Why I'm Marching for Science

Saturday April 22nd 2017 is Earth Day. It is also the day chosen for the March for Science. I was thinking about traveling to Washington DC to march, but will most likely be marching in Minnesota in the Twin Cities march (@ScienceMarchMN).

There are numerous reasons why I'm marching. The most obvious reason for me is that science has been under a constant attack by republicans the last few decades, and these attacks reached a tipping point for me in the last election. Anti-science viewpoints do not know party lines but democrats have not been a constant opponent of science, disparaging scientists, scientific agencies, education, etc. If the previous two statements have your face turning red and mental spittle flying, then there's little point in reading further even though what I want to express in this essay is not specifically a republican/democrat comparison.

I want to suggest that if, as a nation, we have decided that science is the enemy, that we don't need to hear from any more experts, that we make our own reality, then its time to close up shop. We can unequivacolly state that we no longer want a more perfect union, we do not want to promote the general welfare or provide for the common defense, nor are we interested in our posterity. We can still have a government that makes, executes, and interprets law, but let's not kid ourselves that we care about the mission statement outlined in the Preamble of the Constitution of the USA.

Why do I say this? It seems that I'm linking our system of government and science and if so is that appropriate. I think it is. As a student of public education, a few decades removed, I remember learning about the Enlightenment and how Enlightenment ideas and thinking influenced the founding fathers. For those who may have forgotten, these ideas were a focus on reason, logic, science (as it existed at that time), etc. as a way to improve our lot in the universe. Enlightenment principles led to things like the Preamble. Don't take my word for it, you can read what the framers thought by reading The Federalist Papers.

Our government was founded on the idea of rationale policy and governance, on the use of logic and honest debate to inform decision making, on science to explain what was true and what was not. If we have decided as a nation that allegiance to party is more important than making informed decisions, then why waste time pretending we care about our system of government anymore?

I've spent some amount of time thinking about why this concept is so difficult and anathema to many people. I think in part it is because when we think about 'logic' or 'rationality' or 'science', we think these are simple terms easy to understand. Kind of like we all went to school, so we all feel like we understand a teacher's job. Let's take the example of 'logic', that should be easy. The fact is many books have been devoted to this topic and many more will be. When I say logic, probably a lot of people think along the lines of:

If A=B and B=C, then A=C

This is true and this is logic, but it's logic at its simplest.

How about another example many people are familiar with that may not be so simple.

You see a train coming down the line and it is going to hit and kill five people, you can flip the switch so the train goes onto another track, but it will kill one person there. What do you do?

Simple? How about...

You see a train coming down the line and it is going to hit and kill five felons, you can flip the switch so the train goes onto another track, but it will kill one person there. What do you do?

Simple? How about...

You see a train coming down the line and it is going to hit and kill five white girls aged 14-15 but they are felons, you can flip the switch so the train goes onto another track, but it will kill one person there. What do you do?

Simple? How about...

You see a train coming down the line and it is going to hit and kill five elderly people, you can flip the switch so the train goes onto another track, but it will kill one child there. What do you do?

We can go on and on. Some people will not flip the switch in the first case, because that would in fact make them the murderer of one person, although they saved five. Others would say they'd flip the switch in heartbeat in that example, but then what happens in the latter examples. I say the first case is a logical decision because the needs of the many (5 people) outweigh the needs of the few (1 person). In this case, I'm making it a simple numbers game. In the subsequent examples, I'm including information that may impact the value of the people in question such that the raw numbers may not matter as much. Speaking of value, what if in case 2, I point out they were non-violent felons, would your choice change?

Let's get back to science. Science requires logic, but it is more than logic as science requires observation, making inferences based on these observations (aka hypotheses), conducting experiments, and then interpretation of the data, and repeat. Both making inferences and interpreting data requires logic but also requires creativity and imagination of possibilities.

Our legislators need to write laws to accomplish the mission statement described in the Preamble. The world is a dynamic place as is society so we constantly need new laws. For example, we need a new budget every year, there are problems that need to be solved, etc. How are laws written? This is where science plays an important role.

Let's say people who lived in communities in the 1950s downwind of nuclear test sites got cancer at a much higher rate than people living elsewhere. First, this is only discovered serendipitously because doctors in these areas see more cases of cancer than they expected based on their training (that's because by and large people don't move too far). One possibility is that the training was shoddy, so the doctors call colleagues who work elsewhere and learn that their colleagues find cancer at a rate they learned about in medical school. This seems like a real problem, so now some epidemiologists are called in to look more closely at the situation and they find that after controlling for other factors, like diet, age, etc. people downwind of nuclear testing sites are in fact much more likely to come down with cancer. Congress is mobilized, there's a problem that needs solving.

Here's where science and politics separate. There are many issues and repercussions involved here. A law could ban nuclear testing within 50 miles of downwind communities. Is that sufficient distance? We could change the law to make it 500 miles, is that even possible? A law could ban above ground testing, would that prevent the problem? It would if the problem was aerosolized radioactive compounds, but not if the cancer was due radioactive compounds seeping into the water supply. Or we could attack the epidemiologists for being in the pocket of big-antinuke with an agenda trying to get rid of jobs on nuclear testing facilities.

Look at what happened with the smoking-lung cancer science. It took decades and hundreds of thousands of lives before the cigarette companies agreed that smoking causes cancer. The list can go on and on. 

Legislators have a difficult job and we should elect the best and brightest and bravest. If based on scientific studies, it is shown that a new yet inexpensive chemical used on farms kills shrimp, what does a legislator do? If they propose a law banning the chemical, an entire industry and all the employees of said company are out of work. If you don't ban the chemical, the shrimpers on the coasts will be devastated. Maybe you propose banning the use of the chemical near estuaries near the coasts, but this puts farmers in those regions at a disadvantage to those who are not near these areas. Here's where bravery comes in, is a legislator in Iowa going to consider the shrimpers, the industrialists, or the farmers? What about the Mississippi legislators?

Science can tell us much, but it cannot necessarily tell us policy. In the shrimp example, science will also tell us that shrimp are a primary food source of many fish and ultimately mammals. If the shrimp fail, the fish fail and the whales fail, if the fish fail the seals fail and the sharks fail. The impact is not limited to shrimp. Of course if farm costs go up, food prices go up which means less spending on other areas across the country. Making policy is difficult, there are very few, if any, truly 'everybody wins' scenarios. The question I expect politicians to be able to answer is 'why did you vote the way you did?' I expect a politician to explain the pros and cons of their choices and if they can't articulate both the good and bad and back those claims up with data, then what good are they? We might as well make decision based on our guts or 'common sense' whatever that means.

This is why I march for science. Many politicians are ideologues, chickenshit, or both. The worst are the chickenshit ideologues, which represents much of the republican caucus. These are the folks who want a specific policy to go through, kind of a 'we are going to throw the switch on the train track' regardless of the scenario. When scientists point out that there are two people on the track now and 50 young adults on the other track, politicians attack the scientists or the data. Companies that can make money off switches that change tracks can pay 'scientists' to suggest the possibility that maybe there aren't 50 people on the other track because its tough to tell the difference between 47 and 50 and therefore any other number. I 'March for Science' because the legislators in Congress applied for and advocated for a difficult job and they are deciding en masse they don't want to do their job or at least not be held accountable for what they do. They are often not the best nor the brightest and are generally not the bravest. They are too scared to make a decision that may hurt their constituents even if it benefits the greater good, so they lie, obfuscate, and attack those who point out the problems in order to get reelected. A brave legislator tells the farmer that they voted to ban the chemical because it adversely effects shrimpers and so many others; an honest legislator tries to offset the hit the farmer takes through tax credits or other mechanisms. Our legislators* do not.

So as a citizen of the USA, a father, and a scientist, I will march because science is essential for the government to make effective policy and to be held accountable for that policy. I march because I want our representatives to be honest, I want them to be accountable to the people who voted for them and able to defend decisions that in the short term may hurt their constituents. If you are too scared to do the job, do something else. Most people are reasonable and if you explain why a hurt is happening and can explain how you are dealing with that hurt, you will get much in return. When you act like your constituents are petulant children, you can't be surprised when they act that way.

*there are a few, very few, exceptions.

On Screwing Over a Generation of Biomedical Researchers

We, the biomedical community in the United States, live in interesting times. Below is the funding dollars for NIH over the last couple of decades. I completed my Ph.D in 1998 about the time the historical trend line and actual funding line separate. This separation marks the 'doubling,' when Congress passed legislation to double NIH's budget over the course of 5 years. I completed my post-doctoral training and obtained an academic position at a top research university in the midst of the doubling. This was a time of great expansion and much hiring by universities and research institutes across the country. Along with the hiring came investment in new facilities to house and recruit the increased numbers of scientists. This was not an instantaneous process at all institutions, but those who did not expand missed out on this additional ~38 billion dollars of new resources. It was shortly after the doubling was completed that I obtained my first NIH R01 grant.

From Here

Since the doubling was completed, you'll notice there has been a steady decrease in funding every year through 2013. In fact, 2008 represents the year when the 'doubling' was essentially undone. As of 2008, NIH is funded less well than if it had simply not been doubled and kept on it's annual growth rate of 3.3%.

Remember all those universities and research institutions that hired and expanded in the early 2000s? Well now what do you think is happening to those researchers? Maybe we shouldn't care, I mean those institutions didn't have to expand. But this is a lousy argument in my opinion. Congress let it be known that they and by association the country cared about biomedical research (FYI: this was under a republican president). Of course the government also cares about the troops, at least when it comes to sending them overseas to fight. Once research institutions expanded and hired more scientists to make use of this additional funding, Congress changed its mind about caring. Kind of like support dries up when the troops come home. So we hired more scientists who also trained more researchers to help conduct the research. These trainees obtained PhD's and actually wanted jobs too (go figure). And the cycle continued over the short term. If you look at the number of PhD's awarded over time in the biomedical sciences, which is primarily funded by NIH, you see a large increase in the number awarded beginning around 2003. This is 5 years after the 'doubling' began, which is the average time to completion for a biomedical PhD.

The problem as you might have realized is that with the lag between the initiation of the doubling and the graduation time of PhD's, as the first round of PhD's arising from the increased funding during the doubling entered the workforce, the downturn began. Of course there was already 5 more years of researchers in the midst of their training. So we see a huge increase in the number of PhD's being conferred between 2003 and 2008, when ~8000 biomedical PhD's were conferred (remember there are ~24,000 more PhD students in years 1 - 4 still being trained).

So concomitant with reductions in funding, we were still churning out PhD's. Armchair quarterbacks will state the biomedical community should have planned for a decade plus contraction that reversed the NIH doubling and put us in a position where biomedical funding is comparatively worse than at any time in my life time. (I am not arguing absolute dollars are less, they are not, but for the number of scientists that were trained and put to work under this system, we are much much worse.) Of course if we could have predicted that, we could all fund our research programs by visiting Las Vegas every year. This would reduce a ton of paperwork.

At this point when I talk to undergraduates interested in graduate school in biomedical fields, I tell them about the problems and encourage them to think about what they want to be doing in 10 -15 years. If it's running their own labs or being in a science leadership position, then I ask if they would consider moving to a different country. They might have a chance elsewhere.

Adrian Smith and Eric Cantor don't understand science, but know it ain't good

Here is a House Committee on Science and Technology member who along with Eric Cantor are enlisting your help (well, not you because you're reading a blog post at Field of Science not Answers in Genesis) to legislatively cut NSF funded grants.

This is being done in order to trim wasteful spending by those socialist bastards in Washington. For the record:

NSFs 2010 budget was                            6.9 billion
2010 costs for the war in Afghanistan      105 billion
DARPA budget was                                3.4 billion
Dept. Homeland Security 2011 budget    43.6 billion
     TNA TSA 2011 budget (see above)   8.2 billion

Interestingly, the DHS was founded in 2003; the NSF was founded in 1950. So, the NSF with its modest budget that has ever so slowly increased is probably wasting your money, unlike the DHS which had money thrown at it left and right and is certainly spending it wisely.

However, recently NSF has funded some grants Smith isn't happy with (unlike every other year when some halfwit legislator tries culling specific grants usually on evolution or birth control not to mention the dreaded stem cell). Thankfully, Smith tells us which ones are problematic by vaguely telling us what the grants are about. Of course, I expect he is misinforming us and he is not clear on the grants in question since he doesn't tell us a grant number, specific title, or PI name. You can find proposals that might be the ones Smith is worried about, but if you read the abstracts they don't say what he says they say.

Since the average family spends $10,000 in federal taxes (note he didn't say income tax, does the 10k  include FICA, I bet it does....douche), "should 75 families work all year to support soccer research?" Notice how he changes the focus? First the research was on computer models to understand the contributions of soccer players, not soccer research. I am not familiar with this work, but can see the implications, for example this may aid in the development of computer models to determine appropriate tactics in police or military teams going into a building, you know without the loss of life, or even to understand hunting behavior in animals (this is the basic research douchebag previously thought was good). I wonder if all the high school graduates in his district had any of those thoughts. Also, if we break it down the numbers, there are ~ 100 million families (I used # households from here) so multiply that by $10,000 and we get $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 trillion). This # is slightly less than the income tax revenue from 2010, so I expect my # of families is reasonable. Of that $1,000,000,000,000, $750,000 is going to fund soccer research says Smith. Except that isn't true (big fucking surprise). The $750,000 is the total for the grant, which is likely funded for 3 years, which is $250,000 of $1,000,000,000,000 or 0.0000025% of the federal income tax money. If we defund NSF entirely it will save 0.69% of the entire budget.

Way to go Adrian, you helped a lot a whole 1/100th of 1/100th of 25/1000ths of 1%!!!

Now the non-sequitur, before it was "what do you think" about some grants Im not really going to tell you about. Now its, go ahead and find grants you don't think support the hard sciences (who thinks Smith knows what the fuck that even means?) or you don't think are a good use of tax payer dollars. There! With that last clause Smith has told every Tom Dick and Harriet that all grants are fair game to be culled. This is despite the fact that most grants are not funded because the applicants couldn't convince experts (ie university academics) this was the best research to be done. I mean its all well and good if scientists that have trained in these areas for decades (you know those Noble Prize winners Smith seemed to think highly of) think this is a good use of tax payer money. What we really need to know is what the cashier at Target thinks about this research. I expect Smith will very soon be recruiting important constituent feedback for the DOD DOE FDA and TSA among others.

To guide his flock constituents, Smith provides some search terms to identify those grants you may not like. Evil words like "museum" and "success." It's almost as if Smith has identified grants he doesn't like and is helping to guide you to find them on your own and then tell him you don't like them. I suggest some different terms to identify grants, how about "Nebraska" or "North Platte" I saw one grant that wanted to renovate the toilets at a University recreational facility (using Smith's framing). I expect Smith will want to move quickly on all the wasteful tax payer money NSF is spending in his district. Other important search terms include "Virginia" and "Richmond" and you may find some grants funding Pakistan, which is where Bin Laden is hiding (again using the framing of Smith and cronies).

Just say it Smith, you don't like those smart fucking kids who got good grades in school and made you feel insecure. It does suck that these 'university academics' are trying to learn something about the universe we live in, which may actually amount to some important new breakthroughs or insights (but may not as well). I wish you had the balls to say you don't like the NSF or at least research that 1. you don't understand; 2. doesn't benefit the industries that fund your elections; 3. you still don't understand. Nope, instead like the coward you seem to be, you try to mobilize the masses to do the dirty work for you, then you can do what you wanted to do and plead that you are just following orders.

Sometimes things come out right...mostly

Well here they are. Minnesota State Science Standards for k-12 students.

As a member of this committee, we worked quite hard on these standards to try and get them as strong as possible. In the case of high school biology, we were working under the premise that this information was required for every Minnesota student. I gained some interesting insights from serving on this committee, but that is the focus of an upcoming post.

An Archival repost

Francis Collins has just taken over as the head of the NIH. There has been much (rightfully so) discussion of his evangelical christian thoughts in regards to science and what has come from his work. However, as weak as Collins' philosophical arguments are here, I want to touch an a horrifying trend I see coming down from on high (in other words from the director of NIH).

As recently noted at WEIT there seems to be the idea that "Big Science" is better than figuring shit-out-science. One of Collins big credentials was administering the NHGRI, which is a plus, no doubt. But science is more than generating data, even copious amounts of data sufficient to choke a rodent. As I noted in the WEIT comments, any primate (or well trained mammal) can generate copious data points. It is true scientists that figure out what these data points mean, if they mean anything. Thus, I leave you with a repost, while I get back to my day job of trying (desperately) to keep people gainfully employed.

Science Standards and Global Warming

The final draft of the Minnesota K-12 Science Standards is not yet finalized. However, some concern has been raised as highlighted by this MinnPost article. In short the concern is that there is not enough overt emphasis on global warming and/or global systems. (BTW Im sick of this trendy new "systems" terminology that is apparently epidemic in the sciences now. No one does genetics, you have to do genome systems research to be cool.)

Dr. Rudnick is clearly on top of the global warming issue and wants its importance to society highlighted in the science standards. While a noble goal, is that really the purpose of the standards? We want to have scientifically literate citizens. We want citizens to be able to think critically and rationally, science provides tools to do that. Do we want global warming experts? As noted in an update for the article, there are various points throughout the standards including the earth sciences, physical science, and life sciences. It seems Dr. Rudnick will not be happy unless there is a dedicated section of the standards dedicated specifically to global warming. The standards are not curriculum, although the standards to help establish curriculum. If a school district wants to encompass a set of standards and benchmarks into a module devoted to global systems, it can. However, it is not required to.

I understand the importance of understanding and training people to deal with the effects of global warming. However, I think Dr. Rudnick takes it too far. He says the "standards are fundamentally flawed" and that the Dept. of Education "immediately suspend the current process" (emphasis mine). Nice sense of self-importance there. In the comments section, Dr. Rudnick provides a copy of the letter he sent to the Dept. of Education Commissioner Seagren. I, for one, appreciate his candor and passion. However, as I read Dr. Rudnick's letter I got the sense that he is not so much interested in the scientific education of Minnesota students (I know this is a gross overstatement) but in preparing a legion of scientists to combat global warming. Im not sure, but is it ethical to "draft" our K-12 students into global system sciences without a referendum or something similar? There are standards devoted to species extinction, environmental change, water cycles, greenhouse gases, or at least the important concepts behind these issues, isn't this enough? Are these standards only applicable to global warming and if not, should we make it seem like they are?

I do not mean to imply or diminish the critical importance climate change will certainly have on the next few generations. However, that does not mean I support an approach to essentially force a generation of students interested in science into a global warming-curricula. When Sputnik flew overhead did schools across the nation dump physics and chemistry to focus on rocketry and jet propulsion? When Russia obtained nuclear technology, did we have mandated nuclear physics curricula? Just saying...

While I disagree with Dr. Rudnick's inherent accusation that the science standard committee fundamentally failed and I disagree with the over-the-top rhetoric used in his letter. I will commend him for taking a pro-science stand and being passionate about K-12 science education.

NAS looking for input

The National Academies of Science wants to know what matters most to you. As they say, "Based on your input, we will be developing a suite of informational products (booklets, audio podcasts, video podcasts, web sites, and more!) about the topics that matter most to you and other survey respondents." Please take a minute and complete the survey here. (The survey is essential one question and takes less than 5 minutes.) Also, think about what's important to you in the survey and try to avoid simply picking issues that get the most media attention at the moment.