The Forum on Science, Ethics, and Policy

Aug 04 2010

TED talks- A source of inspiration

Category: Communication, Education, Policy, Science and the Media, website — Sara @ 3:41 pm

On June 30^th, 2010, the X Prize Foundation (http://www.xprize.org) announced its most recent project, “…a multi-million dollar prize [aimed] at cleanup efforts in the Gulf as a way to incentivize immediately privately-funded innovation and action.” Francis Beland (VP of X Prize) and Dave Gallo (Oceanographer) made the announcement during the TEDxOilSpill Conference in Washington, D.C. This is the 5^th X Prize to be offered and “will be focused on the development of rapidly-deployable methods to clean up crude oil among coastlines and seas/oceans.”

News of this prize was met with enthusiasm and excitement, but what gave it the extra “wow factor” was its debut at the TEDxOilSpill Conference. If you have not yet heard of TED, I urge you to check out their website. TED.com is a non-profit organization (started in 1984) dedicated to “Ideas worth spreading.” Started as a conference to bring together leaders in their respective fields (beginning with technology, entertainment and design), TED has expanded to encompass experts in all fields and move well-beyond the conference setting.

For those individuals who are not selected to attend one of TED’s 3+ annual events (the application process is highly selective and pricey), TED offers a website chock full videos from their conferences (+700 and counting) from years past to present-day. Their website reads: “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.”

A quick perusal brings up well-known names in science such as: UW’s own John Delaney, talking about “Wiring the Ocean”; Clay Skirky, “HowCognitive Surplus Will Change the World”; Carter Emmart, “A 3D Atlas of the Universe”, to name a few. There are also featured videos by pioneers in economies, politics, policy, art, music, and world health. The archives are staggering. And of course, if you aspire to one-day give a TED talk, you’ll have to keep it short. Talks run about 18-minutes in length and are Powerpoint “lite”.

I urge you to peruse their website, and to listen to talks in areas outside of your realm of expertise. It is inspiring to see how well the featured speakers use interdisciplinary approaches to communicate to their audiences and to the general public. And for those of you interested in the progress of the oil spill and the 5^th X Prize, be sure to visit:

http://tedxoilspill.com/

Several recently added TED talks featured on TED.com (2010)

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Jul 29 2010

Open Science Summit

Category: Communication, Ethics, Policy, Science and the Media — Andy McMillan @ 7:58 pm

I just heard about a conference that’s going on right now in California, the Open Science Summit, with streaming video of the talk also available. It looks like there should be a lot of topics that may be of interest to people reading here. From the description on the streaming page:

From July 29-31, scientists, hackers, students, patients, and activists will convene to discuss the future of our science/technology paradigm. Topics include: Synthetic Biology, Personal Genomics, Gene Patents, Open Access/Data, the Future of Scientific Publishing and Reputation, Microfinance for Science, DIY Biology, Bio-security, and more.

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Jun 16 2010

Artificial Intelligence and Society – Review of the Documentary Plug & Pray

Category: Communication, Ethics, Science and the Media, Scientific Advances — Andy McMillan @ 1:16 pm

Last week as part of the Seattle International Film Festival I saw the documentary Plug & Pray which dealt with the development of artificial intelligence and it’s implications for society.

The tone of the film was set in the opening credits showing Joseph Weizenbaum, who was involved in the early development of computers and artificial intelligence, trying to start up his laptop and play some music, saying “you plug it in and it works … except when it doesn’t”. Most of the film went back and forth between researchers explaining their work and how it will improve society, with Weizenbaum coming in to argue that a lot of the benefits are overstated and too few people are thinking about the negative costs. This contrast is particularly striking in the scenes with Ray Kurzweil, about whom it would be an understatement to say he is optimistic about the potential for technology to improve humanity.

I think the film did a good job of presenting the importance for scientists to consider the impact of the work on society. Weizenbaum brought up the fact that when students would come to him for advice about thesis projects he would tell them to imagine being able to push a button to reverse all the work they had done. If a student thought they would want to be able to have that button, then they shouldn’t work on that project. Weizenbaum himself ultimately decided he didn’t want to be involved in the kind of research that was being done and finished his career teaching mathematics instead of computer science. Similarly, in the Q and A afterwards the director told how off-camera one of the researchers told him he couldn’t think too much about the long-term effects of his research, since then he wouldn’t be able to do it. I did wonder if that comment was being misinterpreted, since the director seemed to imply the researcher thought the consequences weren’t good. When I heard Weizenbaum’s advice about the button, I also thought that many people wouldn’t be able to do research if they thought that way; not because we think we’d regret doing the work, but because there are so many unknowns to take into account. Just considering all the possibilities would take so much work that it wouldn’t be possible to actually do the research.

I also saw what might have been a bit of disconnect when the director said that, other than Kurzweil, few of the researchers seemed to have really thought through the philosophical implications of their work. While it may have been edited to show the times they did discuss those issues, I thought several of them seemed well aware of the issues their work could bring about. However they also were often discussing it in terms of the inherent good of learning about how intelligence works. This valuing of knowledge for the sake of knowledge is something I see commonly in my fellow scientists, but often is less recognized by non-scientists – such as the director.

In general Plug and Pray brought up some interesting ideas that I’m still thinking about almost a week later. I’d definitely say it’s worth people trying to track down if it shows near you or once it comes out on DVD.

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Mar 09 2010

One Last AAAS Post

Category: Communication, Science and the Media — Andy McMillan @ 10:38 pm

I’m finally getting a chance to write up my last day at AAAS. This should wrap up our descriptions of the conference.

The day started out with another of a more science oriented panel, and took a slightly different perspective on the conferences theme of building bridges between communities. This session was jointly organized by AAAS’s math and biology divisions and looked at how mathematical modeling can be applied to different levels of biology. The first two speakers dealt with larger scales, the first to model the spread of HIV in Botswana to help determine the most effective way to introduce preventative anti-retroviral treatments to at-risk groups. The second speaker was looking at the spread of the H1N1 flu in Mexico, specifically how it is related to transportation networks. After this the panel switched to a much smaller focus, with Gerda de Vries describing her work figuring out how different ion channels can work together in neurons to result in rhythmic oscillations in electric potentials. This was a nice lead in the the last speaker I saw, Philip Holme, who looked at the physical processes in the brain that are involved in decision making. While there were still two other speakers after this, I left early to make it to another session that was also looking pretty appealing.

This was “Warriors against Claptrap: The New Generation of Civic Scientists” organized by Sense About Science. The panel was made up of Michael Hanlon, a science writer with the Daily Mail, Kiki Sanford, who writes the blog Bird’s Brain and is involved with the podcast “This Week in Science”, and a representative from the Voice of Young Science network, a branch of Sense About Science, Daniella Muallen. This network is meant to help young scientists confront examples of poor science that we encounter all the time because. Examples of their work can be seen on this section of their webpage. This group is mainly based in the United Kingdom, though apparently they’re interested spreading more internationally.

This was listed as a workshop, and as such after short introductory talks by each of the panelists, it was opened up to the audience for discussion about how as scientists can be effective at engaging people about these kinds of issues. The discussion seemed to mostly center around two ideas. First was the question of how much all the new resources that people have available to learn about science actually reach beyond the people who are already interested in the subject. On this subject I fall somewhere slightly on the optimistic side. While I think a lot of people tend to not pay a lot of attention to science, there’s also a lot of opportunity to engage with people once you can get their attention. The second idea that came up in the discussion was what kind of engagement is actually effective. The consensus seemed to be that it’s a mistake to approach people with an attitude of “we’re the experts so you should pay attention to what we’re talking about” and it’s more effective to try and help people develop the ability to critically evaluate ideas. Daniella pointed out that this was the approach that Voices of Young Scientists took with their reports. She mentioned that most of the people involved weren’t necessarily experts in the relevant fields, but are still in the position of being able to explain the scientific process that can be used to evaluate claims. This leads to the reports being presented as what kinds of simple questions lay people should be asking about the products they’re using. I think this panel led to a pretty interesting discussion, and seemed a good way to finish up the conference sessions.

After that I spent the rest of the day at our poster session, shown below. Overall the time spent at AAAS was pretty informative and enjoyable. Hope you all appreciated the perspective.

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Feb 28 2010

Follow up on AAAS

Category: Communication, Education, Policy, Science and the Media — Kate @ 7:29 pm

As promised, I’m following up with some of the symposia I attended at the annual AAAS conference last weekend. The first one I want to discuss was called Learning Science in Informal Environments. Bruce Lewenstein of Cornell Univsersity began by introducing an NSF funded, NRC consensus study of the same title. The report is available through the National Academies. The report assessed the evidence for science learning in non-traditional learning environments including science museums, nature walks, zoos, aquariums, etc. They report what they call the Six Strands of Learning: 1) excitement and motivation to learn 2) content and science knowledge 3) questioning and building reasons for phenomena 4) reflection 5) participation in activities 6) thinking of one’s self as a scientist or a science consumer. Dr. Philip Bell of the University of Washington, reported that informal environments may be more effective for diverse audiences, and that incorporation of culture, values, social and lived experiences into science education results in better reception of the material. Kirsten Ellenbogen of the St. Paul Science Museum spoke of “Citizen Science” programs in which people collect data and observations for real scientific research so that they are contributing to scientific knowledge, rather than just being taught science. This provides people with a better sense that science is not just a group of facts, but science is a way of knowing. Dr. Brian Smith of Pennsylvania State University spoke about the role of media in informal science learning remarking that the public lists the media as their major source of science information. Smith spoke of the “CSI effect” which is changing people’s perception of who a scientist is—students think that scientists can be cool and scientists can be female as opposed to previously held stereotypes of scientists as nerdy men. The CSI effect also gives people a greater expectation for forensic evidence—for example when people serve on jury duty—even if such evidence is not feasible.

The last symposium I want to discuss is called Consequences of Changes in Energy Return on Energy Invested. Dr. Charles Hall from State University of New York, started off the discussion with his definition of Energy Return on Energy Invested or EROI which is basically the energy delivered to society over the energy put into that activity (or in general terms EROI = [Eout-Ein]/Ein). This concept has very important implications for comparing energy sources, whether they be renewable or fossil fuels. For obvious reasons you need an EROI value of greater than one for net energy gain, and you likely need an EROI value of somewhere between 3 and 8 (that is for every 1 unit of energy used, 3 to 8 units of energy are produced) for it to be economically feasible as an energy source. One can imagine that oil has a significantly higher EROI value than solar or wind (at this time), because the amount of energy we get from fossil fuels versus the work it takes to drill for them is much greater than the amount of energy we get from solar or wind considering the materials needed to build the solar panels or wind mills. However as we hit peak oil and it becomes more expensive to drill for fossil fuels, these relative EROI should change, but will they change enough? Dr. Tad Patzek from the University of Texas-Austin, followed up by saying that conventional oil peaked in 2004, coal will peak in 2-5 years, natural gas will peak in 20-30 years. He clarified that there are plenty of fossil fuels in the world, but that these fossil fuels are like a huge bank account with a limited daily ATM withdrawal amount. The speed with which we can extract fossil fuels is the limiting factor here, and we are overdrawing everyday. Patzek predicts a very drastic change in our lifestyles will be required soon because of the energy crisis. Dr. Margaret Mann of the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado, spoke of the EROI for renewable energy sources. Her method included not only the energy input versus the energy output, but other implications including greenhouse gas emissions, land use, fossil fuel use, water distribution, mineral consumption, equipment, and transportation which takes into account the Life Cycle Analysis of every energy source. She describes this larger perspective as “energy service” not just energy. She argues (against Hall and Patzek) that renewables can provide more energy than they consume. There were, without a doubt, serious disagreements among the panelists (and strong sense of confusion within the audience), but at the end of the session the panelist all agreed to pair up with the person with which they disagreed the most and reconcile their opinions enough to write a scientific article about an EROI topic of choice as a team. Pretty cool…

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Feb 18 2010

FOSEP in San Diego for AAAS Conference

Category: Communication, Education, Events, Policy, Science and the Media, future plans, website — Andy McMillan @ 10:48 pm

Kate and just got to San Diego for the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). We’re looking forward to lots of interesting talks especially since this year’s theme is “Bridging Science and Society” which obviously fits in with FOSEP’s goals. Like previous years, this should be a good place to get ideas for topics and speakers that we can bring to Washington.

We’ll also be presenting a poster describing how we organize different types of events and how people might go about setting up a FOSEP-like group in other places. This will also be an opportunity for us to meet some of the people from FOSEP Colorado which has recently been formed with the help of one of our former leaders, Melanie Roberts.

We’ll be writing updates whenever we get a chance so you all can have an idea of what’s happening out here too.

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Dec 18 2009

Is Scandal Inevitable when Scientists Become Activists?

Category: Policy, Science and the Media — Alex B. Berezow @ 11:33 am

By now, most of the world has heard of “Climategate”– the e-mail scandal surrounding the Hadley Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the UK. (If you are unfamiliar with the story, you can catch up with this Wikipedia article.) In short, hackers broke into the university’s e-mail system and posted on the internet private communications between climate researchers, and the e-mails are far from flattering. Besides gloating over the death of a climate change skeptic, the e-mails show concerted efforts by the researchers to manipulate temperature data, to block public access to their data, and (perhaps most disturbingly) to exclude skeptical or critical researchers from the peer review process. While it may be too early to describe this behavior as “scientific fraud,” it is certainly appropriate to label it “unethical.”

The New York Times’s John Tierney wrote an excellent piece about this scandal and its implications for climate change advocates. Tierney points out that the climate researchers involved became “so focused on winning the public-relations war that they exaggerate[d] their certitude — and ultimately undermine[d] their own cause.”

What this situation also reveals is that scientists who become public policy advocates can lose the most important characteristic they have: objectivity. Scientists must accept data for what it is, not what they wish it to be. Scientists must deal with contradictory data, not ignore it. And most importantly, scientists must be transparent with their research and the conclusions they draw, not secretive. However, these ethical principles become far more difficult to uphold when scientists become activists.

To be sure, “Climategate” does not disprove global climate change, but it absolutely raises the suspicions of a general public who is often leery of science to begin with. Furthermore, scandals such as this damage not only the researchers involved but the entire scientific endeavor itself.

Scientists who become public policy advocates must walk a fine line. Unfortunately, the researchers at East Anglia crossed that line.

Alex B. Berezow is a microbiology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington.

Tags: Climategate, global warming, University of East Anglia

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Nov 01 2009

HIV Vaccination – Significance and Hype

Category: Communication, Science and the Media — Andy McMillan @ 6:27 pm

This week’s Nature has an article and editorial dealing with an example of not explaining adequately to the public the limitations of a major finding. About a month ago there was an announcement about an HIV vaccination trial in Thailand which was somewhat effective. Now that the results are published there’s some controversy on whether the scientists involved over-hyped their results in the initial announcement.

The results first described had a P value of 0.04, which means a 4% probability that the difference between the vaccinated group and placebo group was due to chance variations. Typically the cutoff to consider a result statistically significant is 5% so this just barely met that cutoff, which was acknowledged in the initial press announcement. However it seems that excluding people who weren’t treated exactly as the procedures specified resulted in a P value of 0.16, not statistically significant. An additional red flag in the published results was that the vaccination didn’t seem to increase the levels of antibodies in people, which might be expected if the vaccine was really responsible for the lowered levels of infection. It may turn out that the vaccinations really did help things, but just by a too small of an amount to be picked up by statistics. After all, even the statistical insignificant result of having 16% probability of being due to chance still means there’s an 84% probability that it’s a real difference. However this means the situation is a lot more ambiguous than was initially described.

The sponsors explained the presentation of only the single method of analysis at first by saying they wanted to present a clear result without needing to explain the statistical details and emphasized that even the modest effectiveness presented was a unique enough result to be worth noting. Personally I think this is a little backwards. If there hasn’t been any significant progress in developing an HIV vaccine, it seems scientists should be especially cautious when presenting any kind of result that might get people’s hopes up.

A reason for this is the response of news media to the initial announcement compared to the follow up findings. I remember seeing the first stories published about this being pretty easy to stumble on. However the first I heard about the follow up was in Nature. I went back to specifically look for coverage of the later findings and did find some stories, and this happened during a time while I wasn’t paying as much attention to news so I might have just missed the later coverage. But it isn’t unusual for the first story to get a lot of publicity but later details can be buried. For that reason it’s important to try to make sure those initial stories include all the important details.

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