Please show me the paper supporting the paper that is supporting your argument

Paper’s are everywhere, and they’re flying all over the place

The October edition of the Economist published an article in 2013 calling out the scientific community and the validity of thier findings. (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble) While the amount of scientific papers released has been rising over the past years, the amount of results that are actually reproduced with success is markedly smaller. This inconsistency is seen in many areas of science, from preclinical cancer studies to neuroscience and psychology. In addition, more papers are getting past the peer-review despite having procedural inaccuracies, improper use of statistics or poor study control.

 The article examines several causes for this decline in scientific publishing. The poor reproducibility could be due to : procedural mistakes by the original or the reproducing group, errors in data analysis and reporting from either group and tacit knowledge of the original experimenter about his procedure (Only the experimenter can truly reproduce his experiment as it may involve very subtle manipulations that are difficult to communicate by text) .  Another issue is that there are more and more papers published that are innacurate in one way or another. The author believes this occurs because of pressure on scientists to publish, lax peer-review standards (Although journals are working to improve now), and incorrect use of statistics or data fitting models. The peer-review process was called out in an experiment highlighted in the article, where a fake paper produced by a made up harvard prof was sent to 300 journals for peer review and ended up being published in half of them! The article calls into question today’s academic atmosphere that stresses mass production of papers just to maintain funding and motions for a value shift that encourages publishing quality work regardless of whether it is successful or not. Such a shift, the author believes will promote a healthier culture for researchers to make contributions to one another’s work.

 I found this article to be very eye-opening for me as someone who may pursue a career in science, of mistakes that occur in the field. I feel it’s always important to know what can go wrong so that I can be careful in those situations and take steps to ensure that things occur smoothly without any mistakes. For a field as big as science, it is very difficult for a professional organization or college to police each individual researcher and it is often upon the individual to make sure that he/she is on the right track. A great way to stay on the right track is by understanding where mistakes are commonly made, and why they are made which this article does a good job highlighting. I also gained some awareness of the climate today’s researchers are in with ever-thinning budgets, a heavy pressure to publish and the effects of it all. It definitely has me thinking about ways I can try to make changes to improve the scientific atmosphere.

 What do you think about this article? Have you read any papers that left your head scratching? What solutions do you have  to improve the scientific atmosphere?

Lightning Fast Measurements

It makes its long awaited appearance in the middle of July. The past few weeks have been blazing; simply going outside to get the newspaper has one diaphoretic. But suddenly it gets dark, and you feel the ominous clouds closing in. A wind blows from the south, warning you of what’s in store. The crescendo of raindrops is heard as they begin to fall from the heavens.  Finally- it happens. In a flash of glory, it slashes across the sky, kicking up heat and manufacturing an ear shattering noise.

 Lightning is one of nature’s most extravagant displays, but how is it produced? Scientists are still not fully sure about the exact nature of lightning; however, they are learning more about the phenomena as technology and theories improve. Lightning begins with polarized thunderclouds (often cumulonimbus), where there is a clear-cut aggregation of positive charges near the top of the cloud and negative charges near the bottom. It is still unclear how this charge separation occurs. These clouds induce a positive charge on the ground below; the negative pole of the cloud essentially repels the negatively charged particles on the ground surface and leaves it positively charged. When a negative charge is placed near a positive charge, an electric field is formed, pointing toward the negative end. In the case of thunderclouds, since there is so much charge present; a powerful electric field is formed from the ground to the cloud.

 This electric field is strong enough to strip away the electrons from the gaseous atoms, forming a blend (formally referred to as plasma) of positively charged gas ions and free electrons. The plasma serves as a superhighway for negative charge (electrons and anions) to flow toward the ground, and for positive charge (cations) to climb towards the cloud. Massive amounts of charge zip along this conduction route in an instant; a blinding flash is seen as light is emitted as a result of free electrons settling into the electron shell of the cations. Similar to how a current running inside a copper wire can heat up the wire, the air around the lightning channel gets absolutely torched. The rapid increase in temperature (up to 30000 K) causes a massive pressure build-up which is dispersed in a violent manner, a phenomenon we perceive as thunder.

 Dutch physicists have come up with a new method (Link:http://physics.aps.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/articles/v8/37) that actually measures the electric field along the entire length of a thundercloud, allowing researchers to examine how charge is arranged in a thundercloud. Central to their method are the phenomena of cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are high energy particles that originate from exploding stars and galactic centers. When these particles pass through our atmosphere, they collide with the gases in the upper layers of the atmosphere, creating secondary particles in what is known as an air shower. Some of these secondary particles are charged; therefore, they are deflected by the earth’s magnetic field, a process which releases radiation in the form of polarized radio waves.

 When these air showers are taking place near a thundercloud, the trajectory of the charged secondary particles is adjusted because of the strong electric fields in the thundercloud. As a result, the direction and polarization of the resultant radio wave is altered. The Dutch researchers were able to model this effect mathematically, allowing them to make inferences on the electrical nature of a thundercloud by taking measurements of the radio waves emitted from cosmic radiation in the presence of a thundercloud. The scientists showed that the charge in a cloud is structured in such that a dense middle layer of negative charge is sandwiched between a sparse lower layer and a dense upper layer of positive charge. This arrangement of charge has been theorized for quite some time with evidence such as from these measurements lending support to the hypothesis.

 I am a fan of the work that these scientists have executed. I am impressed with how the Dutch researchers were able to utilize their knowledge of cosmic radiation to examine how charge is distributed in a thundercloud. Their work highlights how one can apply principles learned in the classroom to inspect phenomena in the universe around us. Unlike lightning, novel ideas in science don’t fall from the sky; they are produced by insightful thinkers that are able to connect to the world around them. What do you think about the work these scientists have done? Are there any scientific discoveries that you hold close to heart? Share your thoughts.

  Images taken from:

1) http://www.infoplease.com/images/ESCI243THUNDE002.gif

2) http://astrobites.org/2013/06/04/cosmic-rays-from-the-telescope-array/

H2 Hype

Earlier, I talked about the hydrogen fuel cell and how it’s being employed in a few vehicles on the market today. One of the major hurdles to this concept is the lack of an efficient, clean (doesn’t release carbon dioxide) and inexpensive method to produce the gas. Until now, at least (duh duh duh). A research team at Virginia Tech may have figured out how to produce the gas efficiently using relatively mild conditions by constructing a reaction chamber filled with enzymes that can break down sugars found in waste biomass into hydrogen (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/01/1417719112.full.pdf). In fact, it is being touted as the “breakthrough”(Link: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-discovery-breakthrough-hydrogen-cars.html) that will bring hydrogen fuel cell cars to the top of the automobile industry!

 Upon closer inspection of the article, it becomes clear that their claims are exagerrated; hydrogen fuel still has a long way to go until it reaches our gas stations. First of all, the researchers have only demonstrated the use of their method at the laboratory scale, not at the industry scale. As any engineer will tell you, nothing works the same way once it is scaled up. Second is their claim on low carbon emissions: The reaction being utilized produces carbon dioxide as a product. While they are correct in that it is not a net emission (since the carbon will get fixed back into plants by photosynthesis), there may be the potential to disrupt the carbon cycle by speeding up the release of CO2 emissions. This is something that should be considered during mass production, otherwise we are back to square 1. Finally, a big problem with hydrogen is storage and transport. The gas has poor energy density (vs gasoline) unless compressed to massive pressure (a practice that has massive risks and expenses). It is also difficult to move around since it has such a low boiling point. Contrary to what the author of the article believes, this technology still has quite a journey remaining until it reaches our homes.

 Let’s be clear, I am not some naysayer who has a vendetta against the hydrogen companies. I think this is a great breakthrough in energy harnessing and would love to see if this concept can be used to produce electricity or drive our vehicles. At the same time, I must remain skeptical and realistic about all discoveries, especially when printed in the news. News articles on science are great for learning about new discoveries. However, they tend to carry a lot of emotion which has the potential to throw off the reader. My message to all the readers out there: Tread carefully and be on your toes; don’t get lost in the hype.