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Objective Research Funding? An Approach to quantify the Value of Experiments

Objective Research Funding? An Approach to quantify the Value of Experiments

The distribution of research funds is clearly
not based on purely objective criteria. Most countries have different ways of
how to deal with this issue – all face different, but serious problems. Bruce Knuteson (MIT)
has developed a formula of
which he claims is able to estimate the scientific merit that a proposed
experiment will give back per monetary unit before
we actually perform it. Knuteson’s formula
estimates the gain to be obtained by a proposed experiment in terms of the reduction in information entropy the experiment is
expected to provide. This is a seductive concept: Large scientific projects,
think of ITER at Cadarache or the Large Hadron Collider at CERN – cost the public a lot of money. The ‘right’
distribution of research money is thus not only of interest to promote the future success of
scientific research, but also of larger societal interest. The Swiss newspaper Neue
Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) reports on Knuteson’s formula. Can it really help to
provide objective and rational criteria for funding the right type of research?

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I’m Not a Number; I’m a Human Being: RFID Tags and Our Personas

Swedish athletes Carolina Klüft and Stefan Holm (currently reigning Olympic champions in the heptathlon and high-jump events) recently suggested that elite athletes might have an obligation to implant chips or carry GPS transmitters in order to allow anti-doping organisations to track them. Meanwhile medical researchers debate whether patients should be tagged implanted chips for identification purposes. While such suggestions almost universally provoke a shudder and remarks about Orwell’s 1984 other people voluntarily chip themselves: some to access nightclubs, others to "hack" themselves. We might resist some privacy invasions, but eagerly invite others. Should we just get it over with and let the government tag us all?

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To push or not to push? Choosing to deliver by caesarean section.

Research published this week in the British Medical Journal shows that babies born by elective caesarean section are more likely to have breathing trouble after birth. This is especially the case for babies who are mildly premature (1 to 3 weeks early).

These results are important, since the rates of elective caesarean sections are high in the UK (as in many countries). These rates are higher in middle class mothers, a group  that has been labelled “too posh to push”.  But how should doctors respond to a request for a caesarean section by a mother (where there is no medical indication)? Do the increased risks of caesarean section justify placing restrictions on maternal choice?

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Lights out! For our Climate! For what else?

Last Saturday, people in Germany, Austria and Switzerland were asked to switch off the lights for five minutes between 20.00 and 20.05. “Lights out! For our Climate!” was the motto. Similarly, on February 1 this year –  the day of the publication of the latest scientific report of the IPCC – people all over the world followed a call of a French initiative to turn off the lights for five minutes. The recent call to arms was widely supported by the German-speaking media, including the internet portal Google.

Luckily, not too many people followed the call. Luckily, not because I want to doubt that present forecasts on the future climate provide a need to worry –  they clearly do! But had 10,000 homes participated in the campaign, then it is likely that the the Power supply system would have broken down – in all of Europe. Hopefully the worries of the power generators will have been heard the other side of the Pond, when the campaign “Lights out in America" calls for a similarly rash reaction to global warming in March 2008.

These campaigns do not seem to be the only hasty reaction to global warming.

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Race, IQ and James Watson

A couple of months ago, James Watson – who, together with Francis Crick, was awarded the Nobel Prize for deciphering the double helix structure of DNA – claimed that black people are less intelligent that white  He invoked the authority of science to make his claim. Of course, if the claim had simply been that on average (say) African-Americans had lower scores on IQ tests than White Americans (and that this difference was reflected in educational achievement and other socioeconomic indicators), Watson would simply have been citing facts. The controversial part of Watson’s claim was that the difference was rooted in the genes of blacks and whites and therefore fixed. The first part of the claim is (probably) false – the genetic differences between blacks and white are largely skin deep. But even were it true it would be irrelevant to the real question. Watson calls himself ‘gloomy about the prospect of Africa’, because he thinks that ‘genetic’ means ‘fixed’. But ‘genetic’ does not mean ‘fixed’; the fact that the differences between two individuals are explained by differences in their genes has no implications whatsoever about how hard or easy it is to eliminate the difference. Differences rooted in environmental factors (to the –limited – extent to which it even makes sense to separate environmental factors from genetic) may be easier to eliminate than those rooted in the genes, or they may be harder. Genes work like sets of switches, under the control of other genes and environmental factors. These sets can be configured differently to produce very different results; changing a few triggers thereby produces very different products from much the same genes. In any case, the evidence strongly suggests that this particular IQ deficit is remediable.

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Who is your hard drive working for?

Western Digital, a producer of networked
hard drives that enable users to access their files across the net, has blocked customers
from sharing media files from their drives. Needless to say, users are not
amused and hard at work at finding workarounds. The move is possibly a
pre-emptive way for the company to avoid being sued by the content industry for
providing a means for piracy. The block covers most popular media formats,
regardless of who owns the copyright of the contents. This makes it impossible
for users to share e.g. home videos or their own creations. Who really owns the
hard drive – the customer or Western Digital?

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Private genetic tests, and the case for ‘Genetic education’

An advisory body to the UK government, the Human Genetics Commission has called for more regulation of genetic tests that are available for the public to buy privately.

The completion of the human genome project, and the advances (and economies) in genetic technology have led to a burgeoning industry in private genetic tests. In the US especially, but increasingly also in Europe it is possible to order a wide range of tests for genes associated with risk of disease.

It is argued that tests with significant health implications should not be advertised to the public, and should be available only through a medical practitioner. But is this attitude to testing unduly paternalistic? Is greater regulation a realistic response?

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Restoring Sensation to Amputees’ Lost Limbs

Scientists at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University made two amputees ‘feel’ their lost arms by rerouting to their chest the key nerves that transfer sensations from hand to brain. After several months, stimulation to the area of the nerves would produce rich sensations experienced as if occurring in the missing limbs. Interestingly, the patients could still distinguish between sensory stimulation of chest nerves and that of the rerouted arm nerves.

For a summary, see Yahoo News

For the original paper, see PNAS paper

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