This year’s edition of the Edge World Question Center asks: “What Scientific Concept Would Improve Everybody’s Cognitive Toolkit?” There’s quite a collection of contributions, many from scientists but also from writers and an assortment of unclassifiable big thinkers.

I haven’t carefully perused all of the entries. As you do, please chime in with any that you think we should all be paying attention to. At a brief glance, here are some that caught my eye:

• Robert Sapolsky, The Lure of a Good Story
• Jonathan Haidt, Contingent Superorganism
• Danny Hillis, Possibility Spaces
• Kevin Hand, The Gibbs Landscape
• Ross Anderson, Science Versus Theatre
• Gerd Gigerenzer, Risk Literacy
• Amanda Gefter, Duality
• Joshua Greene, Supervenience!
• Carl Zimmer, Life as a Side Effect
• Rob Kurzban, Externalities
• Richard Foreman, Negative Capability is a Profound Therapy

I have a contribution of my own, The Pointless Universe, after Steven Weinberg’s quote. Need to come up with better branding if this idea is really going to take off.

I opened the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago to find a feature piece written by Jennifer Kahn, a friend of mine from college. The New Yorker has good taste. Jenn was a fellow physics undergraduate major, but at graduation decided to pursue a career in science journalism. This seems much more challenging than physics; there is no clear career path, supporting oneself financially is a constant struggle, and success is often ill-defined and elusive. But Jenn has succeeded. She is a contributing editor at Wired and a teaching fellow at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She has published in a wide range of magazines, and has had four articles selected for the annual “Best American Science Writing” series. This is her second feature article for the New Yorker (her previous was on the 9/11 syndrome).

Her article is on Dathan Ritzenhein, a marathoner trying to recapture his glory days. He is being coached by Alberto Salazar, “regarded by many as the best American marathoner ever.” The trick is that Salazar is trying to reinvent the way Ritzenhein runs. And, most interestingly, the approach is to apply science and technology, rather than simply blunt training and fitness, to perfect the athlete. Jenn tells us:

The fastest finishers had a higher thigh drive, for one thing; at its apex, their femur bone was almost parallel to the ground, like the front legs of a bounding deer. They also slapped the ground so quickly with their forefoot that the contact seemed almost incidental. According to Walker, the short slap transfers force more efficiently, shooting it from the ground forward into the pelvis, rather than allowing it to dissipate in the flex of the foot. The effect, Walker says, is like “a pogo stick with a stiff spring.” He explained, “You want the chain of force to travel from the ground through the body with minimal energy loss. That’s what it means to run efficiently.”

I’m not sure any equations are involved, but the basic idea of applying science directly to biomechanics makes sense. The novelty is that it’s not just making a slipperier swim suit or a faster sneaker, but rather it’s an attempt to engineer a whole new way for the body to move.

The story came out the week of the New York Marathon. We now have the benefit of hindsight. Ritzenhein placed eighth, over four minutes behind the top finishers (but still at an unbelievable 2:12:33; I couldn’t keep up for even half a mile, much less all 26+). I guess physics can only do so much.

Observational science is hard. And it seems to be getting harder. Nowadays, when you want to analyze the latest and greatest data set, it could consist of finding a minute-long evolving oscillatory gravitational-wave signal buried in months and mountains of noise. Or it could consist of picking out that one Higgs event among 600 million events. Per second. Or it could consist of looking for tiny correlations in the images of tens of millions of galaxies.

The interesting effects are subtle, and it’s easy to fool oneself in the data analysis. How can we be sure we’re doing things right? One popular method is to fake ourselves out. A group gets together and creates a fake data set (keeping the underlying parameters secret), and then independent groups can analyze the data to their heart’s content. Once the analysis groups publicly announce their results, the “true” parameters underlying the data can be revealed, and the analysis techniques can be directly evaluated. There is a correct result. You either get it or you don’t. You’re either right or wrong.

This approach has been developed for particle physics and gravitational waves and all sorts of other data sets. The latest version of this is the GREAT10 data challenge, for weak gravitational lensing data analysis. As we’ve discussed before (here, here, here), gravitational lensing is one of the most powerful tools in cosmology (Joanne Cohn has a brief introduction, with lots of links). In short: the gravity from intervening matter bends the light coming from distant objects. This causes the images of distant objects to change in brightness, and to be bent (“shear” is the preferred term of art). By looking at the correlated effects on (literally) millions of distant galaxies, it is possible to infer the intervening matter distribution. What is particularly powerful about gravitational lensing is that it is sensitive to everything in the Universe. There are no prejudices: the lensing object can be dark or luminous, it can be a black hole or a cluster of galaxies or something we haven’t even thought of yet. As long as the object in question interacts via gravity, it will leave an imprint on images of distant sources of light.

Measuring the Universe with gravitational lensing would be simple if only all galaxies were perfectly round, and the atmosphere wasn’t there, and telescopes were perfect. Sadly, that’s not the situation we’re in. We’re looking for an additional percent-level squashing of a galaxy that is already intrinsically squashed at the 30% level. The only way to see this is to notice correlations among many, many galaxies, so you can average away the intrinsic effects. (And there might be intrinsic correlations in the shapes of adjacent galaxies, which is a pernicious source of systematic noise.) And if some combination of the telescope and the atmosphere produces a blurring (so that stars, for example, don’t appear perfectly spherical), this could easily make you think you have tons of dark matter where there isn’t any. How do you know you’re doing it right? You produce a fake sky, with as many of the complications of the real sky as possible. Then you ask other people to separate out the effects of the atmosphere and the telescope (encapsulated in the point spread function) and the effects of dark matter (via gravitational lensing). The GREAT10 team has done exactly this (see discussions here, here, here). They have released a bunch of images to the public. They know exactly what has gone into making the images. Your task is to figure out the PSF and the gravitational lensing in the image. Everyone is welcome to give it a shot! The images, and lots of explanatory documentation, are available here. The group that does the best job of finding the dark matter gets a free trip to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And, most importantly, an iPad. What more incentive could you want? Start working on your gravitational-lensing algorithms!

This is truly science by the masses, for the masses.

Among the many depressing aspects of our current political discourse is the proudly anti-science stance adopted by one of our major political parties. When it comes to climate change, in particular, Republicans are increasingly united against the scientific consensus. What’s interesting is that this is not simply an example of a conservative/liberal split; elsewhere in the world, conservatives are not so willing to ignore the findings of scientists.

Republicans are alone among major parties in Western democracies in denying the reality of climate change, a phenomenon that even puzzles many American conservatives. Denialism is growing among the rank and file, and the phenomenon is especially strong among those with college degrees. So it doesn’t seem to be a matter of lack of information, so much as active disinformation. Republican politicians are going along willingly, as they increasingly promote anti-scientific views on the environment. After the recent elections, GOP leaders are disbanding the House Select Committee on Global Warming.

What makes American conservatives different from other right-wing parties around the world? Note that it wasn’t always this way — there was a time when Republicans wouldn’t have attacked science so openly. I have a theory: it’s Al Gore’s fault.

Actually it’s not my theory, it comes from Randy Olson. For a while now Randy has been vocally skeptical about An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s critically-acclaimed documentary about global warming. I was initially unconvinced. Surely the positive effects of informing so many people about the dangers of climate change outweigh the political damage of annoying some conservatives? But Randy’s point, which I’m coming around to, was that for all the good the movie did at spreading information about climate change, it did equal or greater harm by politicizing it.

By most measures, Al Gore has had a pretty successful career. Vice-President during an administration characterized by peace and prosperity, winner of the popular vote total during his Presidential run, co-founder of Current TV, winner of an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Nobel Prize. But to Republicans, he’s a punchline. It’s an inevitable outcome of the current system: Al Gore was the Democratic nominee for President; therefore, he must be demonized. It’s not enough that their candidate is preferable; the other candidate must be humiliated, made into a laughingstock. (Ask John Kerry, whose service in Vietnam was somehow used as evidence of his cowardice.) The conclusion is inevitable: if Al Gore becomes attached to some cause, that cause must be fought against.

Here is some evidence. You may think of Jay Leno as a completely vanilla and inoffensive late-night talk-show host. But he’s a savvy guy, and he knows his audience. Which is mostly older, white, suburban middle-class folks. Which political party does that sound like? Between January and September of 2010, Jay Leno made more jokes about Al Gore than about Sarah Palin. You read that right. This is while Palin was promoting books, making TV specials, stumping for candidates, and basically in the news every day, while Gore was — doing what exactly?

Once Al Gore became the unofficial spokesperson for concern about climate change, it was increasingly inevitable that Republicans would deny it on principle. This isn’t the only reason, not by a long shot (there’s something in there about vested interests willing to pour money into resisting energy policies that are unfriendly to fossil fuels), but it’s a big part. Too many Republicans have reached a point where devotion to “the truth” takes a distant back seat to a devotion to “pissing off liberals.” With often nasty implications.

What the United States does about climate change will be very important to the world. And what the U.S. does will be heavily affected by what Republicans permit. And Republicans’ views on climate change are largely colored by its association with Al Gore. As much as I hate to admit it, the net real impact of An Inconvenient Truth could turn out to be very negative.

Gore himself doesn’t deserve blame here. Using one’s celebrity to bring attention to an issue of pressing concern, and running for office in order to implement good policies, are two legitimate ways a person can help try to make the world a better place. In a healthy culture of discussion, they shouldn’t necessarily interfere; if any issue qualifies as “bipartisan,” saving the planet should be it. But in our current climate, no discussion of political import can take place without first passing through the lens of partisan advantage. Too bad for us.

The results from this weekend’s question are in: “What is the one concept in science that you really think should be explained better to a wide audience?” I tried to collate the answers from Twitter and Facebook as well as here, at least up to the point where my patience evaporated. Answers below the fold, grouped into three categories: big concepts, specific ideas, and meta issues.

Scott Aaronson wrote, “The skill of sharpening a question to the point where it could actually have an answer.” Which is a skill I should probably try to develop myself, as the question I asked was amenable to different interpretations. Many people answered “evolution,” but as Ed Yong pointed out on Twitter, evolution is actually explained quite well in many places. So when we ask what needs to be explained better, there are at least two issues at work: what we actually do a bad job at explaining, and what doesn’t succeed at penetrating out into the public consciousness. In contrast with evolution, for example, I would say that quantum mechanics is explained in many places, but very rarely is it explained well.

The winner by a wide margin was the meta issue of “the scientific method.” Which raises another question: do we agree on what the scientific method is? I suspect not. But I am completely on board with the idea that “how science works” is not explained very well, and possibly a higher priority than any particular scientific concept.

Others that did well: evolution, statistics, certainty/uncertainty, entropy, quantum mechanics, time, and gravity. I cannot refrain from pointing out that these last four were all addressed at some length in From Eternity to Here. Which makes me think that what people are really saying is, “more folks should read Sean’s book.” Only 40 more shopping days ’till Xmas…

Also of note is that there wasn’t actually a great deal of consensus; the list of concepts that came up is quite long. Clearly we need to do a better job of explaining.

Here are the answers:

(more…)

I tweeted this on an impulse:

What is the one concept in science that you really think should be explained better to a wide audience?

At least 140 characters restricts people to really only suggesting one thing. But I don’t want to leave the blog readers out, so have a go. See if you can stick to just one!

Every astronomer knows this poem, not with any special fondness:

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Now, I really like Walt Whitman, but this was not his finest moment. These days, the don’t-bother-me-with-explanations torch is carried by the Insane Clown Posse — two middle-aged white guys, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope, who put on makeup and rap approvingly about violence and misogyny. (Sorry for the comparison, Walt, but you brought it on yourself.) They received a lot of scorn from scientists for their recent song Miracles, which featured the immortal lines

Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherfuckers lying and
getting me pissed.

Now there is a scary and illuminating interview with the duo by Jon Ronson in the Guardian, where they double down on their dislike of explanation and understanding. (Via Ezra Klein.) It’s all good, but here’s an especially clarifying moment:

“I did think,” I admit, “that fog constitutes quite a low threshold for miracles.”

“Fog?” Violent J says, surprised.

“Well,” I clarify, “I’ve lived around fog my whole life, so maybe I’m blasé.”

“Fog, to me, is awesome,” he replies. “Do you know why? Because I look at my five-year-old son and I’m explaining to him what fog is and he thinks it’s incredible.”

“Ah!” I gesticulate. “If you’re explaining to your five-year-old son what fog is, then why do you not want to meet scientists? Because they’re just like you, explaining things to people…”

“Well,” Violent J says, “science is… we don’t really… that’s like…” He pauses. Then he waves his hands as if to say, “OK, an analogy”: “If you’re trying to fuck a girl, but her mom’s home, fuck her mom! You understand? You want to fuck the girl, but her mom’s home? Fuck the mom. See?”

If you’re confused, Violent J doesn’t actually want to have sex with his paramour’s mother. He is simply advocating not changing your behavior just because a parent is in the house. One word serving many purposes.

Oh yes, and they are evangelical Christians. There are many different senses in which science and religion might come into conflict — personally I care about “religion makes claims about how the world works that aren’t true,” but there are certainly others. Here is one of them. As Shaggy puts it: “But since then, scientists go, ‘I’ve got an explanation for that.’ It’s like, fuck you! I like to believe it was something out of this world.”

I don’t think religion is causing these lovable mop-tops to rebel against the power of scientific explanation; that’s too cheap an explanation. Rather, there is an underlying attitude that both pushes them away from science, and toward religion: a strong preference in favor of believing a certain set of things about the world, well before any evidence is in. First we decide that rainbows and magnets and Stonehenge are miraculous and mysterious things that cannot be accounted for by ordinary, understandable processes; then we reject science and turn to religious beliefs because that’s what flatters our preconceptions. It’s hard to know how to reach people like that. I’m thinking Phil Plait and Brian Cox should put on clown makeup and start rapping about Maxwell’s equations.

George Carlin, asked about the meaning of life, proclaims his love for astrophysics and particle physics. And the cyclic universe scenario, in particular.

The interviewer, sadly, is pretty clueless, and wears his cluelessness like a badge of honor. Carlin shows quite a bit of restraint.

Just a quick update about the Science is Vital campaign that I posted about last week. If you are interested, and close to London, thousands of people are gathering outside the Treasury today as part of Science is Vital to protest about the planned cuts to science funding in the UK.

I’d also like to correct an omission in my last post by giving credit to Jenny Rohn for founding Science is Vital. Thanks for doing this Jenny!

If I could be at the Treasury today, I would. If you can, I hope you make it.

Although I live and work in the US, I was born and educated up to graduate school in the UK, and for reasons both intellectual and personal have been becoming increasingly appalled by the treatment of science there. Put simply, after years of neglect and pressure under the previous Labour government, science funding is now facing evisceration under the new ruling Conservative/Lib-Dem coalition.

I have a lengthy post in the works about my own feelings about the state of the British higher education system, and the treatment of science more specifically. However, here I’d like to make sure that any interested readers are aware of a concerted effort to push back against the planned short-sighted cuts, under the banner of the Science is Vital campaign.

From their website, Science is Vital is

… a group of concerned scientists, engineers and supporters of science who are campaigning to prevent destructive levels of cuts to science funding in the UK.

and the concrete steps that one can take to help the cause (mostly useful if you live in Britain) are

1. Sign the Campaign for Science & Engineering petition.
2. Join the Science is Vital demo in central London, Saturday 9th October at 2 PM.
3. Write to your MP about the importance of science, technology, engineering and maths.
4. Come to the Houses of Parliament for the Science is Vital lobby of MPs on 12th October, 3.30 to 4.30 PM.
5. Spread the word using the posters.

Fellow cosmological bloggers Andrew Jaffe (an American who lives and works in the UK, as a Professor at Imperial College, and blogs at Leaves on the Line) and Peter Coles (a Professor at Cardiff University who blogs at In the Dark) have been writing eloquently and persuasively about the threat to British science for quite some time now. Both have recent posts (Jaffe, Coles) which describe the Science is Vital effort and the motivations behind it.

If you care about science, and maintaining Britain’s historical strength in this area, I urge you to sign the Science is Vital petition, and do whatever you can to fight the planned cuts. It can take a long time to become one of the world’s leading nations in such an important endeavor, but considerably less time to throw away that status. Please don’t let that happen to British science.