About scientific myths

Natural / The Seductive Myth by Alan Levinovitz, p 18

People
 don’t
 just
 live
 by
 archetypal
 myths—they
 are
 constituted
 by them.
 As 
the 
scholar 
of
 myth 
Bruce 
Lincoln 
has 
argued,
 myth 
is 
ideology 
in narrative
 form.
Want 
to 
know 
what 
someone 
stands 
for? 
Look 
to 
the
 myths that
 shape
 them.
 Group
 identity,
 from
 religion
 to
 politics,
 depends
 on
 an investment
 in
 a
 few
 foundational
 stories,
 which
 serve
 as
 justifications
 of one’s
 preferred
 moral
 and
 social
 order.
 This
 is
 why
 mythically
 justified beliefs
 are
 so
 resistant
 to
 evidence:
 changing
 them
 means
 changing yourself.

This is what I think, when colleagues say, that a paper needs a story.

 

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Sorry for the poor English

From a recent Nature email newletter: There’s more to science than English

The evidence shows that the pressure to write in English is a source of frustration and anxiety for some non-native English speakers, and hinders diversity in science. …. “English-speakers have become the gatekeepers of science, excluding a wide variety of opinions [and] perspectives,” says conservation scientist Tatsuya Amano.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0238372

 

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Better than a streamdeck: the Mac touchbar

I have been thinking to buy an Elgato Streamdeck as we have to lecture now also online during winter 2020.

While the Streamdeck mini would be a nice addition to the Elgato 4 K Camlink (that connects the Nikon) as well as the Epoc Cam software (that connects the Iphone) for easy switching input channels, I ultimately decided against this solution and just reconfigured the Touchbar for OBS using Better Touch Tool.

 

 

 

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Everybody knows about confounder but what is a collider?

Here is the best explanation of a collider written by  Julia Rohrer at www.the100.ci

Whenever X1 (conscientiousness) and X2 (intelligence) both cause Y (college attendance) in some manner, conditioning on Y will bias the relationship between X1 and X2 and potentially introduce a spurious association (or hide an existing link between X1 and X2, or exaggerate an existing link, or reverse the direction of the association…)

The cartoon makes it even clearer – confounder act on exposure and outcome, while collider condition on exposure and outcome.

https://catalogofbias.org/biases/confounding/

 

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Covid-19 genetics – Any role of MIP1B?

The first GWAS of severe COVID-19 infection was published in the NEJM with the main hit at rs11385942 at locus 3p21.31, a region linked by the authors to LZTFL1. The GWAS catalogue points to MIP1B ( Macrophage Inflammatory Protein 1 beta, MIP-1b, CCL4) level that has been mapped there as well.

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/gwas/genes/LZTFL1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5223028/

MIP-1B seems to be increased in patients with COVID-19 as a study showed that levels of various CCGFs, including PDGF-BB, CCL5/RANTES, CCL4/MIP-1β, IL-9, and TNF-β were upregulated in COVID-19 patients but negatively correlated to disease severity.

Supplement https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-020-0211-1

Another study measured also MIP-1B but no major effect

Supplement https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/139834/sd/1

A recent Frontiers review discusses the relationship to the cytokine storm in fatal COVID-19 infection but again no isolated effect. Nevertheless I have a gut feeling from a 1995 Science paper that it could be relevant as it was identified as the major HIV-SF produced by CD8+ T cells (which are so important also in COVID-19 recovery).

 

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Science PR

Lutz Frühbrodt “- der Begriff Öffentlichkeitsarbeit ist ein typisch deutscher”

Der Begriff Öffentlichkeitsarbeit ist ein typisch deutscher. Er suggeriert, dass Unternehmen gegenüber der Öffentlichkeit eine Arbeit zu leisten hätten, zu deren Bedingungen. Aber, wenn es denn jemals überhaupt so war, dann stimmt das schon längst nicht mehr …Im Verhältnis von Unternehmen zu Journalisten gibt es seit einiger Zeit einen Umschwung von Pull- zu Push-Kommunikation. Anfragen werden immer später bearbeitet, stattdessen versuchen die Unternehmen, selbst Themen zu setzen. Sie betreiben stärker Content Marketing, also “Unternehmensjournalismus”, etwa mit Online-Magazinen und Web-Themenseiten. Es geht darum, in Abwandlung eines Begriffs des marxistischen Philosophen Antonio Gramsci, kommunikative Hegemonie zu erlangen. Themen zu setzen. Sich eigene Kanäle zu schaffen.

Die Entwicklung gibt es im übrigen auch in der Wissenschaft, allenfalls die amerikanischen Hochschulsport Mannschaften fehlen uns noch. Das Geld dafür ist ja schliesslich da und mit der Privatisierung wird das dann auch noch kommen. Zitat SZ

Vom neuen “Hochschulinnovationsgesetz” versprechen sich Staatsregierung wie Hochschulchefs viel: Weniger Bürokratie soll den Unis Freiheit, Flexibilität, Innovation und Schnelligkeit bringen. So sollen sie mithalten mit Harvard oder Cambridge, eigene Talente fördern und Spitzenforscher nach Bayern locken … Der Staat hätte nur die Rechtsaufsicht inne – und eine lange Leine: Die “Gestaltungsorganisation übergeordneter Art” werde das Ministerium behalten, sagte Sibler. Die Zielvereinbarungen des Freistaats mit jeder Hochschule sollen eine “stärkere Ergebnisorientierung” haben. Themen wie Ökologie, Geschlechtergerechtigkeit oder die Pflege kleiner Fächer werden festgelegt. Sind Ziele nicht erfüllt, gibt es weniger Geld.

Wissenschaft zu wenig ergebnisorientiert? Ich kenne niemand den Ergebnisse nicht interessieren würde. Spitzenforscher? Ich kenne Multifunktionäre die große Arbeitsgruppen haben. Aber was ist daran Spitze, wenn “ergebnisorientiert” immer noch mehr Artikel produziert werden?

Lesenswert auch der Twitter Thread in diesem Zusammenhang

 

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Corona – die wichtigsten Videos der Woche

Beginnen wir mit dem Appell der Bundeskanzlerin “Bitte bleiben Sie, wenn immer möglich, zu Hause”.

 

Dann der wichtigste Corona Experte in Deutschland “So etwas wie eine Meinung gibt es eigentlich in der Wissenschaft nicht“.

 

Ein aktueller Blick in die Schweiz (Zahlen hier) mit einem wunderbaren Musical.

 

Damit zu den Folgen im Spital Schwyz mit Prof. Reto Nüesch (Nachfolger des legendären Paul Vogt Appell).

 

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Der nächste Tiefpunkt des Wissenschaftsjournalismus

Nach dem Skandal bei der ZEIT versucht sich nun auch der SPIEGEL daran, Wissenschaftler zu diskreditieren…

Was Frau Dipl.biol. Rafaela von Bredow und Frau Dr. med. Veronika Hackenbroch mit solchen Fragen bezwecken wollen? Quotenfrau? Volkshochschule? Quelle BILD?

 

Die Reaktion des amtierenden Leiter Wissenschaft und Technik des SPIEGEL ist genauso respektlos “fragen wird man ja wohl dürfen”.

 

 

19.12.2020

Mit reichlich langer Leitung (siehe ZEIT 27.7.20) nun auch Jörg Blech heute mit der “Frage”

 

 

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The Nobel Prize violates a central paradigm of science

With the current hype around prize winners, we may not forget about the much larger number of scientists who have been never honored or even lost their live for doing good science.

The Nobel Prize violates a central paradigm of science that false opinions are always corrected, see also the summary at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies.

So this is not so much about the recent scandal around the secretary of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, Urban Lendahl, who resigned due to the Macchiarini scandal.

Or about the recent Astra Zeneca money behind the nomination of Harald zur Hausen. I am thinking here about cruel treatments for example

1927 “for the discovery of the therapeutic value of malaria inoculation in the treatment of dementia paralytica” to Julius Wagner-Jauregg

1949 to Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz “for the discovery of the therapeutic value of leucotomy (lobotomy) in certain psychoses”.

The refrain is a familiar one that there are no isolated geniuses but (Atlantic), it

reinforces a flawed reward system in science in which the winner takes all, and the contributions of the many are neglected by disproportionate attention to the contributions of a few.

 

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Book of the Year (2020)

Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie / Kings College, is the clear winner. From the introduction

As this book will show, though, that system is badly broken. Important knowledge, discovered by scientists but not deemed interesting enough to publish, is being altered or hidden, distorting the scientific record and damaging our medicine, technology, educational interventions and government policies.
Huge resources, poured into science in the expectation of a useful return, are being wasted on research that’s utterly uninformative. Entirely avoidable errors and slip-ups routinely make it past the Maginot Line of peer review. Books, media reports and our heads are being filled with ‘facts’
that 
are 
either 
incorrect, exaggerated, or 
drastically 
misleading. 
And in the very worst cases, particularly where medical science is concerned, people are dying.

I couldn’t praise the book more than other reviewers

“A highly readable and competent description of the problems facing researchers in the 21st century… An excellent primer for anyone who wants to understand why and how science is failing to live up to its ideals.”
–Wired

“Excellent… A fascinating study… Sure, some scientists are corrupt. Some are negligent. Some are biased. But that does not mean we need less science. It means we need better science. That’s why books like this are so important.”
Evening Standard (London)

“We should listen to this warning about how neophilia and hype is ruining research… Ritchie has a gift for turning boring statistical processes into thrilling detective stories.”
The Times (London)

“A desperately important book. Stuart Ritchie’s much-needed work brilliantly exposes the fragility of the science on which lives, livelihoods, and our whole society depend. Required reading for everyone.”
–Adam Rutherford, author of A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived

Amazon has a great review of Serguei Patchkovskii who wrote (full length)

The book offers a rather good catalogue of problems plaguing the scientific enterprise today. Every practicing scientist will recognize much of what Stuart Ritchie is writing about – sometimes in his or her colleagues, and quite frequently in the mirror. The collection of anecdotes on scientific mishaps, missteps, and outright fraud, which one finds in the book, is also rather entertaining and educational.
[… it] mostly ignores the well-fed elephant in the room: the perverse economics of the modern science, and the closely related misuse of the higher-education system. A lot, and in some fields the most, of the grunt work work in science is done by students (graduate and undergraduate) and post-docs. Both groups are routinely underpaid and under-rewarded, under the guise of being trained and educated. Both are also being held in check by the implied promise of the future academic career and well-paying jobs stemming from it – but for the vast majority of them, there will be no academic career, and no stable science job. […]
Worse, some of the proposed solutions would make it significantly harder for an honest scientist – which is really the majority of scientists, perverse incentives notwithstanding – to do their work, while barely inconveniencing a fraudster willing to break the rules if it benefits him.
Overall, I don’t regret paying my money for this book – but just barely.

 

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The first scientific paper ever published

The first scientific paper (as far as we know) can  be retrieved from the excellent website of the Royal Society “Tryals proposed by Mr. Boyle to Dr. Lower, to be made by him, for the improvement of transfusing blood out of one live animal into another”.

This seems basically the same what Corona researchers are trying today with convalescent serum (although this may be dangerous due to rogue auto-antibodies against type I IFNs that may be transfused as well).

 

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstl.1665.0147

Science is about asking questions…

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstl.1665.0147

 

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Humility

I am surrounded by people who published close to or more than 500 papers, who have a super high Hirsch factor of bigger than 100, who have had third party funding more than 10 mill, who get prices that I have never heard before.

Scientists who spend their life in first class plane seats but not in the lab, who spend their night in expensive hotels while their postdocs do all the work. Scientists at broadcasted talk shows who haven’t read a paper from start to finish for years.

Ritchie “Science Fictions” 2020

In 
fact, 
the 
way 
academic 
research 
is 
currently
 set 
up 
incentivises these
 problems,
 encouraging
 researchers
 to
 obsess
 about
 prestige,
 fame, funding
 and
 reputation
 at
 the
 expense
 of
 rigorous,
 reliable
 results.

For true science the only way is to accept our incapability, our disability and our powerlessness. As @DrTedros said yesterday

Standard is Failure not Success…

 

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