Category: Science

Serendipitous Discoveries Are Made by “Accidents and Sagacity”

(p. 6) “Accident” is not really the best word to describe such fortuitous discoveries. Accident implies mindlessness. Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the American continent was pure accident–he was looking for something else (the Orient) and stumbled upon this, and never knew, not even on his dying day, that he had discovered a new continent. A better name for the phenomenon we will be looking at in the pages to follow is “serendipity,” a word that came into the English language in 1754 by way of the writer Horace Walpole. The key point of the phenomenon of serendipity is illustrated in Walpole’s telling of an ancient Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip (set in the land of Serendip, now known as Sri Lanka): “As their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.”
Accidents and sagacity. Sagacity–defined as penetrating intelligence, keen perception, and sound judgment–is essential to serendipity. The men and women who seized on lucky accidents that happened to them were anything but mindless. In fact, their minds typically had special qualities that enabled them to break out of established paradigms, imagine new possibilities, and see that they had found a solution, often to some problem other than the one they were working on. Accidental discoveries would be nothing without keen, creative minds knowing what to do with them.

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.
(Note: italics in original.)

Modelers Can Often Obtain the Desired Result

(p. A13) After earning a master’s degree in environmental engineering in 1982, I spent most of the next 10 years building large-scale environmental computer models. My first job was as a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency. I was hired to build a model to assess the impact of its Construction Grants Program, a nationwide effort in the 1970s and 1980s to upgrade sewer-treatment plants.
The computer model was huge–it analyzed every river, sewer treatment plant and drinking-water intake (the places in rivers where municipalities draw their water) in the country. I’ll spare you the details, but the model showed huge gains from the program as water quality improved dramatically. By the late 1980s, however, any gains from upgrading sewer treatments would be offset by the additional pollution load coming from people who moved from on-site septic tanks to public sewers, which dump the waste into rivers. Basically the model said we had hit the point of diminishing returns.
When I presented the results to the EPA official in charge, he said that I should go back and “sharpen my pencil.” I did. I reviewed assumptions, tweaked coefficients and recalibrated data. But when I reran everything the numbers didn’t change much. At our next meeting he told me to run the numbers again.
After three iterations I finally blurted out, “What number are you looking for?” He didn’t miss a beat: He told me that he needed to show $2 billion of benefits to get the program renewed. I finally turned enough knobs to get the answer he wanted, and everyone was happy.
. . .
There are no exact values for the coefficients in models such as these. There are only ranges of potential values. By moving a bunch of these parameters to one side or the other you can usually get very different results, often (surprise) in line with your initial beliefs.

For the full commentary, see:
ROBERT J. CAPRARA. “OPINION; Confessions of a Computer Modeler; Any model, including those predicting climate doom, can be tweaked to yield a desired result. I should know.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., July 9, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 8, 2014.)

Similarities Between Lucretius and Galileo

(p. 254) Like Lucretius, Galileo defended the oneness of the celestial and terrestrial world: there was no essential difference, he claimed, between the nature of the sun and the planets and the nature of the earth and its inhabitants. Like Lucretius, he believed that everything in the universe could be understood through the same disciplined use of observation and reason. Like Lucretius, he insisted on the testimony of the senses, against, if necessary, the orthodox claims of authority. Like Lucretius, he sought to work through this testimony toward a rational comprehension of the hidden structures of all things. And like Lucretius, he was convinced that these structures were by nature constituted by what he called “minims” or minimal particles, that is, constituted by a limited repertory of atoms combined in innumerable ways.

Source:
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011.

“The Metric System Can Be Our Operating System Without Being Our Interface”

(p. C6) The outcome was perhaps foreshadowed, as Mr. Marciano points out, when President Ford, using a customary unit, noted that American industries were “miles ahead” when it came to adopting the metric system.
Mr. Marciano tells his story more or less without editorializing, until the end. Surveying the centuries of fights over measurement, he finishes on a rather intriguing point: Standardization no longer matters that much.
. . .
. . . , with the computerization of life, we don’t have to worry about converting from one measurement to another; our software does this for us. We can still speak in pounds or feet, even if everything in the world of manufacturing and technology is really, at bottom, done in the metric system. In the evocative terminology of Mr. Marciano, “the metric system can be our operating system without being our interface.”

For the full review, see:
SAMUEL ARBESMAN. “Liters and Followers; Gerald Ford once proudly declared the country was ‘miles ahead’ in converting to the metric system.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Aug. 2, 2014): C6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 1, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘Whatever Happened to the Metric System?’ by John Bemelmans Marciano; Gerald Ford once proudly declared the country was ‘miles ahead’ in converting to the metric system.” )

The book being reviewed is:
Marciano, John Bemelmans. Whatever Happened to the Metric System?: How America Kept Its Feet. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2014.

Climate Models Allow “the Modeler to Obtain Almost Any Desired Result”

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are the commonly-used models that attempt to integrate climate science models with economic effect models. In the passage quoted below, “SCC” stands for “social cost of carbon.”

(p. 870) I have argued that IAMs are of little or no value for evaluating alternative climate change policies and estimating the SCC. On the contrary, an IAM-based analysis suggests a level of knowledge and precision that is nonexistent, and allows the modeler to obtain almost any desired result because key inputs can be chosen arbitrarily.

As I have explained, the physical mechanisms that determine climate sensitivity involve crucial feedback loops, and the parameter values that determine the strength of those feedback loops are largely unknown. When it comes to the impact of climate change, we know even less. IAM damage functions are completely made up, with no theoretical or empirical foundation. They simply reflect common beliefs (which might be wrong) regarding the impact of 2º C or 3º C of warming, and can tell us nothing about what might happen if the temperature increases by 5º C or more. And yet those damage functions are taken seriously when IAMs are used to analyze climate policy. Finally, IAMs tell us nothing about the likelihood and nature of catastrophic outcomes, but it is just such outcomes that matter most for climate change policy. Probably the best we can do at this point is come up with plausible estimates for probabilities and possible impacts of catastrophic outcomes. Doing otherwise is to delude ourselves.

For the full article, see:
Pindyck, Robert S. “Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?” Journal of Economic Literature 51, no. 3 (Sept. 2013): 860-72.

Catholic Church Banned Infinitesimals from European Classrooms Taught by Jesuits

InfinitesimalBK2014-06-05.jpg

Source of book image: http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/08/science/08SCIB/08SCIB-superJumbo.jpg

(p. C9) Mr. Alexander’s narrative opens in the early 17th century, when Catholic Church administrators in Rome, following a campaign by Euclidean stalwart Christopher Clavius, banned the infinitesimal from the classrooms of Jesuit schools throughout Europe. Instructors’ teachings and writings were monitored to enforce strict adherence to the classical Euclidean geometrical tradition. Mr. Alexander portrays the church’s reactionary stance not as a huff over mathematical philosophy but as a desperate counterattack against existential threats: Euclid’s rules-based structure offered the church a model with which it hoped to rein in a restive flock, roiled by economic and political currents and by an ascendant Protestantism. Martial metaphors abound in the author’s telling: “war against disorder,” “enemies of the infinitely small,” “forces of hierarchy and order.” This was no friendly debate.

For the full review, see:
ALAN HIRSHFELD. “The Limit of Reason; In the 1700s, the idea of an infinitely tiny quantity was so unsettling that the Church banned it from classrooms.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 3, 2014): C9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 2, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘Infinitesimal’ by Amir Alexander; The idea of an infinitely tiny quantity–the foundation of calculus–was so unsettling that in the 17th century the Church banned it from classrooms.”)

The book under review is:
Alexander, Amir. Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World. New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

Global Warming Tipping Point Models Are “Overblown”

(p. C3) Climate models for north Africa often come to contradictory conclusions. Nonetheless, mainstream science holds that global warming will typically make wet places wetter and dry places drier–and at a rapid clip. That is because increased greenhouse gases trigger feedback mechanisms that push the climate system beyond various “tipping points.” In north Africa, this view suggests an expanding Sahara, the potential displacement of millions of people on the great desert’s borders and increased conflict over scarce resources.
One scientist, however, is challenging this dire view, with evidence chiefly drawn from the Sahara’s prehistoric past. Stefan Kröpelin, a geologist at the University of Cologne, has collected samples of ancient pollen and other material that suggest that the earlier episode of natural climate change, which created the Sahara, happened gradually over millennia–not over a mere century or two, as the prevailing view holds. That is why, he says, the various “tipping point” scenarios for the future of the Sahara are overblown.
The 62-year-old Dr. Kröpelin, one of the pre-eminent explorers of the Sahara, has traveled into its forbidding interior for more than four decades. Along the way he has endured weeklong dust storms, a car chase by armed troops and a parasitic disease, bilharzia, that nearly killed him.
. . .
. . . Dr. Kröpelin’s analysis of the Lake Yoa samples suggests that there was no tipping point and that the change was gradual. He says that his argument is also supported by archaeological evidence. Digs in the Sahara, conducted by various archaeologists over the years, indicate that the people of the region migrated south over millennia, not just in a few desperate decades. “Humans are very sensitive climate indicators because we can’t live without water,” he says. If the Sahara had turned to desert quickly, the human migration pattern “would have been completely different.”

For the full commentary, see:
Naik, Gautam. “Climate Clues in the Sahara’s Past; A Geologist’s Findings in Africa Challenge the Way Scientists Think about the Threat of Desertification.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., May 31, 2014): C3.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 30, 2014, and has the title “How Will Climate Change Affect the Sahara?; A geologist’s findings in Africa challenge the way scientists think about the threat of desertification.”)

One of the more recent Kröpelin papers arguing against the tipping point account is:
Francus, Pierre, Hans von Suchodoletz, Michael Dietze, Reik V. Donner, Frédéric Bouchard, Ann-Julie Roy, Maureen Fagot, Dirk Verschuren, Stefan Kröpelin, and Daniel Ariztegui. “Varved Sediments of Lake Yoa (Ounianga Kebir, Chad) Reveal Progressive Drying of the Sahara During the Last 6100 Years.” Sedimentology 60, no. 4 (June 2013): 911-34.

Public Cannot Go into Space Because of Government Run Space Programs

BransonRichard2014-04-25.jpg “‘You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to be able to run a spaceship company,’ says Richard Branson.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. C11) Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, is just months away from launching what he considers “the biggest Virgin company we’ve ever built.” At 63, he’s already founded multiple businesses worth billions, including a record label and a mobile company. But it’s his foray into outer space with Virgin Galactic that has Mr. Branson excited.
. . .
Safety has been one of the biggest challenges in building Virgin Galactic. In 2007, two workers died after a tank explosion during a rocket test, and three were seriously wounded. The accident, which occurred at a partner company’s facility, delayed the program for an estimated 18 months.
Risk factors weigh on the minds of potential customers as well, especially after NASA’s 1986 Challenger disaster, in which seven crew members, including a schoolteacher, died. Mr. Branson thinks that today most people would want to go into space if they could be guaranteed a safe return trip. “Sadly, I think because the space program was run by governments, there was never any real interest in enabling members of the public to go to space after they tried once” with the Challenger, he explains. “After that, they decided not to take any risks whatsoever.” He adds, “I would say 90% of people my age thought they would go to space because they saw the moon landing.”

For the full story, see:
ALEXANDRA WOLFE. “WEEKEND CONFIDENTIAL; Richard Branson; The Virgin Group founder on his out-of-this world venture: space travel.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Nov. 2, 2013): C11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 1, 2013, and has the title “WEEKEND CONFIDENTIAL; Richard Branson on Space Travel; The Virgin Group founder on his latest out-of-this world venture, Virgin Galactic’.”)

Crispr Molecular System Allows Scientists to Edit Genes

CrisprEditsGenes2014-04-28.jpgSource of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D1) In the late 1980s, scientists at Osaka University in Japan noticed unusual repeated DNA sequences next to a gene they were studying in a common bacterium. They mentioned them in the final paragraph of a paper: “The biological significance of these sequences is not known.”
Now their significance is known, and it has set off a scientific frenzy.
The sequences, it turns out, are part of a sophisticated immune system that bacteria use to fight viruses. And that system, whose very existence was unknown until about seven years ago, may provide scientists with unprecedented power to rewrite the code of life.
In the past year or so, researchers have discovered that the bacterial system can be harnessed to make precise changes to the DNA of humans, as well as other animals and plants.
This means a genome can be edited, much as a writer might change words or fix spelling errors. It allows “customizing the genome of any cell or any species at will,” said Charles Gersbach, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW POLLACK. “A Powerful New Way to Edit DNA.” The New York Times (Tues., MARCH 4, 2014): D1 & D5.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 3, 2014.)

Environmentalists Seek to Silence Those Who Dare to Disagree

(p. A13) Surely, some kind of ending is upon us. Last week climate protesters demanded the silencing of Charles Krauthammer for a Washington Post column that notices uncertainties in the global warming hypothesis. In coming weeks a libel trial gets under way brought by Penn State’s Michael Mann, author of the famed hockey stick, against National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writer Rand Simberg and roving commentator Mark Steyn for making wisecracks about his climate work. The New York Times runs a cartoon of a climate “denier” being stabbed with an icicle.
These are indications of a political movement turned to defending its self-image as its cause goes down the drain.

For the full commentary, see:
HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR. “BUSINESS WORLD; Personal Score-Settling Is the New Climate Agenda; The cause of global carbon regulation may be lost, but enemies still can be punished.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 1, 2014): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Feb. 28, 2014, and has the title “BUSINESS WORLD; Jenkins: Personal Score-Settling Is the New Climate Agenda; The cause of global carbon regulation may be lost, but enemies still can be punished.”)

The Krauthammer column that the environmentalists do not want you to read:
Krauthammer, Charles. “The Myth of ‘Settled Science’.” The Washington Post (Fri., Feb. 21, 2014): A19.

Carnegie Wanted Institution to Fund “Exceptional” Scientists “Whenever and Where Found”

So was Carnegie suggesting that we should be open to the exceptional appearing in unexpected locations?

(p. 614) In his deed of trust, Carnegie declared that his research institution in Washington should “discover the exceptional man in every department of study whenever and where found… and enable him to make the work for which he seems specially designed his life work.” That notion would remain the driving philosophy behind the institution over the next century. Some of those “exceptional” scientists, supported by Carnegie money were the astronomer Edwin Hubble, who “revolutionized astronomy with his discovery that the universe is expanding,” and Barbara McClintock, whose work on patterns of genetic inheritance in corn won her a Nobel Prize.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)