Month: December 2011

Last 2011 issue of The Alchemist. Watch out for more in 2012. Meanwhile: an alchemical trick if ever there was one is revealed this week by chemists in Israel who have made insoluble substances soluble while mathematics helps cut costs in tracing black gold. In the wild, The Alchemist also learns why some chilis are so hot and others less pungent and how cockroach sex pheromones might save the woodpecker. Out of this world, Hubble reveals Plutonian chemistry and explains the ruddy embarrassment of this former planet. In Germany, a major award for plastic electronics.

The Alchemist – December 29, 2011.

 Economics may flaunt statistics, mathematical methodology and make claims to predict the future scientifically, but it conspicuously lacks the kind of reality check on its theories present in real science. Writing in International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, Jeffrey Turk, of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Brussels, demonstrates this truism but concedes that the nature of the social world precludes the use of a true scientific approach to economics.

Economics has become increasingly sophisticated in its use of mathematics and computer models of the behaviour of stock markets, commodities and futures. Unfortunately, this sophistication hides a simple truth that does not afflict the world of particle physics, for instance. Put simply, economic theories simply do not live up to their grandeur because they are measuring complex, emergent behaviour at the human, societal and international level, rather than making repeatable observations about reality to support a hypotheses and testing again to build a coherent theory based on evidence. Compare the testable reality of the theory of gravity with the dubious notion of tracking a stock market. The only thing they have in common is that will both inevitably lead to a fall.

Of course, economics has its value, but it offers no valid predictions about the world other than to reveal time and again that where money is concerned it is wholly unpredictable.

Turk, whose background is in particle physics, specialises in realist research methods in the social sciences with a focus on European policy studies. Given the current state of the European economy, perhaps insight from a former CERN scientist is precisely what is now needed to untangle the Euro zone members from the financial crisis. He points out that acquiring Nobel status and borrowing scientific metaphor and the formalism of physical theory do not venerate economics as a real science. Analysis financial data and determining statistical significance is not equivalent to the ceaseless reality checks present in science.

Fundamentally, economics is an artificial construct to make us feel better about greed and to placate the poverty-stricken when the next crash comes. In the sense of realist measurement, economics, and money, do not exist, they are real only in the social sense. Important yet, but measuring things that are not real cannot claim to be science. Next week, The Emperor’s New String Theory…

Jeffrey David Turk (2011). Science is measurement: muons, money and the Nobel Prize Int. J. Pluralism and Economics Education, 2 (3), 291-305

I’ve never understood it. We men have collar size, chest measurement, waist, inside leg, cut, style, even hat size, yet women’s dress sizes seems to be mashed down to a single figure. It makes it almost impossible to shop for a wife, mistress, lady friend or all three without the potential for causing immense offence. It’s an art not a science…which makes it doubly tough for male ubergeeks last-minute shopping on a Christmas Eve.

As far as I can gather, the norm seeming to lie somewhere between an 8 and an 18 with outliers at size zero to 6 and 20+. How can this be? Well, the NYT broke down the women’s clothes size system a while back and revealed that “size” really does matter to women. Moreover, it means something different to each and every shopper depending on whether you mind the Gap or live in a Banana Republic. Admittedly, women do apparently have two other measurements to contend with, but we’re not going for bust today.

Size 0 what?.

Getting your scientific idea across at a conference does not rely on securing a speaker’s slot. The poster sessions at some conferences are often bigger than the lectures and with a good poster you can get a lot of offline eyeballs taking a look.

The poster presentation is not about pasting your paper or thesis on to a foam board and then waltzing off to the coffee bar…
Poster Presentations.

Dozens of medical science specialists have issued a serious warning about the spread of chiropractic. Say the experts in their letter: “it is the involvement of chiropractors in “adjustments” for children suffering from everything from attention deficit to bed-wetting to asthma etc that is particularly disturbing to us.”

Chiropractic techniques can, a report from the Australian Medical Association says, do some good for short periods of time when it comes to certain kinds of back pain.

Lots of people will bear witness to that. Others will say it’s all nothing more than a sCAM (spurious complementary and alternative medicine).

I hate to admit it, but in desperation after being let down by general practice on three occasions, a sports physio, a massage therapist, an osteopath, and even an enforced (incredibly painful) referral by the failed osteopath to his acupuncturist colleague, I visited a chiropractor to treat chronic sciatica several years ago. After several weeks of treatment I was pain free…still am, but with gastrocnemius muscle wasting. However, might my recovery have been nothing more than spontaneous receding inflammation after a year or more of pain and numbness? My GP never stumped up for an MRI on my spine so I have no idea whether I had a prolapsed L4-L5 lumbar disc or some other problem that impinged on my sciatic nerve. Moreover, the specialist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital simply told me I probably had “slipped a disc”, but that conservative treatment (the chiro manipulation) had remedied the problem and he wouldn’t put me under his knife.

Unfortunately, it is probably just chance that chiropractic works on backs, because its theoretical basis is spurious nonsense despite the doctorates. The item I quote here says that, chiropractic subluxations and adjustments are “at its core, [based] on a vague and unprovable supernatural understanding of an inherent energy in the spine that can be manipulated to treat all manner of ills.” Of course, the same might almost be said of how we view the placebo effect in conventional medicine.

The full story here.

1. The Bible (eBook) – ‘to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.’

2. The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) — ‘to learn that the universe is a knowable place.’

3. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook — Audio Book) – ‘to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.’

4. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook — Audio Book) — ‘to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.’

5.  The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (eBook — Audio Book) — ‘to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.’

6.  The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook — Audio Book) – ‘to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.’

7.  The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook — Audio Book) – ‘to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.’

8.  The Prince by Machiavelli (eBook — Audio Book) – ‘to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.’

   From a Reddit question posed to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. The site Open Culture provides links to readily accessible versions of each.