word of the day: ressentiment

The word of the day is ressentiment:

noun

1. any cautious, defeatist, or cynical attitude based on the belief that the individual and human institutions exist in a hostile or indifferent universe or society.

2. an oppressive awareness of the futility of trying to improve one's status in life or in society.

 

1943, a word from Nietzsche, from German ressentiment, from French ressentiment. The French word also was borrowed as obsolete English resentiment (16c.) "feeling or sense (of something); state of being deeply affected by (something); resentment." (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"Nearly a quarter century after the fall of the empire, Putin has unleashed an ideology of ressentiment.  It has been chorussed by those who, in 1991, despaired of the loss not of Communist ideology but of imperial greatness, and who, ever since, have lived with what Russians so often refer to as 'phantom-limb syndrome': the pain of missing Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Baltic states; the pain of diminishment.  They want revenge for their humiliation."

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: Cheka

The word of the day is Cheka:

early Soviet secret police, 1921, from Russian initials of Chrezvychainaya Komissiya "Extraordinary Commission (for Combating Counter-Revolution);" set up 1917, superseded 1922 by G.P.U. (dictionary.com)

"By the late Soviet period, though, K.G.B. officers like Putin were nearly as dismissive of Communist ideology as the dissidents were.  'The Chekists in his time laughed at official Soviet ideology,' Gleb Pavlovksy, a former adviser to Putin, told me.  'They thought it was a joke.'"

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: retrench

The word of the day is retrench:

verb (used without object)

to economize; reduce expenses (dictionary.com)

"For Barack Obama, it is essential to end those two wars [Iraq and Afghanistan] and this retrenchment is in the national interest."

 - Michael McFaul, as quoted by David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: knout

The word of the day is knout:

noun

a stout whip used formerly in Russia as an instrument of punishment

from Russian knut, of Scandinavian origin; compare Old Norse knūtr knot (dictionary.com)

 

 

"He was determined to help establish liberal values and institutions - civil society, free speech, democratic norms - in a land that, for a thousand years, had known only absolutism, empire, and the knout.  'That's me,' he says even now.  'Mr. Anti-Cynicism.  Mr. It Will All Work Out.'"

 

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: capo

The word of the day is capo:

noun

1. the presumed title of a Mafia leader

Italian: head (dictionary.com)

"Apparently, no one in Washington during that period found anything unusual about a Mafia capo openly discussing 'the needs of the family where government is concerned' and suggesting 'favorable business investments' for the politicians and regulators whom he was lobbying."

 - Malcolm Gladwell, "The crooked ladder: the criminal's guide to upward mobility", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: spavin

The word of the day is spavin:

noun

1. a disease of the hock joint of horses in which enlargement occurs because of collected fluids (bog spavin) bony growth (bone spavin) or distention of the veins (blood spavin)

2. an excrescence or enlargement so formed.

 

Origin

Old French (e) spavain, esparvain swelling (dictionary.com)


"And that was when
the blighted times we live in first began,
the dying rivers and
the blackened vine,
the rain that rots the seed in its furrow,
the spavin, the sheep scab,
the empty hive."

 - Linda Gregerson, "Ceres lamenting", 4 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: panoply

The word of the day is panoply:

noun, plural panoplies.

1. a wide-ranging and impressive array or display

2. a complete suit of armor.

3. a protective covering.

4. full ceremonial attire or paraphernalia; special dress and equipment. 

 

Origin

< Greek panoplía full complement of arms and armor, equivalent to pan- pan- + ( h) ópl (a) arms, armor (cf. hoplite ) (dictionary.com)

 

"A burly man with a red beard and a regal manner—Henry VIII without the wives and the panoply—Cutler has a knack for eliciting his subjects’ candor."

 - Tad Friend, "Cry, Baby", 4 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: monopsony

The word of the day is monopsony:

noun

1. the market condition that exists when there is one buyer.

Origin

Greek mon- + Greek opsōnía shopping, purchase of provisions (dictionary.com)

"Right now, the U.F.C.’s chief competitor is Bellator, owned by Viacom. But Bellator remains a minor league, and it hasn’t done much to change the perception that the U.F.C. is something of a monopsony; for an ambitious fighter, a U.F.C. contract is the only one that really matters."

 - Kelefa Sanneh, "Mean girl: Why the world's best female fighter loves to be hated", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: chakra

The word of the day is chakra:

any of several points of physical or spiritual energy in the human body according to yoga philosophy (merriam-webster.com)


"In the minutes before Junoon's set, Raubeson was in the passenger seat of the S.U.V., softly chanting the sounds of the chakras with Ahmad."

 - Ian Parker, "The Band Played On", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker


Is it possible he meant "mantra"?

word of the day: ormolu

The word of the day is ormolu:

noun

1. Also called mosaic gold. an alloy of copper and zinc used to imitate gold.

2. Also called bronze doré, gilt bronze. gilded metal, especially cast brass or bronze gilded over fire with an amalgam of gold and mercury, used for furniture mounts and ornamental objects.

3. gold or gold powder prepared for use in gilding.

 

Origin

< French or moulu ground gold, equivalent to or (< Latin aurum) + moulu, past participle of moudre to grind < Latin molere (dictionary.com)

"The previous week, another great Strad had gone unsold, at Christie's, despite considerable hype: the Kreutzer violin, part of the estate of Huguette Clark.  Sealed bids had also been invited for the Kreutzer, with an estimate of seven and a half million dollars.  The Carpenters had attended that auction, and had come away not with the Strad - it was overpriced, in their opinion, especially with the Christie's commission - but with an ormolu occasional table that had belonged to Clark, her rubber thimbles still in its inner compartments."

 - Rebecca Mead, "Musical gold: Can three ambitious siblings turn old violins into a new investment strategy?", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: Taylorism

The word of the day is Taylorism:

"System of scientific management advocated by Fred W. Taylor. In Taylor’s view, the task of factory management was to determine the best way for the worker to do the job, to provide the proper tools and training, and to provide incentives for good performance. He broke each job down into its individual motions, analyzed these to determine which were essential, and timed the workers with a stopwatch. With unnecessary motion eliminated, the worker, following a machinelike routine, became far more productive." (Encyclopaedia Britannica)


"Gardner said that a wearable computer terminal (Motorola, 2013) had made her and her colleagues think about Taylorism and scientific management."

 - Lauren Collins, "Very important objects", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker


And here I thought Frank Gilbreth invented that.

word of the day: concertina

The word of the day is concertina:

noun

1. a musical instrument resembling an accordion but having buttonlike keys, hexagonal bellows and ends, and a more limited range.

2. concertina wire.

 

verb (used without object)

3. to fold, crush together, or collapse in the manner of a concertina:

verb (used with object)

4. to cause to fold or collapse in the manner of a concertina.

 

adjective

5. of, pertaining to, or resembling a concertina (dictionary.com)

"She is one of the four curators in the museum's Contemporary Architecture, Design, and Digital Department, which this month launched a project called Rapid Response Collecting.  Its stated goal is to demonstrate 'how design reflects and defines how we live together today.'  In practical terms, this means that the curators have been given carte blanche to scour the streets - in a global sense - for items of interest and get them into the museum as quickly as possible.  'It concertinas the amount of time that it takes to make an acquisition,' Gardner said, leading a visitor up the marble stairs of the 20th Century wing, where a gallery had been set up to display the Rapid Response unit's finds."

 - Lauren Collins, "Very important objects", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: tabla

The word of the day is tabla:

noun

1. a small drum or pair of drums of India tuned to different pitches and played with the hands. (dictionary.com)

"Ahmad was preparing to go onstage at the first Louis Armstrong International Music Festival, to play guitar and sign with his band, Junoon - although this was not quite the Junoon with which Ahmad found fame, in the nineteen-nineties, in South Asia.  That band - Styx, in Urdu, with tablas - broke up in 2005."

 - Ian Parker, "The Band Played On", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker


No, I don't get it.

word of the day: sybaritic

The word of the day is sybaritic:

adjective

1. (usually lowercase) pertaining to or characteristic of a sybarite; characterized by or loving luxury or sensuous pleasure: to wallow in sybaritic splendor.

2. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Sybaris or its inhabitants. (dictionary.com)

"Once the rebels break through, Bong and his production designer, Ondrej Nekvasil, provide them with a series of sybaritic astonishments: a sunlit greenhouse garden, a mahogany sleeper car, and party rooms in which toffs, dressed in gowns and rave wear, get stoned, drink, and dance."

 - David Denby, "Endgames: 'Snowpiercer' and 'Begin Again'", 7 & 14 July 2014 The New Yorker


"He was wearing a ten-thousand-dollar ivory-colored tuxedo with blue satin trim by Angelo Galasso, which made him look like a sybaritic sea captain."

 - Rebecca Mead, "Musical Gold: Can three ambitious siblings turn old violins into a new investment strategy?", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker

Recent blog post roundup and Sun letter on fetal learning

Recent posts for the ACS Chemical Biology Community have been on social taboos about discussing compensation, what to wear to work, and gender and scientific authorship.

The Baltimore Sun also published my letter in response to a pop science story they ran on fetal learning.  (The Sun's version appears to have fallen down the memory hole, but here's the original Reuters reports: it's very similar to the Sun story, except the Sun changed "babies in the womb" to "fetuses".)  The Sun has a pay wall, so I'm reproducing the letter here:

Your headline "Fetuses show signs of learning at 34 weeks" (July 27) was inconsistent with the content of the story accompanying it.

The author admitted that the findings were "not statistically significant." In layperson's terms, "not statistically significant" means that the evidence is not strong enough support a conclusion one way or the other.

Scientist Carl Sagan famously said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To claim that fetuses show evidence of learning three weeks earlier than previously thought, the authors would have to show convincing evidence that the earlier work was mistaken. But because their findings were not statistically significant, they can offer no such evidence.

Science journalists are the final interpreter of science for the public. It is their duty not just to report recent findings but also — and more importantly — to critically evaluate them for their non-scientist readers.

The letter was edited somewhat: for brevity, I guess.  Here’s the original text:

Your recent headline "Fetuses show signs of learning at 34 weeks" was inconsistent with the content of the story.  The author admitted that the findings were "not statistically significant".  In layperson's terms, "not statistically significant" means "the evidence is not strong enough support a conclusion one way or another".  Carl Sagan famously said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  To claim that fetuses show evidence of learning three weeks earlier than previously thought, the authors need to show convincing evidence that the previous work was mistaken: because their findings were not statistically significant, their findings are not such evidence.  The author was wrong to "cautiously" conclude, the reviewers were wrong not to insist on removing that conclusion, and the journal was wrong to publish that conclusion, but science journalists are the final interpreter of science for the public.  It is the sacred duty of a science journalist not just to report recent scientific findings, but also, more importantly, to critically evaluate them for their non-scientist readers.

word of the day: adjutant

The word of the day is adjutant:


a staff officer in the army, air force, or marine corps who assists the commanding officer and is responsible especially for correspondence (Merriam-Webster)


"Klay writes with a powerful restraint about the inversion of normal reality called combat, its permanent effects on bodies and souls, but the best stories in 'Redeployment' look at war from a slight distance.  The narrator in 'Unless It's a Sucking Chest Wound,' a battalion adjutant, has the inglorious job of writing up the heroics of other marines being nominated for medals...

"The adjutant is one among many troops−their numbers grew over time−who spent their war almost entirely within the confines of an American base."

 - George Packer, "Home Fires: How soldiers write their wars", 7 April 2014 The New Yorker

phrase of the day: scare quotes

The phrase of the day is scare quotes:


quotation marks used to express especially skepticism or derision concerning the use of the enclosed word or phrase (Merriam-Webster)


"'Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected,' Paul Fussell wrote in 'The Great War and Modern Memory,' his classic study of the English literature of the First World War...

"Here's Kevin Powers, who joined the Army out of high school and ended up as a machine gunner in the same region of Iraq as Turner: 'I had by then inferred that the military was where a person went to develop the qualities that I had come to admire in my father, my uncle, and both of my grandfathers.  The cliché, in my case, was true: I thought that the army would "make me a man".'  The scare quotes suggest Fussell's wised-up irony, but they weren't enough to keep Powers home."

 - George Packer, "Home Fires: How soldiers write their wars", 7 April 2014 The New Yorker

molecule of the day: lysergic acid

The molecule of the day is lysergic acid:

(PubChem)

"In the context of their species, these flamingos were like space voyagers, those who'd return with tales beyond telling.  Except that they'd never return.  You might as well have immersed the birds in a bathysphere and introduced them to the orcas, or dosed their food with lysergic acid."

 - Jonathan Lethem, "Pending Vegan", 7 April 2014 The New Yorker


Lysergic acid is closely related to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

(PubChem)

Recent blogging activity

My most recent piece for the Transcript, the Hopkins Biotech Network's newsletter, is on non-competition agreements, and my most recent blog post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community on the ACS Network shares some statistics from my job search.

The Two-Body Problem

This week's post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community is up, on the two-body problem.

formatting the resume

This week's post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community is up, on what I've learned about how to format my resume.

word of the day: quisling

The word of the day is quisling:

Etymology:  < the name of Major Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945), Norwegian officer, diplomat, and fascist leader, who collaborated with the German forces during their occupation of Norway from 1940 to 1945 (from 1942 as Minister President).

 

A person cooperating with an occupying enemy force; a collaborator; a traitor. Also in extended use.

SHRDLU:  Greetings, fellow quadrupeds.  Peace be upon you.
LADY CHARM:  Peace?  You ride with the enemy.
SHRDLU:  Tom Taylor is no threat to you.  He means to save our world.  And he has the power to do so.
LADY CHARM:  What do we need to be saved from, if not the scourge of man?  Stand aside, quisling, or with one gesture, I'll put you among the things that were.

 - "Wheels Within Wheels, Fires Within Fires", The Unwritten Volume 8: Orpheus in the Underworld, Mike Carey and Peter Gross


I think this is an anachronism.

Word of the day: cold-cock

The word of the day is cold-cock:
  
to knock (a person) unconscious (U.S. slang). (OED)


"The guy with the hand is Lucas Filby.  I was about to arrest him when he cold-cocked me.  Next thing I know, I'm here."

 - Didge, "Live Like Lazarus", The Unwritten Volume 8: Orpheus in the Underworld, Mike Carey and Peter Gross

starting salary data

In this week's post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community on the ACS Network, I discuss the latest starting salary data for new chemistry graduates.

On the culture of getting paid for work

My latest blog post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community in the ACS Network is up, on the culture of getting paid for work.

How do you decide what work you should be paid for (and pay for), and what work should be an unpaid extracurricular, hobby, or favor? What kind of compensation besides money would you accept or have you accepted for work?  Are unpaid internships “engines of inequity” that exploit young people, or they a good way to help young people get real work experience before they know enough to actually contribute to a company’s success?

The Graduation Ceremony Paradox

My graduation ceremony was on Thursday, and I blogged about it for the ACS Chemical Biology Community on the ACS Network.

VAJC, week 2: aluminum adjuvants, ASD, and Hill's criteria (Tomljenovic and Shaw)

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Welcome to the second installment of the Vaccine Autism Journal Club project!

Today we’ll be discussing “Do aluminum adjuvants contribute to the rising prevalence of autism?”, by Lucija Tomljenovic and Christopher A. Shaw, Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry 105:1489-1499 (November 2011).

Disclaimer:  I am not an epidemiologist or statistician.  If you have expertise in these fields, and I get the analysis completely wrong, please let me know in the comments!

Question this paper is trying to answer:  Does the increasing use of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines meet Hill’s criteria for causation of autism?

 

 

Background:  An adjuvant is a substance added to a vaccine to increase the body’s immune response to the vaccine.  In the United States, adjuvants contain aluminum.  You can read the CDC’s frequently asked questions about adjuvants here.

 

In 1965, Sir Austin Bradford Hill proposed a set of criteria to consider when trying to decide whether the most likely interpretation of an association is causation, especially in the context of environmental factors and disease.

 

 

Methods:  The authors gathered data for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) prevalence from several countries.  They also gathered data on the recommended vaccine schedule for each of those countries, and the amount of aluminum that a child would be exposed to if they followed the schedule.  Different brands of vaccines contain different amounts of aluminum, so they calculated the minimum exposure (if you followed the schedule using the brands with the least aluminum), the maximum exposure (if you followed the schedule using the brands with the most aluminum), and the average exposure.  The average is quite literally an average: if there are three brands of DTaP vaccine, they add up the aluminum content and divide by three.  This method of averaging seems silly to me: just because there are three brands doesn’t mean that each brand holds exactly one third of the market.  But as we will see, this is hardly the greatest weakness of the paper, so I’m not going to dwell on it.

 

The authors also assume that aluminum exposure accumulates: i.e., that the human body eliminates none of the aluminum, even over the course of months and years.  Their main justification for assuming an elimination of zero is that “Al [aluminum] has been shown to persist at the site of injection from several months up to 8-10 years following vaccination in patients suffering from macrophagic myofasciitis, an autoimmune disease linked to Al vaccine adjuvants”.  MMF is an extremely rare disease characterized precisely by an abnormal response to aluminum adjuvants.  The idea that you would use aluminum metabolism in these patients as a way to estimate aluminum metabolism in people without MMF is crazy.

 

The authors then look at how aluminum exposure over time correlates with ASD prevalence over time.

 

 

Results:  The authors find an excellent correlation between aluminum exposure (which has been increasing in recent years) and ASD prevalence (which has also increased in recent years), in the population as a whole.

 

The authors go on to claim that the strength and consistency of the correlation, plus the appropriate temporal relationship between the proposed cause and outcome (children are vaccinated as infants; ASD symptoms appear later), plus what they call “a biologically plausible mechanism by which it can be explained”, all meet Hill’s criteria for causation, causing them to conclude that aluminum adjuvants should be seriously considered as a cause of ASD.

 

 

Discussion:  Correlation does not imply causation.  Correlation doesn’t even imply a relationship.  The famous example the great evolutionary biologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould gives in his book The Mismeasure of Man is that he can find an excellent correlation between his age, the population of Mexico, the price of Swiss cheese, his pet turtle’s weight, and the average distance between galaxies.  The true relationship between all of these variables, of course, is that they’re all increasing with time.  To conclude that the reason the average distance between galaxies is increasing because Stephen Jay Gould’s pet turtle is gaining weight, and to propose that putting the turtle on a diet will cause the galaxies to move closer together, is insane.

 

Similarly: the prevalence of ASD has increased in recent decades.  You will find an excellent correlation, therefore, between ASD prevalence and anything else that has also increased in recent decades: not just aluminum adjuvants, but also organic food sales, car seat use, and, I dare say, my age, the population of Mexico, the average distance between galaxies, and the weight of a living pet turtle.  All that should be concluded from these observations is that all of these depend on time, not that there’s any causal relationship between any of them.

 

 

The authors claim that the correlation between aluminum adjuvant exposure and ASD prevalence meets several of Hill’s criteria, the first being the strength of the correlation.  It is true that the authors’ confidence in the correlation is quite high (p < 0.0001): but that is not what Hill meant by the strength of the correlation.  The example Hill gave in his remarks to the Royal Society of Medicine is as follows:

 

prospective inquiries into smoking have shown that the death rate from cancer of the lung in cigarette smokers is nine to ten times the rate in non-smokers and the rate in heavy cigarette smokers is twenty to thirty times as great. On the other hand the death rate from coronary thrombosis in smokers is no more than twice, possibly less, the death rate in non-smokers. Though there is good evidence to support causation it is surely much easier in this case to think of some feature of life that may go hand-in-hand with smoking – features that might conceivably be the real underlying cause or, at the least, an important contributor, whether it be lack of exercise, nature of diet or other factors. But to explain the pronounced excess of cancer of the lung in any other environmental terms requires some feature of life so intimately linked with cigarette smoking and with the amount of smoking that such a feature should be easily detectable.

 

When Hill talks about the strength of the association, he doesn’t mean the confidence: he means the magnitude in the increase in risk.  In order to say that the correlation between aluminum adjuvants and ASD prevalence meets Hill’s criterion of strength, then the authors would have to show that an x increase in aluminum adjuvant exposure leads to a y% increase in ASD risk, where y is some large number.  The authors, of course, cannot do that with the data they’ve collected, because they’re not comparing children with different amounts of aluminum exposure: they’re just looking at entire populations over time.

 

A much better analysis would have been to compare children who had gotten the minimum dose of aluminum adjuvants (based on the brands of vaccine they happened to be vaccinated with) to children who had gotten the maximum dose of aluminum adjuvants, and to see whether the risk in ASD differed between these two groups of children.  The authors, of course, did not do that analysis.  In fact, this paper has no controls at all.

 

 

The second of Hill’s criteria the authors claim that the association between aluminum adjuvants and ASD prevalence meets is consistency.  I’m not entirely sure what they mean: the best I can come up with is that they were able to find a correlation between aluminum adjuvant exposure and autism not just in the US, but also in the UK, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Ireland, and Finland.  But once again, repeating the same method in multiple data sets and getting the same result is not what Hill meant by consistency.  According to Hill,

 

the same results from precisely the same form of inquiry will not invariably greatly strengthen the original evidence. I would myself put a good deal of weight upon similar results reached in quite different ways, e.g. prospectively and retrospectively.

 

This paper does not use “quite different ways” to try to find a correlation.  Indeed, even a single paper cannot provide Hill’s criterion of consistency, which would be an affirmative answer to “Has it been repeatedly observed by different persons, in different places, circumstances and times?”, because a single paper cannot be observed by “different persons”.  Only if the result is found by multiple groups of researchers can it really be said to be consistent.

 

 

I could go on about the other criteria they claim, but I think you get the point.

 

 

Conclusion:  This paper is completely bogus.

 

 

Please leave your comments and questions below.

Our next paper will be “A positive association found between autism prevalence and childhood vaccination uptake across the U.S. population”, Delong, Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A 74:903-916 (May 2011).

 

I will be away from my computer during the next couple of Fridays, so I will tentatively schedule the next installment of the Vaccine Autism Journal Club project to appear on or about May 23.  See you then.

The importance of industrial experience

My latest post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community on the ACS Network is up, on commonly cited reasons why industrial experience is key, and why I think my academic research experience addresses those points.