Science & Society

What Qualifies as Medicine?

2009-12-12T12:29:00.001-08:00

Debates about the proposed Health Reform bill usually center on the costs or savings anticipated. sometimes they center on the expected changes in performance of the medical community. But Sen. Tom Harkin (D, Iowa) added a provision to ensure that alternative medicine providers get their share. Why do we even have to consider this? If a medical procedure can be shown to be effective it won't be "alternative" anymore. Sen. Harkin is the guy who forced Harold Varmus to resign as head of NIH by creating the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). That institution has done at least one thing to aid medicine: They have done a good job of using rigorous placebo-controlled double-blind studies to prove the total lack of efficacy for a long list of herbal "cures". Why don't we just use taxpayer's money to support Kevin Trudeau and his "Cures They Don't Want You to Know About". Oh wait, we did support that millionaire for a while -we gave him room and board and then made sure he couldn't sell actual cures -just the information.

T. Troy Stark
http://www.starkeffects.com

God Believes What You Believe.

2009-12-11T16:17:00.000-08:00

The study of psychology can reveal a lot about us. It often gives us a mirror to help us realize what we are doing from the point of view of others. It can also show us the faults in our own thinking, something god is unlikely to do according to this new study.

" News Office Homepage:
Study: Believers’ inferences about God’s beliefs are uniquely egocentricNovember 30, 2009
Religious people tend to use their own beliefs as a guide in thinking about what God believes, but are less constrained when reasoning about other people’s beliefs, according to new study published in the Nov. 30 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Nicholas Epley, professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, led the research, which included a series of survey and neuroimaging studies to examine the extent to which people’s own beliefs guide their predictions about God’s beliefs. The findings of Epley and his co-authors at Australia’s Monash University and UChicago extend existing work in psychology showing that people are often egocentric when they infer other people’s beliefs.
The PNAS paper reports the results of seven separate studies. The first four include surveys of Boston rail commuters, UChicago undergraduate students and a nationally representative database of online respondents in the United States. In these surveys, participants reported their own belief about an issue and their estimation of God’s belief, along with their assessment of beliefs held by others, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Major League Baseball’s Barry Bonds, President George W. Bush, and an average American.
Two other studies directly manipulated people’s own beliefs and found that inferences about God’s beliefs tracked their own beliefs. Study participants were asked, for example, to write and deliver a speech that supported or opposed the death penalty in front of a video camera – an exercise known to affect people’s reported beliefs. Their beliefs were surveyed both before and after the speech.
The final study involved functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural activity of test subjects as they reasoned about their own beliefs versus those of God or another person. The data demonstrated that reasoning about God’s beliefs activated many of the same regions that become active when people reasoned about their own beliefs.
The researchers noted that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God’s standards. “The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing,” they conclude. “This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God’s beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.”
But the research in no way denies the possibility that God’s presumed beliefs also may provide guidance in situations where people are uncertain of their own beliefs, the co-authors noted.
Citation: “Believers’ estimates of God’s beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people’s beliefs,” Nov. 30, 2009, early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Nicholas Epley, Benjamin A. Converse, Alexa Delbosc, George A. Monteleone and John T. Cacioppo.”
Funding: University of Chicago Booth School of Business, the Templeton Foundation, and the National Science Foundation."

Full Potential

2009-12-06T18:42:00.000-08:00

I'm absolutely amazed at how many people still argue that intelligence is not a valid description of human behavior. Anyone with more than a dozen acquaintances can tell you which of them are the more intelligent. On first meeting someone, most of us quickly evaluate their intelligence, so I'd be very surprised if intelligence is not something that can be objectively measured, with at least as much accuracy and meaning as how good looking someone is. (OK, I actually think IQ can be evaluated a bit more objectively.)

It has been my experience that neither social background nor education has any real impact on intelligence. One's occupation does not seem to predict their intelligence either, though performance in any occupation does. Of course, how long a particular occupation will retain someone of high IQ definitely depends on how interesting that person finds the work and that is quite unpredictable. And, some occupations will be quite limiting for someone without a high enough IQ to perform. For example, you don't find many theoretical physicists with an IQ below 120 though they do come in a wide range of social skill.

Since education, social class and most other environmental factors seem not to have any real effect on IQ, an assertion based only on personal experience, it seems quite reasonable to look for genetic markers. And, since no race is excluded from producing brilliant people those genetic markers must be more basic to humans than are the markers for race. I think the search for such genes is well worth the effort. Note however, that being born with particular traits cannot be blamed entirely on genes. It seems that a great deal of what we are born with is a matter of chance. I'm not even implying environment during development, but rather just chance. I suspect you are born with a particular IQ or g for the same reasons you are born with particular fingerprints.

If I'm right, then a more important question is how to educate people so that we, and they, get the most from what they are born with. I think "no child left behind" should be replaced with "no child's potential left underdeveloped".

-Troy Stark
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com/

Intimidated by Experts!

2009-11-16T11:02:00.000-08:00

Activity in some of your more important brain regions such as the anterior cingulate, a part of the prefrontal cortex involved in critical analysis of what you see and hear, is suppressed at exactly the time that it needs to be engaged. Brain imaging research shows that the areas of your brain that you rely on to “watch for mistakes” are calmed down by the voice of authority. When we perceive someone to be an expert or an authority our defenses against nonsense are lowered. We are much less critical of the advice we receive when it comes from someone we classify as an expert.

Such an automatic obedience response may serve a good purpose in situations where the authority has our best interest in mind but, that doesn’t happen often. Many, if not most, of the interactions we engage in involve authority figures experts. These people advise us on financial matters, fashions, relationships, careers and religious views. A great many of these people we see as experts for no other reason than they told us so. Yet, that is enough for us to dispense with the critical analysis of what they tell us and we end up doing silly things like pouring our money into mutual funds controlled by experts, listening to the critics about movies, taking the advice of political experts and even buying that product you saw on late night TV because the “scientific expert” told you all the benefits.
The reality is our society depends on experts. Unfortunately, the light side of that reality is that experts are less reliable than random chance when it comes to decisions we need to make. Just compare several years of any mutual fund to the S&P 500 or any predictions of political experts or futurists and you’ll see that a blind fold and a dart board would have done better. And, of course, there is the dark side where people masquerade as experts simply because we are more likely to buy what they are selling when they do.

Evidence based decision making is the only way around this problem. Scientific methods absolutely depend on real evidence, but you can’t assume the scientist (expert) really looked at the evidence until you analyze it yourself. Take into account what the experts, authorities and “leaders” tell you, but then wake up and put forth the effort critically analyze what you hear. Such reasoning is not easy and the majority of people in any society will never do it, but that doesn’t have to be you. Question authority. Reason about statements you hear and follow them to their logical consequences. Think –it isn’t illegal yet.

Troy Stark troy@starkeffects.com

Positive Thinking and the Self Development Industry

2009-11-11T11:30:00.000-08:00

I recently read a short book that laid out a more scientific approach to success than I have seen before. The book was Gladwell's "Outliers: The Story of Success". The thesis of the book is that we have been lied to about what creates success and that there is more chance and timing (timing we simply can't control) than we are ever led to believe. Invariably, the stories we hear about success emphasize the character of the person that achieved that success with a suggestion that we will be that successful too, just as soon as we conquer ourselves, but the truth is that success, and I mean really big success, depends on being the right age to accomplish something when the once in history situation arises. Simply put: you must be in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills and you had no way of knowing how to make that happen in advance.

Books on self development have predominently focused on a positive mental attitude telling you "You can achieve anything you believe strongly enough in." These have lead to some absolute nonsense like "The Secret" and others (I love the ones that claim a basis in Quantum Mechanics) proposing the view that you will recieve back from the infinite universe whatever you send by your thoughts to be amplified by that universe. Of course, if you fail, it is your fault for not having the right attitude -you must have held some doubt all along.

Well, reality is what it is and I'm afraid the PMA nonsense leads to the kind of "irrational exuberance" and "pathological hope" that characterises anyone that believes that reality depends on their thoughts (solopsists) and inconvenient physical truths can be overcome by the right attitude or belief -like those with schizophrenia or religious ferver. This PMA stuff also leads to real depression when you must blame yourself for all the failure that you have experienced and all the failure you will experience.

So, I'm going to give you the truth about success as succinctly as I can: If you are going to try to accomplish anything worth accomplishing you are going to fail. You are going to fail more times than you will succeed. Don't "blame" yourself for this, it is simply the way life is. You must make mistakes to learn and you must expect failures on your path. If you are ever going to succeed, you will simply have to learn to adjust and then keep trying. Perseverence is a necessity here. And there is a good use for PMA when it is done right. Your thoughts don't change the universe until you act on those thoughts -and your attitude is nothing more than how you deal with all the failures and struggles. The proper attitude puts things in proper perspective -you expect failure and you intend to keep adapting and trying until you learn how to accomplish your goal. Persistence will overcome many obstacles. Your attitude is a question of how you decide to feel about the things that happen. Oh, here is another important point. It isn't all about chance and timing either, as even Gladwell's book acknowledges that those who succeed are those that put in the time and effort to be ready when chance drops by. If you are not trying to do anything then no opportunity will ever show up. You must have put in the time and effort to develop your skills before opportunity will come along. Which skills you develop should depend on what you actually enjoy doing since there is no way to know in advance what the opportunity is going to look like and I guarantee that hindsight will show you that you developed the wrong skills for most of the opportunities that happen along, but that isn't the point. The point is that you enjoyed developing yourself.

Science & Tech priorities are set by the new admin.

2009-09-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

Peter R. Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget and John P. Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, released a joint memo on August 4th outlining the establishment of scientific priorities for the FY2011 budget.

In the memorandum scientific discovery and innovation are described as, “major engines for increasing productivity, promoting economic growth, safeguarding the environment, improving the health of the population and safeguarding our national security.”

Agencies are asked to redirect resources from, “lower-priority areas,” to scientific and technological activities that are designed to meet four identifiable,“practical challenges,” to administration priorities. Those challenges are described in the memorandum as follows:

·Applying science and technology strategies to drive economic recovery, job creation, and economic growth;

·Promoting innovative energy technologies to reduce dependence on energy imports and mitigate the impact of climate-change while creating green jobs and new businesses;

·Applying biomedical science and information technology to help Americans live longer, healthier lives while reducing health care costs;

·Assuring we have the technologies needed to protect our troops, citizens, and national interests, including those needed to verify arms control and nonproliferation agreements essential to our security

There are four strategic goals outlined to help public agencies meet the requirements:

·Increasing the productivity of our research institutions, including our research universities and major public and private laboratories and research centers;

·Strengthening science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education at every level, from pre-college to post-graduate to lifelong learning;

·Improving and protecting our information, communication, and transportation infrastructure, which is essential to our commerce, science, and security alike; and

·Enhancing our capabilities in space, which are essential for communications, geopositioning, intelligence gathering, Earth observation, and national defense, as well as for increasing our understanding of the universe and our place in it.

Agencies are to describe the expected outcomes of their budget proposals, ensure transparency in their requests and provide, “quantitative metrics,” where at all possible to support their proposals. It further directs federal agencies to clearly illustrate how federal, “science and technology investments contribute to increased economic productivity and progress,” and how these goals and initiatives outlined in the memo are conducted with the, “highest standards of ethical and scientific integrity.”

I'm looking forward to reading some of these proposals, especially the parts illustrating how science and tech investments contribute to increased economic productivity. I think it is very important that the public become aware of how much we depend on science, and also what we can expect science to contribute in the future. I wonder if there is anyway that the media can make scientists as exciting as they made lawyers in the last decade?

T. Troy Stark
troy@starkeffects.com
www.starkeffects.com

Google remembered his B-Day, Hans Christian Ørsted

2009-08-14T09:10:00.000-07:00

Hans Christian Øersted: Danish physicist's birthday is being celebrated with a Google Doodle. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

So, here is the question: Does a Google Doodle bring a science issue up to the status of having a real effect on society?

Of course it does. When google deems someone's birthday worthy of note on their home page, that gets noticed and brings even long forgotten scientists into today's coffee shop topics.

If you are a real physics geek like me, then you already know who Hans Christian Ørsted is. Google's Doodle logo is an illustration of his key discovery: If you run a current through a wire, the electricity creates a magnetic field, which deflects a compass needle. In Ørsted's time there was no field of study called electromagnetics. Now, every physics grad student suffers at least two years of hard calculations using Green's functions and geometry and even special relativity to do E/M experiments on paper or in the computer that would be impossible to do on your table top.

Hans Christian Ørsted discovered E/M just that way -on a table top. Like many discoveries, this one was an accident. But, again like many discoveries this accident happened because somebody was working in the lab fiddling with things he didn't fully understand. That's the life!.

Ørsted's discovery led to a great deal of modern life -electro-magnets, electric generators, transformers and even the mag strip on your credit card.

In 1820, Ørsted was a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Copenhagen. While preparing an evening lecture, he noticed that a compass needle moved away from magnetic north and pointed to the wire whenever current flowed from the battery. With enough playing around, he discovered that it pointed the opposite direction when the battery was reversed.

All of this made quite a stir in society at the time. Invisible currents affecting objects at some distance away with no visible connection between them. It created a whole new world for spiritulists eventually leading to today's proponents of "The Secret", but that is anothe story. In London, the Royal Society gave him a medal, and he was also made a knight of the Prussian Order of Merit, of the French Legion of Honor, and the Danish Order of the Dannebrog. On his death in Copenhagen in 1851, he was given a state funeral.

To honour Ørsted, the scientific community named the unit of magnetic induction after him, in what what is known as the CGS system of units. Of course, only a real physics geek would even know of the cgs system (very suitable for E/M calculations, since it uses a very natural set of constants) but most grad students in physics have done calculations in this system.

I'm thrilled to see that Google remembered his Birthday! (I know I forgot).

troy@starkeffects.com

NIH Directory Scares Me

2009-08-04T18:47:00.000-07:00

President Obama nominated a new director for the NIH. Dr. Francis Collins. He comes with wonderful credentials and some troubling beliefs. Dr Collins is noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes, and his leadership of the Human Genome Project (HGP). Much has been made of Collins’ oft-stated belief in evolution but, an op-ed in the New York Times gives a very different picture. Sam Harris, best-selling author of The End of Faith quotes from a series of slides Collins used in a lecture on science and belief at UC Berkeley. Slide 2: "God's plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings."

OMG. To quote Bob Park: "There is no plan! That is the beauty of Darwinian evolution!" No plan is needed.

Collins is a geneticist who has recently made his name by offering himself up as living proof that a rational person can also believe in God with his 2006 book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief which made him a celebrity in “faith versus reason” circles.

Admittedly I have reservations about a director of the NIH that believes in a divine plan. Such a hypothetical plan would not lend itself to research initiatives that question that plan. However, there is no hard evidence that Collins will be inclined to back away from research that other "born agains" would oppose, but the danger is there considering Collins' high profile in religious circles. It is just that I agree with Sam Harris on this point: "...few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than religion."

Don't take a robot's job!

2009-07-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

James Van Allen was a true American space hero. A year before his death in 2006, he summed-up manned space flight: "It's so old-fashioned." (personal comment to Robert Park)

Bob Park has been harping on this issue for years now on his blog-newsletter, What’s New. In his opinion, manned space flight is absolutely wasteful of our resources and a diversion that prevents real scientific discovery from being achieved. According to Dr. Park, robots are so much better at exploration that humans have no business even trying to explore space –personally that is. It just so happens that we are exploring when we send our robots out there. No doubt they are better than we are: they don’t complain, they can withstand the environment; cold; hot; no air; high radiation; monotony; and possibly dangers we don’t even know about for sure (like the Van Allen radiation belts were). And their eyes and ears and even their sense of touch are better than ours. On top of that, they have senses we never will have. More importantly they can be better at sharing what they find. We humans learn more when we send a robot to do space exploration than we would ever learn by sending another human! Not to mention that losing even one person in a space flight mishap is an incalculable loss, while the loss of a robot is measured in money and time spent by the scientists that create it. It hurts, but we get over it. Actual cost in dollars will always be smaller for sending robots as opposed to humans, more work will always get done when we send a robot and more is learned when we send a robot. –Why in the world would we even consider sending a human to do a robot’s job?

As budgets are planned for our space exploration and domination, we need to realize how much more we get from robots going out there than from people going out there and get more excited about the return for our effort. If we decide that it is more exciting to send a robot, based on the logical reasons for doing so, than it is to send people into that dangerous environment, then maybe our political leaders will be less inclined to take advantage of our emotions with all the grand talk of sending a human crew.

T. Troy Stark
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

Group Think -vs- Intelligent Individuals

2009-07-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

Stephen Pratt, a behavioral ecologist at Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences in Tempe.: "All minds, both collective and individual, have limited capacity—they have to use shortcuts and rules of thumb to solve difficult decision problems, and those shortcuts are expected to sometimes cause mistakes, the ant colonies, however, were unfazed by a challenge that often elicits such mistakes in other animals."
"These findings underscore a nonintuitive point—getting lots of information about a problem may not help decision making if you have only limited computational capacity to process it. You might do better with a strategically limited set of information. The trick, of course, is knowing what information to use and what to exclude."

What Pratt was studying is the way an ant colony makes decisions in comparison to the way that humans or other animals make decisions in situations that often elicit irrational choices in humans and other animals. In his study, the ants, with very limited information on an individual basis, made rational choices with proper comparisons on a group basis in the same situation that causes humans to apply comparisons in an irrational manner. Specifically, we will often face a comparison between two nearly equal choices and statistically choose either one about half the time -in this case a proper comparison, however, if we have a third choice that is worse than one of the other choices in some noticeable way, we often show a bias for the choice that was better by comparison with the really bad option. For example, you may be torn between two options for employment: one position pays a little more money, while the other offers a little more security. If a third choice appears offering much less security -many humans are suddenly not torn between the two choices anymore, now they tend to take the job offering the higher security.

See the report at Scientific American's website

www.sciam.com.

Mindless Collectives Better at Rational Decision-Making Than Brainy Individuals

By Charles Q. Choi

This is just one of the ways groups can make better decisions (defined as more rational) than highly intelligent, over informed, individuals. But, be careful how you apply this knowledge. Following the crowd is not always the right way to go!

-T. Troy Stark,
troy@starkeffects.com
www.starkeffects.com

Seduction, Lies and Cellulose

2009-07-13T13:31:00.000-07:00

One of the real problems with having a technologically advanced society populated by people that don't understand science is plain old fraud. Scams, shell games and self deceptions are too familiar in the energy industry. There have been scams like Steorn's Orbo, Cold Fusion schemes, Sam Leach scammed investors out of millions with an automobile that ran on water, Irving Dardik preaches SuperWaves and who could forget the "smartest guys in the room" .

Well, if it works, somebody will try it again. It appears that Cello Energy of Bay Minette, Alabama, was doing just that. The EPA had a hand in this one too. They have a goal of 100 million gallons of cellulosic fuel by the year 2010 and they were counting on Cello Energy to produce 70 million gallons of it. They are not likely to deliver.

Cello Energy has been ordered by a federal court to pay $10.4 million in punitive damages for fraudulently claiming it could produce cheap diesellike fuel from hay, wood pulp and other waste -cellulosic fuel. In 2007 Cello's owner, Jack Boykin built a facility the way Hollywood does, just the showy parts, and then lured pulp producer Parsons & Whittemore Enterprises to invest $2.5 million in an ownership stake. It seems that P&W CEO George Landegger was not impressed, but the money was invested anyway. Samples of fuel were provided by Cello Energy, but they were derived from petroleum. It turns out that the EPA had been expecting too much from a company that will deliver nothing! What is amazing is the showmanship of Boykin and his company. They claimed to be able to produce 70 million gallons while other companies were promising only a million or two. Should have been a dead give away don't you think? Well, to be fair, the EPA was guilty of getting the 70 million number from just the size of the planned facilities. Take note, if you are going to commit fraud, get your victims to make a few assumptions on their own and make the claims really big.

George Huber of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a chemical engineering professor wrote: "There are no magic processes for conversion of biomass into liquid fuels," and "If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is not true." ----But, people seem less prone to invest when they hear the truth, sooooo......send your money to troy@starkeffects.com (paypal will do) and be one of the first investors in my new technology to capture the energy naturally released in the brains of investors when they suffer an imagination fueled endorphin rush while listening to snake oil salesmen.

Troy Starktroy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

Evolution. It's just a theory.

2008-06-18T22:57:00.000-07:00

How could anyone doubt the family relationship between us the other apes? My Natalie has always recognized how closely her Daddy is related to this guy.

http://www.starkeffects.com

troy@starkeffects.com

Blonde in Zero Gravity

2008-06-14T17:04:00.000-07:00

Blondes in space. And I thought all the blonde hair at my house was out of control.

She is looking at solar panels in orbit. With oil over $130 a barrel, solar panels are looking better all the time.

troy@starkeffects.com

www.starkeffects.com

Special Education is Special -The average of 6 is 6 and a half.

2008-06-02T22:27:00.000-07:00

I´d love for you to read the whole blog here, but if you´re in a hurry, the last paragraph is the punchline.

For the last two years I have had a pretty reliable inside source telling me what actually goes on in one California High School´s special education class. This class is considered an LH class with students having a relatively wide range of IQ level´s but not including profoundly handicapped or severely handicapped students. Several of the students have been competently diagnosed as autistic. These are not the students usually expected to become scientists or engineers but, in my opinion, their education is still important as most of them will be participating members of society and the people responsible for teaching them should take this responsibility seriously. I'm writing to complain that this responsibility has not been entrusted to the best people for the job.

To begin with, the teacher is more concerned with advancing her career into administration than she is with carrying out the duties of her present position. She spends no time teaching, which I thought was a bad thing, but later on I'll explain why maybe it wasn´t. The aid in class has no understanding of learning disorders or how to help these students at all. She has absolutely no patience with their lack of quick comprehension and she chooses to deliberately undermine the efforts of students she has determined to be unpleasant, and, as you might imagine, many autistic or otherwise behaviorally challenged students are unpleasant to be around.

During most of the class days these learning challenged students are assigned to do independent work. There is no lecture to explain the work, they are simply expected to get their books and work on the assignments themselves. Even the brightest students on campus get more attention from teachers than that. A good number of these students fall into the habit of doing nothing and not being noticed at all. These are sometimes students that would actually enjoy learning, but they don´t ask for help.

When students do ask for help they are ridiculed. Not by the other students, but by the teacher or aid. As a matter of fact, the teacher and one aid were sent to a class on working in this type of classroom where one of the points made was that these students are often bullied, and more often than not the bully is the teacher. As a side note, it was mentioned that maybe these teachers may be bullying out of concern. That side note was all it took for this teacher to justify her bullying methods and ridiculing of students. She seemed to learn nothing from the class. She even led the whole class in ridiculing a student who had decided that putting tissue in his nostrils was preferrable to the annoying runny nose... the whole class was amused by the teacher parading in front of the class with tissue in her nose to show how ridiculous it looked. Embarassment is often used as a teaching method in this room, why?

Assignments are given by the teacher with no clear direction. Assignments so vague that many adults would be lost as to where to start. Assignments like: Make a volcano for science class.

Aids sometimes fall into concern for their own status rather than the learning of the students. One aid got annoyed with students not understanding her explanations of how to do a math problem and then asking the other aid for help. She imposed a new rule to solve the problem: If you start an assignment with one aid´s help, then you can´t get help from the other aid for that assignment. What kind of silly-ass rule is that? Such personal insecurities should not be allowed to interfere with the students progress. This same aid was upset that a student that had not put in any effort during the year was suddenly trying to do math homework and and asking the other aid for help in understanding it. She refused to accept work done out of order and actully vocalised her opinion that the student could not avoid a failing grade now and simply had to learn his lesson.

OK, now I´m going to explain why the teacher may have done the most good she could by not teaching these students. She seems not to understand the condition of each student at all, she labels almost everyone of them autistic, which simply isn´t the case. She creates vague assignments and does not direct the students work at all. And to top it off, here is what happens when she decides to teach math:

"OK class, today we are going to learn how to find an average. As an example, we are going to calculate the average of the girls and the boys in this class. What is the average of the girls and the boys in here?" One student volunteers the obvious information: "There are six girls and seven boys if you include the teacher and two aids." The teacher gives a blank stare at the student for a while then: "How did you get that?" With bewilderment the student answers: "I counted." Well, that wasn´t helping the lesson at all so, on she went: She had the boys stand up and wrote each of their names on the board. Then she had the girls stand up and wrote each of their names on the board. Then she gave a number to each name, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 for the boys and 1,2,3,4,5,6 for the girls. ":Now we have to add them together, 6 plus 7 is 13. Now to get the average of the girls take 6 girls plus the 7 boys divided by the 2 possiblities in the class: 13 divided by 2 is 6 and one half. So the average of the girls in the class is six and a half." The math specialist aid has not said a word. No way to know if she had even noticed this amazing result. Of course, the other aid couldn´t resist: "Which one of the boys is half a girl?"

troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

Books that Address Science and Society

2008-04-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

The Genius Engine discusses one of the most critical sciences of this century. This is a well written account of a complicated topic with important implications involving the impact of science on society. Much of the book relates recent research and results showing the functioning of the brain and which parts contribute what characteristics to your thoughts and decision making. Law and morality may both be informed and simultaneously twisted by this new knowlege. As an example: consider the criminal that can show his deficient prefrontal cortex or portions thereof contributed to his lack of respect for the law. He simply cannot be expected to act as a responsible citizen because his brain simply does not have that capacity so we have to let him go. Right? Whatever the answer is, we will be much better able to discuss these issues if we share a common understanding of how the mind functions and that common understanding will come through books like this one.

The Canon Is a wonderful journey through the basics of science that everyone should be familiar with. Best of all, Natalie's personality shows through in every paragraph making this a fun trip.

White matter and learning impairment.

2008-03-01T18:22:00.000-08:00

Half of your brain has been neglected and it may be most significant half when it comes to understanding cognition and mental disorders. New research may even make it possible to improve your thinking –steroids for the brain – maybe not such a great analogy.

It seems that we are slowly becoming aware of the importance of the other half of our brains. Of course, popular culture has known for decades of the differences in the roles of each hemisphere and that same pop culture is slowly realizing the importance of even finer divisions of the gray matter including the mapping of regions of the PFC (prefrontal cortex) into lateral, VM (ventromedial), and orbitofrontal and even rostral regions involved in mixing our emotions with our logic, our memories real and imagined and our beliefs, true or not. We, as a society, are even learning how we might best do that mixing in order to improve our ability to reason as well as live and enjoy life –actually quite a complicated interaction. But that is not the other half of the brain that I’m referring to today.
Learning impairment, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, age related cognitive impairments and even the well known lack of judgment experienced as a teenager may all have origins in the other half of the brain –namely the white matter. We have been aware of the importance of gray matter where the neurons are but our mental performance is actually quite dependent on the white matter where axons that connect different grey matter regions are and where non-neuronal brain cells (glia) are located. Several articles in Scientific American (including the recent March 2008 issue) have discussed the role of glia in cognition. They have also noted the fact that certain outside influences can be detrimental to the myelin sheaths created in the white matter insulating our axons which is essential to clear intelligent thinking. Deterioration of the myelin wrapped around the axons may be causal to many different types of impairments.

Noted in the SciAm article this month by R.Douglas Fields is something I do find rather exciting though. As we age, we wrap our brains in myelin and finally get the complete coating in our 20’s. We are better at learning new things while this is actually being done and we are less adept at learning once this wrapping is complete. There is however a protein, NoGo-A, which is responsible for determining when we are done cooking –or rather wrapping. When that protein is inhibited it may be possible to regain some of our learning capacity. Now that is what I consider exciting and definitely socially unacceptable: Prevent mental maturity, just so I can learn more.

The Golden Compass frightens someone

2007-12-09T20:13:00.000-08:00

I just thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful, imaginative tale with excellent, complex allusions and riveting plot with more symbolism than anyone will catch at first glance. The tale is written by a religious skeptic with an obvious alterior motive to make the viewers think -question. I've noticed a large number of people with dreadful fear of anything that makes people question. They'd rather not know anything that doesn't fit their little world view and they certainly don't want children to start questioning. They have launched a campaign to boycott this great little piece of fiction. If we ever develop a world view that can withstand attacks from new ideas, maybe we won't react with such fear. The fear that reveals our insecurity with a world view that just won't work beyond a little false comfort.
Anyway, the movie was great. I enjoyed it with my little Nicole and was very impressed with Nicole Kidman's performance. Her character was beautiful, slightly vulnerable and extremely dangerous- alot like another Nicole I'm acquainted with. It was fun. I recommend the movie highly!
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com
Think -It isn't illegal yet!

The anthropic principle and a great gift for me!

2007-12-01T13:23:00.000-08:00

I just read another physicist referring to what he probably thinks of as the anthropic principle: That the universe is fine tuned to make life possible. It is true that life as we know it is possible because the universe is the way it is. If it were different, we'd be different or non-existent. This should not suggest to anyone that it was planned that way. We are observing the universe, therefore the universe is capable of supporting observers like us. Unfortunately, we have evolved to assume a purpose for everything so we assign purposes almost automatically which, I think, blinds us to many realities. Oh well, let's get on to something more interesting!

If you want to get me a gift:

This is an extremely exciting technology -If you want to buy me a gift, this is what I want! Amazon's Kindle is a
book reader. It would be a little like carrying around 200 books but in a package smaller than a laptop. I think this is much more exciting than the mp3 players that everyone loves (including me). You buy the books online and pay less than $10. I could save a fortune and not have to add anymore
bookshelves to my house, which already looks like the city library -maybe I could even replace the books I've got
with the electronic version! Anyway, this is something you need! If you happen to know me personally, this is a
gift I would love! For Amazon's Kindle, click here!

I've got to block my NF Kappa B Gene

2007-11-29T23:46:00.000-08:00

I've got to block my NF-Kappa B Gene because, according to a paper in Genes & Development by a team at Stanford University School of Medicne in Californa, it seeems that there really is a genetic program that causes aging. It has long been thought that such a genetic program would have evolved under natural selection and that aging is not just a process of wearing out -since we know we have mechanisms that mitigate that to some extent - but aging is also genetically programmed and now Howard Chang and colleagues have shown that aging of the skin of mice can be reversed (nobody knows yet for how long) by turning off, or rather blocking, a master regulator gene "NF-Kappa B." That is exciting news. I now expect some rhetoric from someone telling me why it is morally wrong to block that gene and reverse aging and I'm taking bets on who will be the first to denounce this new scientific breakthrough.

Why am I so cynical?

- Troy
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

Secularists attacking freedoms?

2007-09-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

Today I read one of the most twisted articles I have ever seen. David Limbaugh wrote that "The secularists demanding the removal of specks from Christians' eyes are oblivious to the planks in their own. Their paranoid predispositions about Christians lead them to the very type of oppressive behavior they wrongly ascribe to Christians. If anyone is guilty of wanting to foreclose debate and impose their values on others, it is these hyperventilating secularists."

He goes on to say that we secularists claim without warrant that there is a consensus on global warming. OK, the truth is I see a consensus on the subject among climate studying scientists. I doubt there is a consensus on proposed solutions but I'm sure that only ignoring evidence would allow me to promote huge wealth based activities that potentially increase the problem without any reference to at least some responsibility for global warming.

He writes: "...With their absence of self-reflection it must never occur to them that in their professed monopoly on 'science,' they squarely violate the fundamentals of the scientific method by forbidding debate and insulating their theories from scientific scrutiny." Is he kidding? We are talking about the difference between evaluating scientific evidence or simply claiming there is none.

He then claims that we malign "intelligent design" proponents for daring to subject our evolution and geology theories to the re-examination that the scientific method requires. What re-examination is he suggesting. Our theories can and will be examined and corrected in perpetuity but there is nothing to be gained by accepting "It was designed that way." It just so happens that design, at least as we understand it, does nothing to explain the way things are while our theories bring about real progress in understanding and controlling the world around us. Short of prayer, which I've found ineffective, there is no value in starting from the hypothesis that the world was designed this way.

It is true that I believe fear is the motivator behind opposition to societal acceptance of homosexuals seeking the same rights as married couples. But, that is because I have no expectation that homosexuality is going to be taught to or accepted by those of us that are simply heterosexual. Again, scientific evidence suggests there is nothing for me to fear from allowing gay marriage which is likely to be just as successful or not as heterosexual marriage.

Religious people do not have a monopoly on morality. Questions about how people should treat each other including abortion, equal rights between sexes, races, IQ levels, hair color, (redheads are superior but that doesn't mean we should have more rights), whatever the difference you want to look at should be seriously considered and decided based on the value to society rather than on "revealed" truth until such revelation is universal, which it never has been. Secularists do not, in general, disregard morality any more than any religious group you want to name and to suggest so is just fearful hate speach. The only real difference here is that when I do choose an action that is not in line with my moral beliefs, I can't blame any supernatural influence or claim absolution because it was the will of some almighty power.

It is true that my worldview does not embrace revealed truth and I do immediately question any claim of truth based only on faith without the need for evidence. It is also true that in my worldview, what I believe to be the best explanation of observed "facts" is always subject to better observations or simpler more elegant explanations. It is also true that I see only self serving dishonesty among those wanting to legislate based on revealed truth. For David Limbaugh to suggest that by agreeing with Alan Hurwitz that the real problem of leadership now is to find a way for people to believe whatever nonsense they want without hurting each other is in some way trying to exert control over society is fairly obviously silly.

T. Troy Stark
troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com/

Mind Reading

2007-07-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

It is official! Science is now on the verge of reading your mind. OK that may be a little of an exaggeration, but the story I'm referring to is still pretty cool. In the August edition of Scientific American, there is an article by Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik called Windows on the Mind. The article actually talks more about the discovery over the last century that the little microscopic motions of our eyes are actually essential to our vision. Without them, we would be unable to see anything unless it moved, which we happen to be better tuned to anyway. The article was pretty good at describing the process of going from wrong assumptions to a better understanding -it seems that these motions were initially assumed to be detrimental to our vision. The small part of the article that had anything to do with mind reading showed up in the last couple of paragraphs as little unimportant asides. It seems that those microsaccades are biased in direction toward those objects that are actually the focus of your attention. When it seems that I haven't even noticed that beautiful girl across the room, measuring the bias in direction of the microsaccades of my eyes would likely betray my attentional focus. I'm afraid the result of that betrayal will probably not surprise anyone! But it is still an interesting result even if it never will provide the government with a mind reading machine. For that, they can hire my consulting firm to study the long list of potential technologies which really are getting too close for comfort.

T. Troy Stark

troy@starkeffects.com

http://www.starkeffects.com/

Dolphins are way cool to watch!

2007-06-07T23:31:00.000-07:00

I was reading a recent article about a theory that dolphin intelligence is due to social interaction. This theory isn't too novel, it has been discussed for at least decades just based on my experience.

More importantly however, I was watching dolphins from the beach today. Arroyo Burrow (sic) beach affords a great view from the restaurant, The Brown Pelican, so that you can watch dolphins or whales while you enjoy dinner. Today however, I saw something that I had never seen in the wild before: dolphins were actually jumping out of the water in beautiful arcs just like they do at Sea World. Such a simple sight is still thrilling to me. Human intelligence is fascinating enough --it makes observing other animals so entertaining! At least I like to imagine that my pleasure in such observations is due to intelligence.

troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

NONSENSE!

2007-05-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

I can't believe the absolute nonsense that I just read in an email designed to get me to buy some "secret revealed" program. Why does quantum mechanics get used like some explanation of magic? This email tried to tell me that quantum mechanics really provides a scientific explanation for "the law of attraction". Even if there were some mystery about the law of attraction -nobody needs quantum mechanics to explain it. I'm quite sure quantum mechanics has only one connection to the world of thought and that is through chemistry- it is a great way to approach chemistry. The law of attraction on the other hand is not misunderstood because it takes quantum mechanics to understand it. It is misunderstood because people want to believe in nonsense. In reality -if you spend your time thinking about something you really want to see happen it still doesn't happen until you DO something to make it happen. The real law of attraction is a law of action--stuff happens when you are out there making it happen. The guys that worked out quantum mechanics were out there making it happen -that was a real creative process of mistakes and triumphs -not some discovery about magic! When you translate your thoughts into action (and what other actions will you have?) then you reap the rewards for those thoughts --and like it or not, most of those rewards will fall short of your desires so --here is the real secret ---keep acting and correcting your actions until you get the result you want! Stop believing in magic since that prevents correct actions.

troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

Orgasms and the Polygraph

2007-05-19T19:00:00.000-07:00

Have you ever lied about an orgasm? Usually (of course, I wouldn't know about this) someone (she) pretends to have one when in fact it never happened. Well, I have heard from a generally reliable source that a polygraph operator would usually be able to accurately tell if you had an orgasm during a polygraph and then lied about it. That is the best you can hope for from a polygraph. It does not accurately test whether or not a subject is lying. It does often present a false positive. That makes this instrument perfect for destroying careers and useless for catching spies. It just so happens that it never has caught a spy or a terrorist. This poor performance record is exactly the reason our government wants to employ this instrument to test the loyalty of the nations scientists working for government labs:

From Bob Park's What's New: A 30 Apr 07 memo notified Los Alamos employees that random polygraph tests of 8,000 personnel in high-risk categories will be conducted by the DOE as part of a new counter-intelligence program.

Why am I not surprised?

troy@starkeffects.com
http://www.starkeffects.com

Science Can't Even Explain Love.

2007-05-13T23:05:00.000-07:00

I've heard complaints lately from a few religiously inclined individuals that I put too much faith in science. "After all, science can't even explain something like love."

I must admit, the scientific exploration of the experience of love is limited to the observable facts of biochemistry and neuro-biology which I find absolutely enthralling. These observables are a step on the road to "explaining" what I think is an emergent property, called emotions, which are based in basic physics and chemistry but are too complex to exist at any lower level. This leaves us with no satisfying explanation of an experience that most of us know when we feel it, but can't really explain. -Just try to tell your best friend what love is. You'll find that you have no idea what it is. You'll still have no idea what love is when you completely explain all of the biochemistry and physics underlying it. You may however, be able to understand why some people are plagued by emotional disorders and be able to help them, but the experience of love will still be no easier to explain than the taste of salt, which could be described at the chemical and neural level but the shared experience is still required to really be able to talk about it.

So, as a scientist I'm left no better off than a poet at providing a satisfying explanation of love. I might even prefer a poet's approach in the situations that count most. But science will be able to help in some situations in a way that I think is important. On the other hand, to tell me that love is a gift from God does no more for me (probably less for me) than to wonder how the experience of love has emerged and evolved. All that really matters is how we enjoy the experience.

troy@starkeffects.com
www.starkeffects.com