Software

Transdermal vitamin D patch

There is a new clinical trial D3ForMe that has a big benefit in my eyes: Avoiding the high local vitamin D in the gut Peyers’ Patch after oral supplementation.
Oral supplementation likely affects gut-specific homing leading activated T cells and antibody-secreting cells (ASCs) to both inflamed and non-inflamed regions of the gut. Also antigen recognition may be affected by inhibited DC maturation.
In an earlier vitamin D3 could be safely be delivered through the dermal route.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Software

Wahlen mit alphabetischer Reihenfolge

Es gibt in Deutschland immer noch viele Kammer-, Sozial- und Vorstandswahlen, die aus angeblichen Fairnessgründen die Kandidatenliste alphabetisch reihen. Dabei wissen die meisten Organisationen nicht, wie sie sich damit vor allem selbst, aber auch den Kandidaten schaden.

Wahlen von Kandidatenlisten in alphabetischer Reihenfolge sind nämlich vor allem dann ein Problem, wenn A. die Wähler die Kandidaten nicht kennen, es B. einen großen Überhang von Kandidaten im Verhältnis zu den Gewählten gibt, C. die Reihung als Empfehlung missverstanden wird und D. die Wahlergebnisse relativ nahe beieinander liegen.

In der englischen Literatur ist das alles als “Ballot Order Effect” bekannt und kann auf vielen Blogs nachgelesen werden:
https://daily.jstor.org/ballot-position/
https://www.pulj.org/the-roundtable/avoiding-election-bias
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-27426319
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier-ballot-order-1.4608059
http://www.centerforpolitics.org/newslet_909cb.html

Der Effekt ist enorm, mit einem Buchstaben im vorderen Drittel liegt die Wahlchance bei ca 65%, im mittleren Drittel bei 25%, im letzten Drittel bei 10%. Am Ende der Liste zu stehen ist besonders schlecht, auch bekannt als “voter fatigue” (das ändert sich allerdings wenn die Liste sehr lange ist, dann wird man wieder etwas häufiger gewählt).

Das folgende Beispiel illustriert an einem praktischen Beispiel, wie eine Liste von 20 Kandidaten am besten unter den Wählern verteilt wird, um den “Ballot Order Effect” zu vermeiden.

l <- LETTERS[1:20]
l
[1] "A" "B" "C" "D" "E" "F" "G" "H" "I" "J" "K" "L" "M" "N" "O" "P" "Q" "R" "S" "T"

# Zuerst wird die alphabetische Reihenfolge aufgelöst
l <- sample(l)
l
[1] "Q" "C" "K" "F" "L" "M" "J" "T" "B" "I" "G" "H" "O" "P" "N" "S" "R" "A" "E" "D"

# Dann wird der jeweils letzte Namen nach vorne gerückt
r &lt;- NULL
for (v in l[20:1]) {
  x <- c( l[grep(v,l):20], l[1:(grep(v,l)-1)] )[1:20]
  r <- rbind (r,x)
}
r

# Jede Zeile gibt nun einen von 20 Wahlvorschlägen aus
  [,1] [,2] [,3] [,4] [,5] [,6] [,7] [,8] [,9] [,10] [,11] [,12] [,13] [,14] [,15] [,16] [,17] [,18] [,19] [,20]
x "D"  "Q"  "C"  "K"  "F"  "L"  "M"  "J"  "T"  "B"   "I"   "G"   "H"   "O"   "P"   "N"   "S"   "R"   "A"   "E"  
x "E"  "D"  "Q"  "C"  "K"  "F"  "L"  "M"  "J"  "T"   "B"   "I"   "G"   "H"   "O"   "P"   "N"   "S"   "R"   "A"  
x "A"  "E"  "D"  "Q"  "C"  "K"  "F"  "L"  "M"  "J"   "T"   "B"   "I"   "G"   "H"   "O"   "P"   "N"   "S"   "R"  
x "R"  "A"  "E"  "D"  "Q"  "C"  "K"  "F"  "L"  "M"   "J"   "T"   "B"   "I"   "G"   "H"   "O"   "P"   "N"   "S"  
x "S"  "R"  "A"  "E"  "D"  "Q"  "C"  "K"  "F"  "L"   "M"   "J"   "T"   "B"   "I"   "G"   "H"   "O"   "P"   "N"  
x "N"  "S"  "R"  "A"  "E"  "D"  "Q"  "C"  "K"  "F"   "L"   "M"   "J"   "T"   "B"   "I"   "G"   "H"   "O"   "P"  
x "P"  "N"  "S"  "R"  "A"  "E"  "D"  "Q"  "C"  "K"   "F"   "L"   "M"   "J"   "T"   "B"   "I"   "G"   "H"   "O"  
x "O"  "P"  "N"  "S"  "R"  "A"  "E"  "D"  "Q"  "C"   "K"   "F"   "L"   "M"   "J"   "T"   "B"   "I"   "G"   "H"  
x "H"  "O"  "P"  "N"  "S"  "R"  "A"  "E"  "D"  "Q"   "C"   "K"   "F"   "L"   "M"   "J"   "T"   "B"   "I"   "G"  
x "G"  "H"  "O"  "P"  "N"  "S"  "R"  "A"  "E"  "D"   "Q"   "C"   "K"   "F"   "L"   "M"   "J"   "T"   "B"   "I"  
x "I"  "G"  "H"  "O"  "P"  "N"  "S"  "R"  "A"  "E"   "D"   "Q"   "C"   "K"   "F"   "L"   "M"   "J"   "T"   "B"  
x "B"  "I"  "G"  "H"  "O"  "P"  "N"  "S"  "R"  "A"   "E"   "D"   "Q"   "C"   "K"   "F"   "L"   "M"   "J"   "T"  
x "T"  "B"  "I"  "G"  "H"  "O"  "P"  "N"  "S"  "R"   "A"   "E"   "D"   "Q"   "C"   "K"   "F"   "L"   "M"   "J"  
x "J"  "T"  "B"  "I"  "G"  "H"  "O"  "P"  "N"  "S"   "R"   "A"   "E"   "D"   "Q"   "C"   "K"   "F"   "L"   "M"  
x "M"  "J"  "T"  "B"  "I"  "G"  "H"  "O"  "P"  "N"   "S"   "R"   "A"   "E"   "D"   "Q"   "C"   "K"   "F"   "L"  
x "L"  "M"  "J"  "T"  "B"  "I"  "G"  "H"  "O"  "P"   "N"   "S"   "R"   "A"   "E"   "D"   "Q"   "C"   "K"   "F"  
x "F"  "L"  "M"  "J"  "T"  "B"  "I"  "G"  "H"  "O"   "P"   "N"   "S"   "R"   "A"   "E"   "D"   "Q"   "C"   "K"  
x "K"  "F"  "L"  "M"  "J"  "T"  "B"  "I"  "G"  "H"   "O"   "P"   "N"   "S"   "R"   "A"   "E"   "D"   "Q"   "C"  
x "C"  "K"  "F"  "L"  "M"  "J"  "T"  "B"  "I"  "G"   "H"   "O"   "P"   "N"   "S"   "R"   "A"   "E"   "D"   "Q"  
x "Q"  "C"  "K"  "F"  "L"  "M"  "J"  "T"  "B"  "I"   "G"   "H"   "O"   "P"   "N"   "S"   "R"   "A"   "E"   "D"    
# Diese 20 Wahlvorschläge werden nun in gleicher Stückzahl ausgedruckt und verteilt

# Bei online Wahlen lässt man einen Counter mitlaufen oder noch einfacher, man wirft
# alle 3 Sekunden den nächsten Vorschlag aus
r[ floor(as.numeric(format(Sys.time(), "%S"))/3), ]
[1] "J" "T" "B" "I" "G" "H" "O" "P" "N" "S" "R" "A" "E" "D" "Q" "C" "K" "F" "L" "M"

Es sollte also nicht all zu schwer sein, faire Wahlen durchzuführen.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy, Software

Depressed Former Internet Optimist

technology review explains a new breed

all this has given rise to a new breed: the Depressed Former Internet Optimist (DFIO). Everything from public apologies by figures in the technology industry to informal chatter in conference hallways suggests it’s become very hard to find an internet Optimist in the old, classic vein. There are now only Optimists-in-retreat, Optimists-in-doubt, or Optimists-hedging-their-bets.

and continues

Many Optimists believed that the structure of the internet by itself—manifested in collaborative projects such as wikis or crowdfunding—would bend social outcomes in their favor. One response to the events of 2016 has been to revisit this assumption, claiming that while the basics might have been right, more work is needed to realize the original vision.

So may I add here an advertisement of Tim Berner-Lee’s Solid project operating Inrupt?

Imagine if all your current apps talked to each other, collaborating and conceiving ways to enrich and streamline your personal life and business objectives? That’s the kind of innovation, intelligence and creativity Solid apps will generate.

As we are now redefining content why not also getting paid by Brave when browsing? The not not evil Alphabet company has already announced some major changes.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy

Women are wonderful

I am currently reading the cognitive bias literature to explain some phenomenon when discovering the “women are wonderful” effect.

The women-are-wonderful effect is the phenomenon found in psychological and sociological research which suggests that people associate more positive attributes with women compared to men. This bias reflects an emotional bias toward women as a general case. The phrase was coined by Alice Eagly and Antonio Mladinic in 1994 after finding that both male and female participants tend to assign positive traits to women, with female participants showing a far more pronounced bias.

Is that true also for general elections?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy

Warum Denken traurig macht

Die FAZ hat die Details, hier ist die subjektive Zusammenfassung des Buches von Georg Steiner.

1. An den entscheidenden Fragen scheitern wir.
2. Das Denken ist zu ungeordnet,
3. zu repetitiv und zu selten innovativ
4. und zuwenig interesselos.
5. Das unbeachtete Denkens frustriert,
6. Hoffnungen werden enttäuscht.
7. Denken stösst immer wieder an Barrieren,
8. es trennt uns vom Nächsten,
9. geht in der Masse unter
10. und kann nicht wirklich seinen eigenen Tod denken.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy

Retractions

Science Magazine reports a collaboration with Retraction Watch

A disturbingly large portion of papers—about 2%—contain “problematic” scientific images that experts readily identified as deliberately manipulated, according to a study of 20,000 papers published in mBio in 2016 by Elisabeth Bik of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues. What’s more, our analysis showed that most of the 12,000 journals recorded in Clarivate’s widely used Web of Science database of scientific articles have not reported a single retraction since 2003.

Most journals that I am reading, are never retracting a paper. So the whole Science statistics are flawed.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy

A damning indictment of contemporary life

I would like to rewrite a text I have seen initially at fstoppers.com.

In his book Civilization, Niall Ferguson wrote a damning indictment of contemporary life. It’s a paradox, he suggests, “that an economic system designed to offer infinite choice to the individual has ended up homogenising humanity.” Never before in human history have so many people worked so hard to establish themselves as top scientists through exactly the same means: using near-identical technology, writing the same grant applications and producing as many mediocre papers as possible.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bo3BHvZFWpe/?taken-by=insta_repeat

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Allergy

A bad study is worse than no study

“Direct infant UV light exposure is associated with eczema and immune development”. Kristina Rueter, Anderson P. Jones, Aris Siafarikas, Ee-Mun Lim, Natasha Bear, Paul S. Noakes, Susan L. Prescott and Debra J. Palmer.
Article in press 2018 American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2018.08.037

These graphical abstracts look a bit strange like “science for dummies”. Isn’t there a major discrepancy of title and abstract?

IMHO this is a RCT of vitamin D supplementation of newborns and not a study of UV light exposure. Maybe the authors needed a selling point for a poorly designed study?

The (only) allergy outcome is shown in table. 6 of 90 in the placebo group and 9 of 90 in the vitamin group develop eczema. This translates into an OR of 1.6 (0.5-4.6, P = 0.4214). I read this as a non significant association of exposure and outcome which is quite understandable given

1. the low power of the study. My result of a post hoc power calculation is around 12%.
2. the ignorance of the main eczema risk factor ( filaggrin mutation!). Allocation by a “history of maternal allergic disease” does not allocate filaggrin mutations equally between groups.
3. the ignorance of maternal vitamin D levels. Restricting to maternal levels >50 nmol/L introduced as a bias toward supplemented fetuses.
4. the ignorance of vitamin D fed by formula. So clearly this is more a dose-finding study and not a RCT of vitamin D supplementation as also the controls are (heavily) exposed.
5. the ignorance of the most relevant outcome in this age group (which is sensitization against food allergens).
6. the trial registration number is wrong.
7. the flowchart numbers have errors, for example the size of the vitamin D group at 3 months need to be N=91 and not N=90.
8. the “vitamin D hypothesis” did not emerge to explain associations found between regions of higher latitudes and increased risk of development of allergic diseases in children – the hypothesis emerged by theoretical considerations of the immune effects of artificial vitamin D supplementation.

JACI – how did that survive your review?

17.1.2020 Update

As it turned out, I didn’t find all issue, there are even more when reading now the review of Maslin et al.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy, Software

On the irrelevance of hypothesis testing in the computer age

Geoffrey R. Loftus in Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 1993, 25 (2), 25() 256

Hypothesis testing, while by far the most common statistical technique for generating conclusions from data, is nonetheless not very informative. It emphasizes a banal and confusing question (“Is it true that some set of population means are not all identical to one another?”) whose answer is, in a mathematical sense, almost inevitably known (“No”). Hypothesis testing, as it is customarily implemented, ignores two issues that are generally much more interesting, important, and relevant: What is thepattern of population means over conditions, and what are the magnitudes of various variability measures (e.g., standard errors of the mean, estimates of population standard deviations)?

so auch in G. Lind “Effektstärken: Statistische, praktische und theoretische Bedeutsamkeit empirischer Befunde”, Privatdruck 2012

Was aber selten (viel zu selten!) in Erwägung gezogen wird, ist die Möglichkeit, Befunde auf ihre theoretische, inhaltliche Bedeut- samkeit hin zu untersuchen: Welche Wertedifferenz ist für unser subjektives Empfinden und unsere Handlungen bedeutsam? Ab welcher Effektstärke können wir davon sprechen, dass eine Therapie- methode oder eine pädagogische Intervention wirklich etwas bringen und den Aufwand lohnen, den alle Beteiligten investieren müssen? Tritt der Effekt immer oder nur unter bestimmten Bedingungen auf? Ist er an Besonderheiten der Studie (Umfang des Samples, Streuung der unabhängigen Variablen) gebunden? Passt der Effekt zu dem, was wir bereits über die Variablen wissen, die wir untersuchen, oder stellt er fundiert geglaubte Theorien in Frage?

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy

The fascination of what’s being difficult

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The fascination of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There’s something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood
Nor on Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day’s war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I’ll find the stable and pull out the bolt.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Genetics

Cell life span in the human body: 7 years?

Karel & Iris Schrijver “Living with the starts” have an intestine chapter “Dying to Live” that is about the cell turn over

Take the skin, for example: a Iiving, breathing, regenerating tissue that is the largest organ of the body and that acts as a barrier between the internal organs and the environment. In adults, it encompasses about 22 square feet (2 m2) and weighs around eight pounds (4 kg). It protects the interior of the body from injury, from harmful effects of microorganisms, and from the damaging ultraviolet rays of the Sun. It plays a role in the body’s thermal regulation through the constriction or dilatation of small blood vessels, it contains nerve endings that allow us to feel touch, temperature, pain, pressure, and vibration, and it slows the loss of fluids from the body. The skin also shelters the hair follicles, which produce the hairs that cover most of the body’s surface, and it provides storage for a variety of substances. The skin, composed of several layers, ages quickly but is remarkably effective at renewing itself. In the top layer, the epidermis, most cells eventually reach the surface as the outermost layers at cells wear off. They are replaced in a time frame of roughly a month or two, in a continuous process that culminates in the loss of approximately 30,000 cells every minute throughout our lives. This translates into roughly eight pounds (4 kg) of dead material per year. Some features of our skin are, of course, more lasting. For example, we may have seemingly permanent moles and we may have scars that persist for years. These tissues, however, are not really skin. Moles are embedded within our skin but they are in fact benign growths that are typically composed of pigmented cells that do not follow the same lifecycle as true skin cells. Likewise, scars are repairs of deep cuts in our skin.

Unfortunately they do not give any reference there. Data should have been produced by carbon 14 dating. And yes, there are references

Radioactive carbon decays slowly, such that a given amount of carbon-14 halves every 6,000 years. So detecting the subtle change in the ratio of normal to naturally occurring radioactive carbon over just a few years is incredibly hard.
But Jonas Frisén of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, says it can be done if one takes advantage of the signal left by nuclear testing, which spewed high levels of carbon-14 into the air during the Cold War.
By the time a halt was called to aboveground nuclear testing in 1963, levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere had doubled beyond natural background levels, says Frisén. Since the halt, this has halved every 11 years. By taking this into account, one can see detectable changes in levels of carbon-14 in modern DNA, he says.
“Most molecules of the cell will turn over all the time. But DNA is a material that does not exchange carbon after cell division, so it serves as a time capsule for carbon,” Frisén says.

basically referring to a Cell 2005 paper

We therefore modified established DNA-extraction protocols to minimize the risk of carbon contamination (see Experimental Procedures). DNA samples were analyzed for purity in several ways; in addition to spectrophotometric analysis, the contents of all samples were analyzed by HPLC and the amount of total carbon (12C, 13C, and 14C) was determined during graphite preparation for isotope analysis by accelerator mass spectrometry.

They needed a minimum of 15 million cells for 14C analysis with the current sensitivity of accelerator mass spectrometry while it would be  interesting to repeat this study with single cell genome sequencing.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy

Zensur bei Springer Nature

Der DHV berichtet in seinem neuesten Newsletter 10/2018, dass Wissenschaftler die Zusammenarbeit mit Springer Nature abbrechen

Aus Protest gegen die Einschränkung der Wissenschaftsfreiheit haben die Professorinnen Madeleine Herren-Oesch und Barbara Mittler sowie die Professoren Thomas Maissen, Joseph Maran, Axel Michaels und Rudolf Wagner die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Wissenschaftsverlag Springer Nature aufgekündigt. Die Herausgeberinnen und Herausgeber der Buchreihe “Transcultural Research”, die im Umfeld des Exzellenz-Clusters “Asien und Europa” an der Universität Heidelberg beheimatet ist, werfen dem Verlag vorauseilenden Gehorsam vor der chinesischen Zensur vor. Das berichten die “FAZ” und die “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”.
Springer Nature hatte im November 2017 regierungskritische Inhalte von seiner chinesischen Webseite entfernt und mehr als tausend Publikationen aus dem Angebot genommen (vgl. Newsletter 11/2017), ohne die Autorinnen und Autoren vor der Löschung zu unterrichten. Rechtliche Zwänge, die der Verlag einzuhalten vorgebe, um weitestgehenden Zugang zu seinen Publikationen zu ermöglichen, existieren nach Ansicht der Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wisssenschaftler nicht.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/wenn-chinas-zensoren-knurren-duckt-sich-selbst-die-westliche-wissenschaft-ld.1425185

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy

Scientific consumerism and pointless jobs

One of those rare insight articles at http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would have advanced sufficiently by century’s end that countries like Great Britain or the United States would achieve a 15-hour work week.[…]
Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise? […]
The standard line today is that he didn’t figure in the massive increase in consumerism.[…]

I am not sure how consumerism translates into science. Is it the mass production of papers? Papers that are never read? Pointless jobs also have massively increased in the science industry basically with all the pointless competition being preached every day.

Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ‘professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers’ tripled, growing ‘from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.’ In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away […] But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning of not even so much of the ‘service’ sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations.

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026
Philosophy

Ghostwriter

The Atlantic had an interesting article on online gig platforms where you can even buy love letters.

For just $7—$5 plus a $2 service fee charged by Fiverr—Jelena wrote a 200-word love letter for me. It was great: I told her that my fictional paramour and I had been dating for 161 days, and she added up those digits, which equal the number eight, and made a reference to how flipping an “8” on its side would lead to the infinity sign. “I wanna flip that 8 to the left and spend it with you,” she wrote.

You can buy space in a fake journal. But can you buy also research? At least there is some indication of that. Continue reading Ghostwriter →

 

CC-BY-NC Science Surf accessed 20.01.2026