Italians Convict Science...Again

In the 1600's, the ingenious scientist Galileo was tried by the Roman Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to spend the rest of his life under house arrest. Galileo's crime was championing the idea of heliocentrism, which offended the Pope and was generally regarded as an affront to God at the time.

How far has Rome come in 400 years? Not very far if you're an Italian seismologist. Last week, an Italian court convicted six scientists of manslaughter, sentencing them to six years in prison for failing to give adequate warning of a deadly earthquake which destroyed the City of L'Aquila in 2009, killing more than 300 people.

If incomprehensible verdicts like this become common, mankind will stifle science simply be forcing it to always err on the side of caution. Imagine a world where every tremor, approaching storm, or rising river was met with evacuation orders. In L'Aquila, what would authorities have done had they received a warning of a possible earthquake? Evacuated the region for a month or more waiting for the "all clear"? Reinforced buildings that are 700 years old? We only have to look to Hurricane Katrina to see how futile advanced warnings often are at getting citizens to act.

In tragedies like the one in L'Aquila we look for someone to blame. Property was destroyed and loved ones were lost, but finding fault with the scientists who have not yet conquered the discipline of predicting earthquakes is dangerous.

Science has marched on since Galileo's time, growing in leaps and bounds. With an appeal pending for the six scientists found guilty of failing to predict an earthquake, it remains to be seen if society's regard for science has also grown.

Science Always Catches Up

They saved Walt Disney’s brain. Or so we’ve been told, so that one day when science has cured all ills, Uncle Walt can be re-animated (excuse the pun) and carry on as a cartoon genius.

While this particular claim is long on rumor but short on facts, the process of freezing the dead, known as cryonics, does exist and many eccentric personalities, perhaps the most famous being baseball legend Ted Williams, are in a deep freeze somewhere awaiting that day when resuscitation of the dead becomes the latest medical marvel.

If this seems like too much sensational science fiction to you, a reminder of all the incurable diseases and unsolvable mysteries that have been put to rest by science is perhaps in order here. Scourges such as polio, tetanus, and typhoid fever are all manageable now and could be eradicated from the planet if vaccines were made available to all.  There was a time when volcanic eruptions were acts of God, hailstorms had religious interpretations, and no one could figure out how the bulky bumblebee was capable of flight. Science provided the answers.

So where am I going with this, you ask? Enter misfortuned Lance Armstrong. The seven-time Tour de France champion has long been suspected of doping in a sport where drugs seem to be the culture. The allegations have always been unequivocally denied by a smug Armstrong and his handlers with claims that all tests administered were passed at the time. End of story.

I’m not going to waste a syllable of this post railing on Mr. Armstrong; I think the good he’s allowed his celebrity to create greatly outweighs the bad, but I will suggest that science has caught up to Armstrong. Indeed, he did pass every test designed to catch cheaters while he was an active cyclist, but it would now appear that newer more innovative tests can now detect what was undetectable only a few short years ago. Ah, there’s the rub.

While Armstrong’s assertion that it’s “time to move forward” and that he will no longer defend the allegations is not an admission of guilt, it would certainly appear that he has read the writing on the wall and knows that the science won’t lie.

There are many lessons in the Lance Armstrong story, but maybe the least obvious is one that requires reefer mad, occasional pill-popping teenagers and other recreational drug users to take note.  Science always catches up.   Only a dope would think otherwise.

Florida Causes Arthritis

Many old folks live in Florida.  Many old folks have Arthritis.  Therefore, living in Florida causes Arthritis.

While I'm certain that anyone reading this claim could easily poke holes in the logic, I'm not convinced that we apply the same rigor to all the other assertions we are bombarded with on a daily basis. 

Today's claim indicated that women drinking 3 - 6 alcoholic beverages/week raise their risk of breast cancer by a statistically significant amount.  And just yesterday I read that sending toddlers to daycare could retard development of their brains.

In our Twitter-fed world, where everyone expects the universe to be explained in 140 characters or less, this kind of "science" is rapidly becoming a replacement for the real thing.

What's missing, of course, from these types of assertions is the rest of the story.  No person with even a rudimentary understanding of the scientific method would accept as fact that Florida could cause arthritis. So then, why are we so quick to jump on the bandwagons of other dubious claims?   Does moderate consumption of alcohol really increase a woman's risk of breast cancer?  Maybe, but other factors would need to be considered and without that scrutiny the claim belongs to the realm of junk science.  Someone who regularly consumes alcohol may be more likely to lead a lifestyle rife with other cancer causing factors; smoking, lack of exercise, poor diet, etc..  Without due consideration given to these other factors in the same study, the conclusion becomes suspect and flawed.

An inevitable corollory to the ease of access to information in our age is the ease of access to poor conclusions based on pseudo-science conveniently bundled up into a palatable tweet.  A proper study needs to include randomized trials, blinding, and cohort comparison all subject to review and repitition by peers.  We'd do well to remember this rather than gulping down the latest fad claim on the internet.

"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive but what they conceal is vital."~Aaron Levenstein