On Research…

Like a song that gets stuck in your head and won’t go away, sometimes I read a story that just bothers me relentlessly.  That was the case when I saw a Cleveland Plain Dealer story early last month.

The PD story focused on the fact that a preponderance of television weather forecasters seem to think that concerns over global climate change are, at best, overblown, and at worst, a grand conspiracy by doomsayers.  You can find the story here.

While the story actually focuses on Cleveland-area forecasters, the same disbelief seems to permeate among their peers around the country.  And judging by the feedback the PD got from readers of the story – a printout of the web version of the story and the comments it elicited ran more than 40 pages – there’s a sizeable chunk of the public content to abide by the weathercasters’ disbelief.

Key to this quandary is the contradiction that comes with those TV gurus’ credentials.  Many weathercasters, with their stations’ support, tout their accreditation by the American Meteorological Society as evidence of their scientific knowledge of the field.

But the AMS is soundly on record supporting the evidence that global climate is changing – mostly warming – and that human activity is largely to blame.  That is the position taken by the United Nation’s 1,200-member Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well as other august bodies such as the National Academy of Sciences.

It would be easy enough to just ignore this conflict and chalk it up to being another indication of the shallowness of television.  But that would be dangerous.

A report at the end of last summer by the respected Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed that 52 percent of those surveyed watched local television news regularly, and 48 percent saying that they watched weather news “very closely.”  In fact, of the 18 “types of news” the Pew study asked about, weather was at the top of the list!

Too many people still believe that global climate change is a relatively balanced, intellectual tug-of-war among scientists whereas, in reality, the actual proportion of credible researchers who doubt the IPCC’s conclusions is minuscule.

Puzzled by this, I asked two colleagues for an explanation:

Bud Ward is one of the most respected environmental reporters around and was just named Climate Change Communicator of the Year by George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communications.  Ward edits the Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media and also commented on the Plain Dealer story.

He pointed to the presence and influence of the forecasting giant Accuweather, a service out of State College, PA, as having some influence.  He also suggested that in some cases, professional pride and jealousy can pit weathercasters against climate scientists, with the latter having strong academic credentials but the former enjoying popular appeal.

Bret Atkins, former reporter and weathercaster at WCMH-TV in Columbus, suggested that, “In TV, it doesn’t always take facts to make a story or an opinion.”  He questioned how many – if any – TV weathercasters actually wrote a well-thought-out piece for a magazine on the topic – “something that has to undergo some review or scrutiny?”

“Until they take the time and risk of professional wrist-slapping from the academic or interested community by researching and writing something that appears in the arena for debate, they’re much like the opinion from a drunk on a barstool – pull his string and he talks.”

Harsh words but bearing some truth.

Personally, I fear the answer is much simpler:  Understanding science can be hard, and climate science with its seemingly limitless variables is extremely difficult even for experts.  The public likes things simpler, less complex.

It’s just easier to simply say that the experts are wrong and trust the smiling weatherman instead.__Earle Holland

Tags: Climate change, Researchers, Science Communication, Science policy // 11 Comments »

Amid the holiday rush at the end of ‘08, the handful of readers of “On Research” may well have noticed that all activity ceased last month.  (Then again, maybe nobody noticed!)  Regardless, the fact is that we just took a few weeks off to rest and recharge and now we’re back, ready to go . . . more or less.

We’ll have a new offering in the next couple of days and then, hopefully, will keep the flow going as usual.  We trust it will be a welcome addition to your day.__Earle Holland

Tags: Uncategorized // 4 Comments »

While all eyes have been focused on the potential disintegration of the auto industry, a surprisingly silent and astonishingly broad purging has been taking place throughout some of America’s major news media.

And while some may immediately react with, “It serves them right,” the truth is that the scientific and medical communities may suffer the most from this loss.

Among the most visible to suffer the ax was the CNN reporting team assigned to cover science, medicine, the environment and technology, including long-time correspondent Miles O’Brien.   These specialists were charged with monitoring advances in these fields and informing the public.  And while some might argue over just how well they did the job, without them there, what will happen to news about science?

The CNN move, no matter how prominent, is dwarfed by the flood of dismissals throughout the Gannett chain, publisher of USAToday, where nearly 1,800 newspaper jobs were eliminated as of yesterday (12/4).   Other news media outlets and chains, while smaller, have been cutting back as well and the trend is clearly eliminating both specialist reporters and those with ample experience.

The explanations lie with economics – that substantive cuts in staffing are needed to insure that media organizations are viably profitable, although the newspaper profits have generally run higher than those of other industries.  So-called “niche” or specialist reporters and veteran journalists are much too costly.  New young reporters are “fresher” in their approach, media outlets argue.

And much, much cheaper, the outlets seldom admit.

CNN’s spokesperson explained it this way:  “We want to integrate environmental, science and technology reporting into the general editorial structure rather than have a stand-alone unit.”  Translation:  “We want specialized topics covered by generalist reporters.”

Researchers should see this as more than just worrisome.

As science, medical and environmental reporters lose their jobs, the journalists knocking on scientists’ doors are going to be even more clueless about the research they’re sent to report.  They’re likely to lack an understanding of the scientific method – how research is done – much less any kind of institutional memory to guide them in determining what new findings are truly important.

For researchers, dealing with the news media has always been a mixed bag.  While the recognition that comes with news coverage is usually pleasing, occasionally the coverage is embarrassingly wrong, making investigators more reluctant to deal with journalists in the past.  In the future, instead of a science or medical writer, the researcher may be trying to explain genomics to a reporter who usually covers the local school board.

The ranks of journalists have ebbed and flowed in the past.  There’s no guarantee that in the future, specialist reporters will be brought back.  Therefore for public research institutions, the obligation to accurately describe the work they do has just increased several orders of magnitude.

With the internet’s ability to convey information, the drawbacks of eliminating the news-media middleman from telling the public about science are diminished.

But the responsibility also increases.  Journalists have argued, right or wrong, that they were the ones to provide an unbiased view and maintain the credibility of the information passed along to readers.  With their fading from the system, we need to insure that what we tell the public is free of spin and agenda, but still full of wonder.

Public research institutions will now need, more than ever, to carry the mantle of public trust.

Whether we like it or not.__Earle Holland

Tags: Researchers, Science Communication, Science policy // 2 Comments »

Ohio State recently got $3.6 million from the National Science Foundation for a new five-year project to change the academic culture in disciplines where women are underrepresented – namely, the so-called STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The university issued a news release explaining the program on Sept. 25.

Just two weeks later, the president of the Ohio Association of Scholars complained in an online column that the new program could lead to “hiring discrimination and quotas that are illegal, unconstitutional and contrary to the university’s mission of academic excellence.” George W. Dent Jr., a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, called on Ohio State and the NSF to delay implementing the program until it can be proven that no laws will be broken in carrying out this initiative.

The column attracted the attention of some Ohio news media. It appeared as an opinion piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and was the impetus for a story in the Columbus Dispatch on Nov. 1.

Sadly, a multimillion federal grant intended to foster gender equity at the nation’s largest single-campus university warranted very little news media attention by itself. But when one man complained about the program, it suddenly became news.

Dent made a pretty bold statement suggesting that Ohio State is prepared to use federal funding to launch into illegal hiring practices. But worse, he made the highly offensive suggestion that an effort to improve the status of women faculty at the university automatically means new hires under such a program will be unqualified

Dent might not have made that leap explicitly, but the implication is plainly there.

He based all of his arguments on the university announcement of the grant — a news release that I wrote — and asked for empirical evidence of the need for and benefits of such a program. He seemed to rely on the 800-word news release for all of his information about the initiative. In fact, the news release summarized a 9,000-word grant proposal, which did not include references and appendices. The empirical evidence Dent is looking for is most likely available there.

His column also pulls from the news release a line saying “Ohio State has adopted progressive policies that allow for flexibility on the tenure track and has created support offices promoting gender equity.” But he omits the rest of that sentence: “(u)niversity surveys show that women faculty have heavier family obligations than men, and female professors are more likely to report that they work in unsupportive department cultures.”

It seems obvious that just because the institution promotes gender equity, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t individuals practicing discrimination every single day within the confines of an academic department. Ohio State has publicly available human resources data that imply this is the case, and the data are cited in the grant proposal.

Also, Dent’s employer, Case Western Reserve University, also received a similar NSF grant under the same national program – called ADVANCE – to promote the full participation of women at all levels of faculty and academic leadership.

It’s puzzling that the president of the Ohio Association of Scholars didn’t do enough research to recognize that his own institution competed for and received a federal grant for the exact same kind of program he now criticizes Ohio State for.

Ohio State can take the heat. We’re a big university. We get lots of complaints. But why do women still have to take shots like these and be criticized for seeking equality in the workplace? –Emily Caldwell

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Tags: Researchers, Science Communication, Science policy // 5 Comments »

The world for journalists and science writers is changing.  It’s inevitable.  More than ever, we find ourselves using other venues to disseminate information and learn about the world. 

For example, nearly every major news outlet has a blog these days.  Instead of writing lengthy stories in print, we blog professionally to tell the public what’s new.  I used to think negative comments about a news story were just ways for disgruntled people to vent after a bad day.  But the truth is that many writers, myself included, learn more from the public than they learn from us. 

Reading one reporter’s opinion, and those of people who choose to subscribe to a blog, only widens our knowledge partially.  But in non-news blogs, the public unintentionally informs us the details that we’ve overlooked.  The general public may not understand the complexities behind each story, but their comments can tell us more about our writing than we know.

People don’t hold back in blogs and they often point out the holes in research or important, missing facts in a story.  They also comment on what they want to see more of in future pieces.  Some people may miss the point of a story completely but others will ask insightful questions, consider the unknowns, and think in broader terms.

This information is so important to understand how to write for different people.  Their views can help me and other writers judge how well our writing anticipates readers’ questions.  It’s often regular people, not other journalists, who help us question what is truly substantive in our writing. 

It’s also interesting to see what people agree and disagree with.   That offers us a window into how people think.  We can delve in the psyche of readers without their knowledge and build future stories based on what we learned.  Even if they didn’t intend to teach reporters, their comments soak into our brains and reshape how we write. 

From blogs, we can learn what people want and expect from their news.   It’s a new facet of news that should be utilized by all writers developing their skills to better serve the public.  To waste this opportunity or simply shrug off the intrinsic value of knowing other people’s opinions would be insanity.  Knowing how people think and what interests them is a key part of writing. 

It’s inevitable, the way we used to think about news has changed. If we don’t utilize the resources around us, especially those that appear useless, we lose sight of why we became writers. __Jenna McGuire

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Tags: Science Communication // 2 Comments »

Reporters share a curiosity about their world; we’re basically information junkies. Science writers especially are driven to understand even the most complex phenomena. We think critically about the research we cover. We assess the methods of a study in order to judge whether its findings are worth sharing with the general public.

That’s why this Salon article about political polls surprised me. Despite my training as a science writer, I couldn’t assess the author’s findings. While attending an annual science writers’ meeting, I decided to take an informal poll of my own, and see if my colleagues could do a better job. Then I would consult the experts.

Ultimately, I learned something about political polls that enhanced my understanding of all the areas of science that we cover — particularly climate science.

According to the Salon author (a political pollster), if a dozen different polls, all employing different methodologies, show that a particular presidential candidate has a lead, then the lead must truly exist. As a layperson, this made sense to me. If you ask the same question many different ways and get the same answer, then it is probably right.

But is it, really?

The science writers I spoke to all seemed relieved to hear that a number of otherwise confusing polls could be summed up in one easy-to-grasp idea. Then I asked, “Do you think that logic is statistically valid?” Quizzical looks and shrugged shoulders suggested nobody knew any better than I did. Colleague Emily Caldwell reversed the question: “You cover statistics. Does it make sense to you?”

Well, I’ve covered statistics just long enough to know that there’s a lot I don’t know. But I knew who to ask.

Fritz Scheuren, vice president for statistics at the National Opinion Research Center, was on campus this week talking about political polls. His answer was similar to what he said on WOSU Radio’s “Open Line” on Oct. 29 [listen to the archive here]. To make sense of polls, people should look at how one poll from a single reputable source, such as Gallup, changes over time — not what a collection of polls from different sources says at a given moment. Different polls ask different questions of different populations in different ways, all based on the study design. The results cannot simply be lumped together. They need to be combined via a sophisticated meta-analysis.

The Salon writer’s assertion makes intuitive sense to non-statisticians, but it’s scientifically invalid.

This reminded me of some seminars I attended earlier this year which concerned how different climate change models can be combined to yield a big picture of what’s happening to the planet. Scientists are working to assemble such “climate model ensembles” in order to reduce the uncertainty that plagues such predictions. Climate models are unlike political polls, explained Ohio State statistician Noel Cressie.  Climate models are closely related (they all study the same interrelated climate variables), whereas political polls should gather data from random samples of people.

But regardless, both kinds of “ensembles” need to be constructed carefully, weighing their similarities and differences. That’s the goal of meta-analysis.

To judge which political polls are reliable — in that they are good predictors of the election — Scheuren said we need to wait until after Nov. 4, and see which ones mirrored actual outcomes. But we can’t do that with climate change, and that’s why statisticians are working so hard to build scientifically valid climate model ensembles now.

The Salon article forced me to look more carefully at political polls — and at how we report on meta-analysis in climate change and other areas of science.– Pam Frost Gorder

Tags: Climate change, Researchers, Science Communication, Science policy // 1 Comment »

Reading about Victor Deeb was one of those “I missed the bullet” moments, the times when you could say that “it could have been me.”

In truth, however, Deeb’s travails are a product of modern times where our fear governs nearly everything we do.

Backing up, Victor Deeb is a 71-year-old professional chemist who had worked in industry for at least 20 years. Since retirement more than a decade ago, Deeb had used a makeshift chemistry lab in his basement to continue his science, most recently, he said, trying to develop a non-cancerous sealant for baby food jars.

But Deeb’s downfall came this summer with a faulty upstairs air conditioner that caught fire, and an emergency call for help to the fire department. During the “mopping up” part of the fire call, firefighters had checked out the rest of the house for problems, found the lab and feared the worst. Calls to Hazmat, the state EPA and other agencies put Deeb’s lab in the spotlight.

Ordered out of his house for months while inspections took place and materials removed, Deeb finally was allowed back home with a court order prohibiting him from rebuilding his lab. While no hazardous materials were ever found there, his “hobby” and home chemistry lab were finished.

Thank God, the authorities never checked out the lab I built in the bedroom of my parents’ home during the 1960s.

They would have had a field day!

In those days, young boys and chemistry sets seemed a perfect match. And many, like me, weren’t satisfied with the tiny bottles offered in ChemCraft or Gilbert chemistry sets for Christmas. Periodic whining and cajoling would lead to a parent driving me and a friend to a chemical supply house in Birmingham with penciled shopping lists and accumulated allowances. Back then, if you knew the local druggist, he might also pass along chemicals omitted from the sets.

Coming home with beakers, Florence flasks, retorts and condensers, as well as a small box of various aldehydes and aromatic hydrocarbons, it was better than a surprise movie and ice cream for the geeks on the block.

While kids today make science fair volcanoes from baking soda and vinegar, we used potassium permanganate and glycerin. We routinely made hydrogen and other gases. The night I generated bromine in the bedroom, filling it with noxious brownish-red gas, should have ended the hobby. But it didn’t. There were even successful attempts at picric acid which, mercifully, we knew to keep damp.

It was a wonder that we survived.

Kids can’t do such stuff now. And that’s probably good, to some extent, given the level of everyday danger that surrounds us. But I do wonder what we’ve lost in the process, what magic vanished with the safety? National attention has been focused on STEM – science, technology, engineering, mathematics – to return our national prominence in science. But is that enough?

Don’t we need the wonder as well?

How many lovers and doers of science started with home chemistry labs and survived to tell the tale?__Earle Holland

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Tags: Researchers, Science Communication, Science policy // 3 Comments »

[Editor's note:  Ohio State science writer Pam Frost Gorder was one of dozens of international journalists invited last week to tour the international physics laboratory at CERN in Switzerland and learn about the GRID, the global computer network designed to handle the massive amounts of data flowing from the world's newest particle collider.  This is the last of four entries about that trip.]

October 3, 2008

Les Robertson, CERN scientist and father of the LHC computing grid, is retiring. Seven years ago, he was the one who got the idea to link distant computer clusters from many countries together, to make data processing for the LHC more manageable.

But that idea has taken on a life of its own, and now there is talk of making the grid permanent, even beyond the decade-plus expected lifespan of the LHC. Other data-heavy sciences, particularly climate science and microbiology, could make good use of the grid.

So after the LHC grid was officially unveiled, and Robertson’s staff presented him with a bouquet of flowers and an ovation, he and I walked through the art exhibit currently displayed in the facility’s entry hall.  The LHC grid, he said, turned out almost exactly as he had originally envisioned it, although he didn’t realize just how challenging it would be to manage the countless people and research groups around the world required to make it happen. He’s traveled the world many times over, visiting computing sites of the grid’s many partners.

He remembered visiting Ohio State — one of the “Tier 2″ universities on the grid. Robertson noticed the close linkage between the university and the Ohio Supercomputer Center, and remarked that our physicists and computer scientists worked together in a way that clearly benefitted the LHC. Tier 0 (CERN itself) and Tier 1 (a handful of sites around the world) are mainly data storage and distribution centers, but the Tier 2 centers are where the real action happens, he said — where scientists actually analyze the LHC data and make discoveries.

But for all this travels he has one regret: He never saw the rest of those countries he visited — the people and cultures beyond the computer centers in universities and laboratories.
His retirement, he promised, would carry him out of this “virtual world” and into the real world.

The “real world” is much better off for his efforts. Now that he’s shown that grid computing can be run on this massive scale, other worldwide grids are linking together, with applications in environmental protection, disaster recovery, medicine, and public health.

And that’s a lasting legacy that he didn’t envision. __Pam Frost Gorder

Tags: Researchers, Science policy // 3 Comments »

[Editor's note:  Ohio State science writer Pam Frost Gorder was one of dozens of international journalists invited last week to tour the international physics laboratory at CERN in Switzerland and learn about the GRID, the global computer network designed to handle the massive amounts of data flowing from the world's newest particle collider.  This is the third of four entries about that trip.]

October 3, 3008

With all the advances in flat-panel TV screens and microelectronics, I keep waiting for the invention of “the box that does everything” — you know, the giant box you see on the wall in science fiction movies. It’s a TV screen, video phone, and computer interface all rolled into one. And it works on voice command.

“Computer, show me sunrise over Mauna Kea, play Beethoven’s fifth symphony, and order that book from Amazon that I wanted… Oh, and call Mom.” And bam! There it is — whatever you want.

While at GridFest, I learned that my dream “box that does everything” may already be here. It’s just a lot smaller than I envisioned.

Bob Jones, computer scientist at CERN and director of Enabling Grids for E-sciencE, sat down with me after the unveiling of the LHC computing grid to talk about how scientists around the world will use it.

More than 30 countries worldwide are tied into the grid, each donating computing power to store and analyze data from the experiment. More than a dozen remote LHC computing centers around the world participated in the ceremony via videoconference, and regardless of whether the site was in Canada, Russia, China, or Australia, they all looked basically the same — a roomful of computers wired together in parallel.

But what about developing countries where scientists don’t have access to that kind of expensive facility? How will they benefit from grid computing?

Surprisingly, Jones said that scientists in developing countries will likely use cell phones to connect to the grid. Today’s multi-purpose phones can store and run applications, he explained, and even some of the most out-of-the-way regions of the planet now have cellular coverage. A researcher can send commands through the phone, and download the results from LHC partner centers in other countries.

This trend has been taking shape for a while, with cell phones and PDAs becoming portable libraries for music and books. Michael Hart, the creator of Project Gutenberg, once told me that the future of e-books was in cell phones. Kids today, he said, are adept at reading text on the tiny computer screens.

As Apple’s iPhone expands its hold on the market by selling itself as an e-book reader, and the magazine The Atlantic argues that all this e-reading could be making us stupid, it will be interesting to see how science is done in this new medium, and in the next generation. __Pam Frost Gorder

[Next: A grid for all sciences . . .]

Tags: Researchers, Science policy // 1 Comment »

[Editor's note:  Ohio State science writer Pam Frost Gorder was one of dozens of international journalists invited last week to tour the international physics laboratory at CERN in Switzerland and learn about the GRID, the global computer network designed to handle the massive amounts of data flowing from the world's newest particle collider.  This is the second of four entries about that trip.]

October 2, 2008

The LHC may be shut down for repairs, but the detectors on at least two of the experiments are alive with signals… from space. Distant stars send showers of high-energy particles streaming through the universe — invisible particles that pass right through us and our planet as if we weren’t even here.

But the sensitive electronics on the ATLAS and CMS detectors record those particles’ passing, thousands of times per second. Ohio State graduate students Greyson Williams and Phillip Killewald showed me a slow-motion visualization in the CMS control center, and still the detectors lining the massive CMS cylinder were blinking like lights on a Christmas tree.

The particles aren’t a nuisance. Because they stream through the detector in perfectly straight lines, the scientists use them like giant rulers to gauge the alignment of detector plates. They can then program software to compensate for plates that are slightly out of alignment. __Pam Frost Gorder

[Next: Science on a cell phone . . .]

Tags: Researchers, Science policy // 3 Comments »