Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Aliens by 2035?


Aliens By 2035?
 
A credulous article about SETI claims that we'll find aliens "soon:" http://nautil.us/blog/why-well-have-evidence-of-aliensif-they-existby-2035

Oh? Seth Shostak will bet me a cup of coffee that we'll find aliens by 2035?

If I were a betting man, I'd take that bet. And he might as well buy it for me now, before inflation brings the price of that coffee to $20 or more!

There are many, many problems with Dr. Shostak's piece.
  1. "I'm optimistic by nature--as a scientist, you have to be."
           -Nope. As a scientist, you have to be skeptical. Popperian falsification, anyone? Optimism--or lack thereof--is irrelevant.
     
  2. "Given the current state of SETI efforts and abilities, I feel that we're on the cusp of learning something truly revolutionary."
           -This is going to sound quite crass, but it's true: nobody cares what Dr. Shostak--or anyone else--feels about might happen in the future. Especially when that possibility is so vaguely stated!
           "...learning something truly revolutionary" could refer to anything from finding an extraterrestrial civilization to discovering that magnetic fields are regulated by microscopic men riding microsopic stationary bikes.
           And upon what is this assertion based? A feeling. Very scientific.

  3. "Most of our experiments so far have used large radio antennas in an effort to eavesdrop on radio signals transmitted by other societies..."
           -What if they don't want us to listen to them? Characterizing the SETI search this way is very disturbing, even if this was nothing more than a poor choice of words. If the people who are involved in this program see it as a cosmic game of peeping-tom, that raises the question of whether it's morally right to be pursuing this topic!
     
  4. [quote continued from #3] "...an approach that was dramatized by Jodie Foster in the 1997 movie Contact."
           -Mmm, a made-for-Hollywood scientific endeavor. Because serious science is always fit to be summarized and dramatized in 2 hours.
           This can be forgiven, though, because the search for aliens is inherently interesting.
__

Michael Crichton--yes, the science-fiction author--made some insightful observations about the sociology of science in his famous CalTech lecture in 2003. In that talk, he blasted the apparent mathematical legitimacy of SETI--the Drake equation--as "meaningless." You can read a transcript of that talk here:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf
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Ultimately, SETI is at least partly a PR move. Dr. Shostak discusses his belief that SETI can aid science literacy in a 2002 article: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2004IAUS..213..535S  I would particularly like to point you to page 2, where Dr. Shostak writes "Because of their emotional content, the media can generate excitement for science."

But let's never allow that goal--to get kids excited about science--to compromise the integrity of what makes science so useful.

-At its core, SETI needs money to continue the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. In order to attract funding, it needs to generate publicity. And it generates publicity by saying things like 'we'll find aliens by 2035.'

Unfortunately, the more mundane truth is that we don't know a) the nature of what we're looking for, b) when it will arrive (or whether it will arrive), c) if we'll even know a signal when we detect it, or d) if any such signals even exist!

This fact--that we're blindly groping around a pitch-black desert in hopes of stumbling across a pool of water--doesn't make for good headlines. But it has the virtue of being the truth.

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Despite all the above curmudgeonly objections, I'd personally contribute some funding to SETI if I ever become a multi-billionaire! But to be brutally honest with myself, the probability of that actually happening is smaller than the chance of a pointy-eared humanoid descending from a spaceship and bidding me, "Live long and prosper."


***
This New Scientist article reports on a mathematical case that we may never detect extraterrestrial signals--not even if they cover half of our galaxy!

Shostak has been spoonfeeding this optimistic prediction to media outlets for years. I give him credit for sticking with his initial prediction of contact by ~2035, rather than moving the goalposts. But if 2035 comes and goes with no alien signals yet, Dr. Shostak will be in his early 90s...if he's even still around to see whether or not his prediction has come true. And if it hasn't, I seriously doubt that anyone will criticize a man of such advanced age. But the history of futurists is littered with disappointment; I have no reason to suspect that this prediction will be any different.

If you're really down on futurism and/or want to read a morose counterpoint to the exuberant optimism of most predictions about the future, read this insightful takedown of the whole concept of predicting the future.

***
Wondering about the social media usage of actual college students? 
Check out the results of this totally informal—but realsurvey.

In case you missed it, I review some fantastic, easy-to-use, and FREE stats programs here.
For more help explaining statistical concepts and when to use them, 
please download my freely available PDF guide here!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4ZtXTwxIPrjUzJ2a0FXbHVxaXc

Sunday, September 6, 2020

Pay-to-play?



Pay-to-play? Predators in the Academy

If you're an early-career researcher, and you want to be a professor, how do you demonstrate your suitability for an open position? You typically have to:
  • Provide a cover letter
  • Provide a Curriculum Vitae
  • Provide a Teaching Statement and/or a Statement of Research
  • Provide your unofficial transcripts
But how do you really set yourself apart from other early-career researchers who are applying for the same position?

One way is to be well-connected; a recommendation from a luminary in your field can go a long way! Another option is to have an extensive list of publications, especially if your publications are in prestigious journals with a high impact factor.

It's the latter that I'd like to focus on today.

Since there is an absolutely massive amount of demand for journal publications, the free market has responded to the pressure: the rise of so-called "predatory journals."

https://contexts.org/articles/pay-to-play-journals/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/sep/18/who-should-pay-to-publish-scientific-research
An interview with Jeffrey Beall and overview of the challenges of identifying "predatory publishers:" http://www.nature.com/news/investigating-journals-the-dark-side-of-publishing-1.12666
An archived version of the famous (or infamous) Beall's List: https://beallslist.weebly.com/
A sting operation to identify predatory publishers who will accept anybody as an editor: http://www.nature.com/news/predatory-journals-recruit-fake-editor-1.21662
It's gotten to the point where people are publishing journal articles about predatory journals! http://www.bioone.org/doi/10.2983/035.035.0101
An advocate of open access to research has become disillusioned by the systemic abuses that take place under the auspices of openness: https://ocsdnet.org/confessions-of-an-open-access-advocate-leslie-chan/

How do you tell a "good" journal from a "bad" one? Well, if you're looking for a single list...alas, there isn't one. However, the DOAJ [Directory of Open Access Journals] lists some helpful guidelines on how to identify a high-quality publisher. And the website ThinkCheckSubmit.org [archived version here] also gives authors guidelines.

Monday, July 13, 2020

Around Academia



Around Academia

The first in a roundup series that I've decided to call "Around Academia."

Is 'self-care' just another way of policing people's thoughts, by compelling them to feel happy? Or might it be a cynical marketing ploy to sell products? https://www.coyneoftherealm.com/blogs/news/the-tyranny-of-self-care-this-year-s-model-of-compulsive-happiness

Are early-career female researchers getting due credit for their work? https://www.coyneoftherealm.com/blogs/news/rising-early-career-female-academics-and-second-to-last-authorship
  • Some advice, whether the assertion linked above is true or not: Don't be a jerk. Give people due credit!
On a related note: should we publish fewer papers? Nelson, Simmons, and Simonsohn make a compelling case: http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/DPlab/papers/publishedPapers/Simmons_2013_Lets%20Publish%20Fewer%20Papers.pdf
  • I can't resist including this quote from page 292: "Under the current system, researchers are heavily rewarded for having new and exciting ideas and only vaguely rewarded for being accurate. Researchers are trained to defeat the review process and conquer the publisher. Uncovering a new and true insight is quite helpful in that process, but it is hardly necessary."

    Yikes. An savage indictment of the current state of the publication process (rather than in its theoretical/ideal form)!
Are yoga and mindfulness simply fads with more hype than substance? http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2017/07/19/creating-illusions-of-wondrous-effects-of-yoga-and-meditation-on-health-a-skeptic-exposes-tricks/


Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics



Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

In an interesting post, Michael Batnick, the Irrelevant Investor, makes a critical point about the oft-overlooked limitations of data in the world of behavioral finance: http://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2018/04/04/the-limits-to-data/

Using Excel shows you how a robot should allocate its lottery winnings.
It doesn't show you that 70% of human lottery winners go bankrupt.

Darwin famously didn't trust complicated mathematics ("I have no faith in anything short of actual measurement and the Rule of Three," he wrote in a letter). He wasn't wrong: complex procedures can obscure what's going on 'under the hood.' This can render a formula's weaknesses virtually invisible.

Have you heard about the studies showing that irrelevant neuroscientific information in a research summary makes people rate the conclusion as more credible? The same seems to go for math—when people see some complex, technical information, they'd often rather just believe it instead of thinking critically.

http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/researchcourse/images/statisticsirony.gif
 By Signe Wilkinson, for the Philadelphia Daily News
http://www.bcps.org/offices/lis/researchcourse/images/statisticsirony.gif


Sunday, March 18, 2018

Stats Doesn't Have to be Scary!



Looking for a free, open-source, easy-to-use statistics program? If you haven't heard about JASP before, then I suggest you read my blog more often! 😂 I've already promoted the use of JASP in the classroom and in research, despite a few limitations such as the inability to edit graphs.

Check out the full playlist: 

In trying to probe the limits of JASP, I uploaded a dataset with over 40,000 rows and 6 or 7 columns of data. It took a minute to upload such a large file, but there was no problem with running analyses even on a large dataset such as that one!

I think most behavioral researchers could spend their entire careers using this program, as long as they also have another program handy to generate publication-quality graphs. R is a popular solution for this (though you'll have to learn a bit of programming to use it).

Benjamin Nanes, MD, PhD, recommends additional options such as ImageJ or Inkscape. They're free, which is a big plus for impoverished graduate students and/or those who simply want to avoid the hassle of trying to get a license for SPSS or another such program on their personal computers.

Though I haven't tried these myself (yet!), I trust Dr. Nanes' recommendations and plan to try them out soon. Another option, also recommended by Dr. Nanes, is Inkscape: this could be used to add text (such as axis labels) to the graph generated by JASP and export it in a vector format that your journal will accept.

Everything I've said so far about JASP also goes for jamovi, another free and open-source program with a user-friendly interface. JASP started development before jamovi, so it's a little further along in its capabilities, but the original lead programmer for JASP is the lead programmer for jamovi, so there are many similarities between the programs--and I like both of them! jamovi does have a few features that JASP lacks, including the ability to see the R syntax for a given operation. This makes jamovi a great bridge for those who would like to learn R!

Since both JASP and jamovi are based on R but provide a far more visually appealing user interface, the analyses are trustworthy (though I've double-checked some analyses myself) and the programs themselves are easy to use.

In any case, if you're wondering why I like JASP so much, I made and edited a series of videos yesterday showing how to install JASP, upload files, and run most of the common tests in JASP 0.8.6.0. I've compiled these videos into a YouTube playlist; note that the instructions for jamovi are going to be quite similar.



screenshot of JASP 0.8.6.0 from my own computer

If you haven't already tried JASP or jamovi, what are you waiting for?


***
Wondering about the social media usage of actual college students? 
Check out the results of this totally informal—but realsurvey.

In case you missed it, I review some fantastic, easy-to-use, and FREE stats programs here.
For more help explaining statistical concepts and when to use them, 
please download my freely available PDF guide here!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4ZtXTwxIPrjUzJ2a0FXbHVxaXc

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Peer Review On Trial



Peer Review Gone Wrong
or, A Cynic's Manifesto

This behavior should get your scientific knickers in a knot: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/23/3m-lawsuit-pfcs-pollution/

Essentially, 3M used perfluorinated chemicals in the production of some of their products (like Scotchgard). Research has demonstrated that such chemicals may harm humans, other organisms, and the environment when they seep into the ground water.

The State of Minnesota sued 3M for this; 3M settled the case for less than 1/5 the amount of the lawsuit, and all without admitting wrongdoing. And 3M had the gall to release a statement describing the settlement as "consistent with 3M’s long history of environmental stewardship."

With 'environmental stewards' like that, who needs polluters?...

Just as outrageously (perhaps more so, if you're an early-career researcher!), this article points out that Minnesota's lawsuit named a widely-published professor, Dr. John Giesy, who allegedly took money from 3M while putting obstacles to publication in the path of scientists whose work showed that perfluorinated chemicals can be dangerous.

State's evidence includes this e-mail, and this particularly damning one, which shows that Giesy knew perfectly well that he was protecting 3M and its interests.

***

Monday, January 15, 2018

In memoriam of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.



On this date in 1929 (January 15), the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born.


To honor his legacy today, I'd like to share a couple of his important works. Here's a brief excerpt from "Letter From a Birmingham Jail:"
I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'...We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was 'illegal.' It was 'illegal' to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.


The entire "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" is brilliant, insightful, and well worth a read! The full text can be found at http://amp.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article194707929.html


The "I Have a Dream" speech, an instant classic, was delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington in 1963. Fortunately for posterity, his speech was recorded in its entirety. Here it is, via YouTube:

Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Though the man himself was mortal, his actions, his words, and his legacy of nonviolent resistance to injustice shine as brightly today as they did in the 1960s!

I would like to leave you with two other inspiring quotes from the Rev. Dr. King: 



Always remember Dr. King's principles and his commitment to fairness and justice. May we all work with tireless integrity to uphold these principles, in all times and places, and for all people.

ResearcherID