Agreeing about climate change

(image http://www.rhs.org.uk)

 

Scientists disagree about things constantly. It is part of the very nature of studying science to constantly question and re-examine the data. Even the most well-studied, comprehensively validated, scientific principles will have their opponents. Many different types of experiment will be carried out by lots of different scientists before we will start to think of something as scientifically true. However, even then there will be someone, somewhere who disagrees. When people say that even scientists can’t agree on whether we are bringing about climate change through our own actions or, for that matter, whether autism is caused by the MMR vaccine, what is actually happening is that a single scientist (or a couple of scientists) has put forward an idea (usually through publishing a scientific paper) that is then disproven by the scientific community after rigorous experiments have been performed.

 

Within science, we see this happen from time to time when scientific papers are published and the data cannot be replicated. In some cases, the scientist doing the initial work has falsified data but often it is a less sinister situation of data misinterpretation or poorly carried out experiments. The real danger comes when this scientist is unwilling to let go of their original hypothesis, even in the face of mounting, irrefutable evidence to the contrary. This is especially damaging when the research is of interest to a general audience. It can be almost impossible to change the minds of politicians and the public once there is an impression of disagreement amongst the scientific community.

 

When politicians or members of the public question why it is so hard to find scientists to argue against the idea of man-made climate change, the answer is because there essentially aren’t any. Scientists virtually unanimously believe that the planet is warming, that it is at least partially our fault, and that the consequences are likely to be devastating. Whatever experiments are done, whatever measurements are taken, and whatever predictions are made, many people seem to be unbudgeable from the idea that scientists are trying to deceive them and that climate change is a myth. Whether we are responsible for climate change is still a matter of some debate, but global warming is a fact and the argument that scientists generally disagree about this is simply untrue.

Isolation

My brother brought my attention to this amazing article about a family in Siberia, who were cut off from the rest of the world for 40 years. The youngest children never having met another human outside their family. Especially moving to me was the description of one of the family’s main forms of entertainment, as being “for everyone to recount their dreams”. Even when you have spent decades with only the same few people for company, they still have something new to offer you.

The other side

I’m planning to start working for a company, or ‘move into industry’ as we scientists call it. I am not absolutely decided on this, but with each passing day I become more tempted. Traditionally, amongst academic scientists, moving from academia to industry has been seen by many as ‘selling out’. You do it either because you want to make more money, or because you can’t make it as an academic scientist. Neither is viewed favourably. Large pharmaceutical companies are painted as the evil side of research, turning beautiful science into a commodity for FINANCIAL GAIN. I think this attitude is becoming less prevalent, but it’s still there. And it’s a shame.

We need biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to take the discoveries we make and turn them into something useful. If this is not our ultimate goal, then what is? Biology is increasingly being utilised to tackle real world problems beyond just health and disease. Synthetic biology (discussed previously in this blog), uses biology to design new systems and organisms that can synthesise useful products such as biofuels, or breakdown waste or toxic products. Fundamental knowledge of gene regulation and cellular metabolism (gained from basic research) is required to engineer new biological ‘machines’. Much research in this area takes place in small start-up companies started by scientists and business people who are passionate about bringing discoveries to bed-side, or fuel pump.

My own decision to (maybe) leave academic research comes partly from wanting to work towards a more defined and useful goal, and partly out of a desire for change. I have gone from being super enthusiastic about my area of research, to being a little bit bored of it, to being ready to change fields entirely, in quite a short space of time. All the aspects of the job I used to think romantic and marvellous – freedom to follow any line of investigation, lack of immediate deadlines, no clients – are starting to feel indulgent. If you stay working in academia, the ultimate career goal is to start your own lab working on your own niche area of research. This should be in some way distinct from that of other scientists, so you can justify getting grant money from research councils to fund your work. In order to progress with your research you usually need to stay pretty focused on one particular area, and so you need to be both passionate and loyal to your piece of science. It turns out I am not very scientifically loyal.

I think being an academic scientist is a fantastic job, with many brilliant people making amazing discoveries every day. They will do just fine without me.

Disclaimer: I currently know very little about the biotechnology or pharmaceutical industry and so these are just my ill-informed opinions.

Directions

Ok everyone, I have a question. It’s the first full week of work after New Year so I’m sure you all want to ease in gently, and will be grateful for a little diversion.

I was in the car last week with A, as usual he was driving and I was feeding small biscuits to the baby at regular intervals like a dog you are trying to make sit. “Do you recognize the route now” he said, “do you think you could drive it without getting lost?”. “Yes” I said, “and, maybe”. “What do you mean ‘maybe’? We’ve driven it 10 times together”. “Well” I said “when I am driving I head towards things I recognize, but sometimes I get somewhere where I recognize two things, and I don’t know which one to head towards (eeny, meeny, miny, moe)”. “What?!?” (he was aghast) “You’re not serious. I don’t believe you”. But it’s true. It’s not that I don’t have the skill or ability to read maps, or that I don’t understand the concept of north, south, east and west, it’s just that when I am driving, I don’t naturally utilize those skills and concepts. I remember a series of landmarks and when I need to repeat that route, I re-trace my journey past these landmarks, following them like Hansel’s breadcrumbs.

“Maybe it is the difference between the male and female brain” said A, sounding unconvinced. I don’t know, it could be. Or it could just be the difference between him and me. I want to emphasise that it is not that I can’t navigate using a mental compass, it is just not my default state.

So guys and gals, what do you do? Do you picture your journey like a map, ever aware of your direction relative to magnetic north? Or, do you use landmarks as your guide, making your way to your destination in a stepwise manner? Is this really a male versus female thing? Of course it is possible, even likely, that people use a combination of the two approaches. However it’s my hunch that people fundamentally adopt one or other approach. I could be wrong. I’d like to know.

Vocal training

This is slightly old news now. An asian elephant, Koshnik, has learned to imitate human speech and can now say several (Korean) words. Koshnik can say about 5 words (including hello and lie-down) but apparently he doesn’t mean what he says. Elephants are anatomically very different from humans, and so the fact that this elephant can match the pitch and timbre of human speech (using its trunk stuck into its mouth), is somewhat surprising. Koshnik spent his early years, an important time for elephant bonding, surrounded by humans. Maybe all social animals would be able to speak if kept alone, with only humans for company, at similar stages in their lives. Probably not bees.

Humans might have a whole repertoire of sounds we never try out. We use what we need to communicate and leave it at that. I always thought the ability to roll Rs was a genetic gift, and indeed A claims he absolutely cannot do it. However, more recently I learned that Polish people have to be able to roll their Rs, and if they struggle with it then they get speech therapy. Something A should consider. To be fair, I struggle with the sound required to pronounce Scottish words such as ‘loch’ and ‘Bruichladdich’. Maybe with enough hard work and perseverance, we could not only be rolling our Rs but also meowing convincingly, or producing biosonar for echolocation.

It is tempting to test this idea on the baby (who should soon be re-branded ‘the toddler’). She currently speaks her own language, which sounds to me a little like mandarin, but is also at a fun stage of imitating us and therefore ripe for such training. She seems very keen to mimic ‘uh-oh’ and we are trying to teach her to announce her presence by shouting this over and over again as she crawls into a new room, bringing trouble with her. What if we were to leave her – at this critical developmental stage – in a room 24 hours a day with only a dog for company? Would she begin to bark? And how about if there was a constant beeping sound? Would she too start to beep? I promise not to do it.

Cocktail protocol

Scientists often like to say that lab science is a lot like cooking. I think it makes us feel cooler and more creative. I’m not sure as many chefs would have said that cooking is like science before the rise of molecular gastronomy, but the likes of Heston Blumenthal are certainly helping our case. In actual fact I would say that I approach cooking completely differently than I do science in the lab. In the lab I am governed by the protocol I am following. I attempt to follow it as accurately as possible, unless I really believe that a necessary change should be made. It is often critical that I do each experiment precisely the same way each time. It doesn’t pay to add an extra sprinkling of phenol, an unexpected pinch of hydrochloric acid, or a generous glug of tetramethylethylenediamine (sorry). To some extent it is in reaction to this that I am a complete disaster when it comes to following recipes in the kitchen. I feel dictated to by recipes. I want to change everything. And I never, ever do anything exactly the same way twice.

However, there is one area of culinary creativity where I do follow the recipe right to the last letter, and that is in the art of cocktail making. To me this is the closest I come to lab work in the home, carefully measuring out different liquids to a precise stoichiometry. Since the birth of the baby, myself and A don’t get out much. As a result, we have built up an extensive home bar. I have come to appreciate the cleverness and subtlety of a really good cocktail recipe. One of our best discoveries has been the deployment of unusual bitters. We have in our collection both the Mexican Mole bitters and Jamaican Jerk bitters made by the Bitter End bitters company (http://www.bitterendbitters.com/index.php). I hope to eventually acquire the entire collection. Here are two of my favourite cocktail recipes, both making use of the Bitter End Mole Bitters. I wouldn’t dare change a thing.

Holy Mole

2 oz bourbon

½ oz Bénédictine liqueur

¾ oz St. Germain liqueur

3 drops BItter End Mole Bitters

Stir all ingredients with ice in a mixing glass.  Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a flamed orange peel.

…

Spicy Sazerac

Sugar cube

4 drops The Bitter End Mole Bitters

2 oz rye or bourbon

1/2 oz absinthe, Pernod, or Herbsaint

Lemon peel for garnish

Pack a rocks glass with ice. In a second rocks glass, soak sugar cube with bitters. Crush sugar cube and add whiskey. Discard the ice from the first glass; rinse the glass with absinthe, discarding extra. Pour whiskey mixture into glass and garnish with lemon peel.

Antarctic addresses

What’s cooler than looking at the Antarctic using Google Maps streetview? Not much.

Higgs Boson continued

My Large Hadron Collider pop-up book arrived! It’s amazing. I can’t wait to get home and build my own cardboard LHC. I think everything will be totally clear in my mind after that.

For more on the Boson itself, I think this cartoon is very clear and also quite lovely:

Higgs Boson Origami

I don’t know about you, but I would like to know more about the Higgs Boson. To this end, I just purchased ‘Voyage to the Heart of the Matter’ – a pop-up book explaining the search for the elusive boson (http://news.papadakis.net/features/higgs-boson-found/). Apparently you construct a mini paper ATLAS detector (one of the machines used in the hunt) yourself, and explore various aspects of the experiment through the medium of folded paper. I can’t go into any more detail than that because I don’t (yet) know much about the experiments or technologies used, and the book won’t be in my possession for about a week, but it sounds pretty awesome.

Maybe I am influenced by the large amount of time I now spend in the company of children’s books, but this seems to me to be a lovely way to explain difficult scientific concepts that really benefit from 3D explanations. Just imagine, a pop-up book explaining the exciting world of RNA!

The science of a sleeping baby

It has been a long time since I wrote here. For the last few months, my waking hours have been entirely taken up with feeding, changing, talking about, and thinking about the baby.  The necessity to feed and change the baby did not come as a surprise, but I have been amazed by how much talking and thinking about the baby I appear to need to do.  Anyway, I don’t intend to blog endlessly about baby-related things, but I might just do it once or twice.  At this point, if I don’t blog about the baby, I won’t blog at all.

The baby has been with us almost 14 weeks. Watching her change, literally day by day, and sometimes hour by hour, has been an absolute joy. I have approached the new challenge of life with the baby in the only way I know how – as a scientist. The main two challenges have been ensuring that the baby both eats and sleeps. Considering that babies essentially do little BUT eat and sleep (and excrete) it is surprising that they seem so much of a challenge. In order to help the baby with the important tasks of eating and sleeping, I have recorded data relating to how, and when the baby eats and sleeps, what measures I have taken to encourage the activity to take place successfully, and the outcome of these measures.  A thinks I need to get back to the lab as soon as possible.

The sleeping needs of the baby I find especially interesting. In the first few months of having the baby I went from not wanting to read anything about baby raising, thinking that by ‘winging it’ I would have a chilled out and independent baby, to reading anything about baby sleep that I could get my hands on.  I have been learning all about baby sleep cycles (shorter than adult sleep cycles), active versus deep sleep (she flails around like a mad person for the first 20 minutes) and the importance of morning versus afternoon naps (different amounts of REM sleep).  It is all very fascinating (when you are at home all day with no lab science to exercise your mind). Apparently babies need to sleep every few hours (we didn’t realise this, nor did the baby). They start to yawn and you have to put them to bed quick smart or they become overtired and get really pissed off with you, and then decidedly do not sleep (and mostly cry, scratch their faces and try to burrow into your chest). We thought her yawning was just a cute mannerism inherited from her father, like we thought her jaundice was just a natural tan. Anyway, once we learned about this need for napping, we spent the last month trying to recognise when she is tired and developing myriad strategies for helping her enter the land of nod as rapidly as possible before she had the chance to start crying and burrowing into our chests. The effect has been impressive. She sleeps all night and wakes up in the morning all smiles, and she is starting to learn to nap when appropriate. She no longer spends the evenings getting progressively more mad with us.  I am beginning to wonder how I would feel if I put myself to bed every time I yawned.  Maybe I would never get mad with anyone ever again.