artdiamondblog.com – Page 429 – Art Diamond's web log

“Theory-Induced Blindness”

(p. 276) The mystery is how a conception of the utility of outcomes that is vulnerable to . . . obvious counterexamples survived for so long. I can explain (p. 277) it only by a weakness of the scholarly mind that I have often observed in myself. I call it theory-induced blindness: once you have accepted a theory and used it as a tool in your thinking, it is extraordinarily difficult to notice its flaws. If you come upon an observation that does not seem to fit the model, you assume that there must be a perfectly good explanation that you are somehow missing. You give the theory the benefit of the doubt, trusting the community of experts who have accepted it. . . . As the psychologist Daniel Gilbert observed, disbelieving is hard work, and System 2 is easily tired.

Source:
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
(Note: ellipses added.)

“EVIDENCE; A lab notebook belonging to Albert Schatz, left, with his supervisor, Selman A. Waksman, and discovered at Rutgers helps puts to rest a 70-year argument over credit for the Nobel-winning discovery of streptomycin.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — For as long as archivists at Rutgers University could remember, a small cardboard box marked with the letter W in black ink had sat unopened in a dusty corner of the special collections of the Alexander Library. Next to it were 60 sturdy archive boxes of papers, a legacy of the university’s most famous scientist: Selman A. Waksman, who won a Nobel Prize in 1952 for the discovery of streptomycin, the first antibiotic to cure tuberculosis.

The 60 boxes contained details of how streptomycin was found — and also of the murky story behind it, a vicious legal battle between Dr. Waksman and his graduate student Albert Schatz over who deserved credit.
Dr. Waksman died in 1973; after Dr. Schatz’s death in 2005, the papers were much in demand by researchers trying to piece together what really happened between the professor and his student. But nobody looked in the small cardboard box.
. . .
Thomas J. Frusciano, the head archivist of the Alexander Library special collections, recalled that the Waksman papers had been acquired in 1983, 10 years after the professor’s death, and had even included a vial of streptomycin. He asked a member of his team, Erika Gorder, to search the stacks.
She remembered seeing the small box next to Dr. Waksman’s papers. “I must have passed by it a million times,” she said, “but I always thought it must contain miscellaneous material from the Waksman papers when they were cataloged.”
When she pulled down the box and carefully opened it, however, there, loosely piled inside, were five clothbound notebooks — just like Dr. Waksman’s, but marked “Albert Schatz.”
In the notebook for 1943, on Page 32, Dr. Schatz had started Experiment 11. In meticulous cursive, he had written the date, Aug. 23, and the title, “Exp. 11 Antagonistic Actinomycetes,” a reference to the strange threadlike microbes found in the soil that produce antibiotics. Underneath the title he recorded where he had found the microbes in “leaf compost, straw compost and stable manure” on the Rutgers College farm, outside his laboratory.
The following pages detailed his experiments and his discovery of two strains of a gray-green actinomycete named Streptomyces griseus, Latin for gray. Each strain produced an antibiotic that destroyed germs of E. coli in a petri dish — and, he was to find out later, also destroyed the TB germ. The notebook shows that the moment of discovery belongs to Dr. Schatz.
One of the pages in Experiment 11 had indeed been cut out, but the page was toward the end of the experiment, after Dr. Schatz had made his discovery. There was no evidence of a break in the experiment to suggest that Dr. Schatz might have removed the page to conceal something he didn’t want the rest of the world to know.
And in Dr. Waksman’s own papers — in the 60 boxes — there was confirmation that the professor knew the missing page was not a real issue. His legal advisers had told him bluntly that it was a distraction. As one lawyer wrote, the missing page was “insignificant.”
As for the professor’s story that Dr. Schatz’s uncle had carried off the key 1943 notebook, Dr. Waksman’s own documents make clear it could not have been true. At the time the key notebook was not at Rutgers; it was with university-appointed agents who were preparing the streptomycin patent application. Here, indeed, was evidence that Dr. Waksman had deliberately spread doubt and confusion about Dr. Schatz’s Experiment 11 in a campaign to belittle the work of his student.

For the full story, see:
PETER PRINGLE. “Notebooks Shed Light on an Antibiotic’s Contested Discovery.” The New York Times (Tues., June 12, 2012): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 11, 2012.)

The issues treated above are discussed in more detail in Pringle’s book:
Pringle, Peter. Experiment Eleven: Dark Secrets Behind the Discovery of a Wonder Drug. New York: Walker & Company, 2012.

How Politics Trumps Peer Review in Medical Research

Abstract

The U.S. public biomedical research system is renowned for its peer review process that awards federal funds to meritorious research performers. Although congressional appropriators do not earmark federal funds for biomedical research performers, I argue that they support allocations for those research fields that are most likely to benefit performers in their constituencies. Such disguised transfers mitigate the reputational penalties to appropriators of interfering with a merit‐driven system. I use data on all peer‐reviewed grants by the National Institutes of Health during the years 1984-2003 and find that performers in the states of certain House Appropriations Committee members receive 5.9-10.3 percent more research funds than those at unrepresented institutions. The returns to representation are concentrated in state universities and small businesses. Members support funding for the projects of represented performers in fields in which they are relatively weak and counteract the distributive effect of the peer review process.

Source:
Hegde, Deepak. “Political Influence Behind the Veil of Peer Review: An Analysis of Public Biomedical Research Funding in the United States.” Journal of Law and Economics 52, no. 4 (Nov. 2009): 665-90.

“A Place of Hypocrisy and Fear, Where Tenured Professors Proclaim Empty Solidarity with Exploited Workers”

Source of book image: http://c481901.r1.cf2.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/victims.jpg

(p. 20) A couple of years ago, Bawer made a trip home to see what’s happened to the academic world he left behind. He attended a few conferences for women’s studies, black studies, queer studies and Chicano studies, where he heard plenty of cant, as when a participant at a “Fat Studies” conference explained her veganism by declaring: “Dairy is a feminist issue. Milk comes from a grieving mother.” He found, in abundance, what he’s looking for: jargon-spewing careerists posing as radicals, semiliterate professors of literature and widespread condemnation of reason itself as a hoax perpetrated by the powerful on the powerless. Based on this sample, he concludes that the contemporary American academy is a place of hypocrisy and fear, where tenured professors proclaim empty solidarity with exploited workers, and Take Back the Night rallies promote the idea that “male students metamorphose, werewolf-like, into potential rapists” every night.
. . .
The humanities and “soft” social science departments that Bawer mocks are sinking into insignificance — partly, to be sure, because they have purveyed the kind of buffoonery he decries.

For the full review, see:
ANDREW DELBANCO. “Back to School.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., August 26, 2012): 1 & 20.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated August 23, 2012 and had the title “Academic Battleground; ‘The Victims’ Revolution,’ by Bruce Bawer.”)
(Note: in the print version, the review started in the left column of the first page under the title “Back to School.” The title was shared by a review of another book, that started in the right column of the first page.)

The full reference for the book under review, is:
Bawer, Bruce. The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind. New York: Broadside Books, 2012.

Premortem Reduces Bias from Uncritical Optimism

(p. 265) As a team converges on a decision–and especially when the leader tips her hand–public doubts about the wisdom of the planned move are gradually suppressed and eventually come to be treated as evidence of flawed loyalty to the team and its leaders. The suppression of doubt contributes to overconfidence in a group where only supporters of the decision have a voice. The main virtue of the premortem is that it legitimizes doubts. Furthermore, it encourages even supporters of the decision to search for possible threats that they had not considered earlier. The premortem is not a panacea and does not provide complete protection against nasty surprises, but it goes some way toward reducing the damage of plans that are subject to the biases of WYSIATI and uncritical optimism.

Source:
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

“Oldest” Pottery Now 2,000 Years Older

“Pottery made by mobile foragers dates back 20,000 years.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

The evidence quoted below is somewhat esoteric, but it bears on an important issue: how long ago did our ancestors become our equals in terms of biological and intellectual abilities? (The longer that period, the longer is the handle in McCloskey’s “Great Fact.”)

(p. D3) Fragments of ancient pottery found in southern China turn out to date back 20,000 years, making them the world’s oldest known pottery — 2,000 to 3,000 years older than examples found in East Asia and elsewhere.
. . .
The crockery, found in Xianrendong Cave in Jiangxi Province, belonged to a group of mobile foragers, Dr. Bar-Yosef said. They were a hunting and gathering community; plant cultivation and agriculture probably did not arrive until about 10,000 years later.

For the full review, see:
SINDYA N. BHANOO. “OBSERVATORY; Remnants of an Ancient Kitchen Are Found in China.” The New York Times (Sun., July 3, 2012): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date June 28, 2012.)

The full reference for the book under review, is:
Wu, Xiaohong, Chi Zhang, Paul Goldberg, David Cohen, Yan Pan, Trina Arpin, and Ofer Bar-Yosef. “Report; Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China.” Science 336, no. 6089 (June 29, 2012): 1696-700.

Economists Have “the Tools to Slap Together a Model to ‘Explain’ Any and All Phenomena”

(p. 755) The economist of today has the tools to slap together a model to ‘explain’ any and all phenomena that come to mind. The flood of models is rising higher and higher, spouting from an ever increasing number of journal outlets. In the midst of all this evidence of highly trained cleverness, it is difficult to retain the realisation that we are confronting a complex system ‘the working of which we do not understand’. . . . That the economics profession might be humbled by recent events is a realisation devoutly to be wished.

Source:
Leijonhufvud, Axel. “Out of the Corridor: Keynes and the Crisis.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 33, no. 4 (July 2009): 741-57.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the passage above was quoted on the back cover of The Cato Journal 30, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2010).)

Economists Optimistic that Economy Can Adapt to Climate Change

Source of book image: http://www.bibliovault.org/thumbs/978-0-226-47988-0-frontcover.jpg

(p. 222) Efficient policy decisions regarding climate change require credible estimates of the future costs of possible (in)action. The edited volume by Gary Libecap and Richard Steckel contributes to this important policy discussion by presenting work estimating the ability of economic actors to adapt to a changing climate. The eleven contributed research chapters primarily focus on the historical experience of the United States and largely on the agricultural sector. While the conclusions are not unanimous, on average, the authors tend to present an optimistic perspective on the ability of the economy to adapt to climate change.

For the full review, see:
Swoboda, Aaron. “Review of: The Economics of Climate Change: Adaptations Past and Present.” Journal of Economic Literature 50, no. 1 (March 2012): 222-24.

Book under review:
Libecap, Gary D., and Richard H. Steckel, eds. The Economics of Climate Change: Adaptations Past and Present, National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

People “Reward the Providers of Dangerously Misleading Information”

(p. 262) As Nassim Taleb has argued, inadequate appreciation of the uncertainty of the environment inevitably leads economic agents to take risks they should avoid. However, optimism is highly valued, socially and in the market; people and firms reward the providers of dangerously misleading information more than they reward truth tellers. One of the lessons of the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession is that there are periods in which competition, among experts and among organizations, creates powerful forces that favor a collective blindness to risk and uncertainty.
The social and economic pressures that favor overconfidence are not (p. 263) restricted to financial forecasting. Other professionals must deal with the fact that an expert worthy of the name is expected to display high confidence. Philip Tetlock observed that the most overconfident experts were the most likely to be invited to strut their stuff in news shows. Overconfidence also appears to be endemic in medicine. A study of patients who died in the ICU compared autopsy results with the diagnosis that physicians had provided while the patients were still alive. Physicians also reported their confidence. The result: “clinicians who were ‘completely certain’ of the diagnosis antemortem were wrong 40% of the time.” Here again, expert overconfidence is encouraged by their clients: “Generally, it is considered a weakness and a sign of vulnerability for clinicians to appear unsure. Confidence is valued over uncertainty and there is a prevailing censure against disclosing uncertainty to patients.” Experts who acknowledge the full extent of their ignorance may expect to be replaced by more confident competitors, who are better able to gain the trust of clients. An unbiased appreciation of uncertainty is a cornerstone of rationality–but it is not what people and organizations want. Extreme uncertainty is paralyzing under dangerous circumstances, and the admission that one is merely guessing is especially unacceptable when the stakes are high. Acting on pretended knowledge is often the preferred solution.

Source:
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.

Behaviorally Modern Humans Emerged at Least by 44,000 Years Ago

“CAVE RELICS; Clues to relatively modern behavior 44,000 years ago in Africa.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D3) In the widening search for the origins of modern human evolution, genes and fossils converge on Africa about 200,000 years ago as the where and when of the first skulls and bones that are strikingly similar to ours. So this appears to be the beginning of anatomically modern Homo sapiens.

But evidence for the emergence of behaviorally modern humans is murkier — and controversial. Recent discoveries establish that the Homo sapiens groups who arrived in Europe some 45,000 years ago had already attained the self-awareness, creativity and technology of early modern people.
. . .
In their research, Dr. d’Errico and colleagues re-examined organic artifacts from Border Cave and their refined radiocarbon ages, concluding that “key elements of the San material culture” place “the emergence of modern hunter-gatherer adaptation, as we know it,” to more or less 44,000 years ago.
Previous discoveries revealed that other cave dwellers in southern Africa were experimenting with pigment use, body adornment, and advanced stone and bone tools more than 75,000 years ago, but that many of these artifacts seemed to disappear by 60,000 years ago. Dr. d’Errico’s group said this suggested that “modern behavior appeared in the past and was subsequently lost before becoming firmly established.”
. . .
In an earlier paper written with Dr. Stringer, Dr. d’Errico said that in his view, present evidence “does not support a gradualist scenario nor a revolution scenario, but a nonlinear process during which key cultural innovations emerge, are lost and re-emerge in different forms before being finally adopted.”
This process, he continued, “does not happen everywhere at the same time,” and the material culture at Border Cave is “not necessarily valid elsewhere.”

For the full story, see:
JOHN NOBLE WILFORD. “Artifacts Revive Debate on Transformation of Human Behavior.” The New York Times (Tues., July 31, 2012): D3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 30, 2012.)

The 2012 academic publication by d’Errico et al can be found at:
d’Errico, Francesco, Lucinda Backwell, Paola Villa, Ilaria Degano, Jeannette J. Lucejko, Marion K. Bamford, Thomas F. G. Higham, Maria Perla Colombini, and Peter B. Beaumont. “Early Evidence of San Material Culture Represented by Organic Artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa.” PNAS 109, no. 33 (2012): 13214-19.

Macaulay Argues that a Limited Government that Protects Property Will Promote Economic Growth

Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.

Source:
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Lord. “Review of: Robert Southey’s “Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society”.” In Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1830.
(Note: the quote above appeared on the back cover of The Cato Journal 30, no. 1 (Winter 2010); Macaulay’s full review, including the quote, can be viewed online at: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/macS1.html )
(Note: the online version does not give page numbers, but gives what I think are “screen” numbers. The passage quoted is all of “SC.96” which appears at the very end of the essay.)