Month: December 2014

‘I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that” is the title of both the latest book by @bengoldacre and his #londonthinks talk tonight @ConwayHall

Strangely that title is my conclusion from both of the last two Ethical Society and Humanist talks I saw last week – so much so that having drafted a piece on those two together,  I can now see me enlarging it to cover all three talks in one post.

[Post Note : Scrap that. Not as advertised.  Old TED Talk “Better Data” on Statins et al. Cheap laughs and no new content, but good points included:

• Psychology of statistics and down-side risk is real problem even for official practitioners and management of medical options – perverse decisions in terms of optimum outcomes.
• Big data approach is real option for public health, despite being largely marketing jargon in so many fields. Again perversely it is easy to justify one-off expensive clinical trials with lower value (even negative value) outcomes, than to do cheap easily-randomised long-term statistical analyses on “freely” available GP records – because of privacy rights risks perceived with the easy option. Wrong view of risks again.
• (It’s not about making “data” publicly available, but making available public data into proper “information” for decision-making. Since there are many ways to manipulate statistical data, we need to be able to trust who is turning data into information for us, ‘because psychologically it’s not intuitive for us, Joe public, to interpret data directly without a proper statistics & risk lens. I’m guessing Ben’s agenda is to sell the industry such a lens and trust is pretty much my earlier “authority” topic – ie who says?.)

 But not the talk advertised. Left before the Q&A. Oh, and I now see the new book is just a collection of Ben’s previous posts and articles, hence why no new content. Be really interested to know the context of the title quote.]

It’s pretty well known that following his joint discovery of the structure of DNA with Francis Crick (helped by Rosalind Franklin and Ray Gosling amongst others), James Watson made some dubious suggestions about racial differences based on DNA – disgraceful by today’s standards. It’s also quite likely as “men of their time” that Watson (and Galton, referenced) actually held sexist and racist world-views, and even pursued misguided agendas based on such views. I have no reason to either deny or justify any of the above. I repeat, I’m not disagreeing.

What I would take issue with in Adam Rutherford’s Grauniad piece is the denial of any racial (or gender) DNA differences. (I bring in gender simply because Rutherford already brings in Watson’s sexism alongside his racism – no reason to conflate, but we can draw on analogous examples.)

Now, gender-wise there are DNA differences (*) that result in physiological and physio-chemical differences between the sexes. What significance(s) you attach to those differences and what consequential behaviours you attribute to them, or counter-behaviours you propose, are a whole ‘nother kettle of fish – a veritable minefield of ethics and political correctness not to mention mis-directed reductive science or scientism. But denial of difference seems neither scientific nor in any other way rational or valuable, and indeed to deny or misrepresent any such differences can only obscure human value. Vive la difference is my typical positive reaction in gender difference cases.

Race is a very slippery concept scientifically, but then even species is a bio-genetic concept whose boundaries are ill-defined and variably-defined depending on which aspect of significance you are proposing to use for what purpose – no less a minefield than gender. (We are evolutionarily fortunate, that none too close hominid cousins exist today, for human species definition to be problematic in practice. Gender-wise there are of course definitional border-line cases, but sufficiently uncommon statistically that the grey areas definitionally-speaking can be addressed by gender re-assignment if the individual so desires – proper understanding helps address the reality of such cases in practice. Race is a totally distinct concept from either species or gender, however ill-defined it or they are.)

The nicest irony is that genetics — the field he founded and Watson transformed — is precisely the subject that has singularly demonstrated that race as a scientific concept holds no water.

It holds water with great difficulty, that’s for sure. However objectively ill-defined, denial of difference cannot be the best course. I’d be very interested in whether “holds no water” is really just a statement of failing to meet certain scientific objectivity criteria in defining racial difference, or literally no demonstrable difference at all. Which specific references this alludes to. Ill-defined is not the same as non-existent – it just means understanding is more complex and problematic. Denial is not really a valid alternative.

Vive la difference I’d probably say again. Better to understand than deny.

As a humanist, I’d say Watson is human too, fallible like Rutherford and the rest of us.

[(*) Post Note : Of course another part of this minefield is that DNA genes are themselves over-definitively-objectified in the reproductive, developmental and evolutionary story – a whole ‘nother story.]

[Last laugh to James Watson . Gets $ 4.8m for his Nobel Prize medal .]

[Last last laugh to Usmanov. Ian Sample in the Grauniad.]

And to join up the dots between the last post and a couple of others recently.

What social media misses is any concept of authority.
Ooooh anathema – free expression and science fact denies authority surely?

Well no. We do of course use the concept of friendship – in terms of who shares what with circles of known sources – to confer some level of trust and filter out noise in the tweets and posts we receive. But its very non-specific trust, unless we spend a great deal of effort organising our circles and lists.

What we need is some authoritative tags that perform a kinda “Snopes” function in near real time. Not just fact / fiction / but partisan / interest warning flags. Tags that can scale priority of visibility, without directly limiting freedom to express. Tags that automatically get copied with any Reply or Retweet or M-retweet.

[QUORA? – BTW I recently subscribed to (and unsubscribed from) Quora – a Q&A based social-media micro-blog – where in principle anyone can ask a question (and use it to make a rhetorical point, naturally), but only authorised responders assigned by subject matter are allowed to correspond. I heard and met Jay Wacker at a recent science event – liked the Quora concept. Sadly for the topics I was interested in, the questions were too basic / trivial or the responders too obviously following limited agendas. But nice try. Might subscribe again if I have time to interact more, but in current form not working for me.]

Just a quickie. A story on BBC R4 Today this morning. These recent photos of parliament showing empty and full houses for different debates, circulating on social media and used to suggest how badly MP’s see their priorities. They’re fake. No shit Sherlock?!? Some discussion about how social media readers are less critical in their judgement of what they find, and how stories, particularly those with images, spread like wildfire.

So to repeat my long standing memetic lesson – ideas spread and multiply not according to the quality of their content, but according to (a) how easy they are to spread (their medium and the simplicity of their presentation) (b) how catchy the content is to the receiver – how much it appeals to existing beliefs and preferences (ie consistency with prejudices).

Fact of life,  ideas with real quality and content are both more complicated in their expression and more complex in their relationship to existing “knowledge”.

(Counter example – also on R4 Today this morning, interviewing Cleggy. The question continually put to him was “flip-flopping” on some policy decision. His defence was changing your mind was not flip-flopping. Flip-flopping is changing your mind back and forth multiple times. But flip-flopping has simple onomatopoeic ring to it, so it will stick to Cleggy. R4 is as “guilty” as anyone – ie it’s not a conspiracy it’s a natural evolutionary problem we need to learn to understand and deal with.)

[Post Note – and here also picked-up by The Spectator.]