The Danger of “Misconceived Pessimism”


In the full version of the commentary quoted below, the authors mention four lines of research that they believe hold promise for the future: vaccines, epigenetics, targeted therapies, and cancer “stem cells.”

(p. A17) This week, the National Cancer Institute, in conjunction with other organizations that track cancers, reported that the death rate from cancer declined from 2002-2004 by an average of 2.1% per year. This is an improvement over the 1.1% annual declines from 1993-2002 and is very good news indeed. Each 1% decline represents 5,000 people living rather than dying, and, of course, this figure is compounded each year.
While some part of the declining death rate from cancer is the consequence of screening, much is the result of greatly improved treatments. And we believe that the successes achieved to date are only the modest beginning of a revolution in the research into and treatment of cancer.
During the last half of the 20th century, almost all treatments of cancers involved forms of chemotherapy in which cancerous and normal tissues were bombarded with nonselective cytoxic drugs. These drugs killed all cells, healthy as well as malignant. Worse, they did not kill all cancer cells, so the cancer progressed — leading to the pessimism dominant in people’s minds today, a reflection of years of articles and opinion pieces in the popular press expressing the view that “the war on cancer” has been waged incorrectly, if not lost.
Now, however, new therapeutic modes are in play, based on better understandings of cancers and great advances in technologies.
. . .
The danger is that misconceived pessimism might result in a loss of popular moral support for the revolutionary new approaches to cancer research and treatment.



For the full commentary, see:
Samuel Waxman and Richard Gambino. “The New Ways We Fight Cancer.” Wall Street Journal (Oct 18, 2007): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Lower Taxes Encourage Entrepreneurship in Ireland


WebReservationsOfficers.jpg “Feargal Mooney, left, is chief operating officer for Web Reservations International. Ray Nolan is the founder and chief executive officer. Web Reservations provides booking and management for hostels that cater to economy travelers.” Source of the caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C8) DUBLIN — Ireland is now alive with enthusiasm for entrepreneurs, who seemingly rank just below rock stars in popularity.
. . .
The relatively new emphasis on entrepreneurs in Ireland is the culmination of nearly four decades of government policies that have lifted the economy from centuries of poverty to modern prosperity.
The change began when Ireland entered the European Union in 1973. In subsequent years, the government rewrote its tax policies to attract foreign investment by American corporations, made all education free through the university level and changed tax rates and used direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses.
“The change came in the 1990s,” said James Murphy, founder and managing director of Lifes2Good, a marketer of drugstore products for muscle aches, hair loss and other maladies. “Taxes and interest rates came down, and all of a sudden we believed in ourselves.”
The new environment also encouraged Ray Nolan, who founded Raven Computing in 1989 to provide software for lawyers to keep track of billable hours. He sold that company and founded another that created software for companies to manage billing and receipts. And in 1999, he founded Web Reservations International to provide booking and property management for hostels that cater to backpackers and economy travelers.
“Hostel owners needed to keep track of people sharing rooms, and bookings for Americans coming to Dublin for three nights,” said Feargal Mooney, chief operating officer of Web Reservations. “Hostel accommodations go for 10 to 20 euro a night,” he said, or $15 to $30 at today’s exchange rates, “so booking reservations in them wasn’t profitable for the big travel companies.”

For the full story, see:
JAMES FLANIGAN. “ENTREPRENEURIAL EDGE; Ireland Uses Incentives To Help Start-Ups Flourish.” The New York Times (Thurs., January 17, 2008): C8.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

Creative Destruction in the Film Industry


(p. B1) While film still is central in big Hollywood features, it’s unclear how long it will be before even the biggest feature movies go all- digital. The buzz in technical movie-making circles these days involves the two-month-old, ultra-high-resolution digital Red camera. Boosters say it looks nearly as good as 35mm film — and costs around $30,000, or about the same as renting a 35mm camera for 10 days.
Thanks to cheap computers, a similar sort of creative destruction is happening everywhere in the industry. Color adjustment used to require expensive oscilloscope-like monitors. It first moved to specialized — and expensive — software, but lately it’s done with relatively low- cost (say, $200) “plug-ins” by companies like Red Giant Software.



For the full story, see:
Lee Gomes. “Editing on Big Films Is Now Being Done On Small Computers.” Wall Street Journal (Weds., Oct. 24, 2007): B1.

“The Quiet Emergence of Pro-Nuke Greens”


PowerToSaveTheWorldBK.jpg








Source of book image: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41hyNtYMzmL._SS500_.jpg

(p. D8) Start with a novelist and former New Yorker magazine fiction editor living on the East End of Long Island, a sometime antinuclear activist (remember Shoreham?) and a determined organic vegetable gardener who spent her childhood in 1950s New Mexico having atom-bomb nightmares. Team her with another lifelong greenie, a man with a doctorate in organic chemistry who grew up on an Idaho ranch without electricity and whose day job, over the course of a long career, has included pioneering something called probabilistic risk assessment (the underpinnings of climate-change analysis, but that’s another story). Send the pair off on a grand tour of the nuclear-power world, from dust-blown uranium mines to the depths of a pilot facility for Uncle Sam’s waste deposit at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. And then wait for them to come back with the predictable diatribe against nuclear power.
Happily, you’ll wait in vain. “Power to Save the World” is a picaresque, flat-out love song to the bad boy of the great American energy debate — as good a book as we’re likely to get on a subject mired in political incorrectness, general unfathomability and essentially limitless gut fears. It’s also the latest plot point for one of the few unassailably positive byproducts of global-warming mania: the quiet emergence of pro-nuke greens, led by such impeccable apostates as Whole Earth founder Stewart Brand and James Lovelock, the British chemist best known for his Earth-is-a-living-organism “Gaia ypothesis.”

For the full review, see:
Reiss, Spencer. “BOOKSHELF; Green With (Nuclear) Energy.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., November 20, 2007): D8.


“I Intend to Be Visible, But Only in Ways I Wish to Be Seen”


The passages below are from a WSJ summary of an October 12, 2007 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

(p. A7) After feeling increasingly alienated by college celebrations of black heritage, English Prof. Jerald Walker opted to redefine his role on campus.
. . .
Prof. Walker decided he had had enough during a commencement ceremony for black students. He had misgivings over the concept itself: “After so recently celebrating our country’s staunchest promoter of integration, I was being asked to celebrate segregation.”
Afterward, he made the decision that he would no longer participate in events simply because of the color of his skin. “I intend to be visible,” he says, “but only in ways I wish to be seen.”



For the full summary, see:
“The Informed Reader; Universities; Black Professor Rebels Against Expected Campus Role.” Wall Street Journal (Oct. 13, 2007): A7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

For First Time, Planet Earth is More Urban than Rural


PushpakExpress.jpg “Sarla Deepak Ire sells guavas on the Pushpak Express, from Lucknow to Mumbai, earning less than $3 a day.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 3) ABOARD THE PUSHPAK EXPRESS, India — The man with neatly parted hair stood in the doorway of the hurtling train. And then, at the perfect moment, he jumped.
This was not about suicide, however. It was about tea.
Having popped out of the door, he clung to the knobs and rods of the train’s exterior with one hand. His other hand gripped a vat of scalding tea tied to his belt.
He glided like a rock climber across the train’s epidermis, from one foothold to the next. He reached the steel beam that connected the cars and walked it like a tightrope. Then, arriving at the next car, he hopped onto more footholds and, at last, ducked inside to utter his sales pitch: “Tea! Tea! Get your hot tea!”
Such acrobatics are not required on most of the world’s trains, nor in this train’s first- and second-class cars, which are connected with inside passageways. But this was third class on the Pushpak Express, a $6, 24-hour ride ferrying migrants from India’s bleak heartland to the thriving coastal megalopolis of Mumbai, formerly Bombay. And in an echo of the ancient caste system, these passengers are physically sealed off from the compartments of the luckier born.
These passengers are also part of a great migration that is changing the world. Goldman Sachs, which has published projections about the Indian economy, predicts that 31 villagers will continue to show up in an Indian city every minute over the next 43 years — 700 million people in all. This exodus, with a similar one in China, helped push the world over a historic threshold this year: the planet, for the first time, is more urban than rural.
. . .
Sonu Gupta, 15, was one of what the veterans call “new men.” With his wiry frame, he looked more like 10. He was traveling with a friend from his village. If he can find work in Mumbai, Mr. Gupta will become his family’s breadwinner. “I’m happy,” he said, “and I’m scared.”



For the full story, see:
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS. “Rumbling Across India Toward a New Life in the City.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., November 25, 2007): 3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

PushpakExpressIndiaMap.jpg







Source of map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Science Would Advance Faster if Results of Failed Experiments Were Easier to Find


The passages below are from a WSJ summary of an October 2007 article in Wired:

(p. B7) Scientists shouldn’t be so quick to squelch the results of failed experiments, Wired Deputy Editor Thomas Goetz says.

Even if data don’t deliver hoped-for results, they still have uses. This is especially the case today, when some compelling discoveries have come from meta-studies, in which statisticians sift the data of several papers to reach conclusions. “Your dead end may be another scientist’s missing link, the elusive chunk of data they needed,” Mr. Goetz says. Making such data available might one day fuel advances in genetics, neuroscience and biotechnology, he contends.



For the full summary, see:
“The Informed Reader; Science; Researchers’ ‘Dark Data’ Should Be Brought to Light.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Oct. 4, 2007): B7.

Mooning the Future


CommodoreBK.jpg









Source of book image:
http://a1055.g.akamai.net/f/1055/1401/5h/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/24530000/24539427.jpg

In an ideal world, a famous railroad mogul like Cornelius Vanderbilt, would be a consistent defender of technological progress. But moguls can differ in their motives and are not always consistent. Consider the following from a new biography of Vanderbilt:

(p. D9) The arrival a few years earlier of the first steamships, clanking loudly and belching flames and smoke, provoked scorn from sailors, who waved their hats in condescension and “sometimes also turned their backs, bent down, and revealed their bare ends to the dignified ladies and gentleman who had paid lofty prices to flirt with the future. Cornelius sometimes made such a salute.”



For the full review, see:
JULIA FLYNN SILER. “The Tides of Fortune.” The Wall Street Journal
(Weds., December 19, 2007): D9.

Government Post-Doc Funding Creates “Glut” of Scientists

The quotes below from a WSJ summary of a Nov. 16, 2007 The Chronicle of Higher Education article, suggests that we do not need to worry about the sometimes-alleged “shortage” of scientists and engineers:

(p. B14) The federal dollars pumped into university science departments has created more scientists and engineers than the market wants, said Michael S. Teitelbaum, vice president of Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which sponsors research, at a hearing in Congress last week. Mr. Teitelbaum said the federal government should find a way to adjust how it funds university research so that university departments don’t end up using the extra money to add graduate students and postdoctoral fellows

For the full summary, see:
“The Informed Reader; Science; U.S. Faces a Glut (Really) of Scientists, Engineers.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., November 13, 2007): B14.

Why We Need Some Savvy Entrepreneur to Start a Garage-Rating Business


SchneiderHenry.jpg




“Henry Schneider found few competent, honest mechanics.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT commentary quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) . . . , Mr. Schneider drove home to Connecticut and undertook a devilish little test.
Over the next few months, he took the Subaru to 40 garages, loosening the battery cable and draining some coolant before each visit. He even wrote himself a script and memorized it, to make sure he was telling every garage the same thing. “We bought the car recently, and we should have had it looked at before we bought it, but we didn’t,” he would say. “It hasn’t started a few times. Can you check that out?” He also asked for a thorough inspection.
Mr. Schneider was trying to answer a question that has occurred to pretty much all drivers who have ever been given the unsettling news that a car needs more repairs than they had expected: Does it really? Or is the garage just looking to make some extra money off me?
. . .
At only 27 of the 40 garages did mechanics tell Mr. Schneider that he had a disconnected battery cable, the very problem to which he had pointed them by saying his car didn’t always start. Only 11 mentioned the low coolant, a problem that can ruin a car’s engine. Ten of the garages, meanwhile, recommended costly repairs that were plainly unnecessary, like replacing the starter motor or the battery. (Tellingly, his results were in line with what the Automobile Protection Association found when it performed its experiments in Canada.)
In all, only about 20 percent of the garages deserved a passing grade. “And that’s with a pretty low bar,” Mr. Schneider told me. “I’m even allowing them to have missed a blown taillight that should have been caught.”
. . .
. . . , Mr. Schneider didn’t set out to study cars. His original goal was to examine the health care system. But he couldn’t very well give himself a heart murmur and then visit 40 cardiologists.
“It turns out it’s hard to get objective measures of people’s bodies,” as Thomas Hubbard, a Northwestern University professor who has also studied the economics of reputation, put it. “It’s a lot easier to get objective measures of people’s cars.”
. . .
Until some savvy entrepreneur starts a garage-rating business, the best solution may be the oldest one: asking for a recommendation from someone who is knowledgeable enough to distinguish between good service and bad. Just remember that a lot of people don’t know quite as much about cars — or their mechanic — as they think they do.



For the full commentary, see:
DAVID LEONHARDT. “ECONOMIC SCENE; When Trust In an Expert Is Unwise.” The New York Times (Weds., November 7, 2007): C1 & C9.

(Note: ellipses added.)



SchneiderDadSubaru.jpg
“Schneider sabotaged his dad’s old station wagon to test the honesty of mechanics.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT commentary quoted and cited above.


A Little Optimism Goes a Long Way


(p. B1) Far from deforming our view of the future, this penchant for life’s silver lining shapes our decisions about family, health, work and finances in surprisingly prudent ways, concluded economists at Duke University in a new study published in the Journal of Financial Economics. “Economists have focused on optimism as a miscalibration, as a distorted view of the future,” said Duke finance scholar David T. Robinson. “A little bit of optimism is associated with a lot of positive economic choices.”
. . .
Optimists, the Duke finance scholars discovered, worked longer hours every week, expected to retire later in life, were less likely to smoke and, when they divorced, were more likely to remarry. They also saved more, had more of their wealth in liquid assets, invested more in individual stocks and paid credit-card bills more promptly.
Yet those who saw the future too brightly — people who in the survey overestimated their own likely lifespan by 20 years or more — behaved in just the opposite way, the researchers discovered.
Rather than save, they squandered. They postponed bill-paying. Instead of taking the long view, they barely looked past tomorrow. Statistically, they were more likely to be day traders. “Optimism is a little like red wine,” said Duke finance professor and study co-author Manju Puri. “In moderation, it is good for you; but no one would suggest you drink two bottles a day.”



For the full story, see:
Robert Lee Hotz. “Science Journal; Except in One Career, Our Brains Seem Built for Optimism.” Wall Street Journal (Fri., Nov. 9, 2007): B1.
(Note: ellipsis added.)