Spreading Ignorance

Ignorance spreads as quickly and is as dangerous to civilization as wildfire. Like most wildfire, most ignorance is spread by the humans affected by it. Facebook is the largest modern source of ignorance, which is one major reason I left Facebook in 2014. I got so tired of debunking things posted there that were quite simply not true. However, the fake posts and lurid but untrue clickbait remain. I learned this month that I'm not the only one annoyed by it.

The CSN Planetarium director in Las Vegas wrote an op-ed in the planetarium's periodical this month that resonated with me. I actually went to meet him to tell him how much I appreciated his post, so he would know people read it, and so he would know he wasn't alone either. You see, when you're educated, you get real tired of stupid people spreading ignorance, because it takes far more work to fight misinformation than to spread it. I present his editorial, with his permission and with the grammatical errors endemic in the original, for your reading pleasure and benefit:

The Planetary Alignment that Wasn't

The internet is an incredibly powerful tool. We can accomplish tasks that took weeks prior in seconds today. Information is available at our very fingertips. The very same concepts that make the internet so powerful also make it a tool for the unscrupulous to either promote false information or to take advantage of others. Astronomy is not immune to this, as many myths about astronomical events are perpetrated on the internet. In some cases, astronomical events are simply blown out of proportion, while in other cases, the events are lied about.

The most recent example is the so-called "planetary alignment" occurring in January/February 2016. This is not an alignment in the sense that most people would think ok. The planets are not close together in the sky. In fact, they are spread out across nearly the whole ecliptic. the media is making a big deal about all five visible planets appearing in the sky at the same time. While this is not a common occurrence, it is not particularly rare either, and it is not significant at all. This is unfortunately the way astronomy reporting seems to be heading. Someone makes a big deal out of something relatively minor, which brings us to our next event, the supermoon.

Around three years ago, someone got the bright idea of referring to the closest full moon to the earth each year as a "supermoon". It caught on and spread rapidly, but the big problem is that it is not really all that noticeable of an effect. The distance to the moon is always changing because of its elliptical orbit about the earth. Every year there will be a closest full moon, and a farthest away. It's simply the physics of orbits, long ago explained by Kepler's three laws of planetary motion.

The last one goes back even farther, and still comes around every year like clockwork: Mars is going to appear as big as the full moon in the sky in August/September/October. The month changes, the year changes, but this ridiculous claim never seems to go away. If you have a large telescope, you can discern Mars's polar ice cap, and sometimes some darker areas on its surface. A small telescope allows you to see the red color, and maybe an ice cap it it is large enough at the time. If a friend posts any variation of this meme on social media this year...please shut them down hard. Don't let this one spread anymore.

Of course, there are others that come around fairly regularly (the next close approach asteroid is going to slam into the earth, etc.) and nearly all are an exaggeration or an outright lie. Do your homework and check out any claim. If need bye, you can contact the Planetarium and I can confirm or deny anything that someone has put out there.

People rely too much on others, in particular people with a penchants for science whom they often mislabel as "scientists" like Bill Nye the Mechanical Engineering Guy. We are too lazy to do our own research. We are too eager to pass on information and appear wise. We are fascinated with being part of significant things. However, as Dr. Kerr writes, far too much of what the media propagates is either an exaggeration or an outright lie. Recently, the meme in politics sounded that Trump was a Nazi. Do any of you really know what Naziism means? Do any of you know any Nazis? I do. Are any of you astronomers, arborists, nutritionists, or other variants of the concept of wizards of smart? Who is this that darkeneth wisdom by words without knowledge? Why are ignorant people so loud and so common and so reliable to spread half truths and whole lies? Far too much "science" out there is nothing more than "a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing", but that doesn't stop the idiots from crying it on every street corner and the rest of the idiots from believing everything they are told.

The internet is not the source of truth. It is not the source of wisdom. It is not even the source of knowledge. It is a source of information. TS Eliot opined as presciently today as in aforetime, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" Things are not rare. Things are not significant. The loudest, the most common, and the most liked individuals are not the wisest. They are the most vociferous, and all too often they are the most deceptive and the most damaging. Their ridiculous claims never go away, because some nincompoop makes a big deal out of a minor thing, even if it is true, and then the internet blows it out of proportion because people post it, and once it's there, it stays, true or not, real or not, kind or not, useful or not. Most of what we read on the internet is pretty useless and fairly inaccurate, which is probably why it's free. What we obtain easily we esteem lightly.

Wine is No Panacea

I have my own misgivings about the "health benefits" provided by red wine based on my own experiences in graduate school. I remember discovering that abiotic stress does not significantly increase resveratrol deposition in berries (and hence in the wine) but that significant rises in ethyl carbamates (carcinogens) were detected. It's nice to see someone else punch holes in the research.

The University of Washington has a viticulture program. I was myself surprised a decade ago to learn this. I suppose the eastern portion of the state is much like Nevada's high desert, so I shouldn't have been surprised. In any case, researchers there found that Resveratrol supplements do not seem to show a significant health benefit. The researcher diplomatically concluded that wine must be healthy because resveratrol comes in a cocktail of other secondary metabolites. Very shrewd.

Simply hypothesized, plants do not make things because they are beneficial to us. Despite the supposition that plants are somehow altruistic in their support of humans, it's not necessarily on purpose. That would require sentience. Plants make them because these compounds like resveratrol help them survive. They also help us, but that's a coincidence of chemical compatibility (or evolutionary adaptation to be able to use them) more than it's an active effort on behalf of fruit to help humans. If resveratrol also helps us, that's a happy accident, but he's probably right- it works because it's coupled to other things.

The trouble is, it's also in there with things that are bad for you.

So, do the costs outweigh the benefits? That depends on whom you ask.

Blinded With Science

There are a lot of people out there who place all their faith in science. Science, however, is a slippery devil (pardon the pun). The same science that props up their lifestyle is made in many cases on the backs of things the people who worship at the altar of a lab bench in white robes of a false priesthood would find appalling.

I remember vividly in graduate school a particularly duplicitous bumper sticker I often saw. In the walk from the experimental farm where I often parked to the agriculture building where I worked, I passed a law office. One of these lawyers had a bumper sticker that said, "Thou shalt not kill. Go vegetarian." I was confused. I was studying plants. If they are not alive, was I wrong to feel bad about torturing them with salt water? What a convenient religion this man had!

The liberal religion is very convenient. It sees what it wishes to see. It investigates the obvious and ignores everything else. Consider for example just two products.

"Animal friendly faux leather" is actually plastic. This means it is made from oil, which means that everyone who complains about how oil is bad for the environment and then buys one of these is a hypocrite, having bought a product that props up Big Oil! You see, oil is a mainstay in our world. Without it, people who complain would not be able to do so because they would have no iphones, no internet, and in many cases no clothing. As they save the animals, some other product must compensate to satisfy the desires of a particular demographic.

Many of these people tout the health benefits of tofu over "antiboitic and hormone-laden beef". What they don't seem to realize is that tofu is made from soybeans, most of which, particularly in America, are Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). So, it's ok to add fish genes to a bean (for example) but not to add extra hormones, that a cow makes anyway, to a cow? While feasible that soy might eventually mutate to have those genes anyway, since we use clones in commercial crops, it's unlikely that the soy we consume will vary very much by 3050 from the version we eat today. Eating tofu isn't necessarily any healthier than the foods for which it serves as a substitute.

Most of these things are designed to make people feel better about themselves. They're not obviously involved in something that evokes an emotional response, and so they feel less guilty. You see, liberalism and liberal science are based less on facts and reason than they want you to think. If you face the facts, such as those presented here, their science is based on emotion. Just because something is less bad doesn't make it good, any more than a less rotted corpse is somehow more alive than a completely rotted one.

Plants are also living things. They are easier to catch, less messy when we kill them (except for things like tomatoes), they don't have cute faces, and they don't cry out in pain. However, without living plants there is no life anywhere. Just like animals, which are also there for the use of men, plants are there to be used by us. Human beings are however the only species on the planet of which I am aware who actively contribute to making their own species weaker. We will disenable raw materials for our own benefit to save bugs and weeds. We also prop up the weakest among us through medicine and because of their wealth who then reproduce and ensconce genetic weakness in the population. Humans are just as GMO as corn or soybeans; we just do it in the hospital and the bedroom rather than at the altar of a laboratory.

When I go hiking, people usually follow me. They know that I have probably been there before and that I turn around periodically to look at the trail. You see, it's easy to get lost if you haven't looked at things from any perspective than straight on. People don't recognize truth because they don't look at it from other angles and because they frequently look at it through glasses tinted by their own preconceived notions. As I have said elsewhere for a while now, most people are not really interested in the truth. They secretly hope the truth will corroborate what they already happen to believe. When you blind them with science, usually they just shut their eyes and refuse to see. Some people are wise; these people are otherwise.

O be wise. What can I say more?

Oops, Another Research Error

For most of my life, I have heard all about how evil men are because we're polluting the planet. Ok, so many of us aren't very conscientious about where we put our waste, but then again neither are the Canadian geese that used to defecate EVERYWHERE at my alma mater. However, they talk about these doomsday prophecies and make movies about their predictions when many of their conclusions are founded in bad science.

At the beginning of each semester, I cover the Scientific Method with my students. I point out the pitfalls and problems in an effort to help them pay better attention to scientists, especially as they start prescribing pills produced by piss-poor projects. Lo and behold, today, an article appears less than a day after I discussed this with a colleague about how the polar ice is melting 30% less quickly than projected. The key phrase in this article is as follows:

previous teams had to measure ice loss at "a few easily accessible glaciers" and then extrapolate it to the 200,000 glaciers worldwide

They extrapolated a few to hundreds of thousands. A few technically means three, which is the equivalent of looking at everyone in the city of Linz Austria and saying they are representative of everyone currently living on the planet. This is why some people die from drugs, because everyone reacts differently.

What concerns me is whether the few they analyzed were truly representative of the whole. If they looked at a few outliers, then they will be way off. What made the other glaciers inaccessible? Weather? Money? Laziness of the researchers? Government policy that refused access? There are too many variables to even evaluate that well. They would have been best served to conclude that the data supported a certain level of ice loss in the area surveyed.

I may have mentioned this before, but we did a lot of work with students and standard curves. Intentionally, we gave them an unknown with a concentration outside the standard curve hoping that they would make an error and extrapolate. Outside the curve, you cannot be sure that the behavior remains the same. Even these researchers were smart enough to confess that "it's not clear how far into the future you can project" because too many things affect other things. I find it funny how they claim everything and everyone is related, that we should coexist, etc., and then they blame human activity with which they happen to disagree as a cause for everything. Who knows what the future will bring? Maybe it will bring meteors or Martians or more of the same. Who can say? They like to talk as if they know for sure, and I find that odd.

What 'Might' Be

This is an article from another blogger I read, talking about the problem with conclusions that leads to bad science and worse journalism.

In case you live under a rock and missed it, the World Health Organization recently announced that cell phones "may possibly" cause cancer.

Now, I'm neither a researcher or statistician, and personally think the jury is still out on this one. I'm not going to take sides.

But here is what I am pissed off about: Notice that the story said "may possibly" cause cancer. But the way we think, it somehow becomes "does cause cancer", and so we panic, and hold our cell phones a yard from our head, and scream into them (that's gonna make driving while talking into one a helluva a lot safer, huh?).

"I can't hear you, Dave, but at least I may possibly not get cancer."

In my opinion a lot of the way this stuff gets played up as the top story on news outlets is just bullshit. It's no different than if I put "SEXXX" in screaming letters at the top of this post. It sure as hell would get your attention, and snag a few search engines, but the post has little, if anything, to do with sex (unless you're into setting the phone on vibrate and...)

This is the nightmare of medical research in the lay press. Let's say Dr. Hodgkin does some research on rat ovarian cells. He finds that in 25% of rats with ovarian cancer, there is a gene that may be able to stop cancer spread.

So he gets published in the journal Genetics Research and Lab Decor. A hungry reporter finds the article, and sees a great way to sell papers with a story on how ovarian cancer has been cured!

Now this isn't what Dr. Hodgkin said. His research had a 25% success rate in curing mice with a certain type of ovarian cancer. The most he might say is that someday this might lead to new methods of treating some types human ovarian cancer.

But, of course, nobody gives a shit about mice with cancer. A headline saying "25% Of Mice with Ovarian Cancer May Someday be Cured!" wouldn't get anyone's attention. But if you make a huge leap of illogic, extrapolate it to humans, and put up "CURE FOR OVARIAN CANCER NEAR!", it will sell newspapers and draw readers, no matter how far off from the truth it is.

For those of you who remember, in the mid-80's there was a HUGE media circus about how Interleukin-2 was THE cure for cancer (an absurdity, if you think about it, considering that cancer isn't even a single disease- it's hundreds). Major news magazines and TV networks ran stories about it. It made the front page... and that was about it. Not to take anything away from Interleukin-2. It eventually did settle down and find a place in malignancy treatment. But was it the miracle breakthrough that it got played up as? Not even close.

By the same token, in the 1970's EVERYONE knew Saccharin caused cancer. So it got a big black box on every product that contained it. And after several years it was quietly found that it DIDN'T. Of course, when the second story came out it was relegated to the back page, and people didn't notice when the warning labels disappeared. Because it's more interesting to scare people, or give them false hope, than to reassure them.

Certainly there are plenty of things that are clearly proven to cause cancer: cigarettes, for example. But hell, at this point we all know that. So it's not going to get attention. But put up a headline about something we believe is harmless (unless you're trying to pass a cell phone talker on the freeway) and it will get a lot of readers.

So let's get back to the cell phones.

What really grates my crank is the use of "may possibly" or "possibly" or "may be linked to..." that the articles about this are so full of. NOT "does" or "doesn't" but simply different variations on ambiguity which, while getting your attention, DON'T REALLY SAY A FUCKING THING!!!

Look at it this way. "Cell phone use may possibly cause cancer". How is that different from "cell phone use may or may not cause cancer"? But if the second sentence was used, you'd say "No shit, Sherlock" and skip the article.

To take it a step further, let's use the "may possibly" phrase in other circumstances, and see how definitive that sounds:

"Mrs. Smith, you may possibly be pregnant."

"Dave, you may possibly be fired."

"You're going to see Dr. Grumpy? I heard he may possibly be competent."

"The Grumpyville Faceplants may possibly win the Super Bowl."

"Congrats, Cindy. You may possibly be getting a promotion."

"Dude! There may possibly be beer and girls at the party!"

"OMG Buffy! Your new boyfriend may possibly be HAWT!"

"KIDS! You may possibly be punished if you don't clean up your damn rooms!"

Doesn't give you a lot of confidence, or clarity, does it?

So next time you see a medical research news story, think about how accurate it may possibly be.

PETPEAVES

Every day during graduate school, I would park at the agriculture experiment station and walk the half mile or so to the Agriculture Building where I spent most of my days. Just across the street from the building where I worked was an attorney's office, and on the back of one of the cars was a bumper sticker I noticed every day and remember very vividly still now. It said, "Thou shalt not kill: go vegetarian".

I have often marveled on the irony of this statement. Here I was, a biochemistry major, studying in the agriculture college under the life sciences program, and this attorney thought plants weren't alive. Yes, I know plants don't seem to have feelings, but like I told some students a month or so ago, even they have blood. You just don't recognize it even though you lather your waffles in it at breakfast. It's called 'syrup'. The students were immediately grossed out by the notion.

For most of my life, I have been fully aware that plants are alive. If I am wrong, then everything I learned in college was a complete lie. I think what we really need in this nation is PETPEAVES: People for the Ethical Treatment of Plants Eaten After Violent Extraction from Soil. Plants cannot speak for themselves because they have no mouths or defend themselves because their weapons are not terribly useful against a predator with eyes (except for some cacti which are very good at dissauding any attempt at predation). Nobody represents their interests, and apparently some lawyers are active in the campaign against their rights. Without plants, all animal life on earth would cease.

Save the plants. Save yourselves. Join PETPEAVES.

**This post is mostly tongue in cheek, just for your information, but all the details are true as well as I understand truth**

Ripeness and Refractometers

One of our anatomy professors just informed me that he passed on something I taught him. While testing the specific gravity of their urine, a student asked him if a refractometer was useful for anything else. He remembered a conversation we had and pulled up a picture of someone using one in the wine industry, which is basically what I did in graduate school.

Refractometers can be used to tell ripeness of fruit. Indeed, I sometimes will use one at the market to test produce. Where I live there are a lot of foreign markets with produce of initially dubious value. I don't really know why they are selling 5kg of limes for $1. Are they bad? Did they buy too many? If I ask them in Italian, will they be able to explain it to me in Spanish? I just trust the refractometer.

Now, imagine what they see. A bearded male of Saxon ancestry pulls a refractometer and some plastic pasteur pipettes from his jacket. He squirts some juice on this lightsaber-looking thing and looks into it as he points it towards the light. Some fruit, he takes. Others he passes. It must look like something out of science fiction to them.

Well, it certainly is science. Using a refractometer to measure the Brix ratio (one degree approximates 1% sugar content and is relatively reliable as an indicator of sweetness), and pH paper to measure acids, one can tell almost exactly when fruit is at the perfect ripeness. As fruits mature, the sugars cease to be reducing, and the total amount of acids diminishes while sugars accumulate in the fruit. At an optimum range of sugar to acid ratio, a fruit is ripe and ready not only for harvest but for consumption.  Delicious!

As a practical matter, since you know I like practical science, this is a putative business model. You buy fruit if you live in the west hemisphere only once a week or more. You hope it will last on the counter until you need it and then only as much as you need to be ripe when you need it. With a refractometer, you could establish fruit in bins at various degrees of ripeness and classify fruit as 'ready now', 'ready within the week' and 'ready in more than a week' and thereby assist shoppers in planning their consumption without waste. Would it sell? I don't know. Could it? Most definitely. We have all seen people smelling mellons and scouring over berries, touching them all. No need for that. Science to the rescue!

You too could be like the wineries and know exactly when your fruits are ripe. Wouldn't that be nice?