Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Autism Spectrum Disorder and Vaccines

Today’s major science news of course is that The British Medical Journal, after an exhaustive review, concluded that the 1998 paper linking autism to vaccines was in fact fraud. ScienceInsider has the news here.

This is a neuroscience story with tremendous legs. It is a spectacular illustration of how policy and neuroscience can intersect with disastrous results.

Money quote:

His report is another strike against the already-retracted research, which was led by Wakefield. A 2002 study failed to replicate the findings; the British General Medical Council spent 2.5 years investigating and a year ago concluded that Wakefield’s conduct was “dishonest” and “misleading.” The Lancet retracted the paper, and Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine in the United Kingdom.

Institute Expansion Project

Here’s a photo from within the new expansion project looking south. In the foreground is Phase I and the new chillers. In the background you can make out the signature two story windows of the Great Room. Our trees are still bare. They’ll be greening up when we take delivery in the Spring.

Phase I and Phase II together make up a larger massing than the original Krasnow Institute facility. Together, they’ll have approximately 30,000 square feet of wet-labs and associated support lab/shared instrumentation space on three floors.

In total, the Institute will encompass nearly 55,000 square feet with over 100 associated scientists, trainees and staff. We still have a center and one of our academic departments in a satellite facility on the Mason campus. Eventually, we’ll bring those folks in also, with a Phase III addition on the south side of the original building.

Krasnow’s mission continues to center on the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive psychology and computer sciences. We conduct convergent research and we train new scientists to do the same.

Neuroplasticity

Happy 2011! From today’s NY Times, Oliver Sacks on real-life examples of rapid neuroplasticity is here.

He is talking about functional (i.e. phenomenological) brain plasticity as reflected in his patients. What is remarkable about modern neuroscience is the growing scaffolding from molecular changes through neuronal morphological dynamics and onto cell assembly dynamics that reflects the budding of a theory for how the phenomenon happens. That’s the good news from neuroscience.

What use the PhD?

There’s been a lot of Sturm and Drang lately about getting your doctorate–at least in the humanities. Now The Economist weighs in here –and not just about the humanities. The correspondent (The Economist contains no bylines) apparently got hers in the life sciences and is none too thrilled.

There are several major trends converging here, among them: the role of tenure, the role of postdoc, the role of graduate students in research and teaching and finally the market outside academia for persons with doctorates. The key element is that things are changing rapidly (as this piece implies) and that what the future holds for the academic research enterprise isn’t entirely clear.

That said, my own view of the majority of our doctoral students is that they are a bright, fairly fulfilled bunch. They work very hard, but they convey a sense of optimism about their own futures. Of course, this may be an advantageous strategy for graduate students within eyesight/earshot of their institute director.

Back to blogging

We’ve got an interesting discussion going on regarding the decline effect here. David Cooper, one of my former doctoral students,  has an interesting viewpoint.

In the meantime, Obama’s wrap up of his successes during the Lame Duck session of Congress curiously didn’t include mention of the COMPETE Act. ScienceInsider takes note here. I think this is probably significant for the science community and we should watch carefully in January as the new Congress gets itself bootstrapped.

The Blizzard missed Washington DC entirely I’m pleased to report. My sympathies to our neighbors in New York and Boston (to say nothing of Philly).

Lame Duck Congress Science Action

From ScienceInsider here. The article correctly raises the point of how relevant the America COMPETES act will be since it doesn’t actually appropriate any monies. In the meantime we read of draconian cuts in the UK science budget–foreshadowing the future here in the US?

I think the real issue in terms of science funding is whether we view it as a national security investment (I do) or whether we view it as a budget-buster. The key argument to make to the incoming Congress is that national security investments into science can help the economy, create jobs and enhance our national security and that the real issue with regards to deficits is entitlement reform.

My take on the Decline Effect

So I’ve read Jonah Lehrer’s New Yorker piece now several times. I take it seriously. The policy implications, particularly with regards to the use of pharmaceuticals, are incredibly disturbing. I’m less concerned with the Rhine’s ESP research in the 1930’s.

I should point out that there are many areas of science ranging from molecular biology to astrophysics where I don’t believe there is any evidence at all for such a “decline effect”.  The disciplines affected by the problem are those that generally depend on to a greater extent on parametric statistics (t-tests and the like) rather than categorical “yes-no” results (e.g. a gene sequence, the timing of an eclipse, a band in a gel).

So what about the causes? First, yes there is experimenter bias. Experimenters are (still) human and hence are imperfect.

But much more interesting to me is the problem of replicability.  As a journal editor myself, I have to make difficult decisions about what to publish and the reality of today’s scientific marketplace is that negative results have a hard time making it past editors and into print. So another real part of the problem is that when many studies are compared for replicability (meta-analysis), this type of research itself is inherently biased by the “dark matter” of unpublished negative results.

Is something else spooky going on here? I don’t think so. Science, I’m pleased to say, has not yet been seriously targeted by deconstructive criticism.

Jonah Lehrer’s piece in the New Yorker

Behind the firewall, here’s the abstract of Jonah’s new piece on the “decline effect”. And here’s Steven Novella’s response on his NeuroLogica Blog.

Basically what’s at stake is our (the community of scientists and those who use scientific results to create informed policies) faith in the Scientific Method (as defined best by Popper).

I’m still working through my own thoughts as to Lehrer’s article. It’s creating a big stir among my colleagues and it deserves a serious response. So stay tuned.