: we have been formed by an accretion of experiences, only a small number of which we can readily recall. You may remember the specifics of only a few conversations with your best friend, but you would never ask if talking to him or her was a waste of time. As for the arts, I can remember in detail only a tiny fraction of the music I have listened to, or the movies I have watched, or the paintings I have looked at, but it would be absurd to claim that experiencing those works had no influence on me. The same could be said of reading.”

I tend to agree that literature can’t be measured in a strictly quantifiable way, books are not only objects of “research” to be studied and explicated, and reading must affect us long after the details of a novel or the experience of curling up on the couch are gone. How exactly – I can’t say. (I’ll obviously have to go read more about it). 

Words of Wisdom

I thought it'd be fun to keep a collection of quotes from Dan, Michael, and Charles (SHERP professors), as well as our guest speakers as we continue through the semester. Eventually they'll range from realistic accounts of the world of journalism today to funny war stories from times immemorial. Right now they're more just quirky aphorisms.  I'll leave them anonymous – can you guess who said them?


"Nobody is god's gift to journalism. God didn't leave many gifts to journalism."


"In journalism, we never need to worry about getting our feelings hurt – we're gonna get the last word anyway."


"Journalism is the art of verification."


"Every story has an ecology, you just have to figure out your way around that world."


"Call up the editor in you – they are a fearsome beast!"


"I like poking at the cathedral of science."


"A science journalist isn't always talking about the 'good' in science."


"Journalists are unable to question numbers... they will take it as gospel."


"You don't want to end up with a masters degree in No Clips."

It Sounds Blue! Kandinsky and the Brain

The overwhelming "what? that's going on right now too?!" of New York City has hit me for real this month, so the blog posts are sadly lacking. But, since this science journalism stuff means I am bombarded with ideas and stories to write about a day, I'm going to make an extra effort to post more often (I need at least some partial record of my thoughts during these wonderfully-crazy months).

So, for starters, I have to share this amazing series in the New Scientist called "Six ways that artists hack your brain." It's all about the neuroscience and psychology of how we perceive/understand/interpret artwork (or get really confused by it). To my surprise, this cross-disciplinary field even has its own a name: neuroaesthetics. Below is a quote from one section about synaesthetes, people who have a neurological condition where their senses seem to get mixed up – they'll hear blue or taste yellow, for example.

LETTERS, words, numbers, sounds, touch, pain and smell all trigger flashes of colour in Carol Steen's mind. The New York-based artist first discovered she could paint her synaesthetic visions after a visit to her acupuncturist. "Each time a needle went in a colour flashed in front of my eyes," she recalls. "When all the needles were in it was like watching a movie. I rushed home and realised I could recall enough to paint a part of what I had seen."

Other synaesthetic artists include David Hockney and Wassily Kandinsky, who painted the piece below, entitled Blue. There is still some speculation over whether Kandinsky actually had synaesthesia or was simply influenced by reports of the phenomenon in other people. But to Christopher Tyler of the Smith-Kettlewell Brain Imaging Center in San Francisco, who has analysed Kandinsky's work, it is obvious (Journal of the History of Neuroscience, vol 12, p 223). "It's very explicit in his work and his writings. He went to a performance of Wagner's music and then wrote about how vivid the visual impressions of the horns were and the colour that the music evoked in his mind. That's synaesthesia," he says.

Steen agrees: "I saw a sphere like the one in Kandinsky's Blue in one of my acupuncture sessions. Since it is really hard to explain your visions to someone, I assume Kandinsky was a synaesthete." The striking colour contrast with the red dot is also familiar to her.

These experiences are probably due to extra connections between the auditory and visual cortex, says Jack Cowan, a mathematical neuroscientist at the University of Chicago. He thinks the additional flow of information into the visual cortex overloads its normal inhibitory mechanisms, allowing spontaneous waves of activity that would normally be eliminated to propagate through the brain. These signals may represent shape or colour. Since the brain can't tell whether a signal was generated within the brain or externally, synaesthetes see the shapes as if they came from the eye.

Check out the other parts of the series like the emotional response to impressionism or Dali's illusions. More to come soon!

Two Cultures (and many more)

The first official reading assignment for school (yes, very excited to be a student again!) is C.P. Snow's "The Two Cultures." I've come across this essay – originally a lecture in 1959 – several times over the past year, mostly in the context of "look what a knowledge gap there is between scientists and the public" or "scientists are just fundamentally different people from the rest." Snow articulates a serious problem he notices in Western society: the splitting of intellectual life (and in turn, practical life) into two polar groups that do not communicate and do not understand one another. These two groups, literary intellectuals and scientists, have become increasingly isolated by a "gulf of mutual incomprehension." The gulf is widened by hostility, distortion, and most of all just a lack of understanding. In later writings, Snow called for a "third culture" to bridge this gap.

Even though Snow was writing 50 years ago, his observations are still relevant today. Many recent articles and books reference the "two cultures" theme, although it seems the modern flavor of this dichotomy has shifted – less "science & humanities" and more "science & everyone else". Those who can speak science to the masses – bypassing the literary intellectuals – are what John Brockman, editor of the Edge magazine, calls "third-culture thinkers." This brand of intellectuals include people like E.O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett. The success of popular science books may surprise the "old-style intellectuals," (Brockman's phrase) but he thinks this is just a sign that science is becoming the new popular culture. 

"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are... 

Today, third-culture thinkers tend to avoid the middleman and endeavor to express their deepest thoughts in a manner accessible to the intelligent reading public. The recent publishing successes of serious science books have surprised only the old-style intellectuals. Their view is that these books are anomalies--that they are bought but not read. I disagree. The emergence of this third-culture activity is evidence that many people have a great intellectual hunger for new and important ideas and are willing to make the effort to educate themselves."

While I do agree with much of Brockman's characterization, I have some concerns about these "third culture" scientists. Thinking it sufficient to communicate directly to the public, they sometimes ignore the arts and humanities altogether, or act as if science has taken its "rightful" place at the top of the intellectual kingdom. To build a bridge across the gulf, there must be collaboration and openness between the disciplines – what Jonah Lehrer's calls a "fourth culture." 

“This fourth culture, much closer in concept to Snow’s original definition… will ignore arbitrary intellectual boundaries, seeking instead to blur the lines that separate. It will freely transplant knowledge between the sciences and humanities, and will focus on connecting the reductionist fact to our actual experience. It will take a pragmatic view of truth, and it will judge truth not by its origins but by its usefulness." (from Proust Was a Neuroscientist)

Chris Mooney, author of Unscientific America, agrees with Lehrer. But he takes the argument one step further, urging science to interact and learn from all parts of society. 

"It’s not just that we need people transplanting knowledge between science and humanities—it’s that we need people who can transplant between science, the humanities, politics, communication, law, business—and everything else. All other walks of life, types of talent, kinds of expertise…the more science draws upon these and the more these intersect with science, the closer science will move back into relationship with the society that fosters it." 

For Mooney, science should not attempt to take the place of other intellectual traditions, but rather it should mesh and share ideas freely with all of them. 

And at this rate (with enough communication, interaction, and Snow's 1959 lecture firmly in mind) we may end up with a fourth, fifth, or sixth culture sooner than we expect.

Related link: Are We Beyond the Two Cultures? Video series from seedmagazine.com

Monkeying Around in Science

The Economist calls it "ironic." In the midst of working a book called Evilicious: Why We Evolved a Taste for Being Bad, evolutionary psychologist Marc Hauser has been accused of some wrongdoing of his own. Specifically, scientific misconduct and cheating. What exactly did he do? The Chronicle of Higher Education provides an overview:

It was one experiment in particular that led members of Mr. Hauser's lab to become suspicious of his research and, in the end, to report their concerns about the professor to Harvard administrators. The experiment tested the ability of rhesus monkeys to recognize sound patterns. Researchers played a series of three tones (in a pattern like A-B-A) over a sound system. After establishing the pattern, they would vary it (for instance, A-B-B) and see whether the monkeys were aware of the change. If a monkey looked at the speaker, this was taken as an indication that a difference was noticed. The method has been used in experiments on primates and human infants. Mr. Hauser has long worked on studies that seemed to show that primates, like rhesus monkeys or cotton-top tamarins, can recognize patterns as well as human infants do. Such pattern recognition is thought to be a component of language acquisition.

Researchers watched videotapes of the experiments and "coded" the results, meaning that they wrote down how the monkeys reacted. As was common practice, two researchers independently coded the results so that their findings could later be compared to eliminate errors or bias. According to the document that was provided to The Chronicle, the experiment in question was coded by Mr. Hauser and a research assistant in his laboratory. A second research assistant was asked by Mr. Hauser to analyze the results. When the second research assistant analyzed the first research assistant's codes, he found that the monkeys didn't seem to notice the change in pattern. In fact, they looked at the speaker more often when the pattern was the same. In other words, the experiment was a bust. But Mr. Hauser's coding showed something else entirely: He found that the monkeys did notice the change in pattern—and, according to his numbers, the results were statistically significant. If his coding was right, the experiment was a big success.

The second research assistant was bothered by the discrepancy. How could two researchers watching the same videotapes arrive at such different conclusions? He suggested to Mr. Hauser that a third researcher should code the results. In an e-mail message to Mr. Hauser, a copy of which was provided to The Chronicle, the research assistant who analyzed the numbers explained his concern. "I don't feel comfortable analyzing results/publishing data with that kind of skew until we can verify that with a third coder," he wrote. A graduate student agreed with the research assistant and joined him in pressing Mr. Hauser to allow the results to be checked, the document given to The Chronicle indicates. But Mr. Hauser resisted, repeatedly arguing against having a third researcher code the videotapes and writing that they should simply go with the data as he had already coded it. After several back-and-forths, it became plain that the professor was annoyed.

"i am getting a bit pissed here," Mr. Hauser wrote in an e-mail to one research assistant. "there were no inconsistencies! let me repeat what happened. i coded everything. then [a research assistant] coded all the trials highlighted in yellow. we only had one trial that didn't agree. i then mistakenly told [another research assistant] to look at column B when he should have looked at column D. ... we need to resolve this because i am not sure why we are going in circles."

The research assistant who analyzed the data and the graduate student decided to review the tapes themselves, without Mr. Hauser's permission, the document says. They each coded the results independently. Their findings concurred with the conclusion that the experiment had failed: The monkeys didn't appear to react to the change in patterns. They then reviewed Mr. Hauser's coding and, according to the research assistant's statement, discovered that what he had written down bore little relation to what they had actually observed on the videotapes. He would, for instance, mark that a monkey had turned its head when the monkey didn't so much as flinch. It wasn't simply a case of differing interpretations, they believed: His data were just completely wrong.

The reaction to the Hauser investigation has been a mix of outcry against academic dishonesty, frustration at a lack of research standards, and distress over the terrible blow to the scientific community. But a refreshingly optimistic angle comes from JL Vernon, who sees "Hausergate" as an opportunity to demonstrate the integrity of the scientific process. Here are some of his ideas:

My reaction to this story may surprise readers of my blog, because I believe there is a silver lining to this story.  If handled properly, this tragedy can do great things for science.  What we have here is a ripe opportunity to showcase the integrity of the scientific process.  As I mentioned in my recent article  on creating science brand loyalists, I think scientists need to be more transparent about the scientific process from experimental design through peer-reviewed publication.  By emphasizing the mechanisms built into the scientific process that brought this deception to an end, science communicators and journalists can make the public aware that science is a self-regulating system in which fraud will not endure.  While there were failures in the system, science ultimately prevailed.

In this particular case, the misconduct that led to the investigation of Dr. Hauser occurred at the earliest stage of the scientific process, the experimental design.  David Dobbs does a great job describing the weaknesses of Hauser’s experimental protocols. The experiments involved observation of video recordings of monkeys responding to certain stimuli that were varied over time in order to induce a response from the monkeys.  The monkeys’ reactions to the stimulus were recorded by the observer.  Based on a letter written by the whistleblower researchers, professor Hauser’s observations conflicted with those of his lab assistants.  After the researchers realized that Dr. Hauser was trying to force them to accept and publish shoddy data, they acted properly by approaching the Harvard University administration to address these issues of scientific misconduct.

For their bravery, the whistleblowers should be recognized as “loyal defenders” of science.  Not only did they end Dr. Hauser’s dangerous practices, they also fulfilled the unofficial oath for science.

Thankfully, once these individuals brought this issue to the attention of the Harvard University ombudsman and the Dean of Arts and Sciences, the appropriate investigation was undertaken.  As far as we know, Dean Smith did not delay the investigation and subsequent to the completion of the investigation Dr. Hauser was properly sanctioned.

Related Links: A letter from the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences describes the findings against Hauser in more detail.