If anyone has a reason to strike, it should be Asian doctors

A few days ago there was a discussion on doctors' pensions - following the BMA strike - and I contributed this tweet:

Doctor retires at 60, 17 years life expectancy. Retires at 65, 17 months. Actuarial fact.

It got about 27 retweets.

As soon as I had hit Send, I thought, damn, they are going to ask me for a reference. I had been given this factoid in a GP seminar on pensions. I did a quick search, and found that it traced back to a Boeing survey of workers. The excellent @KaiserSnooze  found the a good 2002 review here which contains the source: see Table 1, which shows that those who retired at 50 died at 86, those who retired at 65 died at 66.8, and all the others distributed themselves neatly along the range.

However, it looks as if the author,  Sing Lin, PhD, in a later paper reports that the old Boeing data (may be 20 yrs. old) was flawed and cites a 2001 Sandia Labs study which shows that there is no clear influence of age of retirement on life span for age of retirement below 65.
See: http://www.cie-gnyc.org/president2002/life_span.doc Unfortunately access to that link is blocked.

In which way is the data "flawed"? Could the flaw be that it is to the disadvantage of the pensions industry?

Perhaps not. This paper shows that retiring at 60 makes little difference compared to 65. That was for workers in the petrochemical industry.

On the other hand, the good @DoctorAngry did a bit more digging, and found this paper, in a survey of obituaries in the BMJ, which showed that Asian doctors die aet 70, and Western docs die aet 78 (on average, obvs).

This means that when the government forces docs to work until 68, Asians can only expect 2 years of retirement, while Westerners will get a full decade.

So if anyone has reason to be on strike, it should be Asian doctors.

Twitter trends askew

This is innerestin.

I am running an experiment to count  twitter frequency even as we speak.

I have 2 windows open on Twitter, one searching #notw (=News of the World) and another searching  GINGER PEOPLE. (Yes, I know). GINGER PEOPLE is trending. #Notw is not trending.

We are 3 minutes in to the present run, and they are neck and neck at 59(#notw) and 60

I am using standard Twitter (on a PC, Windows XP), and it puts up bars saying "20 new tweets2 "40 new tweets" &c at the appropriate time. They're at 99 and 100 now, * minutes in. Neck and neck.

On the first run, #notw was running about 5 sec ahead at 160 before GINGER PEOPLE reached 159. (Odd, that 99 thing).

Anyway, the point is that #notw, (which has just reached 158 before GINGER PEOPLE could breach 140) was not on the official trending list, when my observations show that (according to the information reaching my computer), it was being tweeted more frequently than GINGER PEOPLE.

That is the observation. What hypotheses can we produce to explain this unexpected state of affairs?

In explaining similar past discrepancies, I recall that Twitter said it was discounting retweets. A quick visual scan  of  about 20 tweets shows only one RT in each search.

There must be some other logical, scientific, serious technical explanation for my observation.

They could say I'm making up my figures to get the result I wanted. But my keystrokes are all down there in memory, so that is checkable.

Someone could replicate the work.

Someone could have a different explanation.

Someone must do something to refute the hypothesis that someone in or near Twitter is tweaking the codes to stop #notw (=News of The World) trending.

[Update: I checked. Ran "#notw" against "Murdochs". Murdochs came in a bad second at 6:50, with 57 new tweets against #notw 100]

Monbiot and Nuclear: Confusion between the Scholastic and Scientific methods

This is an excerpt from my book, Bills of Health (288pp, Radcliffe Medical Press, ISBN 1 85775 101 9), available from all good libraries, but hurry.  I paste it here in the context of the controversy over the effects of Chernobyl, to show that respected scientists can make fundamental methodological flaws in assessing health effects of environmental pollution.


AUTHORITY vs HUMILITY

It is the intrinsic humility or vulnerability before the facts that science differs from systems based on authority.
Mediaeval scholastics depended on received opinion of great thinkers of the past - Aquinas, building on Aristotle, for instance - to the extent that a scholastic refused to look down Galileo's telescope because he feared that what he might perceive there would contradict the beliefs about the moon that he had accepted from his books.  Ironically, there is a tendency for some scientists to think in precisely this scholastic fashion.

Two cardinal cases illustrate this point - Seascale and Camelford.

In the case of Seascale, a working party under the chairmanship of Sir Douglas Black was set up  in 1983 to look into the alleged cluster of cancer cases in Seascale, near to the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing and nuclear weapons materials factory.  He found that there was an "unusual but not unique" incidence of leukaemia in young people in the village.  The report did not say so, but the chance of these cases being produced by coincidence would be about one in a million.

This observation would suggest the hypothesis that "The leukaemias are caused by physical agents in the vicinity".  The second observation in the case is that the children of Seascale had a high level of radionuclides in the environment.  Radionuclides are elements that are rare in nature, which are taken into the body and emit radiation often of the more damaging alpha kind.  This fact suggests the hypothesis that "The leukaemias are caused by the radionuclides."  According to the scientific method, further research should have been put in hand to attempt to disprove this hypothesis.

However, in the Report itself the causation hypothesis was rejected on the grounds that the expected rates of leukaemia, which are theoretical calculations based on assumptions of release rates, estimates of received doses, and assumptions about the relative biological effectiveness (leukaemia causing potential) of alpha radiation, are only one fortieth of the dose needed to produce the observed damage.   In other words, the reasoning was that there were more leukaemias than theory would predict, the theory was right, and therefore the radiation was not the cause.  The corollary to this line of reasoning is that the more leukaemias were found at Seascale, the more innocent the radiation.  This is perverse, since radiation is known to be able to cause leukaemia in humans.  The perversity arises because the method used was not scientific, but scholastic.  It assumed that all we need to know about radiation is in the textbooks, and that new findings are to be compared to the textbooks, rather than the textbooks to be compared to new observations.  The unscientific nature of the logic is clinched by the nuclear scientists' argument that more cases would be required to make a statistically significant cluster.  More cases would on this logic mean that Sellafield was more innocent.  This would mean that the hypothesis that "The Sellafield emissions did not cause the leukaemias" was unfalsifiable, and therefore not scientific.

This line of official reasoning was repeated in the case of the Camelford disaster, known officially as the Lowermoor incident.  On the 6th of July 1988, 20 tonnes of concentrated aluminium sulphate solution were discharged into the treated water reservoir at Lowermoor, Cornwall, which serves the town of Camelford.  Local residents and holidaymakers who drank the water experienced a variety of acute effects, and a lesser number also remained ill for a long time thereafter.  Six months later a committee was set up under Dame Barbara Clayton to provide independent expert advice to the Secretary of State for Health .  The group noted that this incident was unique in the history of pollution; there was no previous experience of humans taking in this particular cocktail of ionic lead, zinc, copper, aluminium, and sulphate. They also noted that the symptoms of the people was also unique.  They had wide ranging problems, with sore/dry mouth, felt unwell and tired, had stomach aches, were very thirsty, had nausea and vomiting, itching, sore eyes, and mouth ulcers.  The persistent effects noted by the group were aches and joint pains, memory loss, poor concentration, speech problems, depression and behavioural problems in children, hypersensitivity, rashes and mouth ulcers, and gastrointestinal disorders.  These symptoms do not fit into any recognised diagnostic category.  So the observation is a unique toxic insult, and a unique resultant syndrome.  Hypothesis: that the toxins caused the illness.  Surprisingly, instead of testing this hypothesis by advising on necessary medical and scientific studies, the group opened their textbooks, and looked up the effects of each of the ions as they are known in isolation.  In each case they found that the ion in those concentrations were incapable of causing those effects.  On this evidence, book-based scholastic theory that did not relate to mixtures of ions, they concluded that the cocktail was incapable of causing the illness.  There was specific scientific evidence of deposition of aluminium in the bones of one affected case.  The group specifically advised against following up this lead.
The group concluded that their book-learning could not account for the illness and that ergo, the symptoms were due to "anxiety".  There was no psychiatrist in the group to advise on this point.  As a result of the public outcry that followed, the Clayton Group was reconvened, and came to the conclusion that they had been quite right in the first place.

Years later, the affected citizens were given out-of-court settlements in compensation for their suffering.
This incident occurred when South West Water was being prepared for privatisation.

It emerges from this that the statements of scientists, especially those working at the behest of Government, are not necessarily "scientific" but statements based on their authority as eminent and respectable scientists.  The confusion comes about not through cynicism or bad faith, but because in the complexity of detail, the simplicities of the method are lost to view.

Delingpole pwned by Sir Paul Nurse, but can the media convey science?

Last night I watched the Horizon programme on Science Under Attack  in which climate change denying journalist James Delingpole is pwned by Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, who asks him if a dear relative was suffering from a fatal disease, would he opt for the "consensus" treatment recommended by doctors, or advice to drink more orange juice offered by a fringe maverick quack?

This results, pleasingly, in a halt to Delingpole's verbal diarrhoea, and a request to change the subject. You can enjoy the 5 minute clip here.

Delingpole, having had time to think, responds on his blog:

Nurse’s analogy is shabby, dishonest and patently false. The “consensus” on Climate Change; and the “consensus” on medical care bear no similarity whatsoever.
In the field of medicine, treatments are tested in a semi-open market. Those with more favourable outcomes (the patient gets better) will quickly gain popularity over those with less favourable outcomes (the patient gets worse). Sure there are market distortions (eg the vast marketing budgets and rampant greed of the big drug companies; inefficiency and incompetence in the public healthcare sector), but generally in the field of medicine, the “consensus” on what constitutes good, bad or indeed “quack” treatment is a fair representation of the facts as they are currently known and empirically tested.

Note the way he brings the market model in. His argument skims over the detailed work in medical research designed to eliminate the placebo effect. For him, the test of efficacy for a treatment is whether it sells on the market. Market consensus is most definitely not the way that medicines are validated. All too often, invalid treatments prevail because of false consensus, and the scientific approach is to test every statement to see if it stands up to experiment.

But every analogy is only an analogy. The real issue is whether man-made climate change is a problem. There most certainly is scientific consensus on climate change.

Delingpole rejects all the science, and fights the idea that there is consensus, because if AGW is happening, his fixed ideology, the free market, cannot address it; we need a common international approach that will guide the energy market. Therefore AGW in Delingpole's view is a Communist/Green conspiracy, and the plotters have somehow subverted the scientific community to create a false picture of what is happening to the earth's climate in order to achieve their goals.



This being the case, the prospect for a reasonable dialogue between scientists and deniers is not rosy. On the other hand, the general conclusion of Nurse's Horizon programme is correct: scientists need to communicate their findings to the masses. We have to debate with the deniers in order that the Undecideds will be able to make a reasonable choice between the conspiracy theorists and the community of scientists who have been assembling millions of bits of climate data for three or more decades.

The question is - how? The media is geared up for sensation. Their eyes go all glassy when facts are on the table. They judge their output not in terms of whether it is true, but whether it sells newspapers. Still, we must keep trying.


Climate Change FAQs.

Camelford Poisoning: Scientists preferred scholastic to scientific method.

The Lowermoor poisoning incident is back in the news:"Water staff told 'keep quiet' over Camelford poisoning".

This is what I wrote back in 2006, slightly edited, in the context of an essay about the difference between the scientific method and authority statements made by scientists:

On the 6th of July 1988, 20 tonnes of concentrat ed aluminium sulphate solution were discharged into the treated water reservoir at Lowermoor, Cornwall, which serves the town of Camelford. Local residents and holidaymakers who drank the water experienced a variety of acute effects, and a lesser number also remained ill for a long time there after.

Six months later a committee ("Group") was set up under Dame Barbara Clayton to provide independent expert advice to the Secretary of State for Health.

The group noted that this incident was unique in the history of pollution; there was no previous experience of humans taking in this particular cocktail of ionic lead, zinc, copper, aluminium, and sul phate. They noted that the symptoms of the people was also unique.

They had wide ranging problems, with sore/dry mouth, felt unwell and tired, had stomach aches, were very thirsty, had nausea and vomiting, itching, sore eyes, and mouth ulcers. The persistent effects noted by the group were aches and joint pains, memory loss, poor concentration, speech problems, depression and behavioural problems in children, hypersensitivity, rashes and mouth ulcers, and gastrointestinal disorders. These symptoms do not fit into any recognised diagnostic category.

So the observation is a unique toxic insult, and a unique resultant syndrome.

The reasonable hypothesis here is  that the toxins caused the illness.

Surprisingly, instead of testing this hypothesis by advising on necessary medical and scientific studies, the group opened their textbooks, and looked up the known effects of each of the ions, taken in isolation.

In each case they found that the ion in those concentrations were incapable of causing those effects.

On this evidence, which was book-based scholastic theory that did not relate to mixtures of ions, they con cluded that the cocktail was incapable of causing the observed ill ness. There was specific scientific evidence of deposition of aluminium in the bones of one affected case. The group specifically advised against following up this lead.

The group concluded that their book-learning could not account for the illness and that ergo, the symptoms were due to "anxiety". There was no psychiatrist in the group to advise on this point. As a result of the public outcry that followed, the Clayton Group was reconvened, and came to the conclusion that they had been quite right in the first place.

Years later, the affected citizens were given out-of-court settlements in compensation for their suffering.

This incident occurred when South West Water was being prepared for privatisation. Which would explain why staff were told to keep quiet, in the BBC report above.

We can conclude from this that the statements of scientists, especially those working at the behest of Government, are not necessarily "scientific" but statements based on their authority as eminent and respectable scientists. In the Lowermor case, the scientists did not use the scientific method, but the scholastic method, the same line that the Church used to discredit Galileo.

As Galileo might have said "Quel puzzi"



I tried to express this at the time, wrote to the newpapers, but you try talking to a journalist about scholastic method and watch his eyes glaze over. Thank the gods for the blogosphere, where we can discuss complex ideas.

Why does Osborne want to kill UK science?

A physicist on the post below asks why Osbore is so intent on his madness in eating - or in fact, burning - the scientific seedcorn.

Good question. In this case, madness = detachment from reality. Probably Osbore does not experience auditory hallucinations, ideas of reference etc, although the Market he is such awe of does have bipolar features.

The political equivalent of psychosis is idealism - in the philosophical sense, which sets up a single idea as a reference point of all existence and experience. For the Tories, the ideal is of the free market. They are Free Market Fundamentalists, and they are Individualists.

These paired ideas lead them to distrust any collective ("State") activity. If the "state" is taking money off individual tax payers and giving it to scientists, they are opposed to it.

Another motive is that to a great extent the Tories are ruled by the tabloids - Murdoch and the Mail. These have a huge influence on Tory voters and therefore Tory party thinking. The tabloids are salted occasionally with research that is daft, or presented as daft. It is motivated by the desire of the thick to believe themselves to be cleverer than smart people.


Third, Osbore does not understand investment because it involves multiplication and stuff, not to mention systems analysis. He only does adding up and taking away.

That's my feeble attempt to answer the "why".

Science is Vital, and Osborne needs to understand the meaning of Investment.

Scientists are on the streets of London,  outside the Treasury at 2pm, protesting against the planned cuts.

Osbore's Treasury mandarins will be inside, sitting in a circle, holding hands, chanting the mantra, "LabourmadeusdoitLabourmadeusdoitLabourmadeusdoit".

Yes, Labour's borrowing to pay for education contributed to our serious ~£150bn deficit, but so also did the banksters who have borrowed and put at us risk a total of £1,200bn of taxpayers' money.

There are other, more realistic, approaches to Osbore's mindless £83bn chainsaw massacre.

Government spending does need a thorough review, but a review that discriminates between good spending and waste. The trouble is that Osbore does not understand the concept of Investment.

Osbore is conducting a simplistic balance sheet rearrangement exercise, doing simple add-and-subtract (mainly subtract) sums in order to propitiate the Market Monster that will otherwise come and Eat Us in our Beds.

Osbore does not understand that the economy is a dynamic organic system, of which some parts, (e.g. Trident and Bankers' bonuses) are a total malignant waste of money, whereas other parts (e.g. wages paid for work that benefits society and environment)  are an investment, expenditure that will bring about income in the future.

Science lies clearly in the second category. Accurate knowledge is vital, essential, in the modern economy. To cut science funding is to eat the seed-corn.

As with all other areas of human activity, there are inefficiencies within science - starting with the fact that very few people (e.g. Gavin Esler) understand what science really is.  In some countries science can get a bit dodgy.

But this is not the time to try to teach the philosophy of science. It is time to teach Osbore to understand investment, to understand that money spent on good science today will generate income tomorrow.

We must keep trying, and not give way to despair. I see today that Chris Hune has very sensibly said that  if (when?) we go back into recession, the cuts will have to be scaled back.  So the Coalition has not taken leave of all its senses yet.

In the meantime, it is good to see the scientists out on the streets at last.

We must all hope they don't get kettled.

Here is Dr Evan Harris' definitive letter to Osbore.

Has Stephen Hawking got his sums right? 0 =1??

Centre of Milky Way Galaxy; Image from Hubble Site

Professor Stephen Hawking has decided that there is no need for God to explain the Universe. Although it is clearly dodgy to debate his argument without reading the book, the nature of his argument, according to condensed reports, does open itself to thought.

He is quoted  as saying:

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," says Hawking. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going".

So far, so good. He has demolished the Pyrotechnnologist God, the idea of a BigPerson outside of the universe who initiates the causal chain that sets the Big Bang going; the idea of a Creator who exists for eternity, but suddenly, possibly out of  boredom, decides to create a cosmos out of nothing, just to have something to watch. Bit like switching on daytime TV. The dismissal of that conception is not a problem, except for religious fundamentalists, but they have problems with the thinking of the man sitting next to them, so that is not a problem.

The problem I, and many others have, is the idea that "the universe can and will create itself from nothing."  Spontaneously.

Nothing is nothing. No-thing. It means no energy, no matter, no branes, no strings, no dimensions,  no laws of physics, nothing. It is zero. To assert that something can come from nothing is to assert that zero is equal to one, 0=1, which would overturn mathematics, the most  positive of all our mental disciplines. Not to mention causing all computers to malfunction. This is a big problem.

Let's go from what we actually know. We know for certain that the universe is expanding. As we go forward in time, it gets bigger. Indeed, it is not an expansion of matter within space and time, it is an expansion of space and time.


So if we run the arrow of time backwards, the universe gets "smaller" until it reaches a point of origin in space and time. In our imagination, this point is small, but that is an illusion, because what we are looking at is all that is, which is...how to express it...a big lot of very big bigness.

Now physicists have been studying the state of affairs in the few milliseconds after the Big Bang. They can work out conditions and interactions of particles and things. Hawking appears to have concluded that we now have a full understanding of all the laws that obtained then. He may or may not be right. The point is, as they work their way back, there comes a point where distinctions are no longer possible. Existence is just that, existence. A Singularity.

Now although the conditions that obtain within a Singularity are by definition beyond the reach of science, I personally cannot imagine that the Singularity is anything but totally undifferentiated. It is beyond space and time, and differentiation can only exist withing space and time. The singularity is also infinitely massive, and infinitely energetic, since it is destined to become the Universe. There is nothing outside of the Singularity, (see above) so it must be infinitely extensive. It is beyond time, so it is eternal and unchanging.

What intrigues me is that this description of the Singularity, which is the result of rigorous use of the scientific, analytical function of our brain, is that it is remarkably close to the description of the Infinite given by mystics, who arrive at the Infinite through the rigorous use of the synthetic function of the brain. Synthetic in the sense of refusing to let the mind wander from one point to another, a refusal to look at distinctions.

The only difference is that the mystics view their Singularity with an overwhelming sense of positive awe. They describe merging with the One as a state of total undifferentiation.

It is very clear that some may choose to regard these two singularities as totally different things, one real and one imaginary. More on this later, because this was a bit of a diversion.

The key point is that the Singularity Exists. That there is being, rather than non-being.

Again, there are two possible views on this. One is to regard it as completely inconsequential: if there were no being, we would not be here to wonder. We are here, so there is no cause for wonderment.

The other view is to contemplate the Mystery of Being - both in its singular state, and its differentiated state, as viewed by us in the matrix of life that sustains us. To me, being is the ultimate mystery - a question completely beyond the bounds of science, since it is untestable. The only thought we can bring to it is that Being manifests a tiny portion of Itself to us every time we use our senses. The trees, grass, flowers, sky, sun, stars are all an exposure of an infinitesimal fragment of the Immensity that was once a Singularity and is now a differentiated unfolding universe in its many levels - matter, energy (both visible and dark) stars, planets, life, consciousness with all the infinite complexities that occur within human consciousness, right down to events like #MetGate.

In encountering the natural world and other human beings (and by encountering I mean authentically experiencing them, not just registering their form in our perceptions in an automatic, habit driven way), we are experiencing a part of the Mystery that is Being.

Think of the cosmos as a hologram, where each part contains an image that is most accurately seen in its totality.

One of the most important encounters is with other people. There are two main options here: to experience them as objects, or reflexively as sentient beings. The former can result in killing; the latter can result in loving.

The highest response it to give a loving response to those that are trying to kill us, metaphorically or physically. To love our enemies, not just our friends.

Behaviour authenticates or refutes belief. It is useless to entertain high thoughts and behave like a complete bastard. The loveless fundamentalist is a walking advertisement of the falsity of his belief system.

Somebody said, "If you cannot find God in the next person you meet, it is pointless looking any further".

That is how Quakers think. "There is that of God within everyone".


I'm just saying. I'm not trying to start an argument.

PS Stephen Hawking is a genius, but not infallible.

PPS Does unconfirmable M-theory plus the anthropic tautology represents the end to the quest to solve the  riddle of existence?

The BMA Homoeopathy (homeopathy) debate

The BMA is calling for homoeopathy to be removed from the NHS.

OK. I'm going to put my head above the parapet, ready for a hail of machine gun products from the anti-homoeopathy activists.

I confess that I have prescribed a few homoeopathic remedies in my in my 30 years as a GP. Just a few - pulsatilla, arnica, rhus tox, aconite. I found aconite especially useful for patient self-management of panic attacks (backed by good information) - very much more useful, and less problematic, than diazepam. I saw no harm from it.

I saw some dramatic recoveries - coincidental, naturally. I saw a particularly impressive coincidence with an adolescent whose problematic asthma disappeared after one dose of a powder prescribed by a proper homoeopathic doctor.

I have huge respect for homoeopathic physicians.  They are old-school. They engage with their patients, get to know them, and form a therapeutic relationship. The patient feels understood, and if the personal physician gives them a powder, they feel confident that they will get better. So they do.

At very least, homoeopath physicians in their natural habitat get an enhanced placebo effect.

Which would explain why published  homoeopathic trials tend to show show positive effect, while randomised double blind trials tend not to show any effect. Or are reported as not showing any effect.

With the notable exception of David Reilly's work.  David did an RCT on homoeopathic preparations in nasal allergy, and got a positive effect. His methods were criticised, so he repeated the work, taking on board the criticisms, and still got a positive effect.

Reilly has a .doc summary of the debate that can be downloaded from this page. It is fairly heavy going, with closely argued statistics so do not waste disc space if you do not do odds ratios and 95% CI's. But it does give another side to the picture about the scientific study of homoeopathy. For instance, the same device is used by H sceptics as has used by detractors of the Spirit Level - discarding unusually positive data.  


He shows a picture of two clusters of placebo controlled trials, one of orthodox drugs, and one of homoeopathic remedies. It is impossible to tell the difference in terms of significance. So the analysts (whose abstract begins with the words "Homoeopathy is widely used, but specific effects of homoeopathic remedies seem implausible." ) proceed to extract 8 homosopathic trials and 6 orthodox trials, and conclude "When account was taken for these biases in the analysis, there was weak evidence for a specific effect of homoeopathic remedies, but strong evidence for specific effects of conventional interventions". This was then reported in an editorial under the headline as The End of Homoeopathy, a report duly amplified in the mainstream media. I confess that I picked up on this. Which just shows that if you want to really know something, you have to trace it right back to source.

I have always asked, when in the right company, that Reilly's work be replicated using two identical ultra-dilute solutions, one prepared by succussion, and one by turbulent mixing. The hypothesis is that the turbulent mix solution will perform less well if succussion is having an effect.As far as I know, this has never been done. It should be.

The response of the objectors is that it just cannot work, because there is no atom present of the original molecule.  Homoeopaths respond that the succussion (passing shock waves through the solution) process creates a "memory" in the water. Objectors ask for evidence of this memory.

Beneveniste thought he had found it, in demonstrating an effect on white cells from antibodies at homoeopathic dilutions. It seems that his effects were not replicated.

However, Louis Rey found this : Ultra-high dilutions of lithium chloride and sodium chloride (10−30 g cm−3) have been irradiated by X- and gamma-rays at 77 K, then progressively rewarmed to room temperature. During that phase, their thermoluminescence has been studied and it was found that, despite their dilution beyond the Avogadro number, the emitted light was specific of the original salts dissolved initially.

The scientific method requires that this work be replicated. It may have been; I don't know. I am coming late to this debate.


Next, this: "We discovered a previously unknown phenomenon in liquid water, which develops over time when water is left to stand undisturbed, and which made precise gravimetric measurement impossible. We term this property autothixotropy (weak gel-like behaviour developing spontaneously over time) and propose a... ( view more ) possible explanation. The results of quantitative measurements, performed by two different methods, are presented. We also report the newly discovered phenomenon of autothixotropy-hysteresis and describe the dependence of autothixotropy on the degree of molecular translative freedom. A very important conclusion is that the presence of very low concentration of salt ions, these phenomena do not occur in deionized water. Salt ions may be the determinative condition for the occurrence of the phenomena". Vybíral + Vorácek2007

Reilly quotes Professor Luc Montagnier, a French virologist who co-discovered HIV and who won the Nobel Prize in 2008, made the radical claim ( 2009 ) that some bacterial DNA sequences are able to induce electromagnetic (EM) waves at high aqueous dilutions - if they were 'strongly agitated', a step 'critical for the generation of signals'. 

He also cites "evidence of ultramolecular dilutions of histamine ability to inhibit basophil activation “in a reproducible fashion”" [ Belon P, Cumps J,  Ennis M, Mannaioni PF, Roberfroid M, Ste-Laudy J,  Wiegant FAC. Histamine dilutions modulate basophil activity. Inlfamm Res 2004; 53:181-8]

These are the tip of the iceberg of papers relating to the micro-structure of water. I have a strong suspicion that water is far more sophisticated than the simple image that we have in our textbooks of tiny bouncy balls flying around at random.

Here is a simple starter on the micro structure of water.

The study of the micro-structure of water deserves scientific study. The trouble is that, because it is outside the mainstream, the people who do it tend to work on their own, and sometimes maybe their work leaves a little to be desired in terms of perfection.  But the medical profession should never forget, and never, never repeat, what we did to poor Semmelweiss.

The essence of science is to say dogmatically, not "This is the case", but to ask, "Is this indeed the case?" In this debate, the question is, "Is it indeed the case that water has no nano-structure which is worthy of investigation?"

So there is something to the micro-structure of water that needs scientific investigation. Whether this will have any relevance to homoeopathic medicines we will have to wait and see.

What we do know is that homoeopathic physicians do meet a need. They have high patient satisfaction. Their medicines are not expensive. Above all, their medicines do not (cannot, in the view of the sceptics) cause side effects.

I do not agree with the request from my union, the BMA, to remove homoeopathy from the NHS. It should be allowed to continue, but under conditions of audit, covering all aspects of their practice: what diagnoses they are presented with, the success rates that they achieve, and their cost-effectiveness. When this evidence is collected, we will be able to make an evidence based decision on whether or not it is worthwhile for the NHS to continue to fund homoeopathic physicians.

This would seems a reasonable way to move forward on this issue.

Later blog on this.

CCD: Ban the neo-nicotinoids and fipronil, and see what happens

O dear. With a heavy heart, I dip my toe into the waters of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) affecting bees.

Heavy heart, because of the amount of detail and counter-detail that I have to wade through. But someone has to do it.

Every skuleboy kno that bees are vital for our crop fertility. Every skuleboy kno that CCD is an existential  threat to bees and therefore humans. Every skuleboy kno that CCD will be multifactorial, but that pesticides is likely to be one of the factors.

1-2 skuleboys kno that Bayer's neo-nicotinoid pesticide has been linked to CCD. Everybody except Mordorch-influenced, gullible journalists know therefore that Bayer will be spending millions to prevent this link becoming common knowledge.

So what are the scientific paths to be followed to establish the link?
Bradford Hill rolled out a series of hoops that any hypothesis should jump through in order to link an environmental agent with disorder. It is going to take decades to "prove" (i.e. test) the link, by which time the honeybee could be in serious peril globally. This is a challenge, and needs a lot of focused, direct work. Here immediately we come up with a problem. Bayer refuses to have the investigations cover plant protection products to the same extent as other factors.
  Here we go. Tobacco, climate change, bees - the Almighty Corporations are in there, defending their profits, over all other considerations.  As I reluctantly study and write, with the green blue and golden world calling me outside, Bayer has well-paid teams deployed in spinning and lobbying. They have been paying the British Beekeepers Association.

However, science is science. What do we know about Bayer's Imidocloprid? Its effects on termites include apparent failure of the immune system, and disorientation.  And so on. I cannot detail all the evidence today - the sun is shining.

To cut to the chase, the big experiment is - what happens to the bee population if suspect pesticides are withdrawn? Well, France did this experiment, partially, in 1994. They banned Imidacloprid, Bayer's neo-nicotinoid. There was a brief recovery, but to Bayer's relief, CCD began again after a few months. Why? Because the ban was only partial, on sunflowers, and other crops were still offering Bayer's products. Also, another pesticide, Fipronil, was used as a substitute, and that also has a link with CCD.

So, we have a choice. Either we fiddle with the science while the bee colonies collapse, or we have a complete moratorium on use of any pesticide suspected of being complicit in CCD, and see if the bee populations recover.

OK?

I'm off out now.

The Bradford Hill Criteria

There is so much ignorant ballix spoke about "scientific proof" that I paste here (thanks to ISIS) the Bradford Hill criterial needed to build a link between a problem and an environmental agent.

(1) Strength of the association. The death-rate from lung cancer was over nine times as high in smokers as in non-smokers; in heavy smokers, it was more than twice that again. This was obviously much stronger supporting evidence than if the rates had only been slightly higher.
(2) Consistency: Are we talking about the result of a single study, or of several, and if there is more than one, were they all done in the same way or were they really different? Bradford Hill pointed out that according to a committee advising the US Surgeon General, 36 different inquiries, not all using the same methodology, had found an association between smoking and lung cancer. That does not rule out the possibility that the same fallacy was at work in all of them, but it strengthens the case.
(3) Specificity: If a disease occurs only in one group of people and if there are no other diseases that occur only in this group, this is strong evidence for cause and effect. In fact, while the death rates for smokers are higher for many causes of death, the increase is much greater for lung cancer than for the others, so this criterion is still satisfied.
(4) Temporality: While cause obviously has to come before effect, it is not always obvious which of two events was really first. If people who smoke are more likely to die from lung cancer, does that mean that smoking causes cancer or is it that the sort of people who are predisposed to lung cancer are also likely to adopt a life style that includes smoking? Here the obvious explanation is correct – smoking does cause lung cancer – but it is a question we should ask.
(5) Dose response: Does increasing the purported cause increase the effect? In the case of smoking and lung cancer, the increase in death rate rises linearly with the number of cigarettes smoked per day, and this is strong supporting evidence. On the other hand, in many cases there are threshold or trigger effects, and then there will be no dose response. Drinking two glasses of poison doesn’t make you twice as dead.
(6) Plausibility: Is the cause-effect relationship plausible? Ideally, we would like to be able to find the mechanism that links cause and effect, but often this is not possible; if it were there would be no problem. We can, however, ask if it is at least plausible that A could be the cause of B. Hill immediately warns, however, that what is considered plausible changes in time. In the nineteenth century, for example, it was thought totally implausible that doctors not washing their hands could be responsible for the deaths of women in maternity wards.
(7) Coherence: Does the claim that A causes B seriously conflict with what we know about B? This is really a companion to the plausibility criterion. If our present knowledge provides no plausible mechanism by which A can cause B, can we actually rule it out? John Snow was not able to suggest how polluted water could be the means by which cholera is spread, but even in 1854, there was no good scientific reason for ruling out the possibility that it might be.
(8) Experiment: If we change A, does B change as well? If people stop smoking, does the death rate from lung cancer fall? We now know that it does. Not only do deaths from lung cancer in a population increase when the proportion of smokers goes increases [2], an individual who gives up smoking reduces his or her chance of contracting the disease depends on the total number of cigarettes smoked [3]. Bradford Hill did include laboratory experiments in his paper, such as the effect of tobacco smoke on dogs, but because he was writing specifically for epidemiologists he considered those to be part of coherence.
(9) Analogy: Are there analogous examples? After it had been established that thalidomide and rubella can produce birth defects, it was easier to make the case that some other birth defect could be caused by a drug or a viral disease.

Royal Society, extra-terrestrial life, fag paper

The Royal Society has a 2 day Conference on the "detection of extra-terrestrial life and the consequences for science and society".

I hope they take into account the fag-paper question.
What's that, I hear you cry.

The probability of contact is reduced by a number of factors, chiefly the presence of a suitable planet in the "Goldilocks zone", provided with not too little, not too much of : water, heat, minerals and gases in its atmosphere. So it is unlikely that there is conscious and intelligent life in the Orion Arm of our galaxy, because of the improbability of having life-supporting conditions in two close-by systems.

But there is another reducing factor, which might be called "Temporal Simultaneity".

To communicate, two civilisation have to be technologically active at a high level in the same period of time.

It is not safe to assume that intelligent life, once it appears on a planet, endures for an astronomically significant length of time. Going by the modern history of our own planet, it is more likely that our technological civilisation will have terminal event before we learn what the term "sustainable" means.

The duration of human beings in relation to earth time has been likened to the thickness of a piece of cigarette paper placed on the topmost railing of the Eiffel Tower, earth time being the Eiffel tower, human history being the paper. Our period of tecnological competence (which means understanding radio communications as far as the Royal Society's topic is concerned) bears a similar ratio to human history as human existence bears to the Earth.

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence assumes that two pieces of paper exist at exactly the same height: that two civilisations share the same period of time. But the planetary towers on which we stand are in fact of hugely different temporal dimensions.

Our Sun, I believe, is relatively a late-comer in the family of stars. Other stars with life-bearing planets may have come before our sun, and other stars with ditto ditto may come along after our sun has done the red giant thing.

Civilisations may have appeared on other solar systems in other star generations, but they may not still be around now.

If our civilisation destroys itself through nuclear war or as a result of uncontrolled releases of greenhouse gases and other erosions of our life support system, and if other civilisations have the same proclivities, then the probability of two competent civilisations coinciding in time and making contact with each other becomes vanishingly small. Which is comforting, as if we encountered people with the same mindset as ourselves, it would end in tears, because we would probably have something that they want. Never trust an alien who offers you a handful of beads.

If a civilisation capable of sending electromagnetic signals continues for hundreds of thousands of years, the paper becomes a little thicker and the likelihood that it will exist simultaneously with another transmitting/receiving civilisation is increased. A civilisation that has achieved a steady-state economy for millions of years is more likely to share the same period of time with us, but they would be horrified if they saw what we are doing to our planet, and they would probably be working under non-intervention rules, having discovered on their own planet how destructive colonialism can be.

I take no pleasure at all in putting this thought forward, but just suggest that it is something that we have to take into account.

[update: just discovered that I am not alone...]

World Population: the Biggest Question of All

Fig 1 Acknowledgments to Optimum Population Trust and UNEP

The question of what to do about the ever-increasing world population of humans is edging ever closer to the surface of political debate. It is the most emotionally charged topic of all time, because it involves an encounter between the irresistible force of mathematical exponential series, and the immovable object of individual human liberty.

The Green Party mentioned it once in a Conference debate, and we did not get away with it. We were damned to hell by the tabloids, and banished to the wilderness.

Things have changed now. Journalists are beginning to ask why no politician ever mentions population. (Answer: see above). Commenters are saying "Never mind the CO2, it is the population increase that we need to worry about". It is quite possible that this is an elephant trap that they are setting, because they will go all libertarian on anyone who dares to pick up their gauntlet.

The man would be an idiot to take up this challenge.

So here I go.

First, an axiom (self-evident truth):
It is impossible to expand forever into a finite space.
(I met someone who was unwilling to accept this axiom, because it implied illiberal thinking. You see?)

Second, the mathematics of exponential growth.
1-2-4-8-16-32-64-128-256-512-1024-2048-4096-8192-16384- &c.
That is a doubling series, and in 15 steps we have gone from 1 to 16,384 and rising. That is what happens if we keep on doubling a number. It is called exponential growth.

The doubling time for world population
between 1881 and 1960 was 79 years,
and for the years
between 1960 and 1999 was 39 years.

In exponential series, doubling times tend to fall by half in each round of doubling.

Since we live on a finite planet, we cannot go on with doubling population. Leaving aside the question of ecological footprint, there would come a time when we would be standing shoulder to shoulder on every piece of land on the planet, not just on the Isle of Wight.

Mathematically and ecologically, doubling population growth forever is a physical impossibility. It cannot happen. It is a dumb idea. It is nonsense. All growth must stop at some point.

And yet, to say that population growth must be stopped is intensely controversial.

Here is a simple biological model. Here is a Petri Dish.

The spots are bacteria.

(I got the photo from Richard Wiseman. Thanks Richard. I don't know where he got it from).









They grow and grow until one of, or a combination of, three things happens:

1. They run out of nutrients
2. They are poisoned by their own excretions
3. They come up against the side of the Petri dish.
   

Here is a video by a maths professor just to show that I am not making this up:

His message is:
"The greatest shortcoming of the Human Race is the Inability to understand the Exponential function".

I feel tired already. I'm going to stop now and have a little lie down, to see if anyone starts calling me a fascist who is reducing humanity to mere numbers, in the comment slot. There may not be any comments, because I have turned off the Anonymous comment facility.

The argument will be continued tomorrow: "Should we curb population, consumption, or both? "

*My local pedant points our that this should read " It is impossible to expand forever at a constant rate into a finite space" because it is possible to expand the series 1+1/2+1/4+1/8+&c forever into a finite space. Or is it?

Can Earthquakes be Predicted? Yes, no, maybe probabilistically

Any skuleboy kno that earthquakes occur as tectonic plates slip on each other.

Everyone would prefer that the time they do his could be reliably predicted.

Experts agree that we are not yet in a position to make accurate predictions, but how close are we?

This is abstracted from Wikipedia on earthquake prediction

1. The VAN method picks up seismic electric signals (SES) from conductive sensors in the ground, and claims to be able to predict earthquakes of magnitude >5, within 100 km of the epicentre, in a 2-hour to 11-day time window. Its claims are contested. (SES come from piezo electric effects from stressed quartz, which is used to provide the spark in non-flint cigarette lighters).
   
   
2. There is evidence that the recurrence time of an earthquake in any place is related to its previous recurrence time.
   
   
3. Satellites may be able to detect precursor low-frequency EMF changes prior to earthquakes.
   
   
4. Animals such as dogs, cats, chickens, horses, ants and elephants have been observed to change behaviour in the days prior to earthquakes. More.
   
   Ref: Diana L. Guerrero, Seismic Sentries: "Animal Sixth Sense & Disaster", 2005
   Yet more: Toads
   
   
5. 50% of major earthquakes have foreshocks, but only 5-10% of foreshock magnitude earthquakes are followed by a major quake.
   
   
6. Ground water level changes occur before some earthquakes.

So we have some leads. The thing is that none of these, taken alone, has the predictive capacity required by the business community. Clearly, nobody is going to close down San Francisco for a week because some chickens are clucking uncontrollably, since they are going to look a bit sheepish is San Francisco fails to fall down in that week. (And if it does fall down, sceptics, being sceptics, are going to say it was a fluke and a coincidence). Susan Hough's book,
Predicting the Unpredictable: The Tumultuous Science of Earthquake Prediction , says there is no prospect of accurate prediction.

And yet...

The problem is that seismologists approach things on an analytic, single-modality basis. Experts are into their own thing, and obviously, a satellite man is going to look down (in both senses) on the lady who is fooling around with chickens and elephants. On the other hand, politicians have to make decisions to protect their populations to the best of their ability, and if I was mayor of a town or city sitting on a fault line (and many cities are located on fault lines, as they are mineral-rich) I would set up a collaboration between all modalities of prediction.

Each of the 6 methods taken on its own will only give a probabilistic estimate of an earthquake. Academic critics will demand 100% certainty before they will allow anything to go ahead, and 100% certainty is not available in this life. So, for their own ego aggrandisement and in pursuance of their obsessive compulsive tendencies, prediction skeptics will commit us to endless repetitions of what is now happening in Haiti.

Instead of having no predictions, and waiting forever for a single perfect predictive method that will never happen, it would be reasonable to work with what we now have, and take them in concert.

We have 6 methods available to us, each with its own uncertainties. If they could be integrated, we could get a very reasonable probability of what is about to happen. We can also give the affected population a probabilistic estimate. Early on, if one or 2 of the modalities are looking a bit ominous, low probability warnings might lead mothers and children to choose to take the weekend away from home, maybe go camping (tents do not fall on you). If four or five modalities are blinking, non essential workers might also decide to move out of the area, and essential workers might choose to wear helmets. If all six modalities are flashing red, the local authorities might care to issue a recommendation for everyone to clear off out of the danger area.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: compliance with these warnings is VOLUNTARY. Skeptics, individualists and free market fundamentalists are not required to comply with the warnings. They are at liberty to stay, and indeed other skeptics from outside the area will be allowed in, so that they can either crow to the cameras in the event of a false alarm, or, in the event that it was not a false alarm, so that they can submit themselves to evolutionary pressures.

This integrated, multi-modality early warning system should be audited for accuracy as time goes on. It might prove useless, or it might prove useful. If useless, it might cause a bit of loss to local businesses. If useful it might save thousands of human lives. ON balance, it is stupid not to try it out.

Summary: there are several modalities of earthquake prediction that, taken individually are subject to false positives and false negatives, but taken together, could provide effective probabilistic and voluntary warning of earthquakes.

PS: Is every window in San Francisco and other at-risk areas covered with adhesive film, so that if it shatters it does not fall and lacerate people in the street below?
I hope so.

See also:

• Earthquake resistant buildings
• Are earthquakes increasing in frequency?

Telegraph Collection Gas Energy Saver : Do Not Buy!

As an inventor, I was thinking about our gas stove, and how to increase the efficiency of heat transfer from flame to saucepan. I was doodling about with a design, and in researching it, found this item here. On the Telegraph marketing site.

Great. One less thing for me to do. So last May I bought a pair (£21 inc p+p) online.
They sit on the flame, go red hot, and as it says on the site,
"Most gas hobs burn gas inefficiently, resulting in expensive bills for your family. The Gas Energy Saver solves this problem by using a special catalytic alloy disc to convert all the unburnt gas to heat and energy instantly.

It fits all gas hobs, neatly sitting on your job, heating to over 1000^oC, dramatically reducing your cooking time. The special stainless steel alloy is dishwasher safe. Measures 14x1cm (51/2x1/4in)".

Get that? "Dramatically reducing your cooking time".

Seven months later, I decided to quantify the amount of gas I was saving, with the following

EXPERIMENT

Method

Turn on gas, and leave it on at the same rate.
Take one saucepan, fill with one full egg-cup of water from the cold tap, place on flame, first with the Gas Energy Saver grid in place. Hit start button of stopwatch. Observe when boiling starts, which is taken as substantial bubbling occurring at the edge of the water. Record time. Remove grid, discard water (into a thermos flask, if you must know, so as to conserve the heated water), remove grid, refill saucepan with the same amount of water, and repeat.

I tried to keep the timings of the actions I took as regular as possible.

In all I took 16 readings, 8 with the Energy Saver Grid (ESG) in place, and 8 in the normal way, with the pan just sitting on the gas hob.

Results

Number of seconds to end point with ESG in place:
106, 44, 137, 156*, 62, 145, 80*, 149
* = end point taken as evidence of boiling dry, with dry pan appearing before boiling was observed.

Average time to boil using the ESG : 110 seconds

Number of seconds to end point without ESG in place:

73, 28, 32, 60, 51, 51, 53, 43
Average time to boil without using the ESG : 49 seconds

Discussion
There was a wide variation in the readings of the "Energy Saver" compared with the readings for the ordinary flame. This could have been due to variations on how the ESG sits on the hob, as it has a toothed structure, which if they are not bedded down on the hob, may hold the pot further from the flame, or not, depending how it is situated. It may be supposed that the device fails because it holds the pot further from the flame.

Conclusion
The Gas Energy Saver has been wasting a significant amount of energy. It is surprising that no trials were carried out on the invention before it was put on the market.

The appliance is not recommended by this blog.

Declaration: No money changed hands in connection with this experiment.

I will now have to fashion and trial my own design to increase the efficiency of heat transfer from flame to saucepan. Bother.

[update 25.1.10: Still no reply from the Telegraph Collection to my letter. 3 weeks now. It was just a polite letter of information. Perhaps they would reply if I mention the Trades Descriptions Act.]
[update 1.2.2010: Just got this email:

Your message

To:      Customer Services
Cc:     
Subject: Gas Energy Saver Trial
Sent:    Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:38:10 -0000

was deleted without being read on Tue, 2 Feb 2010 16:16:00 -0000

Great. I'll send it again.

Update: a lab test contradicts my findings. 

The reason for this is that I was using my apparatus upside down. Which might appear to be stupid, but I was following the picture of the item. 

So now, when I get a round tuit, I will find the items, and repeat the experiment with them the right way up.

Hacked emails -final word - Aaargh!

I have spent the afternoon in AGW skeptic land, viewing the hacked (or should that be "leaked") CCU emails. I did not find any amazing death blow to AGW theory. What I did find was a record of people in the throes of CyberFrustration trying to get the computer to do what it was paid to do. So I did a search on one sample page for "aaa" and came up with several instance of "Aaargh" or variant thereof, as the poor b'stard got another garbage out response from the data. I really did find this, but cannot find the page now*. There are scores of pages to search through.

The emails give an impression of the enormous complexity of the work done, and also an impression that the results were being filtered in favour of those that matched a recent upturn of temperature, but only an expert, after a long time re-working the data, could give a verdict on this.

There is an interesting, balanced piece by Judy Curry here .

She calls for transparency in climate science, which is a very good idea.
She also describes the tribalism that has grown up in the scientific community, with two groups, the pro AGW and anti-AGW. This is accurate imho. The debate has been emotional, with plenty of spleen vented in both sides, and this has not contributed to good science.

This tribalism is not unique to climate science. It happens in all areas.
There was a massive, lifelong clash between two pharmacologists in the early 20th century over muscarinic receptors.
There was a decade long clash over psychiatric depression in the sixties, whether it was one or two entities. The protagonists kept producing ever-larger studies, alternately producing graphs which showed either a camel (one hump) or a dromedary (two humps), depending who had done the work.
There was a mighty argument before it plate tectonics was accepted by geologists.

And so on. That's science. It is not the objective, clean cut clarity that films and news media present.

My conclusion is that global is an immensely complex system, with numerous inputs, that CO2 remains a greenhouse gas, that levels of CO2 have indeed gone up, and that global temperatures are also going up.

After this afternoon's excursion I also have the impression that the Mediaeval warm period was global, not local, and was probably nearly as warm as now, that solar inputs have maybe been underestimated, and that denialists are still prone to cherrypicking.

Finally, it remains the case that the best thing to do is to decarbonise the world economy, because of AGW, acid rain, acid oceans, and peak oil.

[Update: there is a summary of the juicy bits from the emails on Bishop Hill's blog here. It is detailed, and confirms the initial impression: they show that the scientists are human, but the basic science of global warming - that humans have changed the greenhouse composition of the atmosphere, and we are seeing the effects of that changing now - remains).

*[Update 3/12/09: Well, it seems I had stumbled on the computer code page -_the "Harry Read Me.txt page.

Pajamas Media, who seem to be sane, have had a programmer look at what the guy above (let's call him Harry) was doing. Apparently he was trying to organise data with a programme that was not fit for purpose. Newsnight have picked it up the story.

OK. What we have to do is pull all the CRU work out of the equation. I am confident that the Spaghetti Graph, relieved of one or two strands, will still show significant warming.

The CRU work may or may not stand up to review. That will have to wait. The vital action now is to get a revised, CRU-free Spaghetti Graph where people can see them).

New Scientist view on this.

Hacked climate scientists' emails: How bad is it?

philThe news that hackers have published a huge series of emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia is causing great excitement in global warming denial circles.

The most serious excerpt is this:

Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”

The explanation given by Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit:

The following email, which I can confirm is genuine, has caused a great deal of ill-informed comment, but has been taken completely out of context and I want to put the record straight.

"I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline. Mike's series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct +is 0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998."

This email referred to a “trick” of adding recent instrumental data to the end of temperature reconstructions that were based on proxy data. The requirement for the WMO Statement was for up-to-date evidence showing how temperatures may have changed over the last 1000 years. To produce temperature series that were completely up-to-date (i.e. through to 1999) it was necessary to combine the temperature reconstructions with the instrumental record, because the temperature reconstructions from proxy data ended many years earlier whereas the instrumental record is updated every month. The use of the word “trick” was not intended to imply any deception.

Phil Jones comments here “One of the three temperature reconstructions was based entirely on a particular set of tree-ring data that shows a strong correlation with temperature from the 19th century through to the mid-20th century, but does not show a realistic trend of temperature after 1960. This is well known and is called the ‘decline’ or ‘divergence’. The use of the term ‘hiding the decline’ was in an email written in haste. CRU has not sought to hide the decline. Indeed, CRU has published a number of articles that both illustrate, and discuss the implications of, this recent tree-ring decline, including the article that is listed in the legend of the WMO Statement figure. It is because of this trend in these tree-ring data that we know does not represent temperature change that I only show this series up to 1960 in the WMO Statement.”

The ‘decline’ in this set of tree-ring data should not be taken to mean that there is any problem with the instrumental temperature data. As for the tree-ring decline, various manifestations of this phenomenon have been discussed by numerous authors, and its implications are clearly signposted in Chapter 6 of the IPCC AR4 report.

Under this passage, there are graphs which illustrate what was done.
There is an excellent interview (13.2.2010) with Phil Jones and Roger Harrabin of BBC Radio 4 here.

This seems to be a plausible explanation.

Other black marks in the report:

• regrettable gloating over the death of an AGW skeptic.
• request to delete emails to avoid Freedom of Information requests.
• efforts were made to prevent skeptical papers being published in scientific journals.
• Dr Trenberth is down as saying ""The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t".
  [Response on Real Climate: Trenberth is talking about our inability to be able to measure the net radiation balance at the top of the atmosphere to the requisite precision to be able to say on short time scales what the energy budget is doing. The observations are inadequate for that ] More on this here on skeptical science.
  And Desmogblog.
  

To me, that is a reasonable clarification, as is Price's, above.

There is no doubt more, but these are the most serious points I picked up on a huge (nearly 1000 comments) debate on the Real Climate site.

What the emails do show is that scientist are fully human. Surprise, surprise. They display frustration with opposition, and express it in an emotional way.

My opinion is that there is nothing here to make anyone doubt global warming as a whole, but of course the deniers and journalists will milk it for all that it is worth.
That in turn will increase doubt in the electorate, which will diminish the political will to get a sound agreement at Copenhagen or after.

Which is a bad result for all of us, AGW deniers included.

What to do? Clearly, the sensible response from the scientific community is to review the data and use of data in the papers of Phil Jones and Trenberth. Others are calling for an inquiry. Let's hope that gets done as soon as possible.

Rupert's Read has some insights

This is a URL for some of the hacked emails.

StudentScum has a good take on it

This is an interesting analysis of the email list - from an intelligent skeptic.

Authoritative, full analysis by ENDS here

Random Thought: What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. There may be a hacker at work on a denialist site at this very moment...

Gulbuddin and Nidal Hasan: what to do?

Two violent acts of murderous betrayal: Gulbuddin, the Afghan policeman, a determines fighter against the Taleban who switched sides, and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, the psychiatrist who opened fire on soldiers at Fort Hood on Thursday.

Two acts which further undermine the fragile trust which exists between Western soldiers and their colleagues and allies who happen to be Muslim.

The Afghan army and police are almost certainly riddled with Taliban sympathisers and sleepers.

The Muslim community everywhere is continually radicalised by the War on Terror, which is not called the War on Terror any more, but has not been given another name. I propose somehting like "Pointless and Counterproductive War" to fill the terminological vaccuum .

Politicians will utter mealy-mouthed regrets, statements of continuing resolve, and determination to secure victory, but this will not happen while the profits from the poppy fields go to support the Taliban.

How can trust be rebuilt? Pulling out would help, but that in itself could lead to the Somalisation of AfPak, leaving the region in a worse state that it was before.

There is a technological solution that could somewhat help to build trust.
Latent Taleban/insurgent sympathisers or plants could be identified by use of polygraphs, picking up subconscious responses in response to images of Osama bin Laden &c. This could be applied to all army personell, screening Caucasians for racist views and other signs of instability.

Polygraphs are not perfect, and need a great deal of interpretation, but nevertheless as a screening test, idenfifying people who need closer examination, they have a role.

I have suggested the same technique in weeding the proverbial "rotten apples" out of the police service in this country, receiving a chorus of protest against the proposal from police commentators here.

OK, it ain't going to happen, because the Civil Service never accept anything that is not beaten out on their own anvil. But it still is a practical option, the only practical option on the table, along with purchasing the poppy crop and using it as medicine.

[Update 7 Nov 2009: The challenge we should be putting to the apologists for the war is this: "Can you supply evidence to show that the number and intensity of terrorists and would be terrorists is less now than it was when George W Bush initiated the War on Terror?"

It is true that many terrorists have been killed, and Al Qaeda has been weakened as an organisation, but are there less disaffected Muslims, especially young males, than there were? We should doubt it. These two cases, especially Nidal Hasan, suggest not. The fact that Hasan showed no signs of fanaticism suggests that there was an unconscious process of dissidence going on within his mind, and that this welled up into action when he was faced with the reality of going out to help in a war effort that would involve killing fellow Muslims in support of an ostensibly Christian empire.

We are in a vicious circle: Hasan is critical of the war, and cracks in a murderous way. Americans have a backlash on Muslims in their community, which creates more latent and active Islamic backlashers, which creates more "Christian" backlasher and so on until kingdom come.

I would not wish anyone to think I am advocating polygraphs as a way to fight this ill-considered war more efficiently and safely; like all wars, it is mad, bad and sad.]

[Update: Gulbuddin had been sodomised by Afghan officers, and was aiming to kill that officer.]

Nutt was demonstrably within his Remit

The Advisory Council makes recommendations to government on the control of dangerous or otherwise harmful drugs, including classification and scheduling under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and its regulations. It considers any substance which is being or appears to be misused and of which is having or appears to be capable of having harmful effects sufficient to cause a social problem.

It also carries out in-depth inquiries into aspects of drug use that are causing particular concern in the UK, with the aim of producing considered reports that will be helpful to policy makers and practitioners.


Seems to me that this was what David Nutt was doing. Making recommendations.

There's a demonstration of support for David on

	Saturday, 07 November 2009
Time:	12:00 - 15:00
Location:	Opposite Downing Street, London

"Whaddawe want?
Rational Drug Laws!
Whenndawewannem?"
As soon as they can be passed through the various Parliamentary processes!

Government Drugs policy criticised by Official Advisor

From the Guardian today:

Professor David Nutt, chairman of the government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs, criticised politicians for "distorting" and "devaluing" the research evidence in the debate over illicit drugs.The Imperial College professor argued for a new way of classifying the harm caused by both legal and illegal drugs.

"Alcohol ranks as the fifth most harmful drug after heroin, cocaine, barbiturates and methadone. Tobacco is ranked ninth.

"Cannabis, LSD and ecstasy, while harmful, are ranked lower at 11, 14 and 18 respectively," said Nutt in the paper from the centre for crime and justice studies at King's College, London published tomorrow ... Nutt criticised (former Home Secretary) Jacquie Smith's use of the "precautionary principle" to justify her decision to reclassify cannabis and said that by erring on the side of caution politicians "distort" and "devalue" the research evidence.

Nutt acknowledged there was a "relatively small risk" of psychotic illness linked to cannabis use. But he argued that to prevent one episode of schizophrenia it would be necessary to "stop 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 from ever using" cannabis.

...Richard Garside, director of the centre for crime and justice, said Nutt's briefing paper gave an insight into what drugs policy might look like if it was based on the research evidence rather than political or moral positioning.


RL: Cannabis was downgraded, then upgraded again, after pressure from my psychiatric colleagues, who see psychosis brought on by cannabis particularly skunk .

Skunk has been artificially developed to have high levels of THC, the part that stimulates the "branching thought" aspect of getting stoned. Natural cannabis has a higher level of CBD, which has a calming effect, and indeed, there is evidence that it has an antipsychotic (=anti-schizophrenia) effect.

By lowering the THC/CBD ratio, skunk may therefore tip more people into schizophrenia.

We should note that the illegality of cannabis drives consumers to grow skunk, since illegality makes imported grass and hashish more difficult to obtain. Homegrown weed is weak, so peeps turn to skunk.

I agree that drug policy should be changed and liberalised, because illegalisation is a failed policy, which arguably drives up drug use, puts consumers in touch with criminals, carries immense costs in terms of police and court effot, and is contributing to prison overcrowding. It is reasonable tosuppose that it contributes to paranoia.

However, moderate as ever, recognising that drugs policy is driven by irrationality, I would like to suggest that if politicians are determined to use the present absurd system, they should modify it, and leave Skunk cannabis into class B along with cough mixture and speed, but put regular cannabis down again into class C along with ketamine (?? wtf??), tranquillisers and some pain killers.

Anyone can tell the difference between skunk and regular dope. The clue is in the name; skunk has a distinctive smell. In court, there has to be forensic evidence, and the evidence can say what the THC/CBD ratio was in the specimen in question.

So we're bending over backwards here to accommodate the conservatives. Will they buy the logic? Don't hold your breath. It might make you dizzy and euphoric, and we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

Medical Harm reduction note: If, regardless of Lex Asinus, you insist on exercising your right to mess with your state of consciousness regardless of the law, the best way to take it is either to eat or drink it (be careful of the dose, it takes longer to hit this way) or as a Vaporiser.

[update: within hours of my writing this, Government agents defenestrated the Drugs Advisor for ..er.. giving them advice. That's the trouble with scientists, they only understand evidence, they don't understand politics]