Coincidence and Causality

In recent days, we've heard lots of editorials masquerading as news. They tell us that the economic rebound, the successful rescue of the captain of the Maersk Alabama, and housing starts are due to the president's economic plan, which hasn't even hit the ground yet. We hear from DHS that subversive militias are recruiting former members of the military in an attempt to overthrow the government. We hear that the world hates America because we are greedy.

What we don't hear should shock you. What we don't hear is that the pirates are attacking convoys of food and earning $150 million per year in ransom money. What we don't hear is that the Commander of the USS Bainbridge gave a split second decision command to fire that saved the captain of the Maersk Alabama. What we don't hear is that compared to last quarter, housing sales are actually down, but it seems up because fewer homes are going on the market so the percentage is down (my realtor gave me the stats herself on this).

Last night in class, we discussed one aspect of bad science- the ipso facto logical fallacy. They assume that because certain things are concurrent that one causes the other. You can't say that. At best, evidence suggests a link, but on further experimentation we can easily dispell this. One example in class deals with a woman whose flashlight doesn't work. She changes the batteries and it works. What if it hadn't? What other things could it be? We ignore so many things because we do not think of them. My students came up with some good ones: corroded connections, burnt out bulb, batteries inserted incorrectly, etc. Just because new batteries don't fix it doesn't mean they're bad either. Sometimes it's a matter of compounding variables.

Another powerful example, since I live in Nevada, is the roulette wheel. Many novice gamblers assume that because black has come up ten times in a row that it's red's "turn" to get a shot and they bet on red. Truth is that on the next spin, there are the exact same chances of black turning up again, and they don't have abetter chance of being right about red. Unless you remove a number when the ball falls on it, it doesn't change the chances of subsequent draws. It is mathematically possible on an unaltered roulette wheel for a ball to land on 17 black EVERY SINGLE TIME, however unlikely that might be.

See one other problem lies in differences between circumstances and operators. Every person performs experiments differently. A coworker called me yesterday to ask me how I innoculate a specific culture because it only works 50% of the time for her and it has so far always worked for me (most things don't work that frequently). Variations and variegations influence outcomes. We cannot predict the future because the circumstances are NEVER the same in subsequent trials. Things unseen and unknown change all the time, so no matter how well we try nothing is ever an exact replicate. Not even identical twins share everything.

I spent probably 75% of my time in laboratory troubleshooting to pin down unexpected outcomes and link them to unaccounted variables. About half of the rest of the time, I had to explain differences between trials to justify omission of results. Some scientists get excited apoplexy when they "discover" something new, when more often than not they are ghosts and not a result of our manipulations. Just because two things coincide does not mean they are linked. Just because they are linked doesn't mean one is causative. Sometimes things just happen and there is no real good reason.

Red Devil About Red Meat

Meat makes man mortal. Ok, that's not so bad if, like I do, you also hope one day to die. The bad news is the way in which your mortality becomes more apparent through eating red meat.

Red meat consumption is linked to higher heart disease and cancer. Ok, are they causative? Not necessarily, but this is a problem with all science, which creates knee-jerk reactions of all kinds leading the banning of DDT, CO2, and now 2,2,4-trimethyl pentane and beef (which is also threatened by the Flattulence Tax).

Here's the codicil:

The study relied on people's memory of what they ate, which can be faulty.
In the analysis, the researchers took into account other risk factors such as smoking, family history of cancer and high body mass index.

Ok, now, I support this. Why? Scientifically, meat is high in nitrogenous waste, which must be purged immediately to keep the blood from being toxic. Secondly, most amino acids cannot be directly incorporated into proteins, so they must either be modified or metabolized. Third, animals do not eat the best foods- mad cow disease by way of example comes from feeding cows the ground up meat from other cows, and if that includes brain matter of a diseased cow the consuming cow will catch it. Even in Austria, which is a green and organic country, guess how they fertilize the fields of grass? They spray liquid cow dung on it. Gross.

Finally, meat must be cooked to be edible. Even if only one bacillus survives, E. coli doubles fast enough that one survivor can pollute you with millions in rapid succession. During cooking, the chemical structure, and therefore the utility, of components falls apart, making most of it of little use except as glucose substitutes. Also, if you cook it poorly, via charring, an innocuous enzyme in the liver can turn that harmless byproduct into a carcinogen.

Some people claim that you can't bulk up without meat, but cows just eat grass, and they bulk up just fine. Do you need meat? No. I love fish, and a really, really, really good steak tastes good now and then.

Math Conundrums

If according to Dante 1+1=1 (one government plus one people to rule equals one society), then according to Tolkien, 3+7+9=1 (three rings for the elves, seven for the dwarves, and nin for men equal one master ring).

Also, 1 does not equal 1, else my one soldier could defeat your one army, or my one experiment should trump your one career.

Food for thought...

My Beef With Organics

This past week, I butted heads with a good friend over the issue of organic foods. As soon as I explained why, she understood where I came from and seemed less adverse to my reasoning for opposing organics as presently constituted.

As a graduate student, I studied secondary metabolism deposition in plant tissues. We measured volatiles and terpenoids primarily in root, shoot, and berry throughout the vegetative process through to post-veraison. Results for Vitis vinifera varietals demonstrated how secondary metabolites are processed.

My problem with organics is how they come to market. We could track based on chemical properties to the exact day when fruit was ripe and ready for picking. Many organics are, like the foods they replace, picked before they are ripe for transport. Our research demonstrated that most of the chemoprotectants for which we consume plants (like tocopherols, resveratrol, etc.) remain in tissues we don't consume until the plant is absolutely certain the fruit will be set. A day or two prior to ripening, the plant starts shuttling these metabolites from leaves and stem to the fruit, and not before.

For this major reason, organic foods come to market as bereft of the nutrients for which we eat them as their inorganic counterparts, offering no added nutritional benefit, often at much higher cost. If you eat them because they come without hormones or inorganic phosphate, fine, but if you think you're getting better nutrition, consider from whence they come.

The best way to get pure unadulterated foods is to grow as many of them yourself as possible. That way you control the food you eat from seed to salad. You raise it without exogenous chemicals. You pick it at the height of ripeness. You consume food that you know meets all of your criteria. If you buy it because it says organic assuming it's better for you, it might be, but chances are it's just a more expensive fecal precursor than that which your neighbors buy and offers no more chemoprotectants to countermand assaults on your health than inorganics. Caveate empor.