learner thinking - Science-Education-Research

Climate change – either it is certain OR it is science

Is there a place for absolute certainty in science communication?

Keith S. Taber

I just got around to listening to the podcast of the 10th October episode of Science in Action. This was an episode entitled 'Youngest rock samples from the moon' which led with a story about rock samples collected on the moon and brought to earth by a Chinese mission (Chang'e-5). However, what caused me to, metaphorically at least, prick up my ears was a reference to "absolute certainty".

BBC Science in Action episode, 10th October, 2021

Now the tag line for Science in Action is "The BBC brings you all the week's science news". I think that phrase reveals something important about science journalism – it may be about science, but it is journalism, not science.

That is not meant as some kind of insult. But science in the media is not intended as science communication between scientists (they have journals and conferences and so forth), but science communicated to the public – which means it has to be represented in a form suitable for a general, non-specialist audience.

Read about s cience in public discourse and the media

Scientific and journalistic language games

For, surely, "all the week's science news" cannot be covered in one half-hour broadcast/podcast. ¹

My point is that "The BBC brings you all the week's science news" is not intended to be understood and treated as a scientific claim, but as something rathere different. As Wittgenstein (1953/2009) famously pointed out, language has to be understood in specific contexts, and there are different 'language games'. So, in the genre of the scientific report there are particular standards and norms that apply to the claims made. Occasionally these norms are deliberately broken – perhaps a claim is made that is supported by fabricated evidence, or for which there is no supporting evidence – but this would be judged as malpractice, academic misconduct or at least incompetence. It is not within the rules of that game

However, the BBC's claim is part of a different 'language game' – no one is going to be accused of professional misconduct because, objectively, Science in Action does not brings a listener all the week's science news. The statement is not intended to be understood as an objective knowledge claim, but more a kind of motto or slogan; it is not to be considered 'false' because it not objectively correct. Rather, it is to be understood in a fuzzy, vague, impressionistic way.

To ask whether "The BBC brings you all the week's science news" through Science in Action is a true or false claim would be a kind of category error. The same kind of category error that occurs if we ask whether or not a scientist believes in the ideal gas law, the periodic table or models of climate change.

Who invented gravity?

This then raises the question of how we understand what professional academic scientists say on a science news programme that is part of the broadcast media in conversation with professional journalists. Are they, as scientists, engaged in 'science speak', or are they as guests on a news show engaged in 'media speak'?

What provoked this thought with was comments by Dr Fredi Otto who appeared on the programme "to discuss the 2021 Nobel Prizes for Science". In particular, I was struck by two specific comments. The second was:

"…you can't believe in climate change or not, that would just be, you believe in gravity, or not…"
Dr Friederike Otto speaking on Science in Action

Which I took to mean that gravity is so much part of our everyday experience that it is taken-for-granted, and it would be bizarre to have a debate on whether it exists. There are phenomena we all experience all the time that we explain in terms of gravity, and although there may be scope for debate about gravity's nature or its mode of action or even its universality, there is little sense in denying gravity. ²

Newton's notion of gravity predominated for a couple of centuries, but when Einstein proposed a completely different understanding, this did not in any sense undermine the common ('life-world' ²) experience labelled as gravity – what happens when we trip over, or drop something, or the tiring experience of climbing too many steps. And, of course, the common misconception that Newton somehow 'discovered' gravity is completely ahistorical as people had been dropping things and tripping over and noticing that fruit falls from trees for a very long time before Newton posited that the moon was in freefall around the earth in a way analogous to a falling apple!

Believing in gravity

Even if, in scientific terms, believing in a Newtonian conceptualisation of gravity as a force acting at a distance would be to believe something that was no longer considered the best scientific account (in a sense the 'force' of gravity becomes a kind of epiphenomenon in a relativistic account of gravity); in everyday day terms, believing in the phenomenon of gravity (as a way of describing a common pattern in experience of being in the world) is just plain common sense.

Dr Otto seemed to be suggesting that just as gravity is a phenomenon that we all take for granted (regardless of how it is operationalised or explained scientifically), so should climate change be. That might be something of a stretch as the phenomena we associate with gravity (e.g., dense objects falling when dropped, ending up on the floor when we fall) are more uniform than those associated with climate change – which is of course why one tends to come across more climate change deniers than gravity deniers. To the best of my knowledge, not even Donald Trump has claimed there is no gravity.

But the first comment that gave me pause for thought was:

"…we now can attribute, with absolute certainty, the increase in global mean temperature to the increase in greenhouse gases because our burning of fossil fuels…"
Dr Friederike Otto speaking on Science in Action

Dr Fredi Otto has a profile page at the *The Environmental Change Unit*,
*University of Oxford*

Absolute certainty?

That did not seem to me like a scientific statement – more like the kind of commitment associated with belief in a religious doctrine. Science produces conjectural, theoretical knowledge, but not absolute knowledge?

Surely, absolute certainty is limited to deductive logic, where proofs are possible (as in mathematics, where conclusions can be shown to inevitably follow from statements taken as axioms – as long as one accepts the axioms, then the conclusions must follow). Science deals with evidence, but not proof, and is always open to being revisited in the light of new evidence or new ways of thinking about things.

Read about the nature of scientific knowledge

Science is not about belief

For example, at one time many scientists would have said that the presence of an ether ³ was beyond question (as for example waves of light travelled from the sun to earth, and waves motion requires a medium). Its scientific characterisation -e.g., the precise nature of the ether, its motion relative to the earth – were open to investigation, but its existence seemed pretty secure.

It seemed inconceivable to many that the ether might not exist. We might say it was beyond reasonable doubt. ⁴ But now the ether has gone the way of caloric and phlogiston and N-rays and cold fusion and the four humours… It may have once been beyond reasonable doubt to some (given the state of the evidence and the available theoretical perspectives), but it can never have been 'absolutely certain'.

To suggest something is certain may open us to look foolish later: as when Wittgenstein himself suggested that we could be certain that "our whole system of physics forbids us to believe" that people could go to the moon.

Science is the best!

Science is the most reliable and trustworthy approach to understanding the natural world, but a large part of that strength comes from it never completely closing a case for good – from never suggesting to have provided absolute certainty. Science can be self-correcting because no scientific idea is 'beyond question'. That is not to say that we abandon, say, conversation of energy at the suggestion of the first eccentric thinker with designs for a perpetual motion machine – but in principle even the principle of conservation of energy should not be considered as absolutely certain. That would be religious faith, not scientific judgement.

So, we should not believe. It should not be considered absolutely certain that "the increase in global mean temperature [is due to] the increase in greenhouse gases because [of] our burning of fossil fuels", as that suggests we should believe it as a doctrine or dogma, rather than believe that the case is strong enough to make acting accordingly sensible. That is, if science is always provisional, technically open to review, then we can never wait for absolute certainty before we act, especially when something seems beyond reasonable doubt.

You should not believe scientific ideas

The point is that certainty and belief are not really the right concepts in science, and we should avoid them in teaching science:

"In brief, the argument to be made is that science education should aim for understanding of scientific ideas, but not for belief in those ideas. To be clear, the argument is not just that science education should not intend to bring about belief in scientific ideas, but rather that good science teaching discourages belief in the scientific ideas being taught."
Taber, 2017: 82

To be clear – to say that we do not want learners to believe in scientific ideas is NOT to say we want them to disbelieve them! Rather, belief/disbelief should be orthogonal to the focus on understanding ideas and their evidence base.

I suggested above that to ask whether "The BBC brings you all the week's science news" through Science in Action is a true or false claim would be a kind of category error. I would suggest it is a category error in the same sense as asking whether or not people should believe in the ideal gas law, the periodic table, or models of climate change.

"If science is not about belief, then having learners come out of science lessons believing in evolution, or for that matter believing that magnetic field lines are more concentrated near the poles of a magnet, or believing that energy is always conserved, or believing that acidic solutions contain solvated hydrogen ions,^[5] misses the point. Science education should help students understand scientific ideas, and appreciate why these ideas are found useful, and something of their status (for example when they have a limited range of application). Once students can understand the scientific ideas then they become available as possible ways of thinking about the world, and perhaps as notions under current consideration as useful (but not final) accounts of how the world is."
Taber, 2017: 90

But how do scientists cross the borders from science to science communication?

Of course many scientists who have studied the topic are very convinced that climate change is occurring and that anthropogenic inputs into the atmosphere are a major or the major cause. In an everyday sense, they believe this (and as they have persuaded me, so do I). But in a strictly logical sense they cannot be absolutely certain. And they can never be absolutely certain. And therefore we need to act now, and not wait for certainty.

I do not know if Dr Otto would refer to 'absolute certainty' in a scientific context such as a research paper of a conference presentation. But a radio programme for a general audience – all ages, all levels of technical background, all degrees of sophistication in appreciating the nature of science – is not a professional scientific context, so perhaps a different language game applies. Perhaps scientists have to translate their message into a different kind of discourse to get their ideas across to the wider public?

The double bind

My reaction to Dr Otto's comments derived from a concern with public understanding of the nature of science. Too often learners think scientific models and theories are meant to be realistic absolute descriptions of nature. Too often they think science readily refutes false ideas and proves the true ones. Scientists talking in public about belief and absolute certainty can reinforce these misconceptions.

On the other hand, there is probably nothing more important that science can achieve today than persuade people to act to limit climate change before we might bring about shifts that are (for humanity if not for the planet) devastating. If most people think that science is about producing absolute certain knowledge, then any suggestion that there is uncertainty over whether human activity is causing climate change is likely to offer the deniers grist, and encourage a dangerous 'well let's wait till we know for sure' posture. Even when it is too late and the damage has been done, if there are any scientists left alive, they still will not know absolutely certainly what caused the changes.

"…Lord, here comes the flood
We'll say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent
In any still alive
It'll be those who gave their island to survive…"

(Peter Gabriel performing on the Kate Bush TV special, 1979: BBC Birmingham)

So, perhaps climate scientists are in a double bind – they can represent the nature of science authentically, and have their scientific claims misunderstood; or they can do what they can to get across the critical significance of their science, but in doing so reinforce misconceptions of the nature of scientific knowledge.

Coda

I started drafting this yesterday: Thursday. By coincidence, this morning, I heard an excellent example of how a heavyweight broadcast journalist tried to downplay a scientific claim because it was couched as not being absolutely certain!

Works cited:

Wittgenstein, L. (1953/2009). Philosophical Investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, & J. Schulte, Trans. P. M. S. Hacker & J. Schulte Eds. Revised fourth ed.). Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Schutz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1973). The Structures of the Life-World (R. M. Zaner & H. T. Engelhardt, Trans.). Evanston, Illinois: Northwest University Press.
Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Taber, K. S. (2017). Knowledge, beliefs and pedagogy: how the nature of science should inform the aims of science education (and not just when teaching evolution). Cultural Studies of Science Education, 12(1), 81-91.
Taber, K. S. (2019). The Nature of the Chemical Concept: Constructing chemical knowledge in teaching and learning. Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry.

Notes

¹ An alternative almost tautological interpretation might be that the BBC decides what is 'science news', and it is what is included in Science in Action, might fit some critics complaints that the BBC can be a very arrogant and self-important organisation – if only because there are stories not covered in Science in Action that do get covered in the BBC's other programmes such as BBC Inside Science.

² This might be seen as equivalent to saying that the life-world claim that gravity (as is commonly understood and experienced) exists is taken-for-granted Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). A scientific claim would be different as gravity would need to be operationally defined in terms that were considered objective, rather that just assuming that everyone in the same language community shares a meaning for 'gravity'.

³ The 'luminiferous' aether or ether. The ether was the name given to the fifth element in the classical system where sublunary matter was composed of four elements (earth, water, air, fire) and the perfect heavens from a fifth.

(Film director Luc Besson's sci-fi/fantasy movie 'The Fifth Element' {1997, Gaumont Film Company} borrows from this idea very loosely: Milla Jovovich was cast in the title role as a perfect being who is brought to earth to be reunited with the other four elements in order to save the world.)

⁴ Arguably the difference between forming an opinion on which to base everyday action (everyday as in whether to wear a rain coat, or to have marmalade on breakfast toast, not as in whether to close down the global fossil fuel industry), and proposing formal research conclusions can be compared to the difference between civil legal proceedings (decided on the balance of probabilities – what seems most likely given the available evidence) and criminal proceedings – where a conviction is supposed to depend upon guilt being judged beyond reasonable doubt given the available evidence (Taber, 2013).

Read about writing-up research

⁵ Whether acids do contain hydrated hydrogen ions may seem something that can reasonably be determined, at least beyond reasonable doubt, by empirical investigation. But actually not, as what counts as an acid has changed over time as chemists have redefined the concept according to what seemed most useful. (Taber, 2019, Chapter 6: Conceptualising acids: Reimagining a class of substances).

Move over Mendeleev, here comes the new Mendel

Seeking the islets of Filipenka Henadzi

Keith S. Taber

"new chemical elements with atomic numbers 72-75 and 108-111 are supposedly revealed, and also it is shown that for heavy elements starting with hafnium, the nuclei of atoms contain a larger number of protons than is generally accepted"
Henadzi, 2019, p.2

Somehow I managed to miss a 2019 paper bringing into doubt the periodic table that is widely used in chemistry. It was suggested that many of the heavier elements actually have higher atomic numbers (proton numbers) than had long been assumed, with the consequence that when these elements are correctly re-positioned it reveals two runs of elements that should be in the periodic table, but which till now have not been identified by chemists.

According to Henadzi we need to update the periodic table and look for eight missing elements (original image by Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

Henadzi (2019) suggests that "I would like to name groups of elements with the numbers 72-75 and 108-111 [that is, those not yet identified that should have these numbers], the islets of Filipenka Henadzi."

The orginal Mendeleev

This is a bit like being taken back to when Dmitri Mendeleev first proposed his periodic table and had the courage to organise elements according to patterns in their properties, even though this left gaps that Mendeleev predicted would be occupied by elements yet to be discovered. The success of (at least some) of his predictions is surely the main reason why he is considered the 'father' of the periodic table, even though others were experimenting with similar schemes.

Now it has been suggested that we still have a lot of work to do to get the periodic table right, and that the version that chemists have used (with some minor variations) for many decades is simply wrong. This major claim (which would surely be considered worthy of the Nobel prize if found correct) was not published in Nature or Science or one of the prestigious chemistry journals published by learned societies such as the Royal Society of Chemistry, but in an obscure journal that I suspect many chemists have never heard of.

The original Mendel

This is reminiscent of the story of Mendel's famous experiments with inheritance in pea plants. Mendel's experiments are now seen as seminal in establishing core ideas of genetics. But Mendel's research was ignored for many years.

He presented his results at meetings of the Natural History Society of Brno in 1865 and then published them in a local German language journal – and his ideas were ignored. Only after other scientists rediscovered 'his' principles in 1900, long after his death, was his work also rediscovered.

Moreover, the discussion of this major challenge to accepted chemistry (and physics if I have understood the paper) is buried in an appendix of a paper which is mostly about the crystal structures of metals. It seems the appendix includes a translation of work previously published in Russian, explaining why, oddly, a section part way through the appendix begins "This article sets out the views on the classification of all known chemical elements, those fundamental components of which the Earth and the entire Universe consists".

Calling out 'predatory' journals

I have been reading some papers in a journal that I believed, on the basis of its misleading title and website details, was an example of a poor-quality 'predatory journal'. That is, a journal which encourages submissions simply to be able to charge a publication fee (currently $1519, according to the website), without doing the proper job of editorial scrutiny. I wanted to test this initial evaluation by looking at the quality of some of the work published.

One of the papers I decided to read, partly because the topic looked of particular interest, was 'Nature of Chemical Elements' (Henadzi, 2019). Most of the paper is concerned with the crystal structures of metals, and presenting a new model to explain why metals have the structure they do. This is related to the number of electrons per atom that can be considered to be in the conduction band – something that was illustrated with a simple diagram that unfortunately, to my reading at least, was not sufficiently elaborated.¹

The two options referred to seem to refer to n-type (movement of electrons) and p-type (movement of electrons that can be conceptualised as movement of a {relatively} positive hole, as in semi-conductor materials) – Figure 1 from Henadzi, 2019: p2

However, what really got my attention was the proposal for revising the periodic table and seeking eight new elements that chemists have so far missed.

Beyond Chadwick

Henadzi tells readers that

"The innovation of this work is that in the table of elements constructed according to the Mendeleyev's law and Van-den- Broek's rule [in effect that atomic number in the periodic table = proton number], new chemical elements with atomic numbers 72-75 and 108-111 are supposedly revealed, and also it is shown that for heavy elements starting with hafnium, the nuclei of atoms contain a larger number of protons than is generally accepted. Perhaps the mathematical apparatus of quantum mechanics missed some solutions because the atomic nucleus in calculations is taken as a point."
Henadzi, 2019, p.4

Henadzi explains

"When considering the results of measuring the charges of nuclei or atomic numbers by James Chadwick, I noticed that the charge of the core of platinum is rather equal not to 78, but to 82, which corresponds to the developed table. For almost 30 years I have raised the question of the repetition of measurements of the charges of atomic nuclei, since uranium is probably more charged than accepted, and it is used at nuclear power plants."
Henadzi, 2019, p.4

Now Chadwick is most famous for discovering the neutron – back in 1932. So he was working a long time ago, when atomic theory was still quite underdeveloped and with apparatus that would seem pretty primitive compared with the kinds of set up used today to investigate the fundamental structure of matter. That is, it is hardly surprising if his work which was seminal nearly a century ago had limitations. Henadzi however seems to feel that Chadwick's experiments accurately reveal atomic numbers more effectively than had been realised.

Sadly, Henadzi does not cite any specific papers by Chadwick in his reference list, so it is not easy to look up the original research he is discussing. But if Henadzi is suggesting that data produced almost a century ago can be interpreted as giving some elements different atomic numbers to those accepted today, the obvious question is what other work, since, establishes the accepted values, and why should it not be trusted. Henadzi does not discuss this.

Explaining a long-standing mystery

Henadzi points out that whereas for the lighter elements the mass number is about twice the atomic number (that is, the number of neutrons in a nucleus approximately matches the number of protons) as one proceeds through the period table this changes such the ratio of protons:neutrons shifts to give an increasing excess of neutrons. Henadzi also implies that this is a long standing mystery, now perhaps solved.

"Each subsequent chemical element is different from the previous in that in its core the number of protons increases by one, and the number of neutrons increases, in general, several. In the literature this strange ratio of the number of neutrons to the number of protons for any the kernel is not explained. The article proposes a model nucleus, explaining this phenomenon."
Henadzi, 2019, p.5

Now what surprised me here was not the pattern itself (something taught in school science) but the claim that the reason was not known. My, perhaps simplistic, understanding is that protons repel each other because of their similar positive electrical charges, although the strong nuclear force binds nucleons (i.e., protons and neutrons collectively) into nuclei and can overcome this.

Certainly what is taught in schools is that as the number of protons increases more neutrons are needed to be mixed in to ensure overall stability. Now I am aware that this is very much an over-simplification, what we might term a curriculum model or teaching model perhaps, but what Henadzi is basically suggesting seems to be this very point, supplemented by the idea that as the protons repel each other they are usually found at the outside of the nucleus alongside an equal number of neutrons – with any additional neutrons within.

The reason for not only putting protons on the outer shell of a large nucleus in Henadzi's model seems to relate to the stability of alpha particles (that is, clumps of two protons and two neutrons, as in the relatively stable helium nucleus). Or, at least, that was my reading of what is being suggested,

"For the construction of the [novel] atomic nucleus model, we note that with alpha-radioactivity of the helium nucleus is approximately equal to the energy.

Therefore, on the outer layer of the core shell, we place all the protons with such the same number of neutrons. At the same time, on one energy Only bosons can be in the outer shell of the alpha- particle nucleus and are. Inside the Kernel We will arrange the remaining neutrons, whose task will be weakening of electrostatic fields of repulsion of protons."
Henadzi, 2019, p.5

The lack of proper sentence structure does not help clarify the model being mooted.

Masking true atomic number

Henadzi's hypothesis seems to be that when protons are on the surface of the nucleus, the true charge, and so atomic number, of an element can be measured. But sometimes with heavier elements some of the protons leave the surface for some reason and move inside the nucleus where their charge is somehow shielded and missed when nuclear charge is measured. This is linked to the approximation of assuming that the charge on an object measured from the outside can be treated as a point charge.

This is what Henadzi suggests:

"Our nuclear charge is located on the surface, since the number of protons and the number of neutrons in the nucleus are such that protons and neutrons should be in the outer layer of the nucleus, and only neutrons inside, that is, a shell forms on the surface of the nucleus. In addition, protons must be repelled, and also attracted by an electronic fur coat. The question is whether the kernel can be considered a point in the calculations and up to what times? And the question is whether and when the proton will be inside the nucleus….if a proton gets into the nucleus for some reason, then the corresponding electron will be on the very 'low' orbit. Quantum mechanics still does not notice such electrons. Or in other words, in elements 72-75 and 108-111, some protons begin to be placed inside the nucleus and the charge of the nucleus is screened, in calculations it cannot be taken as a point."
Henadzi, 2019, p.5

So, I think Henadzi is suggesting that if a proton gets inside the nucleus, its associated electron is pulled into a very close orbit such that what is measured as nuclear charge is the real charge on the nucleus (the number of protons) partially cancelled by low lying electrons orbiting so close to the nucleus that they are within what we might call 'the observed nucleus'.

This has some similarity to the usual idea of shielding that leads to the notion of core charge. For example, a potassium atom can be modelled simplistically for some purposes as a single electron around a core charge of plus one (+19-2-8-8) as, at least as a first approximation, we can treat all the charges within the outermost N (4th) electron shell (the 19 protons and 18 electrons) as if a single composite charge at the centre of the atom. ²

Dubious physics

Whilst I suspect that the poor quality of the English and the limited detail included in this appendix may well mean I am missing part of the argument here, I am not convinced. Besides the credibility issue (how can so many scientists have missed this for so long?) which should never be seen as totally excluding unorthodox ideas (the same thing could have been asked about most revolutionary scientific breakthroughs) my understanding is that there are already some quite sophisticated models of nuclear structure which have evolved alongside programmes of emprical research and which are therefore better supported than Henadzi's somewhat speculative model.

I must confess to not understanding the relevance of the point charge issue as this assumption/simplification would seem to work with Henadzi's model – from well outside the sphere defined by the nucleus plus low lying electrons the observed charge would be the net charge as if located at a central point, so the apparent nuclear charge would indeed be less than the true nuclear charge.

But my main objection would be the way electrostatic forces are discussed and, in particular, two features of the language:

Naked protons

protons must be repelled, and also attracted by an electronic fur coat…

I was not sure what was meant by "protons must be repelled, and also attracted by an electronic fur coat". The repulsion between protons in the nucleus is balanced by the strong nuclear force – so what is this electronic 'fur coat'?

This did remind me of common alternative conceptions that school students (who have not yet learned about nuclear forces) may have, along the lines that a nucleus is held together because the repulsion between protons is balanced by their attraction to the ('orbiting') electrons. Two obvious problems with this notion are that

the electrons would be attracting protons out of the nucleus just as they are repelling each other (that is, these effects reinforce, not cancel), and
the protons are much closer to each other than to the electrons, and the magnitude of force between charges diminishes with distance.

Newton's third law and Coulomb's law would need to be dis-applied for an electronic effect to balance the protons' mutual repulsions. (On Henadzi's model the conjectured low lying electrons are presumably orbiting much closer to the nucleus than the 1s electrons in the K shell – but, even so, the proton-electron distance will be be much greater than the separation of protons in the nucleus.)³

But I may have misunderstood what Henadzi's meant here by the attraction of the fur coat and its role in the model.

A new correspondence principle?

if a proton gets into the nucleus for some reason, then the corresponding electron will be on the very 'low' orbit

Much more difficult to explain away is the suggestion that "if a proton gets into the nucleus for some reason, then the corresponding electron will be on the very 'low' orbit". Why? This is not explained, so it seems assumed readers will simply understand and agree.

In particular, I do not know what is meant by 'the corresponding electron'. This seems to imply that each proton in the nucleus has a corresponding electron. But electrons are just electrons, and as far as a proton is concerned, one electron is just like any other. All of the electrons attract, and are attracted by, all of the protons.

Confusing a teaching scheme for a mechanism?

This may not always be obvious to school level students, especially when atomic structure is taught through some kind of 'Aufbau' scheme where we add one more proton and one more electron for each consecutive element's atomic structure. That is, the hydrogen atom comprises of a proton and its 'corresponding' electron, and in moving on to helium we add another proton, with its 'corresponding' electron and some neutrons. These correspond only in the sense that to keep the atom neutral we have to add one negative charge for each positive charge. They 'correspond' in a mental accounting scheme – but not in any physical sense.

That is a conceptual scheme meant to do pedagogic work in 'building up' knowledge – but atoms themselves are just systems of fundamental particles following natural laws and are not built up by the sequential addition of components selected from some atomic construction kit. We can be misled into mistaking a pedagogic model designed to help students understand atomic structure for a representation of an actual physical process. (The nuclei of heavy elements are created in the high-energy chaos inside a star – within the plasma where it is too hot for them to capture the electrons needed to form neutral atoms.)

A similar category error (confusing a teaching scheme for a mechanism) often occurs when teachers and textbook authors draw schemes of atoms combining to form molecules (e.g., a methane molecule formed from a carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms) – it is a conceptual system to work with the psychological needs for students to have knowledge built up in manageable learning quanta – but such schemes do not reflect viable chemical processes.⁴

It is this kind of thinking that leads to students assuming that during homolytic bond fission each atom gets its 'own' electron back. It is not so much that this is not necessarily so, as that the notion of one of the electrons in a bond belonging to one of the atoms is a fiction.

The conservation of force conception (an alternative conception)

When asked about ionisation of atoms it is common for students to suggest that when an electron is removed from an atom (or ion) the remaining electrons are attracted more strongly because the force for the removed electron gets redistributed. It is as if within an atom each proton is taking care of attracting one electron. In this way of thinking a nucleus of a certain charge gives rise to a certain amount of force which is shared among the electrons. Removing an electron means a greater share of the force for those remaining. This all seems intuitive enough to many learners despite being at odds with basic physical principles (Taber, 1998).

I am not deducing that Henadzi, apparently a retired research scientist, shares these basic misconceptions found among students. Perhaps that is the case, but I would not be so arrogant as to diagnose this just from the quoted text. But that is my best understanding of the argument in the paper. If that is not what is meant, then I think the text needs to be clearer.

The revolution will not be televised…

In conclusion, this paper, published in what is supposedly a research journal, is unsatisfactory because (a) it makes some very major claims that if correct are extremely significant for chemistry and perhaps also physics, but (b) the claims are tucked away in an appendix, are not fully explained and justified, and do not properly cite work referred to; and the text is sprinkled with typographic errors, and seems to reflect alternative conceptions of basic science.

I very much suspect that Henadzi's revolutionary ideas are just wrong and should rightly be ignored by the scientific community, despite being published in what claims to be a peer-reviewed (self-describing 'leading international') research journal.

However, perhaps Henadzi's ideas may have merit – the peer reviewers and editor of the journal presumably thought so – in which case they are likely to be ignored anyway because the claims are tucked away in an appendix, are not fully explained and justified, and do not properly cite work referred to; and the text is sprinkled with typographic errors, and seems to reflect alternative conceptions of basic science. In this case scientific progress will be delayed (as it was when Mendel's work was missed) because of the poor presentation of revolutionary ideas.

How does the editor of a peer-reviewed journal move to a decision to publish in 4 days?

Let down by poor journal standards

So, either way, I do not criticise Henadzi for having and sharing these ideas – healthy science encompasses all sorts of wild ideas (some of which turn out not to have been so wild as first assumed) which are critiqued, tested, and judged by the community. However, Henadzi has not been well supported by the peer review process at the journal. Even if peer reviewers did not spot some of the conceptual issues that occurred to me, they should surely have noticed the incompleteness of the argument or at the very least the failures of syntax. But perhaps in order to turn the reviews around so quickly they did not read the paper carefully. And perhaps that is how the editor, Professor Nour Shafik Emam El-Gendy of the Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute, was able to move to a decision to publish four days after submission.⁵

If there is something interesting behind this paper, it will likely be missed because of the poor presentation and the failure of peer review to support the author in sorting the problems that obscure the case for the proposal. And if the hypothesis is as flawed as it seems, then peer review should have prevented it being published until a more convincing case could be made. Either way, this is another example of a journal rushing to publish something without proper scrutiny and concern for scientific standards.

Works cited

Henadzi, F. (2019). Nature of Chemical Elements. Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice, 3(1), 1-5.
Taber, K. S. (1998) The sharing-out of nuclear attraction: or I can't think about Physics in Chemistry, International Journal of Science Education, 20 (8), pp.1001-1014. [Download the paper]
Taber, K. S. (2013). Upper Secondary Students' Understanding of the Basic Physical Interactions in Analogous Atomic and Solar Systems. Research in Science Education, 43(4), 1377-1406. doi:10.1007/s11165-012-9312-3

Footnotes:

¹ My understanding of the conduction band in a metal is that due to the extensive overlap of atomic orbitals, a great many molecular orbitals are formed, mostly being quite extensive in scope ('delocalised'), and occurring with a spread of energy levels that falls within an energy band. Although strictly the molecular orbitals are at a range of different levels, the gaps between these levels are so small that at normal temperatures the 'thermal energy' available is enough for electrons to readily move between the orbitals (whereas in discrete molecules, with a modest number of molecular orbitals available, transitions usually require absorption of higher energy {visible or more often} ultraviolet radiation). So, this spread of a vast number of closely spaced energy levels is in effect a continuous band.

Given that understanding I could not make sense of these schematic diagrams. They SEEM to show the number of conduction electrons in the 'conduction band' as being located on, and moving around, a single atom. But I may be completely misreading this – as they are meant to be (cross sections through?) a tube.

"we consider a strongly simplified one- dimensional case of the conduction band. Option one: a thin closed tube, completely filled with electrons except one. The diameter of the electron is approximately equal to the diameter of the tube. With such a filling of the zone, with the local movement of the electron, there is an opposite movement of the "place" of the non-filled tube, the electron, that is, the motion of a non-negative charge. Option two: in the tube of one electron – it is possible to move only one charge – a negatively charged electron"
Henadzi, 2019, p.2

² The shell model is a simplistic model, and for many purposes we need to use more sophisticated accounts. For example, the electrons are not strictly in concentric shells, and electronic orbitals 'interpenetrate' – so an electron considered to be in the third shell of an atom will 'sometimes' be further from the nucleus than an electron considered to be in the fourth shell. That is, a potassium 4s electron cannot be assumed to be completely/always outside of a sphere in which all the other atomic electrons (and the nucleus) are contained, so the the core cannot be considered as a point charge of +1 at the nucleus, even if this works as an approximation for some purposes. The effective nuclear charge from the perspective of the 4s electron will strictly be more than +1 as the number of shielding electrons is somewhat less than 18.

³ Whilst the model of electrons moving around the nucleus in planetary orbits may have had some heuristic value in the development of atomic theory, and may still be a useful teaching model at times (Taber, 2013), it seems it is unlikely to have the sophistication to support any further substantive developments to chemical theory.

⁴ It is very common for learners to think of chemistry in terms of atoms – e.g., to think of atoms as starting points for reactions; to assume that ions must derive from atoms. This way of thinking has been called the atomic ontology.

⁵ I find it hard to believe that any suitably qualified and conscientious referees would not raise very serious issues about this manuscript precluding publication in the form it appears in the journal. If the journal really does use peer review, as is claimed, one has to wonder who they think suitable to act as expert reviewers, and how they persuade them to write their reports so quickly.

Based on this, and other papers appearing in the journal, I suspect one of the following:

a) peer review does not actually happen, or

b) peer review is assigned to volunteers who are not experts in the field, and so are not qualified to be 'peers' in the sense intended when we talk of academic peer review, or

c) suitable reviewers are appointed, but instructed to do a very quick but light review ignoring most conceptual, logical, technical and presentation issues as long as the submission is vaguely on topic, or

di) appropriate peer reviewers are sought, but the editor does not expect authors to address reviewer concerns before approving publication, or possibly

dii) decisions to publish sub-standard work are made by administrators without reference to the peer reviews and the editor's input

We didn't start the fire (it was the virus)

A simile for viral infection

Keith S. Taber

Could an oral Covid-19 treatment be available soon?

There was an item on the BBC radio programme/podcast 'Science in Action' (23rd September 2021) about anti-viral agents being used in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: 'Could an oral Covid-19 treatment be available soon?'

In discussing early trials of a new potential treatment, Molnupiravir ¹, Daria Hazuda (Vice President of Infectious Disease and Vaccines at Merck Research Labs and Chief Scientific Officer of MRL Cambridge) made the point that in viral infections the virus may trigger an immune response which is responsible for aspects of the illness, and which may continue even when there is no longer active virus present. As part of her interview comments she said:

"But even after someone is infected, the host actually mounts, for all these [respiratory] viruses, a really dramatic immune and inflammatory response. So it sort of lights a fire. And even when the virus stops replicating, you know that fire continues to burn, and in a lot of cases that's what lands people in the hospital. And so you want to prevent the virus from igniting that fire, that is what really ends up causing a huge amount of damage to the patient. …
the greatest benefit [of the antiviral drug being tested] is in the outpatient setting before that fire gets ignited."
Daria Hazuda being interviewed on 'Science in Action'

A scientific simile

Science communicators, such as teachers, but also scientists and journalists presenting science in the public media, often use techniques to 'make the unfamiliar familiar', to get across abstract or difficult ideas in ways that their audience can relate to.

These techniques can include analogies, metaphors and similes. Here Dr Hazuda used an analogy between the damage to tissue that can occur in disease, and the damage a fire can do. In particular, she was suggesting that the virus may be seen as like something which ignites a fire (such as a match or a spark) but which is not needed to keep the fire going once it had taken hold.

She introduced this idea by suggesting that the virus "sort of lights a fire". This can be considered a simile, which is a figure of speech which is a kind of explicit comparison where one thing is said to be like or similar to another.² Dr Hazuda did not suggest that the virus actually lights a fire, but rather it has an effect which can be considered somewhat like ('sort of') igniting a fire.

"We didn't start the fire
It was always burning, since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it"

Billy Joel

Viruses triggering long term disease

The symptoms we experience when ill can be the results of our immune system reacting to illness, rather than the direct effect of the disease causing agent. That does not mean the disease itself would not harm us (infectious agents may be destroying cells which would not be obvious until extensive damage was done), but that in some conditions what we notice – perhaps sneezing, coughing, a raised temperature – is due to the immune response.

The immediate context of the Science in Action interview was the current COVID-19 pandemic caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, the idea that a viral infection may trigger ('ignite') a longer term immune response (the 'fire') is not new with COVID. The syndrome sometimes known as chronic fatigue syndrome has unknown cause(s), but viruses are among the suspects. Viruses have been suspected as being a possible trigger (if perhaps in combination with other factors) in a range of autoimmune conditions. In autoimmune conditions the mechanisms that usually protect a person from infectious agents such as (some) bacteria and viruses attack and destroy the person's own cells leading to inflammation and potentially serious tissue damage.

People might commonly say that the immune system is 'meant' or 'intended' to protect us from diseases and that it sometimes 'goes wrong' leading to autoimmune disease – but strictly this is not a scientific way of thinking. The immune system has no purpose as such (this would be 'teleological' thinking), but has just evolved in ways such that it has on balance increased fitness.

From that perspective, it might not seem so strange that our immune systems are sometimes insufficient to protect us from harm, and yet can also sometimes be over-sensitive and start doing damage – as that surely is what we might expect if evolution has (through natural selection) led to a system which has tended on the whole to be protective.

The admirable HLA-B27?

"HLA B27 plays an admirable, perhaps outstanding role in the immune response to viruses, however, it is also directly involved in the pathogenesis of the spondyloarthropathies"
Bowness, 2002: 866

My late wife Philippa was diagnosed with a complex autoimmune condition – she was told that she had atypical Wegener's granulomatosis (a disease now usually called Granulomatosis with polyangiitis ²), a form of vasculitis (a disease leading to inflammation in the blood vessels), and that she might have been genetically susceptible to autoimmune diseases because she produced a particular type of human leukocyte antigen, HLA-B27. HLA is an important component of human immune systems, but the precise antigens a person produces varies, depending on their genes (just as we all have blood but people can be assigned into different blood groups). It was also suggested to her that an otherwise minor infection may have acted as a trigger in setting off the autoimmune problems.

Medicine today has some effective agents such as steroids that help 'dampen down' the 'fires' that damage tissues in autoimmune diseases. But these conditions can be very serious. Fifty years ago, most people found to have Wegener's granulomatosis were dead from that damage within a year of their diagnosis.

HLA-B27 is only found in a minority of people in most populations and is associated with a higher prevalence of certain immune conditions such as ankylosing spondylitis (an inflammatory condition especially affecting the spine), inflammatory bowel disease, and some forms of arthritis. It might seem odd that evolution has not led to the elimination of HGLA-B27 if it is associated with serious medical conditions. Yet, again, it may be that something which can make people prone to some conditions may also be better at protecting them from others.

People with HLA-B27 may be better at mounting an effective immune response to some viral infections (the fire is more readily ignited, we might say) and this might be enough of an advantage to balance its unfortunate role in autoimmune conditions. Over human history, HLA-B27 might have protected a great many people from dangerous infections, if also being responsible for a smaller number becoming very ill.

"HLA-B27 appears to excel at its natural function of binding and presenting viral peptide epitopes to cytotoxic T cells. We have suggested that HLA-B27 may, however, act as a 'double-edged sword'. Thus, certain features of its peptide binding ability or cell biology (perhaps those favouring excellent antiviral responses) might also lead to autoimmunity."
McMichael & Bowness, 2002: S157

That is, what makes this immune component so good at attacking certain viruses (as if the immune system had been doused in petrol so that the slightest spark might initiate a response) may also be responsible for its association with autoimmune diseases. HLA-B27 may (metaphorically) be the can of petrol that means that a viral spark starts not just a fire, but a conflagration.

Read about science in public discourse and the media

Read about making the unfamiliar familiar

Read about science similes

Read about teleological explanations

Work cited:

Bowness, P. (2002). HLA B27 in health and disease: a double‐edged sword? Rheumatology, 41(8), 857-868. doi:10.1093/rheumatology/41.8.857

McMichael, A., & Bowness, P. (2002). HLA-B27: natural function and pathogenic role in spondyloarthritis. Arthritis research, 4 Suppl 3(Suppl 3), S153-S158. doi:10.1186/ar571

Footnotes:

¹: "the first oral, direct-acting antiviral shown to be highly effective at reducing nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 infectious virus" according to a preprint reported at medRχiv). A preprint is a paper written to report scientific research but NOT yet tested through peer review and formally published, and so treated as reporting more provisional and uncertain findings than a peer-reviewed paper.

² By comparison, a metaphor may be considered an implicit comparison presented as if an identity: e.g., the nucleus is the brain of the cell.

². The disease was named after the German physician Friedrich Wegener who described the condition. After Wegener was identified as a Nazi and likely war criminal (suspected, but not convicted) it was decided to rename the disease.

What COVID really likes

Researching viral preferences

Keith S. Taber

When I was listening to the radio news I heard a clip of the Rt. Hon. Sajid Javid MP, the U.K. Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, talking about the ongoing response to the COVID pandemic:

Health Secretary Sajid Javid talking on 12th September

"Now that we are entering Autumn and Winter, something that COVID and other viruses, you know, usually like, the prime minister this week will be getting out our plans to manage COVID over the coming few months."
Sajid Javid

So, COVID and other viruses usually like Autumn and Winter (by implication, presumably, in comparison with Spring and Summer).

This got me wondering how we (or Sajid, at least) could know what the COVID virus (i.e., SARS-CoV-2 – severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) prefers – what the virus 'likes'. I noticed that Mr Javid offered a modal qualification to his claim: usually. It seemed 'COVID and other viruses' did not always like Autumn and Winter, but usually did.

Yet there was a potential ambiguity here depending how one parsed the claim. Was he suggesting that

[COVID and other viruses]

usually

like Autumn and Winter

COVID

[and other viruses usually]

like Autumn and Winter

This might have been clearer in a written text as either

COVID and other viruses usually like Autumn and Winter

COVID, and other viruses usually, like Autumn and Winter

The second option may seem a little awkward in its phrasing, ¹ but then not all viral diseases are more common in the Winter months, and some are considered to be due to 'Summer viruses':

"Adenovirus, human bocavirus (HBoV), parainfluenza virus (PIV), human metapneumovirus (hMPV), and rhinovirus can be detected throughout the year (all-year viruses). Seasonal patterns of PIV are type specific. Epidemics of PIV type 1 (PIV1) and PIV type 3 (PIV3) peak in the fall [Autumn] and spring-summer, respectively. The prevalence of some non-rhinovirus enteroviruses increases in summer (summer viruses)"

Moriyama, Hugentobler & Iwasaki, 2020: 86

Just a couple of days later Mr Javid was being interviewed on the radio, and he made a more limited claim:

Health Secretary Sajid Javid talking on BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme, 15th September

"…because we know Autumn and Winter, your COVID is going to like that time of year"
Sajid Javid

So, this claim was just about the COVID virus, not viruses more generally, and that we know that COVID is going to like Autumn and Winter. No ambiguity there. But how do we know?

Coming to knowledge

Historically there have been various ways of obtaining knowledge.

Divine revelation: where God reveals the knowledge to someone, perhaps through appearing to the chosen one in a dream.
Consulting an oracle, or a prophet or some other kind of seer.
Intuiting the truth by reflecting on the nature of things using the rational power of the human intellect.
Empirical investigation of natural phenomena.

My focus in this blog is related to science, and given that we are talking about public health policy in modern Britain, I would like to think Mr Javid was basing his claim on the latter option. Of course, even empirical methods depend upon some metaphysical assumptions. For example, if one assumes the cosmos has inbuilt connections one might look for evidence in terms of sympathies or correspondences. Perhaps, if the COVID virus was observed closely and looked like a snowflake, that could (in this mindset) be taken as a sign that it liked Winter.

A **snowflake** – or is it a *virus particle*?
(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

Sympathetic magic

This kind of correspondence, a connection indicated by appearance, was once widely accepted, so that a plant which was thought to resemble some part of the anatomy might be assumed to be an appropriate medicine for diseases or disorders associated with that part of the body.

This is a kind of magic, and might seem a 'primitive' belief to many people today, but such an idea was sensible enough in the context of a common set of underlying beliefs about the nature and purposes of the world, and the place and role of people in that world. One might expect that specific beliefs would soon die out if, for example, the plant shaped like an ear turned out to do nothing for ear ache. Yet, at a time when medical practitioners could offer little effective treatment, and being sent to a hospital was likely to reduce life expectancy, herbal remedies at least often (if not always) did no harm.

Moreover, many herbs do have medicinal properties, and something with a general systemic effect might work as topical medicine (i.e., when applied to a specific site of disease). Add to that, the human susceptibility to confirmation bias (taking more notice of, and giving more weight to, instances that meet our expectations than those which do not) and the placebo effect (where believing we are taking effective medication can sometimes in itself have beneficial effects) and the psychological support offered by spending time with an attentive practitioner with a good 'bedside' manner – and we can easily see how beliefs about treatments may survive limited definitive evidence of effectiveness.

The gold standard of experimental method

Of course, today, we have the means to test such medicines by taking a large representative sample of a population (of ear ache sufferers, or whatever), randomly dividing them into two groups, and using a double-blind (or should that be double-deaf) approach, treat them with the possible medicine or a placebo, without either the patient or the practitioner knowing who was getting which treatment. (The researchers have a way to know of course – or it would difficult to deduce anything from the results.) That is, the randomised control trial (RCT).

Now, I have been very critical of the notion that these kinds of randomised experimental designs should be automatically be seen as the preferred way of testing educational innovations (Taber, 2019) – but in situations where control of variables and 'blinding' is possible, and where randomisation can be applied to samples of well-defined populations, this does deserve to be considered the gold standard. (It is when the assumptions behind a research methodology do not apply that we should have reservations about using it as a strategy for enquiry.)

So can the RCT approach be used to find out if COVID has a preference for certain times of year? I guess this depends on our conceptual framework for the research (e.g., how do we understand what a 'like' actually is) and the theoretical perspective we adopt.

So, for example, behaviourists would suggest that it is not useful to investigate what is going on in someone's mind (perhaps some behaviorists do not even think the mind concept corresponds to anything real) so we should observe behaviours that allow us to make inferences. This has to be done with care. Someone who buys and eats lots of chocolate presumably likes chocolate, and someone who buys and listens to a lot of reggae probably likes reggae, but a person who cries regularly, or someone that stumbles around and has frequent falls, does not necessary like crying, or falling over, respectively.

A viral choice chamber

So, we might think that woodlice prefer damp conditions because we have put a large number of woodlice in choice chambers with different conditions (dry and light, dry and dark, damp and light, damp and dark) and found that there was a statistically significant excess of woodlice settling down in the damp sections of the chamber.

Of course, to infer preferences from behaviour – or even to use the term 'behaviour' – for some kinds of entity is questionable. (To think that woodlice make a choice based on what they 'like' might seem to assume a level of awareness that they perhaps lack?) In a cathode ray tube electrons subject to a magnetic field may be observed (indirectly!) to move to one side of the tube, just as woodlice might congregate in one chamber, but I am not sure I would describe this as electrons liking that part of the tube. I think it can be better explained with concepts such as electrical charge, fields, forces, and momentum.

It is difficult to see how we can do double blind trials to see which season a virus might like, as if the COVID virus really does like Winter, it must surely have a way of knowing when it is Winter (making blinding impossible). In any case, a choice chamber with different sections at different times of the year would require some kind of time portal installed between its sections.

Like electrons, but unlike woodlice, COVID viral particles do not have an active form of transport available to them. Rather, they tend to be sneezed and coughed around and then subject to the breeze, or deposited by contact with surfaces. So I am not sure that observing virus 'behaviour' helps here.

So perhaps a different methodology might be more sensible.

A viral opinion poll

A common approach to find out what people like would be a survey. Surveys can sometimes attract responses from large numbers of respondents, which may seem to give us confidence that they offer authentic accounts of widespread views. However, sample size is perhaps less important than sample representativeness. Imagine carrying out a survey of people's favourite football teams at a game at Stamford Bridge; or undertaking a survey of people's favourite bands as people queued to enter a King Crimson concert! The responses may [sic, almost certainly would] not fully reflect the wider population due to the likely bias in such samples. Would these surveys give reliable results which could be replicated if repeated at the Santiago Bernabeu or at a Marillion concert?

How do we know what 'COVID 'really likes?
(Original Images by OpenClipart-Vectors and Gordon Johnson from Pixabay)

A representative sample of vairants?

This might cause problems with the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2). What counts as a member of the population – perhaps a viable virus particle? Can we even know how big the population actually is at the time of our survey? The virus is infecting new cells, leading to new virus particles being produced all the time, just as shed particles become non-viable all the time. So we have no reliable knowledge of population numbers.

Moreover, a survey needs a representative sample: do the numbers of people in a sample of a human population reflect the wider population in relevant terms (be that age, gender, level of educational qualifications, earnings, etc.)? There are viral variants leading to COVID-19 infection – and quite a few of them. That is, SARS-CoV-2 is a class with various subgroups. The variants replicate to different extents under particular conditions, and new variants appear from time to time.

So, the population profile is changing rapidly. In recent months in the UK nearly all infections where the variant has been determined are due to the variant VOC-21APR-02 (or B.1.617.2 or Delta) but many people will be infected asymptotically or with mild symptoms and not be tested, and so this likely does not mean that VOC-21APR-02 dominates the SARS-CoV-2 population as a whole to the extent it currently dominates in investigated cases. Assuming otherwise would be like gauging public opinion from the views of those particular people who make themselves salient by attending a protest, e.g.:

"Shock finding – 98% of the population would like to abolish the nuclear arsenal,
according to a [hypothetical] survey taken at the recent Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament march"

In any case, surveys are often fairly blunt instruments as they need to present objectively the same questions to all respondents, and elicit responses in a format that can be readily classified into a discrete number of categories. This is why many questionnaires use Likert type items:

Would you say you like Autumn and Winter:

1	2	3	4	5
Always	Nearly always	Usually	Sometimes	Never

Such 'objective' measures are often considered to avoid the subjective nature of some other types of research. It may seem that responses do not need to be interpreted – but of course this assumes that the researchers and all the respondents understand language the same way (what exactly counts as Autumn and Winter? What does 'like' mean? How is 'usually' understood – 60-80% of the time, or 51-90% of the time or…). We can usually (sic) safely assume that those with strong language competence will have somewhat similar understandings of terms, but we cannot know precisely what survey participants meant by their responses or to what extent they share a meaning for 'usually'.

There are so-called 'qualitative surveys' which eschew this kind of objectivity to get more in-depth engagement with participants. They will usually use interviews where the researcher can establish rapport with respondents and ask them about their thoughts and feelings, observe non-verbal signals such as facial expressions and gestures, and use follow-up questions… However, the greater insight into individuals comes at a cost of smaller samples as these kinds of methods are more resource-intensive.

But perhaps Mr Javid does not actually mean that COVID likes Autumn and Winter?

So, how did the Department of Health & Social Care, or the Health Secretary's scientific advisors, find out that COVID (or the COVID virus) likes Autumn and Winter? The virus does not think, or feel, and it does not have preferences in the way we do. It does not perceive hot or cold, and it does not have a sense of time passing, or of the seasons.² COVID does not like or dislike anything.

Mr Javid needs to make himself clear to a broad public audience, so he has to avoid too much technical jargon. It is not easy to pitch a presentation for such an audience and be pithy, accurate, and engaging, but it is easy for someone (such as me) to be critical when not having to face this challenge. Cabinet ministers, unlike science teachers, cannot be expected to have skills in communicating complex and abstract scientific ideas in simplified and accessible forms that remain authentic to the science.

It is easy and perhaps convenient to use anthropomorphic language to talk about the virus, and this will likely make the topic seem accessible to listeners, but it is less clear what is actually meant by a virus liking a certain time of year. In teaching the use of anthropomorphic language can be engaging, but it can also come to stand in place of scientific understanding when anthropomorphic statements are simply accepted uncritically at face value. For example, if the science teacher suggests "the atom wants a full shell of electrons" then we should not be surprised that students may think this is a scientific explanation, and that atoms do want to fill their shells. (They do not of course. ³)

Of course Mr Javid's statements cannot be taken as a literal claim about what the virus likes – my point in this posting is to provoke the question of what this might be intended to mean? This is surely intended metaphorically (at least if Mr Javid had thought about his claim critically): perhaps that there is higher incidence of infection or serious illness caused by the COVID virus in the Winter. But by that logic, I guess turkeys really would vote for Christmas (or Thanksgiving) after all.

Typically, some viruses cause more infection in the Winter when people are more likely to mix indoors and when buildings and transport are not well ventilated (both factors being addressed in public health measures and advice in regard to COVID-19). Perhaps 'likes' here simply means that the conditions associated with a higher frequency/population of virus particles occur in Autumn and Winter?

A **snowflake**.
The conditions suitable for a higher frequency of snowflakes are more common in Winter.
So do snowflakes also 'like' Winter?
(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

However, this is some way from assigning 'likes' to the virus. After all, in evolutionary terms, a virus might 'prefer', so to speak, to only be transmitted asymptomatically, as it cannot be in the virus's 'interests', so to speak, to encourage a public health response that will lead to vaccines or measures to limit the mixing of people.

If COVID could like anything (and of course it cannot), I would suggest it would like to go 'under the radar' (another metaphor) and be endemic in a population that was not concerned about it (perhaps doing so little harm it is not even noticed, such that people do not change their behaviours). It would then only 'prefer' a Season to the extent that that time of year brings conditions which allow it to go about its life cycle without attracting attention – from Mr Javid or anyone else.

Keith S. Taber, September 2021

Addendum: 1st December 2021

Déjà vu?

The health secretary was interviewed on 1st December

"…we have always known that when it gets darker, it gets colder, the virus likes that, the flu virus likes that and we should not forget that's still lurking around as well…"
Rt. Hon. Sajid Javid MP, the U.K. Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, interviewed on BBC Radio 4 Today programme, 1st December, 2021

Works cited:

Moriyama, M., Hugentobler, W. J., & Iwasaki, A. (2020). Seasonality of Respiratory Viral Infections. Annual Review of Virology, 7(1), 83-101. doi:10.1146/annurev-virology-012420-022445
Taber, K. S. (2019). Experimental research into teaching innovations: responding to methodological and ethical challenges. Studies in Science Education, 55(1), 69-119. doi:10.1080/03057267.2019.1658058

Footnotes:

¹. It would also seem to be a generalisation based on the only two Winters that the COVID-19 virus had 'experienced'

². Strictly I cannot know what it is like to be a virus particle. But a lot of well-established and strongly evidenced scientific principles would be challenged if a virus particle is sentient.

³. Yet this is a VERY common alternative conceptions among school children studying chemistry: The full outer shells explanatory principle

Of mostly natural origin

Is your shampoo of natural, unnatural, or supernatural origin?

Keith S. Taber

It seems that some of the ingredients of a well-known brand of hair care products are not of natural origin (Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay)

A well know brand of hair products is being advertised on television with an explicit claim that the shampoo is 94% of natural origin. Clearly there is also an implicit claim here about the other 6%! This dubious claim does not seem to be a slip of the tongue, as similar references can be found in product details on line (including the examples below). The science teacher in me knew that it was this kind of nonsense which supports common misconceptions about 'natural' being inherently good, and there being a clear distinction between materials that are 'natural', and those that are not.

Shampoos from brands other than Herbal Essences are 100% of natural origin.

The other evening I was watching television, and there was a shampoo being advertised, and although I was not paying attention I thought I heard the claim that the shampoo contained products of 94% natural origin. Had I misheard – a quick 'rewind' suggested not.

My next assumption was that this was sloppy language being used by some advertising copywriter, and that the manufacturer who commissioned the commercial simply had not noticed the slip. So I had a look on line.¹ It seems that the brand concerned, Herbal Essences, has a habit or topping up its products with material that is not of natural origin. The company claims it is using at least 90% materials of natural original in its latest products (see the examples below), and this is apparently seen as a positive point to stress in its marketing.

But this is just nonsense. If the shampoo was fabricated using 94% products of natural original, then 6% was not of natural origin. This leaves me to wonder where the rest originates. A shampoo, any shampoo, is 100% of natural origin.

Natural products chemistry

In chemistry there is a common term natural products which tends to be used for materials extracted from living organisms – one can extract vitamin C from oranges, and insulin for diabetics used to be extracted from pancreases from farm animals (although now it is produced by the activities of bacteria or yeast). In that sense salt (produced by evaporating sea water) and chalk (deriving from the shells debris from long dead sea organisms) are not natural products. But like everything else in the material world, salt and chalk are still of natural origin.

So what is a hair product which is not of natural origin, or which is only partially of natural origin? It seems there are two obvious contrasts to natural, which are 'unnatural' and 'supernatural'. Presumably the company was not suggesting it used ingredients of supernatural origin?

Do Herbal Essences employ a specialist formulation technologist to prepare the shampoo ingredients that are ***not*** of natural origin? (Image by pendleburyannette from Pixabay)

What makes something unnatural?

Assuming Herbal Essences products do not include material of supernatural origin, the other option would seem to be material of unnatural origin. But what makes a material unnatural.

At various times, in various cultural contexts, the divine right of kings, feudalism and slavery will have been seen as perfectly natural, as well the subservience of women to men. Certain sexual acts that are now widely (if not universally) considered part of the normal range of human behaviours have at various times in different societies been considered unnatural – indeed so unnatural that those found to have 'committed' them might be put to death.

Given that the question of 'what is human nature?' is not settled (didn't Immanuel Kant think this was the core task for philosophy?) the approach that is sometimes taken is to look instead to 'nature' herself (for nature is a 'she' as has long been established – in part justifying her domination and mistreatment by 'man'). If it happens in nature, then that's natural.

"The sun rises everyday but animals occasionally give birth to monsters. 'Natural is what occurs always or almost always', says Aristotle, generalizing from this experience."
Paul Feyerabend

So, by this criterion, saving lives with blood transfusions is not natural, and nor is hip replacement surgery, nor using an incubator to stop premature babies dying. However, cancer is natural. Pushing your siblings out of the nest, or pecking them to death, to get a greater share of the food your parents bring home is perfectly natural. Depositing your eggs in another creature, and paralysing it so that it acts as a defenseless (but alive, and so fresh) source of food when your offspring hatch out inside it, is natural.

"We can save you if you wish, but only by unnatural acts" (Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay)

The man-made is not 'natural'

This depends upon demarcating humans as somehow outside of nature. This is difficult for a natural scientist to accept as 'ever since Darwin' (to borrow a phrase) it has been difficult to see how humans can be considered inherently distinct from the rest of the natural world, even if contingency has led to some obvious differences in terms of the development of culture. This argument then distinguishes the natural from the synthetic, the man-made.

A space rocket is not natural (in this sense) as it only exists because humans built it. Whether this is qualitatively different from technology elsewhere in nature – a badger's dam, a termite's nest, a honeycomb – rather than just a matter of a (admittedly impressive) difference of degree is an interesting question.

There are no doubt times where it is useful to distinguish between materials and objects that can be collected or extracted form 'natural' sources, and those that only exist because they have been synthesised by people – even if we do need to be wary of reading too much into the distinction. The Saturn V rocket did not exist 'in nature', and nor does a lemon coated in a wax so that it will stay 'fresh' longer – but one is the product of considerably less processing than the other. ²

Fluorine compounds (fluorides) are added to drinking water in many places to help protect teeth, but in other places the water supply already (i.e., 'naturally') contains fluoride at much higher levels – indeed, sometimes high enough to be considered a medical risk. This both reminds us that what is natural is somewhat arbitrary, and that what is considered natural is not necessarily desirable.

Natural and natural origin

The Saturn V rocket was synthetic – it was not found 'as is', growing in a swamp or being ejected from a volcano ('You Only Live Twice' style). But the materials it was made from were all of natural origin, even if some of them may have been the result of considerable processing of naturally occurring materials.

Everything you see here is of natural origin (From '*You Only Live Twice*', Eon Productions)

Any material thing in our world is of natural origin. Some materials are used much as found 'in nature', sometimes some cleaning or tidying is needed (think of natural diamonds being 'cut' to best reflect light), some purifying (separating compounds from crude oil fractions), some extracting (metal from ore), some synthesising (ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen)… The amount of processing may vary considerably, but everything material that goes into a manufactured product is ultimately of natural origin.

So Herbal Essences products are 100% of natural origin, just as are the products of all their competitors.

A vague distinction

Webpages advertising specific Herbal Essences product lines often simply report that they are of 9n% natural origin, as in the examples below (95%, 96%, 97%). However, I found a page where it was clarified that the 90+% of natural origin included "purified water and ingredient materials derived from a natural source and subjected to limited processing".

So Herbal Essences do not use natural ditch water, or natural swamp water, or even natural sea water in their products, but rather purified water. I am pleased – as I have used Herbal Essences products, and will likely do so again, and I would rather not use dirty water when I am seeking to clean my hair.

Water – easily sourced from nature, and used in hair products (Image by mac231 from Pixabay)

So, it seems that for Herbal Essences, being of natural origin actually means, natural materials found in a suitable form to be used directly, or ("natural derived") only needing a "limited" amount of processing. Limited processing is a good thing in 'green chemistry' terms (less waste, less energy needed) but it is both a vague notion (who is to decide what makes the processing 'limited', and how does a consumer know what Herbal Essences count as limited?), and of course it is simply a quite different concept to being of natural origin.

I guess the company wanted a way of saying they were basing their products on natural products (such as plant extracts) without being misleading by implying that they could simply go and collect all the component materials and use them without needing any further processing. These materials may be pressed, steamed, or separated and purified in other ways, but are not generally the outcomes of complex synthetic processes. I can see both why that would be attractive to consumers, and why it is not easy to get across in a simple catchy term.

Yet the claim that 94% of your hair product is of natural origin, when a moment's thought should lead to the consumer realising that actually all products are of 100% natural origin, is a claim that (unlike the missing 6% of your Herbal Essences brand shampoo), does not have any substance.

a "limited" amount of processing
is both a vague notion and simply a quite different concept to
being of natural origin.

Appendix: Some examples of products that are not completely of natural origin

95% natural origin

The Herbal Essences Coconut Milk conditioner is, according to their website,

95% natural origin
73% purified water and 22% natural derived ingredients other 5% for a good usage experience & product stability.
https://herbalessences.co.uk/en-gb/products/coconut-milk/coconut-milk-shampoo/

96% natural origin

The Herbal Essences Coconut Milk conditioner is, according to their website

96% natural origin
88% purified water and 8% natural derived ingredients other 4% for a good usage experience & product stability.
https://herbalessences.co.uk/en-gb/products/coconut-milk/coconut-milk-conditioner/

96% natural origin

The Herbal Essences Bourbon & Manuka Honey shampoo, is,

96% natural origin
73% purified water and 23% natural derived ingredients other 4% for a good usage experience & product stability.
https://herbalessences.co.uk/en-gb/products/bourbon-manuka-honey/bourbon-manuka-honey-shampoo/

97% natural origin

Their Volumising White Strawberry & Sweet Mint shampoo, is

97% natural origin
84% purified water and 13% natural derived ingredients other 3% for a good usage experience & product stability.
https://herbalessences.co.uk/en-gb/products/white-strawberry-sweet-mint/white-strawberry-sweet-mint-shampoo/

At least ⁹/₁₀^ths natural origin

I learn from the company's website that

"All of our Herbal Essences bio:renew hair products have a 90% natural origin *"
https://herbalessences.co.uk/en-gb/whats-up-with-paraben-free-shampoo/

And they kindly explain that by natural origin they mean

"* includes purified water and ingredient materials derived from a natural source and subjected to limited processing"

Source cited:

Feyerabend, P. (2011) The Tyranny of Science. Cambridge: Polity Press

Footnote

¹: All quotes are from the website pages cited as accessed on 22nd August 2021.

². I note that Wikipedia suggests that

"Fruit waxing is the process of covering fruits (and, in some cases, vegetables) with artificial [sic] waxing material. Natural [sic] wax is removed first, usually by washing, followed by a coating of a biological or petroleum derived wax. Potentially allergenic proteins (peanut, soy, dairy, wheat) may be combined with shellac."

Not a great experiment…

What was wrong with The Loneliness Experiment?

Keith S. Taber

The loneliness experiment, a.k.a. The BBC Loneliness Experiment was a study publicised through the BBC (British public service broadcaster), and in particular through it's radio programme All in the Mind, ("which covers psychology, neuroscience & mental health" according to presenter, Claudia Hammond's website.)¹It was launched back in February 2018 – pre-COVD.²

"All in the Mind: The Loneliness Experiment launches the world's largest ever survey of its kind on loneliness." https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09r6fvn

Claudia Hammond describes herself as an "award-winning broadcaster, author and psychology lecturer". In particular "She is Visiting Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Sussex" where according to the University of Sussex "the post has been specially created for Claudia, who studied applied psychology at the University in the 1990s", so she is very well qualified for her presenting role. (I think she is very good at this role: she has a good voice for the radio and manages to balance the dual role of being expert enough to exude authority, whilst knowing how to ask necessarily naive questions of guests on behalf of non-specialist listeners.)

A serious research project

The study was a funded project based on a collaboration between academics from a number of universities, led by Prof Pamela Qualter, Professor of Education at the Manchester Institute of Education at the University of Manchester. Moreoever, "55,000 people from around the world chose to take part in the BBC Loneliness Experiment, making it the world's largest ever study on loneliness" (https://claudiahammond.com/bbc-loneliness-experiment/)

Loneliness is a serious matter that affects many people, and is not be made light of. So this was a serious study, on an important topic – yet every time I heard this mentioned on the radio (and it was publicised a good deal at the time) I felt myself mentally (and sometimes physically) cringe. Even without hearing precise details of the research design, I could tell this was simply not a good experiment.

This was not due to any great insight on my behalf, but was obvious from the way the work was being described. Readers may wish to see if they can spot for themselves what so irked me.

What is the problem with this research design?

This is how the BBC described the study at its launch:

The Loneliness Experiment, devised by Professor Pamela Qualter and colleagues, aims to look at causes and possible solutions to loneliness. And we want as many people as possible to fill in our survey, even if they've never felt lonely, because we want to know what stops people feeling lonely, so that more of us can feel connected.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09r6fvn

This is how Prof. Hammond described the research in retrospect:

55,000 people from around the world chose to take part in the BBC Loneliness Experiment, making it the world's largest ever study on loneliness. Researchers from the universities of Manchester, Brunel and Exeter, led by Professor Pamela Qualter and funded by the Wellcome Trust, developed a questionnaire asking people what they thought loneliness was, when they felt lonely and for how long.
https://claudiahammond.com/bbc-loneliness-experiment/

And this is how the work is described on the University of Manchester's pages:

The Loneliness Experiment was a study conducted by BBC Radio 4's All in the Mind….
The study asked respondents to give their opinions and record their experiences of loneliness and related topics, including friendship, relationships, and the use of technology – as well as recording lifestyle and background information. Respondents also engaged in a number of experiments.
The survey was developed by Professor Pamela Qualter, from The University of Manchester's Manchester Institute of Education (MIE), with colleagues from Brunel University London, and the University of Exeter. The work was funded by a grant from The Wellcome Trust.
https://www.seed.manchester.ac.uk/education/research/impact/bbc-loneliness-experiment/

When is an experiment not an experiment?

These descriptions make it obvious that the The Loneliness Experiment was not an experiment. Experiment is a specific kind of research – a methodology where the researchers randomly assign participants randomly to conditions, intervene in the experimental condition,and take measurements to see what effect the intervention has by comparing with measurements in a control condition. True experiments are extremely difficult to do in the social sciences (Taber, 2019), and often quasi-experiments or natural experiments are used which do not meet all the expectations for true experiments. BUT, to be an experiment there has to be something that can be measured as changing over time in relation to specified different conditions.

Experiment involves intervention (Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

Experiment is not the only methodology used in research – there are also case studies, there is action research and grounded theory, for example – and non-experimental research may be entirely appropriate in certain situations, and can be of very high quality. One alternative methodology is the survey which collects data form a sample of a population at some particular time. Although surveys can be carried out in various ways (for example, through a series of observations), especially common in social science is the survey (a methodology) carried out by using participant self-responses to a questionnaire (a research instrument).

it is clear from the descriptions given by the BBC, Professor Hammond and the University of Manchester that the The Loneliness Experiment was not actually an experiment at all, but basically a survey (even if, tantalisingly, the Manchester website suggests that "Respondents also [sic] engaged in a number of experiments". )

The answer to the question 'when is an experiment not an experiment?' might simply be: when it is something other than an experiment

Completing a questionnaire (Image by Andreas Breitling from Pixabay)

What's in a name: does it really matter?

Okay, so I am being pedantic again.

But I do think this matters.

I think it is safe to assume that Prof. Hammond, Prof. Qualter and colleagues know the difference between an experiment and a survey. Presumably someone decided that labelling the research as the loneliness study or the loneliness survey would not be accessible (or perhaps not as impressive) to a general audience and so decided to incorrectly use the label experiment as if experiment was synonymous with study/research.

As a former research methods lecturer, that clearly irks as part of my job was to teach new researchers about key research concepts. But I would hope that people actually doing research or learning to do research are not going to be confused by this mislabelling.

But, as a former school science teacher, I know that there is widespread public misunderstanding of key nature of science terms such as theory and experiment. School age students do need to learn what is meant by the word experiment, and what counts as an experiment, and the BBC is being unhelpful in presenting research that is not experimental as an experiment – as this will simply reinforce common misconceptions of what the term experiment is actually used to denote in research .

So, in summary, I'll score The BBC Loneliness Experiment

motivation – excellent;
reach – impressive;
presentation – unfortunate and misleading

Work cited:

Taber, K. S. (2019). Experimental research into teaching innovations: responding to methodological and ethical challenges. Studies in Science Education, 55(1), 69-119. doi:10.1080/03057267.2019.1658058 [Download manuscript version]

Note:

1: Websites cited accessed on 28th August, 2021.

2: It would have been interesting to repeat when so many people around the world were in 'lock-down'. (A comparison between pre-COVID and pandemic conditions might have offered something of a natural experiment.)

Shock! A typical honey bee colony comprises only six chemicals!

Is it half a dozen of one, or six of the other?

Keith S. Taber

Bee-ware chemicals!
(Images by PollyDot and Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay)

A recent episode of the BBC Inside science radio programme and podcast was entitled 'Bees and multiple pesticide exposure'. This discussed a very important issue that I have no wish to make light of. Researchers were looking at the stressors which might be harming honey bees, very important pollinators for many plants, and concluded that these likely act synergistically. That is a colony suffering from, say a drought and at the same time a mite infection, will show more damage that one would expect from simply adding the typical harm of each as if independent effects. Rather there are interactions.

This is hardly surprising, but is none-the-less a worrying finding.

Bees and multiple pesticide exposure episode of BBC Inside Science

However, my 'science teacher' radar honed in on an aspect of the language used to explain the research. The researcher interviewed was Dr Harry Siviter of the University of Texas at Austin. As part of his presentation he suggested that…

"Exposure to multiple pesticides is the norm, not the exception. So, for example a study in North America showed that the average number of chemicals found in a honey bee colony is six, with a high of 42. So, we know that bees are exposed to multiple chemicals…"
Dr Harry Siviter

The phrase that stood out for me was "the average number of chemicals found in a honey bee colony is six" as clearly that did not make any sense scientifically. At least, not if the term 'chemical' was meant to refer to 'chemical substance'. I cannot claim to know just how many different substances would be found if one analysed honey bee colonies, but I am pretty confident the average would be orders of magnitude greater than six. An organism such as a bee (leaving aside for a moment the hive in which it lives) will be, chemically, 'made up' of a great many different proteins, amino acids, lipids, sugars, nuclei acids, and so forth.

"the average number of chemicals found in a honey bee colony is six"

From the context, I understood that Dr Siviter was not really talking about chemicals in general, but pesticides. So, I am (not for the first time) being a pedant in pointing out that technically he was wrong to suggest "the average number of chemicals found in a honey bee colony is six" as any suitably informed listener would have immediately, and unproblematically, understood what he meant by 'chemicals' in this context.

Yet, as a teacher, my instinct is to consider that programmes such as this, designed to inform the public about science, are not only heard by those who are already well-versed in the sciences. By its nature, BBC Inside Science is intended to engage with a broad audience, and has a role in educating the public about science. I also knew that this particular pedantic point linked to a genuine issue in science teaching.

A common alternative conception

The term chemical is not usually used in science discourse as such, but rather the term substance. Chemical substances are ubiquitous, although in most everyday contexts we do not come across many pure samples of single substances. Tap water is nearly all water, and table salt is usually about 99% sodium chloride, and sometimes metals such as copper or aluminium are used in more or less pure form. But these tend to be exceptions – most material entities we engage with are not pure substances ('chemicals'), rather being mixtures or even more complex (e.g., wood or carrot or hair).

In everyday life, the term chemical tends to be used more loosely – so, for example, household bleach may be considered 'a chemical'. More problematically 'chemicals' tends to be seen as hazardous, and often even poisonous. So, people object to there being 'chemicals' in their food – when of course their food comprises chemicals and we eat food to access those chemicals because we are also made up of a great many chemicals. Food with the chemicals removed is not food, or indeed, anything at all!

In everyday discourse 'chemical' is often associated with 'dangerous' (Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay)

So, science teachers not only have the problem that in everyday discourse the term 'chemical' does not map unproblematically on 'substance' (as it is often used also for mixtures), but even more seriously that chemicals are assumed to be bad, harmful, undesirable – something to be avoided and excluded. By contrast, the scientific perspective is that whilst some chemicals are potentially very harmful, others are essential for life. Therefore, it is unhelpful when science communicators (whether journalists, or scientists themselves) use the term 'chemical' to refer only to potentially undesirable chemicals (which even then tend to be undesirable only in certain contexts), such as pesticides which are found in, and may harm, pollinators.

I decided to dig into the background of the item.

The news item

I found a news item in 'the Conversation' that discuses the work.

Dr Siviter's Article in the Conversation

It began

"A doctor will always ask if you are on any other medication before they write you a prescription. This is because pharmaceuticals can interact with each other and potentially disrupt the treatment, or even harm the patient. But when agrochemicals, such as pesticides, are licensed for use on farms, little attention is paid to how they interact with one another, and so their environmental impact is underestimated."
Siviter, 2021

This seemed a very good point, made with an analogy that seemed very telling.

(Read about science analogies)

This was important because:

"We analysed data gathered in scientific studies from the last two decades and found that when bees are exposed to a combination of pesticides, parasites and poor nutrition, the negative impact of each is exacerbated. We say that the cumulative effect of all these things is synergistic, meaning that the number of bees that are killed is more than we would predict if the negative effects were merely added together."
Siviter, 2021

This seems important work, and raises an issue we should be concerned about. The language used here was subtly different from in the radio programme:

"Many agrochemicals, such as neonicotinoids, are systemic, meaning they accumulate in the environment over several months, and in some cases years. It is perhaps not surprising then that honeybee colonies across the US have on average six different agrochemicals present in their wax, with one hive contaminated with 39 [sic, not 42]. It's not just honeybees which are at risk, though: wild bees such as bumblebees are also routinely exposed."
Siviter, 2021

So, here it was not 'chemicals' that were being counted but 'agrochemicals' (and the average figure of 6 now referred not to the colony as a whole, but only to the beeswax.)

The meta-analysis

'Agrochemicals' was also the term used in the research paper in the prestigious journal Nature where the research had been first reported,

"we conducted a meta-analysis of 356 interaction effect sizes from 90 studies in which bees were exposed to combinations of agrochemicals, nutritional stressors and/or parasites."
Siviter, et al., 2021

A meta-analysis is a type of secondary research study which collects results form a range of related published studies and seeks to identify overall patterns.

The original research

Moreover, the primary study being referred to as the source of the dubious statistic (i.e., that "the average number of chemicals found in a honey bee colony is six") referred not to 'chemicals' but to "pesticides and metabolites" (that is, substances which would be produced as the bee's metabolism broke the pesticides down):

"We have found 121 different pesticides and metabolites within 887 wax, pollen, bee and associated hive samples….
Almost all comb and foundation wax samples (98%) were contaminated with up to 204 and 94 ppm [parts per million], respectively, of fluvalinate and coumaphos, and lower amounts of amitraz degradates and chlorothalonil, with an average of 6 pesticide detections per sample and a high of 39."
Mullin, et al., 2010

Translation and representation

Scientific research is reported in research journals primarily for the benefit of other researchers in the field, and so is formatted and framed accordingly – and this is reflected in the language used in primary sources.

A model of the flow of scientific to public knowledge (after McInerney et al., 2004)

Fig. 10.2 from Taber, 2013

It is important that science which impacts on us all, and is often funded from public funds, is accessible to the public. Science journalism, is an important conduit for the communication of science, and for his to be effective it has to be composed with non-experts in the public in mind.

(Read about science in public discourse and the media)

It is perfectly sensible and desirable for a scientist engaging with a public audience to moderate technical language to make the account of research more accessible for a non-specialist audience. This kind of simplification is also a core process in developing science curriculum and teaching.

(Read about representing science in the curriculum)

However, in the case of 'chemical' I would suggest scientists take care with using the term (and avoid it if possible), as science teachers commonly have to persuade students that chemicals are all around of us, are not always bad for us, are part of us, and are essential. That pesticides and their breakdown products have been so widely detected in bee colonies is a matter of concern, as pesticides are substances that are used because of their detrimental effects on many insects and other organisms that might damage crops.

Whilst that is science deserving public attention, there are a good many more than 6 chemicals in any bee colony, and – indeed – we would want most of them to be there.

References:

McInerney, C., Bird, N., & Nucci, M. (2004). The Flow of Scientific Knowledge from Lab to the Lay Public: The Case of Genetically Modified Food. Science Communication, 26(1), 44-74. doi:10.1177/1075547004267024 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1075547004267024
Mullin, C. A., Frazier, M., Frazier, J. L., Ashcraft, S., Simonds, R., vanEngelsdorp, D., & Pettis, J. S. (2010). High Levels of Miticides and Agrochemicals in North American Apiaries: Implications for Honey Bee Health. 5(3): e9754. PLoS ONE, 5(3), e9754. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0009754 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0009754
Siviter, H. (2021) Pesticides: interactions between agrochemicals increase their harm to bees, The Conversation, August 4, 2021 5.36pm BST, https://theconversation.com/pesticides-interactions-between-agrochemicals-increase-their-harm-to-bees-165626
Siviter, H., Bailes, E. J., Martin, C. D., Oliver, T. R., Koricheva, J., Leadbeater, E., & Brown, M. J. F. (2021). Agrochemicals interact synergistically to increase bee mortality. Nature. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03787-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03787-7
Taber, K. S. (2013). Modelling Learners and Learning in Science Education: Developing representations of concepts, conceptual structure and conceptual change to inform teaching and research. Dordrecht: Springer.

Balding black holes – a shaggy dog story

Resurrecting an analogy from a dead metaphor?

Keith S. Taber

Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky…(Image by Garik Barseghyan from Pixabay)

I was intrigued by an analogy in a tweet

Like a shaggy dog in springtime, some black holes have to shed their "hair."

The link led me to an item at a webpage at 'Science News' entitled 'Black holes born with magnetic fields quickly shed them' written by Emily Conover. This, in turn, referred to an article in Physical Review Letters.

Now Physical Review Letters is a high status, peer-reviewed, journal.

(Read about peer review)

As part of the primary scientific literature, it publishes articles written by specialist scientists in a technical language intended to be understood by other specialists. Dense scientific terminology is not used to deliberately exclude general readers (as sometimes suggested), but is necessary for scientists to make a convincing case for new knowledge claims that seem persuasive to other specialists. This requires being precise, using unambiguous technical language."The thingamajig kind of, er, attaches to the erm, floppy bit, sort of" would not do the job.

(Read about research writing)

Science News however is news media – it publishes journalism (indeed, 'since 1921' the site reports – although that's the publication and not its website of course.) While science journalism is not essential to the internal processes of science (which rely on researchers engaging with each other's work though scholarly critique and dialogue) it is very important for the public's engagement with science, and for the accountability of researchers to the wider community.

Science journalists have a job similar to science teachers – to communicate abstract ideas in a way that makes sense to their audience. So, they need to interpret research and explain it in ways that non-specialists can understand.

The news article told me

"Like a shaggy dog in springtime, some black holes have to shed…
Unlike dogs with their varied fur coats, isolated black holes are mostly identical. They are characterized by only their mass, spin and electric charge. According to a rule known as the no-hair theorem, any other distinguishing characteristics, or "hair," are quickly cast off. That includes magnetic fields."

Conover, 2013

Here there is clearly the use of an analogy – as a black hole is not the kind of thing that has actual hair. This would seem to be an example of a journalist creating an analogy (just as a science teacher would) to help 'make the unfamiliar familiar' to her readers:

just as

dogs with lots of hair need to shed some ready for the warmer weather (a reference to a familiar everyday situation)

so, too, do

black holes (no so familiar to most people) need to lose their hair…

(Read about making the unfamiliar familiar)

But hair?

Surely a better analogy would be along the lines that just as dogs with lots of hair need to shed some ready for the warmer weather, so to do black holes need to lose their magnetic fields…

An analogy is used to show a novel conceptual structure (here, relating to magnetic fields around black holes) maps onto a more familiar, or more readily appreciated, one (here, that a shaggy dog will shed some of its fur). A teaching analogy may not reflect a deep parallel between two systems, as its function may be just to *introduce* an abstract principle.

(Read about science analogies)

Why talk of black holes having 'hair'?

Conover did not invent the 'hair' reference for her ScienceNews piece – rather she built her analogy on a term used by the scientists themselves. Indeed, the title of the cited research journal article was "Magnetic Hair and Reconnection in Black Hole Magnetospheres", and it was a study exploring the consequences of the "no-hair theorem" – as the authors explained in their abstract:

"The no-hair theorem of general relativity states that isolated black holes are characterized [completely described] by three parameters: mass, spin, and charge."

Bransgrove, Ripperda & Philippov, 2021

However, some black holes "are born with magnetic fields" or may "acquire magnetic flux later in life", in which case the fields will vary between black holes (giving an additional parameter for distinguishing them). The theory suggests that these black holes should somehow lose any such field: that is, "The fate of the magnetic flux (hair) on the event horizon should be in accordance with the no-hair theorem of general relativity" (Bransgrove, Ripperda & Philippov, 2021: 1). There would have to be a mechanism by which this occurs (as energy will be conserved, even when dealing with black holes).

So, the study was designed to explore whether such black holes would indeed lose their 'hair'. Despite the use of this accessible comparison (magnetic flux as 'hair'), the text of the paper is pretty heavy going for someone not familiar with that area of science:

"stationary, asymptotically flat BH spacetimes…multipole component l of a magnetic field…self-regulated plasma…electron-positron discharges…nonzero stress-energy tensor…instability…plasmoids…reconnection layer…relativistic velocities…highly magnetized collisionless plasma…Lundquist number regime…Kerr-schild coordinates…dimensionless BH spin…ergosphere volume…spatial hypersurfaces…[…and so it continues]"

(Bransgrove, Ripperda & Philippov, 2021: 1).

"***Come on Harry, you know full well that 'the characteristic minimum plasma density required to support the rotating magnetosphere is the Goldreich-Julian number density'*** *[Bransgrove, Ripperda & Philippov, 2021: 2]****, so hand me that hyperspanner***."
Image from Star Trek: Voyager (Paramount Pictures)

Spoiler alert

I do not think I will spoil anything by revealing that Bransgrove and colleague conclude from their work that "the no-hair theorem holds": that there is a 'balding process' – the magnetic field decays ("all components of the stress-energy tensor decay exponentially in time"). If any one reading this is wondering how they did this work, given that most laboratory stores do not keep black holes in stock to issue to researchers on request, it is worth noting the study was based on a computer simulation.

That may seem to be rather underwhelming as the researchers are just reporting what happens in a computer model, but a lot of cutting-edge science is done that way. Moreover, their simulations produced predictions of how the collapsing magnetic fields of real black holes might actually be detected in terms of the kinds of radiation that should be produced.

As the news item explained matters:

Magnetic reconnection in balding black holes could spew X-rays that astronomers could detect. So scientists may one day glimpse a black hole losing its hair.

Conover, 2013

So, we have hairy black holes that go through a balding process when they lose their hair – which can be tested in principle because they will be spewing radiation.

Balding is to hair, as…

Here we have an example of an analogy for a scientific concept. Analogies compare one phenomenon or concept to another which is considered to have some structural similarity (as in the figure above). When used in teaching and science communication such analogies offer one way to make the unfamiliar familiar, by showing how the unfamiliar system maps in some sense onto a more familiar one.

hair = magnetic field

balding = shedding the magnetic field

Black holes are expected to be, or at least to become, 'hairless' – so without having magnetic fields detectable from outside the event horizon (the 'surface' connecting points beyond which everything, even light, is unable to 'escape' the gravitational field and leave the black hole). If black holes are formed with, or acquire, such magnetic fields, then there is expected to be a 'balding' process. This study explored how this might work in certain types of (simulated) black holes – as magnetic field lines (that initially cross the event horizon) break apart and reconnect. (Note that in this description the magnetic field lines – imaginary lines invented by Michael Faraday as a mental tool to think about and visualise magnetic fields – are treated as though they are real objects!)

Some such comparisons are deliberately intended to help scientists explain their ideas to the public – but scientists also use such tactics to communicate to each other (sometimes in frivolous or humorous ways) and in these cases such expressions may do useful work as short-hand expressions.

So, in this context hair denotes anything that can be detected and measured from outside a black hole apart form its mass, spin, and charge (see, it is much easier to say 'hair')- such as magnetic flux density if there is a magnetic field emerging from the black hole.

A dead metaphor?

In the research paper, Bransgrove, Ripperda and Philippov do not use the 'hair' comparison as an analogy to explain ideas about black holes. Rather they take the already well-established no-hair theorem as given background to their study ("The original no-hair conjecture states that…"), and simply explain their work in relation to it ("The fate of the magnetic flux (hair) on the event horizon should be in accordance with the no-hair theorem of general relativity.")

Whereas an analogy uses an explicit comparison (this is like that because…), a comparison that is not explained is best seen as a metaphor. A metaphor has 'hidden meaning'. Unlike in an analogy, the meaning is only implied.

"The no-hair theorem of general relativity states that isolated black holes are characterized by three parameters: mass, spin, and charge";
"The original no-hair conjecture states that all stationary, asymptotically flat BH [black hole] spacetimes should be completely described by the mass, angular momentum, and electric charge"

(Read adbout science metaphors)

Bransgrove and colleagues do not need to explain why they use the term 'hair' in their research report as in their community it has become an accepted expression where researchers already know what it is intended to mean. We might consider it a dead metaphor, an expression which was originally used to imply meaning through some kind of comparison, but which through habitual use has taken on literal meaning.

Science has lots of these dead metaphors – terms like electrical charge and electron spin have with repeated use over time earned their meanings without now needing recourse to their origins as metaphors. This can cause confusion as, for example, a learner may develop alternative conceptions about electron spin if they do not appreciate its origin as a metaphor, and assumes an electron spins in the same sense as as spinning top or the earth in space. Then there is an associative learning impediment as the learner assumes an electron is spinning on its axis because of the learner's (perfectly reasonable) associations for the word 'spin'.

The journalist or 'science writer' (such as Emily Conover), however, is writing for a non-specialist readership, so does need to explain the 'hair' reference. So, I would characterise the same use of the terms hair/no-hair and balding as comprising a science analogy in the news item, but a dead metaphor in the context of the research paper. The meaning of language, after all, is in the mind of the reader.

Work cited:

Bransgrove, A., Ripperda, B., & Philippov, A. (2021). Magnetic Hair and Reconnection in Black Hole Magnetospheres. Physical Review Letters, 127(5), 055101. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.055101 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.055101
Conover, E. (2013, August 3rd 2021). Black holes born with magnetic fields quickly shed them. ScienceNews. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/black-hole-magnetic-field-hair-computer-simulations-physics

Excavating a cognitive dinosaur

Keith S. Taber

Filling-in; and digging-out a teaching analogy

Is the work of cognition like the work of a palaeontologist? (Image by Brenda Geisse from Pixabay)

I like the reflexive nature of this account – of someone reconstructing an analogy
about how cognition reconstructs coherent wholes from partial, fragmented data
from a partial, fragmented memory representation.

I was reading something about memory function that piqued my interest in an analogy:

"Neisser, using an analogy initially developed by Hebb (1949) to characterize [sic] perception, likened the rememberer to a paleontologist who attempts to reconstruct a dinosaur from fragmentary remains: 'out of a few stored bone chips, we remember a dinosaur'…"
Schacter, 1995, p.10

I was interested enough to look up the original use of this analogy (as I report below).

This links to three things that have separately interested me:

the nature of memory
the constructivist account of learning and cognition
using analogies in teaching and comunicating science

The nature of our memories

I have long been interested in what memory is and how it works – and its role in academic learning (Taber, 2003). In part this perhaps derives from the limits of my own memory – I have been reasonably successful academically, but have never felt I had a good memory (and I seem to get more 'absent minded' all the time). This interest grew as it became clearer to me that our memory experiences seem to be quite different – my late wife Philippa would automatically and effortlessly remember things in a way that that seemed to me to be a kind of superpower. (She was once genuinely surprised that I could not picture what a family member had been wearing on arriving at a family event years before, whereas I thought I was doing pretty well to even remember I had been there.) Now that neurodiversity is widely recognised, it seems less surprising that we do not all experience memory in the same way.

A lot of people, however, understand memory in terms of a kind of folk-model (that is, a popular everyday account which does not match current scientific understanding) – along the lines that we put information into a memory store, where – unless it gets lost and we forget – we can later access it and so remember what it was that we committed to memory. Despite the ubiquity of that notion, research suggests that is not really how memory functions. We might say that this is a common alternative conception of how memory works.

(Read about 'Memory')

The constructive nature of memory

Schacter was referring back to a tradition that began a century ago when Bartlett carried out a series of studies on memory. Bartlett (1932/1995) would, for example, expose people to a story that was unfamiliar to his study participants, and then later ask them to retell as much of the story as they could remember. As might be expected, some people remembered more details than others.

What perhaps was less predictable at the time was the extent to which people included in their retelling details that had not been part of the original story at all. These people were not deliberately embellishing or knowingly guessing, but reporting, as best they could, what their memory suggested had been part of the original story.

People who habitually exhibit this 'confabulation' to an pathological degree (perhaps remembering totally fantastic things that clearly could not be true) are recognised as having some kind of problem, but it transpires this is just an extreme of something that is normal behavior. Remembering is not the 'pulling something out of storage' that we may experience it as – as actually what we remember is more like a best guess based on insufficient data (but a guess made preconsciously, so it appears in our conscious minds as definitive) than a pristine copy of an original experience. Memory is often more a matter of constructing an account from the materials at hand than simply reading it out from something stored.

Thus the analogy. Here is some wider context for the quote presented above:

"The publication of Neisser's (1967) important monograph on cognitive psychology rekindled interest in Bartlett's ideas about schemas and reconstructive memory. According to Neisser, remembering the past is not a simple matter of reawakening a dormant engram or memory trace; past events are constructed by using preexisting knowledge and [schemata] to piece together whatever fragmentary remains of the initial episode are available in memory. Neisser, using an analogy initially developed by Hebb (1949) to characterize [sic] perception, likened the rememberer to a paleontologist who attempts to reconstruct a dinosaur from fragmentary remains: 'out of a few stored bone chips, we remember a dinosaur' (1967, p.285). In this view, all memories are constructions because they include general knowledge that was not part of a specific event, but is necessary to reconstruct it. The fundamentally constructive nature of memory in turn makes it susceptible to various kinds of distortions and inaccuracies. Not surprisingly, Neisser embraced Bartlett's observations and ideas about the nature of memory."
Schacter, 1995, p.10

These ideas will not seem strange to those who have studied science education, a field which has been strongly influenced by a 'constructivist' perspective on learning. Drawing on learning science research, the constructivist perspective focuses on how each learner has to build up their own knowledge incrementally: it is not possible for a teacher to take some complex technical knowledge and simply transfer it (or copy it) to a learner's mind wholesale.

(Read more about constructivism in education)

Excavating the analogy: what did Hebb actually say?

Hebb is remembered for his work on understanding the brain in terms of neural structures – neurons connected into assemblies through synapses. His book 'The Organization of Behavior' has been described as "one of the most influential books in Psychology and Neuroscience" (Brown, 2020: 1).

Tachistoscope Source: Science Museum Group (This image is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence)

The analogy referred to by Schacter was used by Hebb in describing perception. He discussed studies using a tachistoscope, an instrument for displaying images for very brief periods. This could be used to show an image to a person with an exposure insufficient for them to take in all the details,

"…the pattern is perceived, first, as a familiar one, and then with something missing or something added. The something, also, is familiar; so the total perception is a mélange of the habitual.
The subject's reports [make it] clear that the subject is not only responding to the diagram as a whole; he perceives its parts as separate entities, even though presentation is so brief. Errors are prominent, and such as to show that all the subject really perceives–and then only with rough accuracy–is the slope of a few lines and their direction and distance from one another"
Hebb, 1949: pp.46-47

That is, the cognitive system uses the 'clues' available from the incomplete visual data to build (in effect) a hypothesis of what was seen, based on correspondences between the data actually available and familiar images that match that limited data. What the person becomes consciously aware of 'seeing' is not actually a direct report from the visual field of the presented image, but a constructed image that is a kind of conjecture of what might have been seen – 'filling-in' missing data with what seems most likely based on past visual experiences.

Cognitive scientist Annette Karmiloff-Smith developed the concept of 'representational redescription' as a way of describing how initially tacit knowledge could eventually become explicit. She suggested that "intra-domain and inter-domain representational relations are the hallmark of a flexible and creative cognitive system" (Karmiloff-Smith,1996: 192). The gist was that the brain is able to re-represent its own internal representations in new forms with different affordances.

An loose analogy might be someone who takes a screenshot when displaying an image from the JPEG photo collection folder on the computer, opens the screenshot as a pdf file, and then adds some textual annotations before exporting the file to a new pdf. The representation of the original image is unchanged in the system, but a new representation has been made of it in a different form, which has then been modified and 'stored' (represented) in a different folder.

Hebb was describing how a representation of visual data at one level in the cognitive system has been represented elsewhere in the system (representational redescription?) at a level where it can be mentipulated by 'filling-in'.

Hebb then goes on to use the analogy:

"A drawing or a report of what is seen tachistoscopically is not unlike a paleontologist's reconstruction of early man from a tooth and a rib. There is a clear effect of earlier experience, filling in gaps in the actual perception, so that the end result is either something familiar or a combination of familiar things–a reconstruction on the basis of experience."
Hebb, 1949: p.47

Teaching analogies

Hebb was writing a book that can be considered as a textbook, so this can be seen as a teaching analogy, although such analogies are also used in communicating science in other contexts.

(Read about Science analogies)

Teaching is about making the unfamiliar familiar, and one way we do that is by saying that 'this unfamiliar thing you need to learn about is a bit like this other thing that you already know about'. Of course, when teaching in this way we need to say in what way there is an analogy, and it may also be important to say in what ways the two things are not alike if we do not want people to map across irrelevant elements (i.e., to develop 'associative' learning impediments).

(Read about Making the unfamiliar familiar)

Hebb is saying that visual perception is often not simply the detection of a coherent and integral image, but is rather a construction produced by building upon the available data to construct a coherent and integral image. In extremis, a good deal may be made of very little scraps of input – akin to a scientist reconstructing a model of a full humanoid body based on a couple of bits of bone or tooth.

There are examples where palaeontologists or anthropologists have indeed suggested such complete forms based on a few fossil fragments as data. This is only possible because of their past experiences of meeting many complete forms, and the parts of which they are made. (And of course, sometimes other scientists completely disagree about their reconstructions!)

An exscientific analogy?

Often in teaching science we use teaching analogies that compare an unfamiliar scientific concept to some familiar everyday phenomenon – perhaps a reaction profile is a bit like a roller-coaster track. Perhaps we could call these adscientific analogies as the meaning is transferred to the scientific concept from the everyday.

Sometimes, however, familiar scientific phenomena or ideas are used as the source – as here. Perhaps these could be called exscientific analogies as the meaning is taken from the science concept and applied elsewhere.

Developing the palaeontology analogy

So, Hebb had originally used the palaeontology analogy in the context of discussing perception. When I looked into how Neisser had used the comparison in his "important monograph on cognitive psychology" I found he had developed the analogy, returning to it at several points in his book.

Do we analyse what we attend to?

Neisser's first reference was also in relation to perception, rather than memory. Neisser argued that before we can attend to part of a scene there must already have been the operation of "preattentive mechanisms, which form segregated objects" from which we can select what to attend to. These processes might be referred to as analyses:

"…the detailed properties and features that we ordinarily see in an attended figure…arise…only because part of the input was selected for attention and certain operations then performed on it. Neither the object of analysis nor the nature of the analysis is inevitable, and both may vary in different observers and at different times."

Neisser, 1967, p.94

But Neisser was not sure this really was 'analysis', which he understood as drawing on another (what I labelled above) exscientific analogy:

"The very word 'analysis' may not be apt. It suggests an analogy with chemistry: a chemist 'analyses' unknown substances to find out what they 'really' are."

Neisser, 1967, p.94

Rather than refer to analysis, we could draw on Hebb's palaeontological analogy:

"More appropriate…is Hebb's (1949, p.47) comparison of the perceiver with a paleontologist, who carefully extracts a few fragments of what might be bones from a mass of irrelevant rubble and 'reconstructs' the dinosaur that will eventually stand in the Museum of Natural History. In this sense it is important to think of focal attention as a constructive, synthetic activity rather than as purely analytic. One does not simply examine the input and make a decision; one builds an appropriate visual object."

Neisser, 1967, p.94

[If it helps to have some examples to reflect upon this account of perception, you may find it useful to look at some images that may require careful interpretation.]

Neisser draws upon the analogy repeatedly in developing his account of perception:

"Such emotion-flooded experiences [as 'physiognomic' perception: 'Everyone has perceived such traits as suppressed anger in a face, gaiety in a movement, or peaceful harmony in a picture'] can be thought of as the result of particular kinds of construction. The same fragments of bone that lead one paleontologist to make an accurate model of an unspectacular creature might lead another, perhaps more anxious or more dramatic, to 'reconstruct' a nightmarish monster." (pp.96-97)
"To 'direct attention' to a figure is to attempt a more extensive synthesis of it. Of course, synthesis presupposes some prior analysis, as the paleontologist must have some fragments of bone before he can build his dinosaur…" (p.103)
"Recognition, whether of spelling patterns or words as wholes, must be mediated by relevant features, as meaningless in themselves as the bone chips of the paleontologist." (p.114)
"The process of figural synthesis does not depend only on the features extracted from the input, just as the dinosaur constructed by a paleontologist is not based only on the bone chips he has found. Equally important is the kind of perceptual object the perceiver is prepared to construct. The importance of set and context on the perception of words has been demonstrated in a great many experiments." (pp.115-116)
Neisser, 1967

And as with perception, so memory…

When Neisser discusses memory he uses a kind of double analogy – suggesting that memory is a bit like perception, which (as already established) is a bit like the work of the palaeontologist:

"Perception is constructive, but the input information often plays the largest single role in determining the constructive process. A very similar role, it seems to me, is played by the aggregate of information stored in long-term memory.
This is not to say that the stimuli themselves are copied and stored; far from it. The analogy being offered asserts only that the role which stored information plays in recall is like the role which stimulus information plays in perception….The model of the paleontologist, which was applied to perception and focal attention in Chapter 4, applies also to memory: out of a few stored bone chips, we remember a dinosaur….one does not recall objects or responses simply because traces of them exist in the mind, but after an elaborate process of reconstruction, (which usually makes use of relevant stored information).
What is the information – the bone chips – on which reconstruction is based? The only plausible possibility is that it consists of traces of prior processes of construction. There are no stored copies of finished mental events, like images or sentences, but only traces of earlier constructive activity."
Neisser, 1967, p.285

Fleshing-out the metaphor

Neisser then pushes the analogy one step further, by pointing out that the 'fleshed-out' model of a dinosaur in the museum may be constructed in part based on the fossil fragments of bones, but those fragments themselves do not form part of the construction (the model). The bones are used as referents in building the skeletal framework (literally, the skeleton) around which the model will be built, but the model is made from other materials (wood, steel, fibreglass, whatever) and the fossil fragments themselves will be displayed separately or perhaps filed away in a drawer in the museum archives. (As in the representational redescription model – the original representation is redescribed at another level of the system.)

"The present proposal is, therefore, that we store traces of earlier cognitive acts, not of the products of those acts. The traces are not simply 'revised' or 'reactivated' in recall; instead, the stored fragments are used as information to support a new construction. It is as if the bone fragments used by the paleontologist did not appear in the model he builds at all – as indeed they need not, if it to represent a fully fleshed-out skin-covered dinosaur. The bones can be thought of, somewhat loosely, as remnants of the structure which created and supported the original dinosaur, and thus as sources of information about how to reconstruct it."
Neisser, 1967, pp.285-286

The head palaeontologist?

A final reference to the analogy is used when Neisser addresses the question of the cognitive executive: the notion that somewhere in the cognitive system there is something akin to an overseer who direct operations:

"Who does the turning, the trying, and the erring" Is there a little man in the head, a homonculus, who acts the part of the paleontologist vis-à-vis the dinosaur? p.293
Neisser, 1967, p.293

The homonculus can be pictured as a small person sitting in the brain's control room, for example, viewing the images being projected from the visual input.

It is usually considered this is a flawed model (potentially lading to an infinite regress), a failure to take a systemic view of the cognitive system. It is the system which functions and leads to our conscious experience of perceiving, attending, making decisions, planning, remembering, and so forth. Whilst there are specialist components (modules) including for the coordination of the system, there is not a discrete controller overlaying the system as a whole who is doing the seeing, hearing, thinking, etcetera based on outputs from processing by the system.

Here the homonculus would like an authority that the palaeontologist turned to in order to decide how to build her model: raising the question of how does that expert know, and who would they, in turn, ask?

Why change Hebb's orignal analogy?

Altohugh Neisser refers to the analogy as being that used by Hebb, he modifies it. A tooth and rib become fragments of bone, and the early man becomes a dinosaur. Whether the shift from the reconstruction of an early hominid to the reconstruction of a terrible lizard was a deliberate one (for greater effect? because Neisser thought it would be more familiar to his readers?) or not I do not know. The phrasing suggests that Neisser thought he was applying Hebb's original comparison – so I suspect this is how he recalled the analogy.

Perhaps Neisser had regularly used the analogy in his teaching, in which case it may have become so familiar to him that he did not feel the need to check the original version. That is, perhaps he was correctly remembering how he had previously misremembered the original analogy. That is not fanciful, as memory researchers suggest this is something that is very common. Each time we access a memory the wider representational context becomes modified by engagement with it.

That is, if what is represented (in 'long-term memory'*) is indeed "traces of prior processes of construction…traces of earlier constructive activity" then each time a 'memory' is experienced, by being constructed based on what is represented ('in memory'*), new traces of that process of constructing the memory are left in the system.

It is possible over the years to be very convinced about the accuracy of a distorted memory that has been regularly reinforced. (The extent to which this may in part be the origin of many wars, feuds, and divorces might be a useful focus for research?)

So perhaps Neisser had represented in his long-term memory the analogy of a palaeontologist with a few fossil fragments, and when he sought to access the analogy, perhaps in a classroom presentation, the other elements were filled-in: the 'tooth and rib' became 'a few fragments of what might be bones' and the 'early man' become 'a dinosaur' – details that made sense of the analogy in terms familiar to Neisser.

The account of cognition that Hebb, Neisser and Schater were presenting would suggest that if this had been the case then for Neisser there would be no apparent distinction between the parts of Hebb's analogy that Neisser was remembering accurately, and the parts his preconscious mind had filled-in to construct a coherent analogy. I like the reflexive nature of this account – of someone reconstructing an analogy about how cognition reconstructs coherent wholes from partial, fragmented data – from a partial, fragmented memory representation.

Sources cited:

Bartlett, F. C. (1932/1995). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, R. E. (2020). Donald O. Hebb and the Organization of Behavior: 17 years in the writing. Molecular Brain, 13(1), 55. doi:10.1186/s13041-020-00567-8
Hebb, D. O. (1949). The Organisation of Behaviour. A neuropsychological theory. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1996). Beyond Modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Schacter, D. L. (1995). Memory distortion: history and current status. In D. L. Schacter (Ed.), Memory Distortion. How minds, brains, and societies reconstruct the past (pp. 1-43). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Taber, K. S. (2003) Lost without trace or not brought to mind? – a case study of remembering and forgetting of college science, Chemistry Education: Research and Practice, 4 (3), pp.249-277. [Free access]

* terms like 'in memory' and 'in long-term memory' may bring to mind the folk-notion of memory as somewhere in the brain where things are stored away, whereas it is probably better to think of the brain as a somewhat plastic processing system which is constantly being modified by its own functioning. The memory we experience is simply the outcome of active processing** in part of the system that has previously been modified by earlier mental activity (** active processing which is in turn itself further modifying the system).

Scientific errors in the English National Curriculum

Keith S. Taber

I am writing this open letter to the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry to request that as Learned Societies with some influence with government (perhaps limited, but certainly vastly more than an academic) the Societies might ask the Department for Education to correct two basic errors of science in the National Curriculum for England which is set out as the basis for teaching school age learerns and for developing public examinations specifications and papers.

The two errors relate to (a) the misuse of scientific terminology (the word substance) and (b) a failure of logic (in a reference to conservation of energy). As you will no doubt be aware, the original published version of this iteration of the programmes of study for science in the English National Curriculum included some basic errors (incorrect physics formulae) that received wide publicity and which were quickly amended. Despite some other issues also getting early attention, these other problems have never been addressed. One more complex issue that I strongly feel deserves addressing, but which would would require considerable redrafting, is the confused and incoherent treatment of the nature of chemical reactions across the secondary phase (Key Stages 3 and 4). I have raised these issues at various times, and have published a scholarly analysis of these problems .Whilst I obviously did not expect an article in an academic journal to directly impact policy, I thought this could be a 'springboard' to then approach government. I have contacted the relevant ministers (the Rt Hon Gavin Williamson CBE MP, Secretary of State for Education and the Rt Hon Nick Gibb MP, Minister of State for School Standards), and in response to instructions to refer this issue to the Department for Education website, I did so. My comments have been noted, but I was informed

"there are no current plans to review the curriculum".

Whilst I accept that any detailed re-working of the curriculum is not imminent, I do think the Department could still instigate minor corrections to errors which are published on the government's website, and then consequently repeated by the examination authorities, the examination boards and even individual school websites. Correcting these (surely, embarrassing) errors would require very little effort. The first error I refer to is the incorrect use of the term 'substance'. In science, the term substance has a fairly specific meaning. Although, as with many science concepts, there may be some discussion over precise definitions and demarcations, there is general agreement at the level at which the term would be used in introductory science at school level. In the primary stages of the English National Curriculum for Science we read that Y5 learners should be

"taught to…explain that some changes result in the formation of new materials [sic], and that this kind of change is not usually reversible, including changes associated with burning and the action of acid on bicarbonate of soda".

A better term here would be 'substances', not 'materials' (although this is more a mater of the wording being imprecise than incorrect). However in relation to Y4 learners there is a reference to

"exploring the effect of temperature on substances [sic] such as chocolate, butter, cream"

none of which are substances as the word is used in science.This is a misuse of the term 'substance'. So whereas in secondary school, learners are taught to distinguish the meanings of 'material' and the more specific 'substance', it seems these terms are being used interchangeably in the National Curriculum specification itself. The other issue relates to the statement (in the Key Stage 4 specification) that

"energy is conserved in chemical reactions so can therefore be neither created nor destroyed".

To my reading this suggests a blatant error of logic, which I can only assume does not reflect scientific ignorance by the person drafting the document – but more likely is a typographic error that has never been corrected. Conservation of energy is a general (universal) principle, and its more specific application to chemical reactions as one class of changes is then subsumed under that principle. I have long assumed that what had been intended (but mistyped) was either "energy is conserved in chemical reactions BECAUSE it can be neither created nor destroyed" or "energy CAN be neither created nor destroyed SO THEREFORE is conserved in chemical reactions" – that is, the logic has been completely reversed in the curriculum document. I have recently realised that there is a third possibility: that this statement is not meant as an explanation (of energy conservation in reactions under a more general principle) but as a definition, along the lines "energy is conserved in chemical reactions WHICH MEANS THAT IT CAN be neither created nor destroyed". Whatever was meant, the current wording implies a logical non sequitur, and should, surely, be corrected. I would hope you might agree that these kinds of errors should not be included in what teachers are asked to teach, students to learn, and examining boards to assess; and that when a suitable opportunity arrises you might make appropriate representations regarding the desirability of corrections being made. Your sincerely, Dr Keith S.Taber Emeritus Professor of Science Education (I have had constructive replies from both the RSC and IoP)

Opposites avoid attracting

Do species become more different from one another to avoid breeding?

Keith S. Taber

They say "opposites attract". True perhaps for magnetic poles and electrical charges, but the aphorism is usually applied to romantic couples. It seems like one of those sayings that survives due to the 'confirmation bias' in human cognition. That is, as long as from time to time seemingly unlikely couplings occur, the explanation that 'opposites attract' seems to have some merit, even in it only applies to a minority of cases.

Trying to avoid a fight

What got me thinking about this was an interview (on BBC's Inside Science radio programme/podcast) with Dr Jacob Dunn, Associate Professor in Evolutionary Biology at Anglia Ruskin University, who studies primate vocal communication. He was discussing his research into the calls of tamarin monkeys in the Amazon rainforest, and in particular the calls of two different species where their ranges overlap.

Apparently, in the area of overlap the red-handed tamarins seemed to have adapted one of their calls so it sounds very similar to that of the pied tamarins. (N.b. The images above represent two contrasting species, just as an illustration.) The suggested explanation was that this modification made it more likely that the monkeys of different types would recognise each other's calls – in particular that "…they are trying to be understood, so they don't end up in a fight…".

Anthropomorphism?

I wondered if these monkeys were really "trying" to achieve this, or whether this might be an anthropomorphism. That is, were the red-handed tamarins deliberately changing their call in this way in order to ensure they could be understood – or was this actually natural selection in operation – where, because there was an advantage to cross-species communication (and there will be a spread of call characteristics in any population), over time calls that could be understood by monkeys of both species would be selected for in a shared niche.

Then again, primates are fairly intelligent creatures, so perhaps Dr Dunn (who, unlike me is an evolutionary biologist) means this literally, and this is something deliberate. Certainly, if the individual monkeys are shifting their calls over time in response to environmental cues, rather than the shift just occurring across generations, then that would seem to suggest this is learning rather than evolution. (Of course, it could be implicit learning based on feedback from the responses to their behavior, and still may not be the monkeys consciously adopting a strategy to be better understood.)

Becoming more distinct

Dr Dunn's explanation of the wider issue of how similar animals will compete for scarce resources intrigued me:

"When you have species that are closely related to one another and live in sort of overlapping areas there's quite a lot of pressure because they're likely to be competing for key resources. So, sometimes we see that these species actually diverge in their traits, they become more different from one another. Examples of that are sort of coloration and the way that animals look. Quite often they become more distinct than you would expect them to, to avoid breeding [sic] with one another."

My initial reaction to this was to wonder why the two species of monkeys needed to avoid breeding with each other. 'Breeding' normally refers to producing offspring, reproduction, but usually breeding is not possible across species (except sometimes to produce infertile hybrids).

Presumably, all tamarins descended from a common ancestor species. Speciation may have occurred when different populations become physically separated and so were no longer able to inter-breed (although still initially sexually compatible) simply because members of the two groups never encountered each other. Over time (i.e., many generations) the two populations might then diverge in various traits because of different selection pressures in the two different locations, or simply by chance effects* which would lead to the two gene pools drifting in different ways.

(* Read about 'Intergenerational couplings in the family: A thought experiment about ancestry')

Two groups that had formed separate species such that members of the two different species are no longer able to mate to produce fertile offspring, might subsequently come to encounter each other again (e.g., members of one species migrating into to the territory of the other) but inter-breeding would no longer be possible. A further mechanism to avoid breeding (by further "diverge[nce] in their traits") would not seem to make any difference.

If they actually cannot breed, there is no need to avoid breeding.

A breeding euphemism?

However, perhaps 'breeding' was being used by Dr Dunn as a euphemism (this was after all a family-friendly radio programme broadcast in the afternoon), as a polite way of saying this might avoid the moneys copulating with genetically incompatible partners – tamarins of another species. As tamarins presumably do not themselves have a formal biological species concept, they will not avoid coupling with an animal from a different species on the grounds that they cannot breed and so it would be ineffective. They indulge in sexual activity in response to instinctive drives, rather than in response to deliberate family planning decisions. That is, we might safely assume these couplings are about sexual attraction rather than a desire to have children.

I think that was what Jürgen Habermas may have meant when he wrote that:

"…the reproduction of every individual organism seems to warrant the assumption of purposiveness without purposeful activity…"

In terms of fitness, an animal is clearly more likely to have offspring if it is attracted to a sexually comparable partner than a non-compatible one. Breeding is clearly important for the survival of the species, and uses precious resources. Matings that could not lead to pregnancy (or, perhaps worse from a resource perspective, might lead to infertile hybrids that need to be nurtured but then fail to produce 'grandchildren'), would reduce breeding success overall in the populations. Assuming that a tamarin is more likely to be attracted to a member of a different species when it does not look so different from its own kind, it is those monkeys in the two groups that look most alike who are likely to be inadvertently sharing intimate moments with biologically incompatible partners.

A teleological explanation

Dr Dunn's suggestion that "quite often [the two species] become more distinct than you would expect them to, to avoid breeding with one another" sounds like teleology. That is, it seems to imply that there is a purpose (to avoid inter-breeding) and the "species actually diverge in their traits" in order to bring about this goal. This would be a teleological explanation.

(Read about 'Teleology')

I suspect the actual explanation is not that the two species "come more distinct…to avoid breeding with one another" but rather than they come more distinct because they cannot breed with each other, and so there is a selection advantage favouring the most distinct members of the two different species (if they are indeed less likely than their less distinguishable conspecifics to couple with allospecific mates).

I also suspect that Dr Dunn does not actually subscribe to the teleological argument, but is using a common way of talking that biologists often adopt as a kind of abbreviated argument: biologists know that when they refer to evolution having a purpose (e.g., to avoid cross-breeding), that is only a figure of speech.

Comprehension versus accuracy?

However, I am not sure that is always so obvious to non-specialists listening to them. Learners often find natural selection a challenging topic, and many would be quite happy with accepting that adaptations may have a purpose (rather than just a consequence). This reflects a common challenge of communicating science – either in formal teaching or supporting public understanding.

The teacher or science communicator simplifies accounts and uses everyday ways of expressing ideas that an audience without specialist knowledge can readily engage with to help 'make the unfamiliar familiar'. However, the simplifications and approximations and short-cuts we use to make sure what is said can be understood (i.e., made sense of) by non-specialists also risks us being misunderstood.

Albert Einstein and John the Baptist

Keith S. Taber

What is the relationship between Albert Einstein and St. John the Baptist?

Why would someone seeking to communicate scientific ideas to a broad readership refer to St. John?

Spoiler alert: in a direct sense, there clearly is no relationship. St. John lived in Palestine two thousand years ago, was a preacher, and is not known to have had any particular interest in what we think of as physics or science more generally. Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist, and probably the most famous scientist of the twentieth century, perhaps of all time.

It is fair to point out both were Jewish: John can be considered a Jewish prophet. There has been much speculation on Einstein's religious thought. Of Jewish background, he was subject to the Nazi's fascist policies in Germany and fled to spent much of his life in the U.S.A. Sometimes considered an atheist, Einstein did talk of God (as not playing dice for example – that is, not leaving room in the Universe for completely random events) but it is sometimes claimed he use the idea of God as a metaphor for some kind of pantheistic or general spiritual background to the universe. In general though, he stuck to physics, and campaigned on issues like world peace.

(Read about 'The relationship between science and religion')

So, why raise the question?

My posing this question was motivated by reading something written by Herman Weyl (1885 – 1955) who is described by Wikipedia as "a German mathematician, theoretical physicist and philosopher". In one of his writings Weyl referred to Hendrik Lorentz who (again according to Wikipedia) was "a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect".

This is how Weyl described Lorentz:

"the Dutch physicist H.A. Lorentz who, as Einstein's John the Baptist, prepared the way for the gospel of relativity."

Weyl, 1952/2016, pp.131-132.

Those studying physics at high levels, or reading about relativity theory, will probably have heard of the 'Lorentz transformations' that are used in calculations in special relativity.

An extended metaphor?

What Weyl is doing here is using a metaphor, or perhaps an analogy. In a metaphor a writer or speaker says that something is something else – to imply it has some attribute of that other thing.

(Read about 'Science metaphors')

In an analogy, one system is compared with another to show that there is, or to suggest that perhaps might be, a structural similarity. Usually analogies are presented as an explicit comparison (X is like Y: i.e., rather than 'Lorentz was Einstein's John the Baptist', perhaps 'Lorentz was like Einstein's John the Baptist in the sense that…')

(Read about 'Science analogies')

As Weyl does not say Lorentz was like a John the baptist figure, or played a role similar to John the Baptist, but that he was "Einstein's John the Baptist" I would consider this a metaphor. However, it is an extended metaphor as the comparison is explained as justified because Lorentz "prepared the way for the gospel of relativity".

That could be seen as a second metaphor in that relativity is normally considered a theory (or two theories, special relativity, and general relativity), and not a gospel – a word that means 'good news'. So Weyl is saying that Lorentz prepared the way for the good news of relativity!

Making the familiar unfamiliar?

When I read this comment I immediately felt I appreciated the point that Weyl was seeking to make. However, I also felt that this was a rather odd comparison to make, as I was not sure how universally it would be understood.

Those communicating about science, whether as science teachers or journalists or (as here) scientists themselves looking to reach a general audience, have the task of 'making the unfamiliar (what people do not yet know about, and may indeed seem odd) familiar'. There are various techniques that can be used, and often these involve some form of comparison of what is being told about with something that is in some ways similar, and which is already familiar to the audience.

(Read about 'Making the unfamiliar familiar')

I attended 'Sunday school' from a young age (I think before starting day school if I recall correctly) at a London City Mission church, and later at a Methodist Church, where I became a Sunday school teacher before i went off to University. I therefore learnt quite a bit about Christianity. Anyone with such a background will have learnt that John the Baptist was a cousin of Jesus Christ, who preached 'the coming of the Lord' (i.e., the Jewish messiah, identified in Christianity with Jesus), and baptised Jesus in the River Jordan as he set out on his mission as a preacher and healer. John is said to have told his congregation to "prepare ye, the way of the Lord!" (the title of a song in the musical 'Godspell').

Someone knowing about Christianity in this way (regardless of whether they accept Christian teaching, or even the historical accuracy of the Baptism story) would likely immediately appreciate that just as John prepared the way for Jesus' ministry in first Century (CE) Palestine, so, according to Weyl, Lorentz prepared physics, laid important groundwork, for Einstein's work on relativity.

When you have the necessary background, such comparisons work effectively and quickly – the idea is communicated without the reader having to puzzle over and interpret the expressions "Einstein's John the Baptist" and "gospel of relativity" or deliberate on what is meant by 'preparing the way'. That is, the if the reader has the relevant 'interpretive resources' then understanding is an automatic process that does not require any conscious effort.

Culture-specific interpretive resources?

But I wondered what someone would make of this phrase ('Einstein's John the Baptist') if they did not have knowledge of the Bible stories? After all, in many parts of the world most people are not Christians, and may have little or no knowledge of Christian traditions. Did Weyl just assume everyone would have the background to appreciate his comparison, or did he assume he was only writing for an audience in certain parts of the world where this was common knowledge?

Certainly, as teachers, our attempts to help our students understand abstract ideas by making references to common cultural phenomena can fall flat if the learners are not familiar with those phenomena. It is counter-productive if the teacher has to interrupt their presentation on some abstract idea to explain the very comparison that was meant to help explain the scientific concept or principle. If you have no idea who 'John the Baptist' was, in what sense he 'prepared the way' for Jesus, or or how the term 'Gospel' came to be attached to the accounts of Jesus' life, then it is not so easy to appreciate what Lorentz was to Einstein's work from Weyl's prose. We can only make the unfamiliar familiar by using cultural references when we share those references with those we are communicating with.

Work cited:

Weyl, H. (1952/2016). Symmetry (New Princeton Science Library edition ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Is there a place for absolute certainty in science communication?

Scientific and journalistic language games

Who invented gravity?

Believing in gravity

Absolute certainty?

Science is not about belief

Science is the best!

You should not believe scientific ideas

But how do scientists cross the borders from science to science communication?

The double bind

Coda

Works cited:

Notes

Seeking the islets of Filipenka Henadzi

The orginal Mendeleev

The original Mendel

Calling out 'predatory' journals

Beyond Chadwick

Explaining a long-standing mystery

Masking true atomic number

Dubious physics

Naked protons

A new correspondence principle?

Confusing a teaching scheme for a mechanism?

The conservation of force conception (an alternative conception)

The revolution will not be televised…

Let down by poor journal standards

Works cited

Footnotes:

A simile for viral infection

Could an oral Covid-19 treatment be available soon?

A scientific simile

Viruses triggering long term disease

The admirable HLA-B27?

Work cited:

Footnotes:

Researching viral preferences

Coming to knowledge

Sympathetic magic

The gold standard of experimental method

A viral choice chamber

A viral opinion poll

A representative sample of vairants?

But perhaps Mr Javid does not actually mean that COVID likes Autumn and Winter?

Addendum: 1st December 2021

Works cited:

Footnotes:

Related reading:

Is your shampoo of natural, unnatural, or supernatural origin?

Shampoos from brands other than Herbal Essences are 100% of natural origin.

Natural products chemistry

What makes something unnatural?

The man-made is not 'natural'

Natural and natural origin

A vague distinction

Appendix: Some examples of products that are not completely of natural origin

95% natural origin

96% natural origin

96% natural origin

97% natural origin

At least 9/10ths natural origin

Source cited:

Footnote

What was wrong with The Loneliness Experiment?

A serious research project

What is the problem with this research design?

When is an experiment not an experiment?

What's in a name: does it really matter?

Further reading:

Work cited:

Note:

Is it half a dozen of one, or six of the other?

A common alternative conception

The news item

The meta-analysis

The original research

Translation and representation

References:

Resurrecting an analogy from a dead metaphor?

Why talk of black holes having 'hair'?

At least ⁹/₁₀^ths natural origin