The vaccination debate

Sometimes I wonder how the anti-vaccination movement have managed to move the debate to the extent they have. Today the debate in the media tends to be about whether a certain vaccine have barely measurable side effects or not. 

What tends to be forgotten or not mentioned is that vaccinations saves millions of lives and could save millions more if everyone had access to and used vaccines. The World Health Association estimates that vaccinations saves 3 million people every year and that if vaccination was available (and used) world wide, another 3 million people could be saved. In the US there has been a 99% decrease in deaths from vaccine preventable diseases, such as diphtheria, mumps, pertussis and tetanus since the vaccines have been introduced. Smallpox used to kill 400.000 people annually, until a vaccination was discovered. Now this disease is extinct. Before there used to be around 400.000 cases of polio each year. Following the introduction of the vaccine, there are around a 1000 cases per year. 

The bottom line is that vaccinations save lives, many many lives. Still people in Sweden are now raging over the suggested link between the swine-flu vaccine and narcolepsy, in which less than a hundred extra cases may have occurred due to vaccination. Of course I sincerely sympathise but no sane human being should question the value of vaccination in general because of this potential misfortune. 

Review of "At Home" by Bill Bryson

I am a big fan of Bill Bryson. His writing has caused me to laugh out loud in inappropriate situations time and time again. All his travel books are absolutely amazing and I recommend them to anyone. I also liked his short history of nearly everything, which provides an enjoyable introduction to science history, albeit not as funny as his travel books.

At Home sounded like it would be a book both funny and educational at the same time. In addition I feel that there is a bias in my historical knowledge towards war and despair and I hoped that this book might remedy that.

So maybe my disappointment with this book, in part, stems from my high expectations. While I did indeed learn quite a lot about things that you don't get from traditional history books, the book seemed rather disorganized, which was frustrating. In addition only rarely did Bryon flex his fantastic humor. Why Bill? It is like having Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio in a movie wearing Burkas...

Right at the start of the book Bill rightly points out that history generally ignores all the things we do most of the time such as eating, sleeping, socializing, having sex, etc. With this introduction, Bill goes on to tell the story of the Paxton's Crystal Palace and the great exhibition for which it was built. The great exhibition is a good starting point because so many new inventions, which changed our lives but rarely makes it to the history books, were shown there for the first time.

Bryson then takes us on a 700 page tour of a house, with each room leading to different histories. For instance, you will hear about the construction of the Eifel tower, a completely useless construction, which still was deemed a better project than another proposition - a 70m high guillotine. We learn about Magellan's voyage across the pacific where his crew (those few that survived) ate rat droppings and sawdust. We learn that burial grounds were lacking and that corpses were more or less piled on top of each other. The place where the national gallery stands, 70.000 bodies are estimated to have been buried.  

Yet another fascinating story is the one about lighting and how people used to walk streets in complete darkness which was convenient for criminals but not for ordinary persons. Then came the time of the oil lamps which caused innumerable fires as well as wide spread whale deaths. At last electricity was discovered and the light bulb was invented, with one light bulb providing lighting equivalent to numerous candles. What fantastic progress! I think it is difficult to imagine what life must have been like before. Of course there were the all to common anti-progress people who said that electricity was dangerous and would spell our surmise, when Edison assistant accidentally electrocuted himself they became even surer of them selves. One does not have to look far to find comparative situations today.

Bryson will provide the reader with many more snippets of interesting information, which may come in handy at the next cocktail party, here are a few of my favorites…

·      In the past chairs were always placed up against the wall (to avoid tripping over them in the dark) and therefore chair manufacturer did not paint the back of chairs.

·      Peppercorn is actually a dried wine, which used to be an immensely valuable commodity.

·      Mice can squeeze through 10mm cracks and are everywhere humans are

·      Rats do enter houses via the toilet

·      Before the invention of synthetic fertilizer, bird droppings were the favored product, and Peru’s export largely consisted of bird shit.

·      George Washington determined the location of Washington DC – near his plantation

·      Approximately 300.000 people in the UK are seriously injured from falling in the stairs each year.

·      Selling corpses to anatomists used to be a lucrative business

·      Smallpox used to kill 400.000 individuals each year before a vaccine was made

·      Queen Anne was so fat she had to be lifted out of Windsor castle using a crane

This list could of course be much longer, and if you decide to read the book you will get a lot of this. However, as already hinted at I think that the book lack a structure or a thread which is easily followed. The connection between the room that a chapter is focused on and what Bill writes about is sometimes… elusive

One of the things I found a bit disappointing was that the book is very centered on the UK and US, which I suppose I should have expected, but I really would like to know more about the everyday life of people in different cultures.

All in all, while this book may be a hit for some people it is not one that I would recommend to my friend. Rather go for one of Bill Bryson’s other books, which are frequently unforgettable. 

Thinking about doing something is almost the same as doing it

Would you believe that just thinking about doing something can improve actual performance? While this may seem far fetched, a lot of research is actually pointing in this direction. This is because imagining/visualizing something, to the brain, is the same thing as actually doing something minus the motor output. So for instance when I imagine myself scoring a long distance free kick at home in my couch my brain will do approximately the same things as it would if had been standing there on the pitch. Similarly, remembering a certain event in ones life will activate the same set of neurons that was active when that event was experienced, but this time the visualization is generated without the help of external sensory systems (eyes, touch, hearing taste etc etc).

This set up has many, many implications. One recent and interesting implication is that simply thinking about eating will cause a feeling of satiety, which in turn will result in reduced calorie intake (see reference below). So one way to loose those extra pounds is to think a lot about eating... 

Also related to this are the so called mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are neurons that fire both when you are doing something, say moving your hand, and when you are observing someone else doing the same thing. Upon hearing this many people immediately jump to conclusions that brains must be communicating via quantum entanglement vibrations at dark energy frequencies. A much more plausible explanation for the phenomenon is that when you see someone else do something, you typically imagine yourself doing the same thing. If brain A and brain B are fairly similar then the same sets of neurons in the same locations in the brain are probably involved in planning the action -  hence the mirror neuron effect...

I am obviously just touching the tip of the iceberg of this interesting field of research and philosophical thinking, and all I can do is to encourage all readers to go check it out for yourselves.

Morewedge CK, Huh YE, & Vosgerau J (2010). Thought for food: imagined consumption reduces actual consumption. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330 (6010), 1530-3 PMID: 21148388

The Amalekite Genocide

In the old testament God says (1 Samuel 15) "... Now go attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

It is absolutely incomprehensible for me how anyone want to even claim that books containing passages (plural), such as the one above, can be a source of moral authority. Even we assume that this is not what literally happened, I still think that it disqualifies the bible as a source of morality... Also listen to the unbelievable discussion about the Amalekite genocide between christian John Allister, and atheist Justin Schieber from Reasonable doubts.

Book review: The Demon Haunted world by Carl Sagan

What would the world be like if it was not for science and the technologies science have provided us with? While some may feel nostalgic in a “back to the jungle” kind of way, the truth is that science have allowed us to live healthier, more comfortable, more enlightened, and longer lives compared to any other time in history. On average we live 20-30 years longer than a hunter gatherer, and because of new technologies, children today grow up with an awareness of what happens, not just in their own neighbourhood, but in the whole world. A King in the 19th century would come nowhere near the living standard of a peasant in the west today. Though we do not live in utopia, I feel lucky to live in this age rather than say a hundred or two hundred years ago.

With this backround Carl Sagan goes on to explain the difference between science and pseudoscience and religion, providing us with many examples of pseudoscience along the way.
People often ask if science is not just another religion, pointing out that scientist, like priests, are merely human beings, and that they are (like priests), not immune to corruption or emotions such as pride. It is indeed undeniable that scientists can be corrupt, hold on to ideas for too long, and even on rare occasions, fabricate data. What distinguishes science from pseudoscience and religion however is that everyone who calls him or herself a scientist accept the basic idea that we do not know anything for certain, that we should test all ideas and theories to see if they fit the available evidence, and if a certain theory does not fit the data we should throw away the theory, not the data. This basic mindset is the reason that scientic theory have progressed while religious ideology stands still, why we now have replaced the Newtonian model of the universe, which was a quite good description of the universe, with Einstein even better model. Pseudoscience on the other hand puts forth theories that often cannot be tested and when they can be tested logical fallacies are used to disregard the data - throwing out the pseudoscientific theory is not an option.

As an example of a pseudo-scientific claim, Carl Sagan analyzes in detail, the claim of extra-terrestial abductions, which two percent of Americans claim to have been subjected to. This would means that (unless the aliens specifically target Americans) one hundred million people have been abducted world wide. How is it possible that all evidence we have is a few blurry unconvincing pictures? Is it not more likely that our evidently imaginative, hallucinogenic minds that dream and daydream, see patterns where there are non, have made up aliens? Would it be more of a miracle if no one ever thought they saw an alien? Also, why do people who have never heard of aliens (in the media) never see them, and why did people in the middle ages see demons but never the aliens that are described by believers today?

Sagan also discusses the phenomenon of repressed memories. Despite the fact that there was no evidence to support their existence, nor any good evolutionary reason why we should have them (it generally aids fitness to remember when you have been hurt), it was a prominent view among psychoanalysts that people who had experienced abuse as children repressed these memories which only surfaced during psychoanalysis years later. Particularly worrying was the fact that therapist, following the guidelines in various therapy handbooks, often persuaded their patients that they had experienced abuse even when there was no other evidence available. One troublesome example is Paul Ingram whose daughter, during therapy, started to retrieve memories of her father killing and eating babies. Though he intitially denied the claims he too eventually started retrieving repressed memories of sexual abuse, and later he confessed to being part of a satanic cult that had murdered 25 babies. Only when a skeptical scientist (Ofshe) implanted memories that were demonstrably false in Ingram did people start to question the theory in general.

What can we learn from examples such as this. One fundamental lesson is that it is good to be skeptical or as Carl Sagan has said elsewhere, be open minded but not so open minded that your brain falls out (or something like that). We should be especially skeptical, and require substantial evidence when hearing seemingly amazing claims such there is a person who can live without eating (which was actually, amazingly, told to one of my daughter at her school), or that homeopathy (disease causing agents diluted to the extent that there are no molecules left) can cure something. Another important lesson from Sagan is that it is ok to reserve judgement. Do aliens exist? Will global warming become a disaster for human kind? I don’t know this and it is ok to be on the fence and wait for more data to arrive

In the remaining part of the book Sagan discusses various ways that society could increase, curiosity, skepticism, and scientific literacy. To what extent can we rely on the free market to finance science, given that short term payoff is often small? How does the media profile in the modern society affect peoples belief and scientific literacy? How can schoold be transformed to encourage skeptical inquiry? Personally I have tried to follow his advice to always take my children's question seriously (even though they are sometimes tedious questions). If there is one lesson I want my children to bring with them it is that asking questions is a good thing, and I do not want to kill their astonishing ability to come up with new questions all the time.

Though I like this type of book and though I am a big fan of Carl Sagan I did walk away from this book feeling that it was a little bit unorganized. Sagan jumped around between different subject a little too much and it was hard to find a thread to hold on to (much like this review I suspect). Still allll in all, The Demon haunted world is a book that gives its reader a comprehensive introduction to scientific and skeptical thinking. It is written in an engaging, passionate style.

Book review: Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman

I generally dislike self help books (especially the ridiculous ones claiming that the universe or quantum laws are doing the job for you). However, if a book at least aspires to be science based then I am willing to give it a try. In addition positive psychology i.e., the scientific study of what makes happy people happy, is a hot topic within psychology today and Martin Seligman is one of the founders of this field.

For these reasons I was able to overcome my fear of being pursuaded to change my life by a silly self help book. It was a nice surprise when early on Seligman acknowledged that happiness is not everything. One can find meaning in life without being extraordinarily happy. Interestingly, happy/optimistic people are actually quite inaccurate in their beliefs about the world when compared with depressed people. For instance, happy people thought they were in control of completely random events much longer than depressed people who acknowledged their inability to affect events much earlier.

Still happiness, at least statistically, is correlated with many beneficial effects. Happiness and optimism correlates with longevity, income, and ability to endure pain, and whether or not someone would end up in a happy marriage correlated with the type of smile (genuine or fake panam smiles) people had on photos from their youth.

So how do you become happy? Having the right genes helps but at least according to Seligman (who does quote a lot of studies), there are thing you can do to become happier. Be warned though, it requires an effort. Up to a rather low limit, money makes you happier. Having friends and a wife is also correlated with happiness.

Another strategy if you do not fancy wives and friends but would still like to be happy is to engage in gratifying activities. Gratifying activities (e.g. hiking) are the one that make you feel good about yourself for a “long” time after you have done them (often they require you to work in some way). This should be contrasted with pleasurable activities (e.g. eating chocolate) that make you feel good when you do them but not afterwards. Seligman (thankfully) does not say that you should never engage in pleasurable activities, only that to achieve happiness we should really focus on gratifying activities.

Seligman further argues that it is important to use your “signature strengths”. Signature strengths are essentially the positive parts of your personality. This includes things such as passion, curiosity, openness, integrity, sense of justice humour etc etc. In other words, the things that others value in you. Try to steer towards situations that let you use your signature strengths and you will become a happier person...

Have this book changes my life? Not really, no. It was interesting and it has made me think more about what type of activities I find gratifying which include training and doing research, and I try to do more of this. All in all “Authentic Happiness” is a good interesting book that I would recommend it to people interested in positive psychology, and who would like a science based understanding of happiness and its consequences.

Book review: Complications by Atul Gawande

Would you let a young inexperienced surgeon operate on your child or yourself, even if it involved a greater risk of complications, so that they could become better surgeons? Almost everyone would answer no to this question and indeed when the authors own son experienced a complication, he insisted on an experienced surgeon. Despite this it is an unavoidable fact that surgeon need practice and if they are not allowed to practice there will be no good surgeons in the future.

The reader of this book will receive an insight into the dilemmas faced by surgeons. It is a book that acknowledges the fantastic benefits of surgery while simultaneously acknowledging the fact that doctors are merely human beings and that even with the best of intentions mistakes are frequently made.

Some questions discussed (without aspiring to provide a definite solution):

• How can you provide young surgeons with practice opportunities without compromising the care of patients (and on how many animals do you let them practice before allowing them to operate on humans)? 
• How much should you trust a doctors “intuition” - and how does it compare to neural networks and machine algorithms? 
• How should you deal with bad doctors - doctors who compromise the care of their patients because they have a depression, are stressed out or have a drinking problem (again doctors are just human beings and are affected by such things too)? 

Gawande takes on these and other questions. He is consistently honest about the limitations as well as the benefits that surgery involves and it seems that he does not hide unpleasant truths. All in all, Complications is a good intriguing book which I would recommend to anyone interested in surgery or medicine in general.

Book review - Science of Evil by Simon Baron Cohen

Simon Baron Cohen’s fundamental idea is that in order to prevent evil we must first understand its causes. How was Josef Fritzl capable of locking up his own daugter in his basement and then rape her on a daily basis for more than a decade? The typical reaction to this type of story is that Josef Fritzl is an evil man, and he did what he did because he was evil. But what does it mean when you say that someone is evil, and does deeming someone as an evil person have any positive side effects?

These are of course difficult questions and I don’t think that Baron Cohen provides a complete answer to them (which would have been a lot to hope for). What Baron Cohen does claim is that if we want to prevent evil we must first understand it. He further suggests that individuals, such as Fritzl, who commit horrendous acts probably suffers from a lack of empathy, that is a lacking ability to see the world from another persons perspective. Borderline patients, psychopaths and narcissists are three mental disorders that have a common feature, namely zero empathy. In other words they are more or less incapable of seeing the world from another persons perspective and therefore they may not get the same “gut response” when they hear about Fritzl.

Many people lack empathy, but not all of them endorse in “evil”. Other factors such as upbringing and attachments to caregivers can influence whether a person born with deficient empathy becomes an offender or learns how to follow the rules of society despite lacking some of the intuitions that derives from having empathy.

Simon Baron Cohen’s expertize lies in the field of autism which is another mental dissorders characterized by a lack of empathy. Individuals that have a autism spectrum dissorder (this category includes those with asperger syndrome), also behave in ways that reveal a lack of empathy, however, they are often good at systematizing, that is seeing relationships between various variables in the world. Because of this special ability they have benefited the world in many ways
Rather than deeming individuals evil, we should try to understand why evil acts are committed. To look at people with a severe lack of empathy is a good and plausibly fruitful starting point for such an endeavour.

Simon Baron Cohen, is a terrific writer with the ability to convey complex ideas and complex research findings in an accessible and easy to understand way. This book as well as “The essential difference” show that this is indeed the case.

Manchester United starting lineup vs Everton

Tomorrow the premier league starts again which I am really looking forward to. I am extra encouraged this year because my team (Manchester United) have signed to world class players over the summer. Kagawa from Japan was one of the best players in Bundesliga last year, and won the title for the second time in a row and then there is Van Persie, top scorer in the premier league last year. Vidic is also back which will certainly improve the defense. 

Here is my suggested line-up vs Everton on sunday, very offensive I know, but it seems to me that you cannot leave out neither Kagawa or Van Persie... Also both Rooney and Kagawa are responsible defensively...

  

Misconceptions about sceince

A colleague at my University who also writes a blog called "Åse fixes Science" recently linked to an excellent resource where common misconceptions about science are straightened out.

If you believe in any of the following statements I recommend that you take a look at the site. My personal experience as a scientist confirms everything that is written on the page.

Science is complete! - No it's not
Science is not a creative process! - It is
Scientists are always objective! - No, they are people
There is one scientific method that all scientists use! - No there are many methods

On two points I would have added some information to the page however. First, when the author discusses whether all scientists are atheists it is stated and statistics are provided to show that this is not the case. It is stated for instance that 75% of scientist believe that religions convey important truths. I think that it would have been appropriate to add that compared to the population at large there are more atheists among scientists than in the population at large.

The second point which I agree with but would like to add to is whether there is one scientific method. Anyone who knows the slightest bit of information about science knows that scientists use an almost limitless number of methods - anything that will allow them to get a better model of reality. However, I think that in another sense there is a scientific method. All scientific methods (or "The scientific method") are systematic, it does not have logical inconsistencies, and any method used should possible to try again to confirm the results. Good scientists follow such basic principles...

The world is getting better

I recently finished Harvard Professor Steven Pinker's most recent book called "The better angels of our human nature: Why violence has declined". This 1000 page book Pinker argues convincingly that all categories of violence (war, murder, assaults, and rape) has decreased substantially throughout history. What about the 2WW with 50 million plus deaths. While this was indeed the most destructive war in terms of the absolute number of dead people, it is not the most destructive if you look at the percentage. Genghis Khan for instance, in his raids reached a 40 million figure almost a thousand years ago, a huge proportion of the people around at that time. In other words, for the average individual it was way more dangerous in Genghis Khans time than when Hitler was alive.



Importantly the number of wars have decreased throughout history and since the 2WW there have been fewer wars than ever before (despite serious tensions during the cold war I may add). It is of course easy to think that there are a lot of wars because almost every war is covered in the media in a way that is quite new.

Likewise the murder rate has gone from 50-100 persons per 100.000 per year in the middle ages to an average that is lower than 10 persons per 100.000 per year in the west today (in Sweden where I live the rate is more like 1 person in 100.000 per year).

Why has violence decreased so much? Pinker argues, and after reading his book I agree, that the main historical factor is the development of states i.e. an uninterested third party that can settle disputes that would previously spark violence. To call a state "uninterested" may be an overstatement since in order to flourish it is in the states interest that its subjects do not fight. Apart from this rationale Pinker also presents a large amount of data showing that the establishment of a state is correlated with a strong decrease in violence.

The other main factor Pinker argues is responsible for the decline of violence is rational-abstract thinking. Today we live in a global world, and like never before we get to peek into other peoples lives, even if they live on the other side of the globe. It is almost impossible and it is definitely not socially acceptable to dismiss other peoples suffering just because they live in another country.

If this sounds interesting, listen to the TED lecture with Pinker where he gives you a short outline.
Another authors who has similar ideas although his explanation is somewhat different is Matt Ridley, listen to him below.



References:
Pinker, S. (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature. Viking Adult.

The important peer review comes after the peer review.

It is not a secret among scientists that the peer review system which is used as a sort of quality control prior to publication is flawed. When a scientists thinks that he or she has made a discovery the general procedure is to write up a paper containing an introduction to the questions addressed, the methods used (the "scientific method" should really be plural as in "scientific methods" because in science a wealth of different methods are used to create ever improving models of the "real world"), the results found and then a discussion in which you discuss your work and how it relates to other scientists results.

The paper is then sent to a journal. If the scientist thinks his or her paper is groundbreaking it may be sent to nature or science, but there are many other options as well. The editor of the journal may then decide whether the paper is rejected immediately (editors have a lot of power), or whether it will be sent out for a review (notice that editors cannot just go ahead and accept a paper, however fantastic it seems.).

What people refer to as "peer review" is when a paper is sent to a few scientists (usually 2-3) in the same field, who will carefully read the paper and give their opinion on it. They may say the article lacks in news-value, that the method used has flaws or that one has forgotten to discuss a certain relevant paper (often their own...). Based on the reviews from these experts the editor makes a choice, will the article be published, rejected or they encourage you to do some changes and then send it in again.

So lets say you got through all this and managed to get your paper accepted by a top-notch scientific journal. Is your conclusions now established dogma, or scientific fact. Is it written into the holy bible of science never to be changed? No! When your article has been published the real peer review process starts, your article will now be discussed by other scientists in the field. When it is published it is open for everyone (with a subscription to the journal) to read and comment upon. It may be that after a few years a fatal flaw is found in the paper and no-one will believe in it anymore.

A good example is the faster than light neutrinos where the authors did not believe in faster than light neutrinos themselves but they still published their data allowing other scientists to add their interpretations/suggestions. Pretty fast someone figured out that the results was merely caused by a measuring error in so and so, which was later confirmed. Now no-one believes in faster than light neutrinos. The lesson is that although scientists are often stubborn and stick with their theories to the bitter end, science at large has proven to be extremely flexible, and almost on a daily basis theories and hypothesizes are questioned or modified to describe reality a bit more accurately.

For those who think that science is just another religion it is also interesting to compare how often you make changes in the bible (next to never), and how often you make changes to science textbooks, the foundation of what we teach new students in a field. In neuroscience may textbooks come out with new editions every 2-4 years to keep up with all the new facts.

Video games and violence

A big and important question in our society is whether playing video games, which people of all ages do more and more, causes more violence/aggression. Popular videogames such as Grand Theft Auto (GTA) often involves a lot of violence/murder and it would not be an unreasonable hypothesis that this could affect the person playing the game through observational learning.

I will not argue that there is definitely no effect of video game playing on violence, however, if there is such an effect it is being overshadowed by the significant decline in all types of violence that we have been through history. This trend towards a more peaceful society have in fact been particularly pronounced in the last couple of decades, that is, since video games became popular. In short, while people are playing more videogames, our society is getting increasingly peaceful i.e. there is a negative correlation between the amount of time people playing video games and violence. This pattern is more consistent with the idea that video games makes people more peaceful although I do not think data would support that idea either.

I don't think anyone will question that people are playing more videogames today but if you do take a look at these charts. If you don't believe that violence has decreased in modern times (maybe you even think that it is increasing), then you should read this excellent book by Harvard Professor Steven Pinker where he gives you all the data

Pinker, S. (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature. Why Violence Has Declined (p. 832). Viking Adult.. 

Doves commuting to work

Sometimes animals do surprising things. There is the chimp Santino who, in his zoo cage, gathered a pile of rocks that he later tried to hit tourists with. What is impressive here is not the throwing (I believe that monkeys are quite good at that), but rather the fact that Santino gathered the stones before the tourists arrived.

Another example that many people have probably heard about is the crows in Australia who like nuts (see video below). The problem for the crows is getting the nuts open - they cannot do it themselves so instead they have developed a very clever strategy to achieve their goal. They fly to an intersection with traffic-lights and then wait until the cars stop (red light on), at this point they place their nut in their intersection and then fly up to a light-post of wire and wait for the cars to start driving. The cars then crack the nut and next time when the traffic light are red the crows fly down to the road and get their reward. Very clever indeed!

A third example that I only heard about yesterday, even though it was in our own Capital (Stockholm), is the doves who commute to work. In Stockholm there is a train network which is partially below ground and partially above. Doves have regularly been seen to board these trains, drive one station and then exit the train again. It seems that their rendezvous is "Farsta Strand" where there is plenty of cafes and restaurants where they find their food. The doves typically fly home however, sometimes they commute back from their work as well.

In some of the articles writing about this they say that the doves in London are even cleveler... They sometimes travel more than one stop.... My guess is that these behaviors (maybe with the exception of the chimp) are all extreme cases of operant conditioning. For some unlikely reasons the birds more or less accidentally dropped a nut or entered a train and then received a significant reward (either a nut or a lot of saved energy), which increased the likelihood that the behavior would occur again.

The secret: The Law of Attraction and Einstein

Rhonda Byrne, author of "The Secret" is an expert when it comes to grabbing quotes from dead scientists to make it sound as if their quotes support her crazy idea that what you are thinking affects the universe. By the way, Byrne when stating her "Law of Attraction" doesn't just mean that what you think changes how you behave which changes the way people interact with you (a statement even I would agree with). Rather Byrne wants us to think that there is a fundamental, universal law (like the law of gravity), which entails that everything that has ever happened to you (at least that is how I interpret it), came about because of what you thought - happy thought lead to good things and negative thought lead to bad things...

Byrne writes that: 

"The law of attraction is a law of nature. It is as impartial as the law

of gravity."

"Nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it through persistent thoughts. "

"Often when people first hear this part of the Secret they recall

events in history where masses of lives were lost, and they find

it incomprehensible that so many people could have attracted

themselves to the event. By the law of attraction, they had to be on

the same frequency as the event. It doesn't necessarily mean they

thought of that exact event, but the frequency of their thoughts

matched the frequency of the event. (p.28)"

Anyways, back to quoting dead scientist turning and twitching in their grave. On page 40 Byrne writes that:

"Marci Shimoff shared a wonderful quote from the great Albert

Einstein: "The most important question any human being can ask

themselves is, 'Is this a friendly Universe?'"

Knowing the law of attraction, the only answer to give is, "Yes,

the Universe is friendly." Why? Because when you answer in this

way, by the law of attraction you must experience that. Albert Einstein

posed this powerful question because he knew The Secret.

He knew by asking the question it would force us to think and

make a choice. He gave us a great opportunity, just by posing the

question."

To take Einstein's intention even further, you can affirm and proclaim,

"This is a magnificent Universe. The Universe is bringing all

good things to me. The Universe is conspiring for me in all things.

The Universe is supporting me in everything I do. The Universe

meets all my needs immediately." Know that this is a friendly Universe!

Seriously? Does asking whether we have a friendly/magnificent universe mean that you believe in the (crazy) law of attraction. Of course not! What Einstein likely meant is how easy/difficult it is for us humans to live in this universe. Why have we not been blown up by a supernova already? For how many more millennia will we be able to live on earth like we do today?

Besides, I hardly think that the Universe Byrne is describing in The secret is a "friendly universe", rather it is a universe which gives back what you think. Those African children in Darfur must really have some nasty thoughts...




The next quote can be found on pp. 62-63:

"Time is just an illusion. Einstein told us that. If this is the first time

you have heard it, you may find it a hard concept to get your head

around, because you see everything happening—one thing after

the other. What quantum physicists and Einstein tell us is that everything

is happening simultaneously. If you can understand that

there is no time, and accept that concept, then you will see that

whatever you want in the future already exists. If everything is

happening at the one time, then the parallel version of you with

what you want already exists!

It takes no time for the Universe to manifest what you want. Any

time delay you experience is due to your delay in getting to the

place of believing, knowing, and feeling that you already have it. It

is you getting yourself on the frequency of what you want When

you are on that frequency, then what you want will appear."

I guess that the only real quote here from Einstein is that "time is an illusion", and there is actually some truth to this, although Einstein would not agree with the conclusions. What Einstein showed was that "the constant" in the Universe was "c" which is the speed of light in vacuum. The faster something moves the slower time will go. From this idea there is a theoretical, mathematical possibility that time travel will be possible but that idea is also associated with many difficulties. Why have we not been visited by someone from the future yet? Furthermore, even if time is relative, that says nothing about "The law of attraction". Does Byrne suggest that you need many parallel universes for the law to work?



The last Einstein quote associated with Einstein is on page 79-80 in The Secret:

"The great scientist Albert Einstein revolutionized the way we view

time, space, and gravity. From his poor background and poor beginnings,

you would have thought it impossible for him to achieve

all that he did. Einstein knew a great deal of The Secret, and he

said, "Thank you" hundreds of times each day. He thanked all

the great scientists who had preceded him for their contributions,

which had enabled him to learn and achieve even more in his

work, and eventually become one of the greatest scientists who

has ever lived."

Right... I invite anyone to show me that Einstein literally said thank you "hundreds of times" everyday. That sounds like a lot to me. However, even if Einstein did say thank you often, maybe he was just a positive dude who thanked people when appropriate. Regarding his thanks to his predecessors, it is clear for scientists that the work done by scientists through the ages is a very important foundation for modern science and we should be thankful for their contribution. Also, if we go by "The Secret" why not just wish for and think positive thoughts and then let the universe bring you a fantastic scientific theory, why all the hard work?

The core of Science: Being self-critical

One of the central theorems of science is being self-critical and to stay open to the idea that whatever the current consensus is, in whatever subject, things may change down the road. In the history of science this has happened many times, perhaps most clearly in the field of physics where we have gone from a geo-centric view of the universe (with the earth as the center), to a heliocentric universe with the sun in the middle.

Newton later described, very accurately, the laws that governed the universe and using these laws allowed us to predict, to an impressive degree, how the planets, stars, and other objects in space move. Despite this success, Newton turned out to be wrong of course and Einstein turned out to be right, or at least more right than Newton was.

Does the fact that Einsteins theory have correctly predicted experimental outcomes up to a gazillion decimals mean that he is definitely right? No, only a religious person would take such a stance. If you are a good scientist you stay open to the idea that there may be even better and more exact theories up ahead. All we really know is that Einsteins theory predicts what will happen in the Universe we live in to an impressive degree, and that this is very useful when designing say computers or GPS satellites.

When I discuss whether science is really like I what I have just described, I often hear the critique that scientists are just people, that they have narrow-minded beliefs just like anyone else, and that there are corrupt persons on key positions in science as well. I think this is all true (although I don't think there is as much corruption in Science as there is in politics), however, what is different is that you can ask (almost) any scientist whether this or that theory is definitely true and he or she is very likely to say no. In other words, even though many scientists cling on to certain theories and ideas, they tend to stay open to the idea that it is wrong, and they stay open to the idea that if the right evidence comes in, they will change their beliefs. The examples above (and there are many more from all fields of science), also show that science does in fact change over time

This, of course, stands in stark contrast to the world of religion where it is claimed that one book presents the truth, i.e., they don't say that if so and so, then I guess there is no God(s). Religion is based on faith which is beliefs that are not based on logic or observations. This is what, at the core separates science from religion and it is a very important distinction to make in my mind.  

Nice experiment on Baboons show that monkeys can distinguish words and non-words

There is a common misconception that all animal experimentation has to be painful. Most people have seen pictures of rats being "tortured" or monkeys with sad faces taking part in some kind of experiment, and that type of picture tends to stick.

Of course, there is no denying that many experiments on animals will cause some level of discomfort however, researchers aim at (and are quite good at) minimizing the level of discomfort for animals in experiments. I would even go as far as to say that in most cases dying in a laboratory is probably less painful than dying in nature.

Anyhow, Science magazine recently published an article showing that baboons can learn to distinguish words and non-words. This was an interesting finding (although I must admit that i never surprises me when we learn that monkeys can do things we did not think they could do), however, the reason this study stands out is how "gentle" the study was.

The monkeys were housed in a 30mx25m cage with toys and friends and other types of stimuli that Baboons like. In an adjacent room there was a computer with a touch screen interface. The monkeys could, at their own will visit the computer room. When a monkey entered the room the computer identified the monkey and then the task of distinguishing words and non-words started. If the monkeys got the task right they were rewarded with a treat. When the monkey felt like hanging out with his/her buddies again it would simply leave the room. Sound better than being hunted by a hungry lion on the Savannah if you ask me...


Reference:
Grainger, J., Dufau, S., Montant, M., Ziegler, J., & Fagot, J. (2012). Orthographic Processing in Baboons (Papio papio) Science, 336 (6078), 245-248 DOI: 10.1126/science.1218152

Radiation exposure

Some forms of radiation is dangerous to you and some forms are not dangerous to you. Sunlight, which is a form of electromagnetic radiation, is good for you in moderate doses (it causes your skin to make D-vitamin), but not in large doses (can lead to skin cancer). As a general rule, high energy radiation (waves with a short wavelength) is dangerous to you whereas low energy radiation is bad for you. Radio waves for instance, are so low energy that they cannot do anything to you. At the other end of the scale you have cosmic rays that come in from deep space and hits the earth. Cosmic rays have a lot of energy and when they shoot through your body they may rip up a few DNA molecules, potentially causing the cell to become a cancer cell. Luckily the earths magnetic field protects us from cosmic rays and we generally do not have to worry about them (astronauts do however).

In between radio waves and cosmic rays you find microwaves. These waves have the special property of causing H2O molecules to jiggle. Now jiggling a molecule is the same as heating it up, that is why microwaves are great for heating foods which always contains a fair amount of water. For the same reason you do not want to stick your head in the microwave oven (your brain contains a lot of water to). Mobile phones also communicate using microwaves and when you are using a mobile phone will heat your head a little bit. I want to emphasize little because it is a minuscule amount of heating compared to other sources, and there is no scientific reason to assume that the heating would cause any adverse effects whatsoever.

What about radioactivity? Radioactivity is the high energy radiation that is generated when larger atoms fall apart. In general radioactivity is bad for you because just like cosmic rays it can destroy DNA molecules, however, some forms of radioactivity (alpha particles) are only dangerous if you first eat them (this is because, unlike gamma radiation, they cannot penetrate the skin). For this reason you want to avoid radioactivity as much as possible. Having said that, there is no way that you can avoid radioactivity completely because atoms are falling apart all around us all the time. This informative chart shows how much radioactivity you get from various things you are more or less likely to encounter in your life. For example tonight, when I sleep next to my wife, a certain number of atoms in her body will break, radioactivity will be emitted, and I will receive 0.05 micro sieverts of radiation. You get a hundred times more (5 micro sieverts) if you visit the dentist and get a teeth x-ray, that is why the dentist leaves the room when the picture is taken. If this sounds bad though, consider that a transatlantic flight will give you a full 40 micro sievert, four times as much as a dental x-ray!

All of this pales in comparison to a regular CT scan, a standard technique in medicine that gives you a full 2 milli sieverts, that is 2000 micro sieverts. A chest scan (which I have taken) will give you 7 milli sieverts. Still even at 7 milli sieverts there is no proved risk of adverse effects, although it is not clear that there is no risk either. The lowest dose that has been clearly linked to cancer is 100 milli sieverts. To get radiation poisoning you need 400 milli sieverts and if you get 4 sieverts (4000 milli sieverts), it is usually fatal...

The scope of your brain and your connectome

One cubic millimiter of brain tissue contains a hundred thousand (100.000) neurons. Between these 100.000 neurons there is 1 billion (1.000.000.000) connections. In one cubic millimeter that is!!! Your brain contains millions of miles of wiring, tens of times longer than the circumference of our planet.

Sebastian Seung recently published a book called "connectome" where he lays out the hypothesis that "you are your connectome". What is connectome you ask. Your connectome is all your neurons and the connections between all of your neuron. This statement is more attractive than the statement "you are your genes" because unlike genes, your connectome changes in response to everything that happens to you. I have not looked up the numbers, but I am in no doubt that every second of your life is associated with the formation of new synapses, destruction of other synapses and change in strength of yet other synapses.

The only way this hypothesis can really be tested is by mapping the human connectome, which, according to Seung (and I agree), won't happen for a few decades at least...


In the TED lecture professor Seung presents his ideas.



By the way, the brain actually does not contain 100 billion neurons but more like 86 billion neurons. And we do not just use 10% of our brain - we use 100%!



See also: The Human Connectome Project