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Scientific organizations must be braver in confronting climate denial
Citadels of science like MIT and the American Geophysical Union are eschewing opportunities to stand up against climate change denial by turning a blind eye to evidence. It is a discredit to science and a disservice to society.

Walking on stage to receive my PhD at MIT this June, I felt both proud and disappointed: bittersweet emotions toward a place that taught me so much science yet nothing about how to stand up for it.

As a young scientist researching renewable energy since high school, and as a young person scared for my generation's future, it has been painful for me to watch an intellectual powerhouse like MIT fail to lead against climate change. Worst of all has been MIT's refusal to confront outright attacks on basic climate science.

The Institute's own climate advisory committee, on which I sat, unanimously told MIT to address the disinformation spewed by the fossil fuel industry. 3,500 MIT members petitioned the president to make it happen. Faculty, students, scientists, and environmentalists wrote letters, alumni withheld donations, Cambridge City Council even passed a resolution.

Yet when the administration finally unveiled its climate plan, it didn't just reject the recommendation of its own committee, it completely ignored us. The word "disinformation" appeared once in 18 pages, right before the administration refused to divest from the fossil fuel companies responsible, and committed instead to "bringing them closer." For 126 days we students sat-in outside our president's office in protest, but MIT refused to budge.

Things are just as bad at the American Geophysical Union, the world's largest association of Earth scientists. In April, AGU's board rejected calls from 200 of its members to drop ExxonMobil as one of its sponsors. (I helped organize the campaign, and joined the AGU early this summer after beginning a postdoc modeling energy systems for climate mitigation.)

Exxon is a company that has spent decades perfecting the art of climate science disinformation. Decades orchestrating, funding, and perpetuating campaigns designed to confuse the public, sabotage science, and slander scientists, many of whom are AGU members. In other words, Exxon is climate science's Most Wanted. And America's union of geoscientists just voted to keep taking its petty change.

AGU's decision is an implicit sanction, however unintentional, for Exxon to attack science and scientists. It is a failure to protect the integrity of science - and scientists themselves - against those who undermine our very raison d'être: truth and knowledge.

And significantly, it is a flat-out violation of AGU's own sponsorship policy, which says: "AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science."

To this day, Exxon funds the American Enterprise Institute, whose head of energy studies ten months ago proclaimed, amidst a torrent of misinformation, that the human contribution to global warming is "unresolved". [$3.8 million from Exxon since 1998; $325,000 in 2015.]

To this day, Exxon funds the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose official position is that "Global Climate Change is Inevitable...the debate will continue on the significance of natural and anthropogenic contributions." [$1.7 million+ since 1998; $75,000 in 2015. An Exxon Manager sits on ALEC's corporate board.]

To this day, Exxon funds climate-denying Congress members like Sen Jim Inhofe, who says global warming is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and who Exxon supported in 2015 even as he refuted record-high temperatures by producing a snowball on the Senate floor. [$3.5 million+ to 208 members since 1999; $724,500 to 100 members in 2013-14; 2015-16 data not yet public.]

And so the evidence goes on, as we documented in a report to AGU's board.

Incredibly, AGU's explanation-free answer to all of this was that "It is not possible for us to determine unequivocally whether ExxonMobil is participating in misinformation about science currently."

"You have been fooled," responded two Congressmen to AGU. Atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel went further, calling AGU's decision "a mockery of its own bylaw." But it's even worse than that: it is a mockery of the evidence-based reasoning that defines us as scientists. Like MIT, it is a sad example of a scientific organization confronted by climate denial, yet overrun by status quo bias and setup to fail. And it is a huge missed opportunity.

Because as trusted voices in our society, institutions like MIT and the AGU wield megaphones to public and political opinion and, through leadership, immense capacities to effect change. In 2006, when Great Britain's Royal Society reprimanded Exxon for its climate disinformation campaigns, it forced the oil giant to publicly address, however feebly, its wrongdoings. And that was one letter from one institution.

AGU can show similar courage. Tomorrow, as its board meets to revisit the question of Exxon sponsorship, we will deliver the signatures of 50,000 members of the public, each encouraging the union to do what scientists do best: face the facts. AGU sponsors must abide by AGU sponsorship policy, and Exxon has not. So AGU must drop Exxon. Otherwise, why bother having a sponsorship policy in the first place?

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science

1473713695000

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Where The Brain And Panoramic Memory Meet
Stop for a moment, take a stroll down memory lane and try to imagine your childhood home, or your former schools you had attended. You can probably visualize it, as expected, but there's a little more. When you "pan" out your memories, you can picture not only your home and school, but also nearby buildings, homes and shops across the street. Not only conceptually, but also physically, the brain is a complex structure, but it's not hard to derive the fact that this phenomenon exists and comes from some region in the cerebrum. However recently, MIT neuroscientists were able to locate the two brain regions involved in creating these panoramic memories.

"Our understanding of our environment is largely shaped by our memory for what's currently out of sight," Caroline Robertson says, who is a postdoc at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. She is also the lead author of the study.

Essentially, when we look at a scene, visual information comes through the retinas in the eye and into the brain, which has regions that process sections of things we typically see. The MIT team had believed that processing areas, such as the occipital place area (OPA), the retrosplenial complex (RSC), and parahippocampal place area (PPA) are responsible for generating these panoramic memories.

The general hypothesis was that "as we begin to build memory of the environment around us, there would be certain regions of the brain where the representation of a single image would start to overlap with representations of other views from the same scene."

The method they used to test this hypothesis was rather interesting. Using immersive, hi-tech virtual reality headsets, they were able to see people in various panoramic scenes. Then they showed some participants 40 street corners in Boston's Beacon Hill neighborhood and asked if they came from the same street corner. Their responses only configured their hypothesis -- participants were able to determine if the pairs came from the street corner when they were connected or linked in the 100-degree image rather than them unlinked. These results lead to the possibility that the PPA is not involved in building panoramic memories.

In a similar related experiment, researchers tried to test the possibility if an image could influence the brain to recall an image from that very same panoramic scene. To test this, they asked participants a scene and asked if they can recall if the image was on the left or right when they had first saw it. Prior to that, they showed them another image from the same street corner or an unrelated picture. As expected, participants did better with the related/linked image.

This experiment opens up a lot of possibilities not only involving brain research, but also with various technologies. As mentioned, they had used virtual reality headsets on participants, and were able to use the technology to their advantage, accurately simulating the experience they had intended the participants to go through. Future use of virtual reality along with brain research itself is a new golden key to the endless doors of discovery in the field of science.

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science

1473713689000

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Why Nuclear Weapons Are A Big F-You To Science
Nuclear weapons have been a source of controversy since their inception in the late 1930s. What began with The Manhattan Project and a growing effort to counter hints at Russian advances, resulted in the world's most powerful, sublime, and redoubtable agents of destruction. From the war-loving frenzy of the '40s to the institutional rejection of it in today's age, nuclear weapons have gradually transmuted from humanity's fleeting triumph to the absolute darkest application of our intelligence.

It's hard to discern the exact innards of a nuclear bomb, as a ton of these details are kept under secrecy accords that will have you prosecuted for high treason should any figure divulge them. And if you don't have access to tons of uranium, Tony Stark level enrichment plants, billions in resources, and the world's greatest engineers, you don't need to know everything. I can however, discuss many of the fundamentals.

Most applications we've seen of these bombs are referred to as fission bombs, or more broadly, atomic weapons. The main idea is that scientists load a gigantic container with tons of uranium, which is the key agent in producing a chain of what's called fission events. You then have a spark of energy that ignites a vicious chemical process, with thousands of pounds of the radioactive metal to intensify the radius of destruction. Fission works by taking a super heavy element and splitting all of its nuclei apart with the help of uranium to do the underlying dirty work. The result, is decades of radioactive poison, infrastructural rebuilds, and constant reminders of why stuff like this should never have seen fruition.

The other type of nuclear weapon is thermonuclear, or more aptly called a hydrogen bomb. Instead of uranium, a thermonuclear bomb uses hydrogen as its destructive agent, and immense amounts of energy are created by isotope hydrogen atoms constantly banging into each other and trying to fuse. Hydrogen bombs are in every way better than their predecessors. Stronger, more predictable, and without the long term dispersion of radiation, they would have been the clear choice in warfare should nuclear efforts not have come to such a sudden halt. The most powerful bomb ever detonated was a hydrogen bomb, and it was called Tsar Bomba, developed by the Russians with the potential to destroy the entire the state of Connecticut.

Our inherent duty to destroy and persevere raises ethical issues. Nuclear weapons are the direct result of humanity's efforts to be the momentary masters of time, knowing that this existence, as Carl Sagan puts it, is nothing more than a "fraction of a dot" in a very vast cosmos. It's this insatiable desire to be atop everyone else that is destroying us, and it's our moral obligation to end this kind of suffering.

Charlie Chaplin puts a lot of this into perspective in The Great Dictator. We've made machines that make us faster, technology that defies the laws of physics, and yet the world is "barricaded with hate" and we've been "goose-stepped into misery and bloodshed." These inventions were intended to better us, and yet they've made the way for hate and intolerance.

I hope all of you can realize the intersection of social justice and science. The fundamental principles of science are to create, understand, and theorize, all for the reasons of furthering our progress, not diminishing it. Carry that with you, and the world is a much better place.

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Opioid Companies Lobby Against Medical Marijuana
Our next several blogs will catalogue the various ways drug companies have ruthlessly promoted our nation's deadly opioid epidemic. This first installment on just the latest outrage- political lobbying to block the legalization of medical marijuana. Future blogs will each tell other aspects of this sordid story.

The exponential growth of addiction to prescription opioids offers a classic example of selfish corporate greed swamping any vestige of corporate conscience. The Pharma drug pushers are attempting to protect their blood money profits by blocking fair competition from much safer and much cheaper medical marijuana. As usual, Pharma displays great loyalty to its executives, its shareholders, and its subservient politicians, while displaying a shameful disregard for the lives of its customers and the welfare of our society.

Drug cartels are rightly reviled. But drug companies are now more deadly and only marginally less ruthless.

Policymakers should weigh the considerable evidence that legalized medical pot improves pain management and reduces opioid addiction. They should focus less on the few real dangers and be less susceptible to powerful Pharma pressure.

Medical Pot Reduces Opioid Abuse And Deaths

Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia have legalized pot for medical purposes. It turns out that medical marijuana is over-rated for many of the conditions currently treated with it.
But pot could have a major role in improving our currently horrible management of chronic pain. A review of 79 studies found "30% or greater improvement in pain with cannabinoid compared with placebo."

Studies also show that legalizing medical pot, and making it available in dispensaries, reduces by 15-35% admissions for prescription opioid abuse and opioid overdose deaths.

In states that legalize medical marijuana, doctors also write many fewer prescriptions for medications meant to treat pain, depression, anxiety, seizures, and nausea.

The dangerous over-use of prescription opioids has become our national nightmare. Any rational assessment of risks versus benefits would much favor pot over addicting pain pills.

Pharma Fights To Defend Its Opioid Profits

Pharma is the most active and powerful opponent of legalized medical pot. Its subversive activities take the usual form used by all rich and powerful industries to defend their selfish commercial interests when these conflict with the broader public weal: sponsoring friendly anti-pot researchers; funding friendly anti-pot organizations; lobbying government agencies; paying off politicians; and mounting public relations campaigns.

The financial stakes are high. On one side, Pharma is protecting its revenues of about $10 billion per year. On the other, the costs of opioid addiction to our society mount to many multiples of this. Consider all the medical and rehab treatments required to deal with prescription opioid abuse and addiction; the lost work productivity; the impact on the legal and correctional systems; and all the additional costs occasioned by downstream heroin addiction.

And this is to say nothing of all the lives lost and of all the lives ruined. Pharma will fight to the last dollar to protect profitable product, however deadly it is and however costly to society. Society needs to learn how to fight back and protect itself from predator drug companies.

Several other industries are allied with Big Pharma in actively opposing the legalization of pot- particularly the beer makers, distillers, Big Tobacco, and the prison lobby. All are blatantly self-interested, but none is quite so hypocritical as the drug industry -- which constantly trumpets its devotion to patient welfare while consistently sacrificing it on the altar of obscene profit.

What Needs To Be Done

It is crazy public policy to make a relatively safe drug illegal, while simultaneously allowing Pharma to legally push an extremely deadly one.

The epidemic of addiction to, and deaths from, legal prescription opioids is a national tragedy plaguing all fifty states. It will have no simple solution, but clearly the universal legalization of medical pot should be part of the tool kit.

Political opposition is partly based on ideological and puritanical grounds; partly on groundless over-estimation of risk; and partly on Pharma's greedy efforts to hold its opioid market share against an effective and much safer competitor.

Recent history makes clear that Pharma owns Washington and also many state capitals. It invests twice as much on marketing and lobbying as it does on research and is much better at buying politicians than producing better products.

But right sometimes triumphs over might, particularly when the evidence is so clear and the stake in lives so high. Pharma's pressure on the many politicians beholden to it is increasingly meeting counter-pressure generated by the unprecedented spread of addiction to the general population and the consequent rising death toll.

Now that 25 states have legalized medical pot and have derived such clear benefit from doing so, can the other 25 states afford to continue suffering the huge human and financial cost of unfettered legal opioids.

Legalizing medical pot will not by itself solve the overall opioid mess, but it is an obvious and effective step in the right direction. Other steps will be discussed in later blogs.

Allen Frances is a professor emeritus at Duke University and was the chairman of the DSM-IV task force.

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science

1473698700000

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'Feed A Cold, Starve A Fever'? Here's What Science Says
By Lindzi Wessel

"Feed a cold, starve a fever" is an adage that has been around for centuries. Now a new study in mice finds that it might actually have some truth -- but it depends what exactly is the cause of your fever.

Why it matters:

Loss of appetite is common with sickness and Ruslan Medzhitov, an immunologist at Yale University, and his colleagues wanted to know why. Is it just a consequence of illness, or does it have some protective benefit we don't fully understand?

The nitty gritty:

Researchers infected mice with either a bacteria that causes food poisoning or a flu virus.

All the mice began to eat less after falling ill, but some were force-fed food or given pure glucose. After 10 days all the bacteria-infected mice who had continued being fed had died, while more than half that had avoided food lived. But it was the opposite in those infected with the flu: More than 75 percent lived if they had been force-fed, while only about 10 percent lived if they hadn't. Food was protective against the virus, but detrimental to the bacterial infection.

"To our complete surprise we found that force feeding was protective" in viral infections, Medzhitov said.

Intrigued, the team conducted more experiments, and found that glucose, but not proteins or fats, was the dangerous component of foods during a bacterial infection. The study was published Thursday in the journal Cell.

But keep in mind:

The work was done in mice, not people. But a 2002 study in humans found similar results: eating stimulates the kind of immune response needed to combat viral infections, while fasting might stimulate the immune response that takes down unfriendly bacteria.

What they're saying:

"What it shows is that if we understand the infection, there might be simple ways that we can improve outcome," said David Schneider, an immunomicrobiologist at Stanford University who wasn't involved in the work.

But he noted more needs to be done before we know how far to generalize these findings, which used only one strain of mice and might not apply to every infection.

"We don't want to say, 'Ok, bacteria means we don't feed patients.' It's not time for that yet," he said. "There are always going to be exceptions."

You'll want to know:

The differences in nutrition seemed to influence survival not through a direct impact on the pathogen, but rather by changing the ability of the mice's own tissue to withstand the metabolic stress that came with illnesses, said Janelle Ayres, an immunomicrobiologist at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., who was not involved in the study.

"Conventional wisdom among most scientists and the general public is you have an infection, you have to take an antibiotic or you have to take an antiviral and you just have to kill it," she said. "This nicely demonstrates that we need to be able to deal with metabolic stresses, or we can compromise our ability to defend against infection."

The bottom line:

Fevers can be caused by both bacteria and viruses -- so the adage "Feed a cold, starve a fever" is an oversimplification. But knowing whether to feed patients based on the infection they have could be useful not just for chicken soup remedies but also for more serious infections like sepsis, which can be caused by both types of pathogens.

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science

1473698696000

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Beagle blinding, killing leaves animal experimentation proponents on the defensive
CBS News' recent exposure of waste of your and my tax dollars on a cruel experiment designed in such a way as to be ineffective before it was even begun may be the single-most critical event in the fight to stop government funding of animal experiments in months, or even years.

For those unfamiliar, the University of Missouri is being sued for allegedly blinding, and then killing when the experiment went awry, six beagles. Prior to their deaths, the six dogs--a number insufficient to provide any meaningful scientific insight--had acid dripped into their eyes. The experiment, like so many others, was paid for using your and my tax money, and generated a huge amount of media attention and social media chatter.

Now, it appears that groups and individuals known for advancing spurious theories and rumored to be astroturfer targets, including some so-called conservatives who have evidently found a new line of wasteful government spending to embrace, are stepping up their advocacy for this kind of nonsense, which remains completely indefensible--on scientific inquiry, fiscal responsibility, and anti-cruelty grounds. Americans who care about how government spends our money, about animal rights, and about real scientific inquiry that informs and pushes the boundaries of human knowledge, should be on guard and not buy what's being sold.

Taxpayer funding of animal experiments is not a partisan issue, but it is one that has real resonance with both progressives, keen to see taxpayer money spent on items like health care and education while preventing the constant flow of government cash that imperils our furry friends more than anything else these days, and conservatives, who should oppose all government waste on spec, in the name of limited government and fiscal conservatism. There's a reason that principled leaders, whether Rep. Dina Titus or Sen. Jeff Flake, oppose running monkeys on treadmills until they become sick or dropping loads of taxpayer cash on hooking them on crack.

The truth is, lobbying and advocacy aimed at maintaining or expanding the $12 billion a year minimum the U.S. government spends poking and prodding our furry friends isn't about saving human lives, or groundbreaking scientific inquiry, or avoiding another Holocaust (a novel claim of experimentation advocates). It is literally about keeping the gravy train flowing for 1 percenter inhabitants of ivory towers who don't care how much they waste, or how ridiculous or non-informative their often duplicative, repetitive "research" is. This is why, in the coming months, you can expect to see more hyperbolic emotive calls for maintaining, or even doubling down on, the status quo. And it's why rational people across the philosophical spectrum should ignore them.

Progressives and conservatives alike must reject calls to keep the trough full, and start calling for at least some of that $12 billion to be put to better use: Whether it's countering the Zika virus, taking the opioid crisis head-on, paying down the national debt, better funding care for our veterans or our kids or our poor, giving Americans a small tax rebate, or even just fueling federal government workers with more ice cold Diet Cokes, there is no shortage of better things to do with this money, which is yours and mine.

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science

Amazon CEO's rocket company reveals its orbit-and-beyond-capable boosters

... sexual selection, that is

Why it matters:

The nitty gritty:

But keep in mind:

What they're saying:

You'll want to know:

The bottom line: