Is Landis dirty? Does it matter?

Is Landis dirty? Does it matter?

Floyd Landis might have used a banned drug during the Tour de France. The drug might have improved his performance. Banning the use of certain substances might make sport more fair. Then again, maybe not. And in the end it might be impossible to reach certainty on any of these questions.

As Gina Kolata points out in the New York Times (7/28/06), the reliability of the tests is not perfect, and the evidence that the use of testosterone enhances endurance is far from compelling. Never mind that the security of the samples themselves raises more questions than a Florida election. Kolata has been following this issue for a long time (See http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9C06EED8123CF932A25754C0A96F958260)
and the picture is not becoming any clearer.

Transcending the Landis case is the larger question of what is fair in sports. In the split-second, all-or-nothing world of sports athletes are willing to try anything to gain an advantage. There is no end to the dietary regimes, vitamins, and supplements that athletes are willing to try. There is no consistent rationale for deciding what is legal. Should synthetic vitamins be banned? What about naturally occurring stimulants? Like it or not, athletes are in a constant race to find the secret elixir before it can be banned or detected. Besides, all their training is designed to make their bodies different. Most of us cannot even imagine how much training was required or how difficult it was for the rider who finished last in the Tour.

The most thoughtful and knowledgeable contrarian on the question of regulating performance enhancing drugs is Norman Fost, a physician and bioethicist (Disclosure: and a friend) at the University of Wisconsin. Everyone who believes without thinking that ii is obvious that we can make sport pure and that even if we can’t we have to try needs to listen to Fost. Here are a couple of samples.


http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/15634.html

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/02/let_the_doping_begin.php?page=all&p=y

Correction: Roger Pielke confusion

In an earlier posting (7/14/06), I mistakenly merged two individuals named Roger Pielke. I cited the blog of Roger Pielke of Colorado State University

http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/

and then added an additional link to the blog of Roger Pielke at the University of Colorado.


My apologies to the second Roger, who maintains a very worthwhile S&T policy blog. To find out what he thinks, don't listen to me--visit Prometheus.

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/

How to manipulate student test results

How to manipulate student test results

Most states have figured out that the fastest way to improve student performance on federally mandated standardized tests is to make the test easier or to lower the passing grade. States regularly trumpet their success in meeting the demands of the No Child Left Behind Act as the percentage of students deemed “proficient” increases every year. Since each state determines what is proficient, this standard is of dubious value. Not surprisingly, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, over which the states have no control, is not finding the rates of improvement that many states are claiming.

In an op-ed in the July 25, 2006 Wall Street Journal, Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute describes a less obvious way in which the state test results are misleading. Many states are also reporting success in closing the test score gap between black and white students, but Murray explains in some detail how a little statistical sleight of hand combined with less demanding standards makes this possible. Murray shows that with current test scores one can make the case that the gap is closing by lowering the standards or that it is growing by raising the standards.

One need not buy Murray’s analysis of test scores that he presented a few years ago in The Bell Curve to see that he has a useful point to make about how some states are playing fast and loose with test results to paint the picture they want. The real picture is that student performance is not what it should be and that the gap between black and white students remains disturbingly large. Pretending that we’re making progress will not fix the problem.

For those who can’t get enough of statistics and favor nature in the nature/nurture debate, Murray recommends the website of La Griffe du Lion (www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com). The site includes extensive analysis of test scores as well as discussions of why a Kenyan from the Nandi district is more than 500 times as likely as a European to be a top 1,500-meter runner. The website will not win a politically correct seal of approval, and the controversial nature of its opinions/findings probably explain the La Griffe’s use of a nom de plume.

Is Bush stem cell veto looming?

Is Bush stem cell veto looming?

Today and Tuesday the Senate will be debating and voting on three bills related to stem cell research. President Bush has promised to exercise his first veto to stop one of the bills, which would allow federally sponsored researchers to to work on stem cells derived from embryos that were created for in vitro fertilization but that will never be implanted and will eventually be destroyed.

The president supports the other two bills. One promotes research to discover alternative sources of stem cells that does not require the destruction of embryos. The other bans “fetus farming,” the practice of acquiring tissue from a woman who became pregnant for the purpose of creating fetal tissue for research. This bills do not face serious opposition. Most scientists are happy to also pursue alternative means of obtaining stem cells and have no interest in having women become pregnant to produce stem cells for research.

An excellent news story on this week’s activities accompanied by useful background information the legislation and the history of the debate can be found on the National Public Radio website:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5559077

A news story on the political maneuvering and strategy of Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN) can be found in today’s Wall Street Journal, which is available online for subscribers only.

Climate Change Squabbles

Climate change squabbles

For those who cannot get enough of climate change debates, here are a couple of skirmishes. An editorial in the July 14 Wall St. Journal cites a report soon to be released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee in which three statisticians critique the work of Michael Mann regarding the climate record of the past 2,000 years. Mann is famous for the “hockey stick” graph that indicates that after a long period of relative stability the climate has been warming rapidly in recent years. This report finds statistical errors in Mann’s work and further concludes that climate researchers are a close-knit social network who are not sufficiently rigorous in criticizing one another’s work. The report could be accurate in its specific observations, but the Journal is wrong in concluding that this has any meaning for the larger debate about climate science.

A more thorough discussion of Mann’s work can be found in a new National Research Council report: Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html).

For more climate change feuding, check out Roger Pielke’s blog about an upcoming Discovery Channel program about global warming:
http://climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu/2006/07/07/nbcdiscovery-channel-show/
He makes a good case for including a little more rigor and range of scientific opinion in the show.

Pielke is an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University who maintains a lively science policy blog at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/

To Save Disadvantaged Kids, Kidnap Them

To Improve Educational Outcomes, Start Very Early

The current effort to improve the quality of K-12 education is worthwhile, but if we want an affordable program to improve learning, we must intervene at a much earlier age, according to Nobel laureate and University of Chicago economist James J. Heckman. In a concise review of research in economics, neuroscience, and developmental psychology in the 30 June 2006 issue of Science magazine, Heckman finds that the most cost-effective interventions occur when young children are building the foundation of neural pathways that will be essential in acquiring cognitive, linguistic, social, and emotional competence.

Efforts to help older children catch up with their peers have achieved little success. Good schools can help children with a strong foundation to thrive, but they cannot make up for severe early childhood deficiencies. Heckman concludes that public investment in disadvantaged children when they are very young is “a rare public policy initiative that promotes fairness and social justice and at the same time promotes productivity in the economy and in society at large.” He maintains that the United States is overinvesting in remedial programs for older children and underinvesting in developmental programs for the very young.

Heckman’s neutral language does not convey what this means on the ground. He is essentially saying that a large number of incompetent parents are effectively crippling their children for life and that the only way to save these children is for government to take over their parenting. It is a version of the common off-handed comment that the solution to educational underperformance is more Korean mothers. One could argue that we could educate the parents, but they are the very people who suffer from the lack of a development foundation that makes learning possible. The most efficient approach is to work directly with the kids. This might be the ultimate maternalistic policy, but Heckman provides compelling evidence that nothing else will achieve the results we want.

Money Doesn't Buy Happiness

Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness

Although people with above-average incomes express somewhat higher than average general satisfaction with their lives, they do not seem to be significantly happier in their moment-to-moment experience. An article by Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and four colleagues in the 30 June 2006 edition of Science magazine reports that a boost in income results in only a short-lived increase in happiness and that an overall increase in the nation’s average income does nothing to increase happiness once the per capita gross domestic product exceeds $12,000 per year.

The authors discuss a number of possible explanations for money’s inadequacy. It could be that we get more pleasure from having more money than our neighbors than we get from the money itself. If everyone gets richer, no one is able to enjoy it. Another possibility is that goods aren’t that good. Although we get a surge of pleasure from buying a Lexus or a 50-inch plasma TV, the joy fades quickly. A third possibility is that wealthier people don’t know how to enjoy themselves. They spend more time working, more time in active leisure at the gym or tennis court, and less time in passive leisure in front of their expensive TVs. This formula results in more general life satisfaction but also more stress and less moment-to-moment happiness.

Why do we try so hard to increase our incomes if the result is not significantly greater happiness? The problem is the “focusing illusion.” If one thinks about the effect of a single factor on happiness, the tendency is to exaggerate its importance. Apparently, our problem is that we think too much about money, which can ultimately undermine our quest for happiness.

Science Looks at Life

Science Looks at Life

The June 30, 2006 issue of Science magazine includes a fascinating special section entitled “Life Cycles,” which explores what current research can tell us about a number of everyday concerns. Topics include low fertility rates in developed countries, how to improve the educational and social success of disadvantaged children, critical issues for adolescents, and the ability of money to buy happiness. I’ll be writing blogs on several of these articles in coming days.

In the lead article, William P. Butz and Barbara Boyle Torrey provide an overview of exciting new developments in the nature of social science research. They highlight six research approaches that should yield important results:

• Longitudinal studies begun up to 40 years ago are now yielding important insights.
  
• Social science researchers, particularly in game theory, risk and decision science, and experimental social psychology, have developed effective ways to use laboratory experiments that can shed light on many areas of social science.
  
• Improved statistical methods are making it possible to make use of existing data without compromising the privacy of individuals.
  
• Researchers are beginning to merge data from Geographic Information Science and Geographic Positing Systems with data from traditional information sources to gain new insights into how geographic factors influence social and economic conditions.
  
• Genomics is providing new insights into human migration, the nature=nurture debate, and the racial and ethnic categories that have been used in social science.
  
• The globalization of research is helping to distinguish between and local and universal phenomena in a wide variety of social science studies.
  

We often hear vague pronouncements about the value of interdisciplinary research. Butz and Torrey provide enlightening examples of what this means in practice and exciting thoughts of what we can expect in the future.