Jim Johnson's List: Science

• misinformation persists in the face of overwhelming evidence. Straightforward efforts to combat the lies may backfire as well. A paper published on September 18 in Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI) says that efforts to fight the problem frequently have the opposite effect.

   

   "You have to be careful when you correct misinformation that you don't inadvertently strengthen it," says Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth and one of the paper's authors. "If the issues go to the heart of people's deeply held world views, they become more entrenched in their opinions if you try to update their thinking."
• belief perseverance: maintaining your original opinions in the face of overwhelming data that contradicts your beliefs
• we are especially vulnerable when invalidated beliefs form a key part of how we narrate our lives. Researchers have found that stereotypes, religious faiths and even our self-concept are especially vulnerable to belief perseverance
• people are more likely to continue believing incorrect information if it makes them look good (enhances self-image)
• We are more likely to believe a statement if it confirms our preexisting beliefs, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias
• Even simple traits such as language can affect acceptance: Studies have found that the way a statement is printed or voiced (or even the accent) can make those statements more believable

• Although virtually all climate scientists agree that human actions are changing the climate and that immediate action must be taken, roughly 60 percent of Americans believe that no scientific consensus on climate change exists.

   

   "This is not a random event," Maibach says. Rather, it is the result of a concerted effort by a small number of politicians and industry leaders to instill doubt in the public. They repeat the message that climate scientists don't agree that global warming is real, is caused by people or is harmful.
• To counter this effort, Maibach and others are using the same strategies employed by climate change deniers. They are gathering a group of trusted experts on climate and encouraging them to repeat simple, basic messages. It's difficult for many scientists, who feel that such simple explanations are dumbing down the science or portraying it inaccurately.

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• The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, may eventually influence reading lessons for pre-elementary children. Because previous studies have shown that a child’s reading skills at age 7 can accurately predict reading skills 10 years down the road, interventions need to happen earlier.
• “By the time kids reach elementary school, we’re not great at finding ways of helping them catch up,”
• The good news is that early screening could make a difference, at an early age the brain is plastic, and genes, environment and experiences can affect the FA values.
• “Once we have an accurate model relating the maturation of the brain’s reading circuitry to children’s acquisition of reading skills, and once we understand which factors are beneficial, I really think it will be possible to develop early intervention protocols for children who are poor readers, and tailor individualized lesson plans to emphasize good development,” Yeatman said. “Over the next five to 10 years, that’s what we’re really hoping to do.”

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• New research shows that babies display glimmers of consciousness and memory as early as 5 months old.
• Studies on adults show a particular pattern of brain activity
• Researchers in France
• team monitored infants' brain activity through caps fitted with electrodes. More than 240 babies participated, but two-thirds were too squirmy for the movement-sensitive caps
• Comparing infant brain waves to adult patterns is tricky, says Charles Nelson, a neuropsychologist at Harvard Medical School. "ERP components change dramatically over the first few years of life," he wrote in an email. "I would be reluctant to attribute the same mental operation (i.e., consciousness) in infants as in adults simply because of similar patterns of brain activity

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• Two years ago, the journal Nature reported a startling spike in the number of scientific research papers that were being retracted.

  Between 2000 and 2010, the number of papers retracted shot up tenfold, while the total number published climbed only 44 percent, the journal reported.

  Most of the papers were pulled because of honest mistakes or failure to replicate results, but nearly half were withdrawn because of outright cheating -- falsification of results or plagiarism from another researcher.

• Dr. Fang said.

  Recent research he's done suggests the number of papers being retracted is leveling off, Dr. Fang said, but the bigger problems that have driven the increase in scientific misconduct still exist.

  He pointed to at least three issues: scientists chasing increasingly less research money, too much emphasis on individual achievement even though most research today is done by groups, and heavy reliance by universities on research grants to pay for faculty salaries.

  After a big increase in biomedical funding about 15 years ago, the National Institutes of Health's budget in real dollars has declined over the past decade and is particularly tight now because of the federal budget sequester. At the same time, the percentage of initial basic research grants approved has plummeted over the past 50 years, from about 60 percent in 1963 to less than 20 percent in 2010.
• Researchers also are more likely to cheat if they think their colleagues are doing so, Dr. Fang added.

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• Dawkins promoted this gist: “a society based simply on the gene’s law of universal ruthless selfishness would be a very very nasty society… Be warned that if you wish, as I do, to build a society in which individuals cooperate generously and unselfishly towards a common good, you can expect little help from biological nature…because we are born selfish”.
• Dawkins falls for a “fallacy of composition.” He inappropriately extends properties of parts to wholes. An absurd example is: each atom in a teacup is invisible, therefore the teacup is invisible. Dawkins projects his preferred “selfish” zero-sum property of genes onto everything built by genes, and falsely concludes everything that has “evolved…should be selfish.” But all genes are also cooperative. And besides, no gene-level property can be safely projected onto all things that have genes, or everything they do. Biology isn’t that simple. It mixes competition and cooperation.
• In later editions Dawkins partially recants his central selfish dogma, saying “without departing from fundamental laws of the selfish gene theory… cooperation and mutual assistance can flourish.” Game Theory had proved his prophecy of “little help from biological nature” to be false. Cooperating generously can be an evolutionarily stable strategy, with higher productivity than selfishness.
• In the 30th anniversary edition, he conceded that “born selfish is misleading” and asked readers to “Please mentally delete that rogue sentence and others like it.”

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• While the brain sleeps, it clears out harmful toxins, a process that may reduce the risk of Alzheimer's, researchers say.

  During sleep, the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain increases dramatically, washing away harmful waste proteins that build up between brain cells during waking hours, a study of mice found.
• The results appear to offer the best explanation yet of why animals and people need sleep.
• The scientists noticed that during sleep, the system that circulates cerebrospinal fluid through the brain and nervous system was "pumping fluid into the brain and removing fluid from the brain in a very rapid pace,"
• this increased flow was possible in part because when mice went to sleep, their brain cells actually shrank, making it easier for fluid to circulate. When an animal woke up, the brain cells enlarged again and the flow between cells slowed to a trickle.
• The process is important because what's getting washed away during sleep are waste proteins that are toxic to brain cells,
• So why doesn't the brain do this sort of housekeeping all the time? Nedergaard thinks it's because cleaning takes a lot of energy. "It's probably not possible for the brain to both clean itself and at the same time [be] aware of the surroundings and talk and move and so on,
• It does raise the possibility that one might be able to actually control sleep in a way to improve the clearance of beta amyloid and help prevent amyloidosis that we think can lead to Alzheimer's disease."

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• "The experience of play changes the connections of the neurons at the front end of your brain,
• without play experience, those neurons aren't changed,"
• It is those changes in the prefrontal cortex during childhood that help wire up the brain's executive control center, which has a critical role in regulating emotions, making plans, and solving problems
• to produce this sort of brain development, children need to engage in plenty of so-called free play
• The brain builds new circuits in the prefrontal cortex to help it navigate these complex social interactions
• Much of what scientists know about this process comes from research on animal species that engage in social play.
• This includes cats, dogs and most other mammals.
• When the rats are young, play appears to initiate lasting changes in areas of the brain used for thinking and processing social interactions
• he changes involve switching certain genes on and off.
• play behavior is remarkably similar across species
• "countries where they actually have more recess tend to have higher academic performance than countries where recess is less."

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• A major study suggests that killing among chimpanzees results from normal competition, not human interference.

   

  Apart from humans, chimpanzees are the only primates known to gang up on their neighbours with lethal results - but primatologists have long disagreed about the underlying reasons.

• One proposal was that human activity, including destroying habitats and providing food, increased aggression.

   

  But the new findings, published in Nature, suggest this is not the case.
• Chimpanzees live in well-defined colonies, and groups of males patrol the borders of each colony's territory. This is where violent conflicts are known to arise, particularly if a patrol encounters a single chimp from a neighbouring community
• When the scientists compared the figures across chimpanzee research sites, they found that the level of human interference (e.g. whether the chimps had been fed, or their habitat restricted) had little effect on the number of killings
• Instead, it was basic characteristics of each community that made the biggest difference: the number of males within it, and the overall population density of the area.
• These parameters link the violence to natural selection: killing competitors improves a male chimp's access to resources like food and territory - and crucially, it will happen more frequently when there is greater competition from neighbouring groups, and when the males can patrol in large numbers, with less risk to their own survival.
• the authors of the new study suggest that chimpanzee homicide - which previous research has estimated to occur at a similar rate to that seen in hunter-gatherer human societies - goes up and down as a simple consequence of competition for resources.

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• Scientists just invented a form of telepathy. Actually, it’s a form of noninvasive electronic brain-to-brain communication.
• Telepathic technology — by which I mean brain-to-computer and computer-to-brain interfaces, and communication between the two — will get better.
• Once we know how to make people think of words, all kinds of communication will become easier and more private.
• Another big advance — which might come even earlier than words — is emotions. Currently, brain-computer interfaces can detect emotions. Some technologies, such as deep brain stimulation, can induce emotions directly into the brain. It’s only a matter of time before input is connected with output. This would be a form of telepathic empathy — a technology that lets you feel some piece of what another person is feeling.
• That could be useful in all sorts of communications.
• It could also be very useful in various kinds of human relationships, or in psychotherapy.
• The developing technology will pose all sorts of troubling and complex ethical challenges.
• And yes, governments will be able to use this technology to do horrible things. In particular, police interrogations will become more intrusive unless we enact laws to prevent it

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