THe Nature of Science, or the Science of Nature

So, a study shows that research on mice is nearly useless, in some areas, for understanding effects on humans.  Or, worse than useless, actually misleading.  Science and Nature are two places to publish big, important, but perhaps speculative papers.

Excerpt:

The study’s investigators tried for more than a year to publish their paper, which showed that there was no relationship between the genetic responses of mice and those of humans. They submitted it to the publications Science and Nature, hoping to reach a wide audience. It was rejected from both.


Science and Nature said it was their policy not to comment on the fate of a rejected paper, or whether it had even been submitted to them. But, Ginger Pinholster of Science said, the journal accepts only about 7 percent of the nearly 13,000 papers submitted each year, so it is not uncommon for a paper to make the rounds.

Still, Dr. Davis said, reviewers did not point out scientific errors. Instead, he said, “the most common response was, ‘It has to be wrong. I don’t know why it is wrong, but it has to be wrong.’ ”   Um....it has to be wrong because otherwise we have wasted billions of dollars as a result of forcing people to do studies on mice, when those studies are actively misleading about effects on humans?  Because we know THAT's not right.  Right?

The Culture that is Hollywood

Here's Leonardo di Caprio on his upcoming plans:

"I am a bit drained. I'm now going to take a long, long break. I've done three films in two years and I'm just worn out.  I would like to improve the world a bit. I will fly around the world doing good for the environment"

1. Three films in two years? We need legislation to stop this kind of worker exploitation.

2. The only way that last sentence works is if Leo can fly just by flapping his arms.

What do you think people? How can LDC best help "improve the world"? Tell me in the comments.

Performance Art: Housesitting Edition

It's 2:30 am in our short-term rental. A loud electronic chirp wakes us up. Again. and Again.

Must be the smoke alarm in the hall outside the bedroom. Get up and sure enough, that's where it's coming from.

Get a chair, pull off the cover. Take out the battery. Curse. Go back to bed. And? A loud electronic chirp.

WTF?

Go hunting around the house for another battery. Find some, but they're labeled "best before 8/08".

Put one in anyway. Curse. Go back to bed. And? A loud electronic chirp. WTF?  Maybe it's wired into the house's electrical system.

Get flashlight. Head to basement. Thank goodness the circuits are all labeled in the junction box. Turn off all the upstairs circuits. Curse. Go back to bed. And? Loud electronic chirp.

Mrs. Angus makes me go back downstairs to "see if the switches have turned themselves back on" Now after 3:00 am. Thankfully, the laws of physics still apply and circuit breakers are still off. I turn them back on anyway because that clearly isn't the issue.

As I'm climbing back up the stairs, fantasizing about throwing myself off the roof and getting some sleep at the hospital, I see a small disk-shaped object on top of the books on the bottom row of a bookcase in the hallway where the smoke alarm is located.

It's a Carbon Monoxide monitor. I pick it up and it emits....a loud electronic chirp. I rip off its cover, shake out its batteries and crawl back into bed.

One more such victory and we are lost.

re-writing history

The following quote is from Acemoglu & Robinson's blog:

 This is not to deny that ideology and ignorance play a role in the fates of nations. For example, clearly, if European leaders at Maastricht knew the problems that single currency and implicit bailout guarantees to financial markets on sovereign debt of peripheral countries would create, they would not have opted for it, instead choosing another path to increasing integration in Europe.

 I don't think this is right at all. Plenty of economists (both liberal and conservative) were pointing out that Europe was not an optimal currency area and that the single currency wouldn't work.

Instead, I'd say arrogance and over-confidence often play important roles in the fates of nations and the Euro is a prime example.

Other examples? What gets us into trouble more often, ignorance or arrogance?

Be kind rewind

Chartist surrealism appears in online medical journals too! LeBron links to the following amazing chart of "excess health care spending growth".  The article in the New England Journal of Medicine defines "excess" growth as the difference between the growth of health care spending and the growth of potential GDP (no word if this is "real" potential or "nominal" potential GDP).

Sweet!

Just to summarize, they are taking a totally unobservable and made up variable and using it to define another unobservable and totally made up concept, that of "excess" health care spending.

Shouldn't excess spending be defined as wasteful spending, like unnecessary tests or surgeries or inefficient record keeping?

Doesn't health care have to be paid for out of actual GDP? Can you tell your doctor, look, the output gap is 13%, so I am only paying 87% of this bill.

How can anyone define the correct path of health care spending? Must it be a constant portion of GDP? Why? Why couldn't preventative care and lifestyle adjustment make health care shrink as a proportion of GDP? Or conversely, why couldn't some amazing but expensive breakthrough cause optimal health care spending to soar as a percentage of GDP?
 

Can data sooth the "savage" meme?

Veronique & Tyler took a beating for displaying a graph of government spending in selected Eurozone countries and questioning the severity of European austerity.

They were criticized for confusing austerity with spending cuts, not adjusting for inflation, not expressing the data as a percentage of GDP.

Despite its flaws, I think the graph has an important message, as just yesterday the AP ran a story that was picked up everywhere which had the following lede:

The European Union estimates that the economy of the 17 countries that use the euro is in recession in the wake of a debt crisis that has prompted savage spending cuts and a jump in unemployment to record highs.

The dreaded MSM is in love with the "savage cuts" meme.  The graph shows that such cuts don't generally exist.  And that is a valuable service (though the message is not yet getting through).

As to whether or not there's "austerity" in Europe, that determination would require a precise, agreed on definition of the term, which we currently lack. Perhaps the NBER could devise a method to identify austerity periods like they currently do for recessions.

As an awkward aside, I'd also like to point out that expressing government spending as a percentage of GDP when the economy is in a recession would tend to hide rather than reveal spending cuts, so I think giving the raw numbers is the right approach (though an inflation adjustment would be helpful).

When Irish eyes are smiling

The Irish should love the Greeks. After all, it's got to be nice not being on the bottom of the heap of Euro-countries.

Yet they seem to enjoy screwing with them nonetheless.

Aer Lingus has been making folks with Greek passports take written language tests in Greek before letting them board flights to Ireland.

All good clean fun until they did it to this lady taking a flight from Barcelona to Ireland.

One of the many great parts of the story is that no one at the Aer Lingus desk in Barcelona could read Greek, nor did it appear they had an answer key on the premises.

I think I could have passed the test under those circumstances. Years of teaching econometrics has left me overly familiar with the Greek alphabet.

Hat tip to Mrs. Angus.

Now you have no excuse

A little over a year ago, I recommended the book "Red Plenty". At that time it was not released in the US (I got it via Amazon UK). Now it's out in paperback and kindle at the "regular" Amazon store.

Here is a recent review from the NY Times.

The book is amazing. Check it out, people.