Blog - Science-Education-Research

Do nerve signals travel faster than the speed of light?

Keith S. Taber

I have recently posted on the blog about having been viewing some of the court testimony being made available to the public in the State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin court case (27-CR-20-12646: State vs. Derek Chauvin).

[Read 'Court TV: science in the media']

Prof. Martin J. Tobin, M.D., Loyola University Chicago Medical Center

I was watching the cross examination of expert witness Dr Martin J. Tobin, Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine by defence attorney Eric Nelson, and was intrigued by the following exchange:

Now you talked quite a bit about physics in your direct testimony, agreed?

Yes

And you would agree that physics, or the application of physical forces, is a constantly changing, er, set of circumstances.

I did not catch what you said.

Sure. You would agree with me, would you not, that when you look at the concepts of physics, these things are constantly changing, right?

Yeah, all of science is constantly changing.

Constant! I mean,

Yes.

in milliseconds and nanoseconds, right?

Yes.

And so if I put this much weight [Nelson demonstrating by shifting position] or this much weight [shifting position], all of the formulas [sic] and variations, will change from second to second, from millisecond to millisecond, nanosecond to nanosecond, agreed.

I agree.

Similarly, biology sort of works the same way. Right?

Yes.

My heart beats, my lungs breathe [sic], my brain is sending millions of signals to my body, at all times.

Correct.

Again, even, I mean, faster than the speed of light, right?

Correct.

Millions of signals every nanosecond, right?

Yes.
Day 9. 27-CR-20-12646: State vs. Derek Chauvin

Agreeing – but talking about different things?

The first thing that struck me here concerns what seems to me to be Mr Nelson and Dr Tobin talking at cross-purposes – that neither participant acknowledged (and so perhaps neither were aware of).

I think Nelson is trying to make an argument that the precise state of Mr George Floyd (who's death is at the core of the prosecution of Mr Chauvin) would have been a dynamic matter during the time he was restrained on the ground by three police officers (an argument being made in response to the expert's presentation of testimony suggesting it was possible to posit fairly precise calculations of the forces acting during the episode).

This seems fairly clear from the opening question of the exchange above:

Now you talked quite a bit about physics in your direct testimony, agreed? … And you would agree that physics, or the application of physical forces, is a constantly changing, er, set of circumstances.

However, Dr Tobin does not hear this clearly (there are plexiglass screens between them as COVID precautions, and Nelson acknowledges that he is struggling with his voice by this stage of the trial).

Nelson re-phrases, but actually says something rather different:

You would agree with me, would you not, that when you look at the concepts of physics, these things are constantly changing, right?

['These things' presumably refers to 'the application of physical forces', but if Dr Tobin did not hear Mr Nelson's previous utterance then 'these things' would be taken to be 'the concepts of physics'.]

So, now it is not the forces acting in a real world scenario which are posited to be constantly changing, but the concepts of physics. Dr Tobin's response certainly seems to make most sense if the question is understood in terms of the science itself being in flux:

Yeah, all of science is constantly changing.

Given that context, the following agreement that these changes are occurring "in milliseconds and nanoseconds" seems a little surreal, as it is not quite clear in what sense science is changing on that scale (except in the sense that science is continuing constantly – certainly not in the sense that canonical accounts of concepts shift at that pace: say, in the way Einstein's notions of physics came to replace those of Newton).

In the next exchange the original context Nelson had presented ("the application of physical forces, is … constantly changing") becomes clearer:

And so if I put this much weight [Nelson demonstrating by shifting position] or this much weight [shifting position], all of the formulas and variations, will change from second to second, from millisecond to millisecond, nanosecond to nanosecond, agreed.

I agree.

As a pedantic science teacher I would suggest that it is not the formulae of physics that change, but the values to be substituted into the system of equations derived from them to describe the particular event: but I think the intended meaning is clear. Dr Tobin is a medical expert, not a physicist nor a science teacher, and the two men appear to be agreeing that the precise configurations of forces on a person being restrained will constantly change, which seems reasonable. I guess that is what the jury would take from this.

If my interpretation of this dialogue is correct (and readers may check the footage and see how they understand the exchange) then at one point the expert witness was agreeing with the attorney, but misunderstanding what he was being asked about (how in the real world the forces acting are continuously varying, not how the concepts of science are constantly being developed). Even if I am right, this does not seem problematic here, as the conversation shifted to the intended focus quickly (an example of Bruner's 'constant transnational calibration' perhaps?).

However, this reminds me of interviews with students I have carried out (and others I have listened to undertaken by colleagues), and of classroom episodes where teacher and student are agreeing – but actually are talking at cross purposes. Sometimes it becomes obvious to those involved that this is what has happened – but I wonder how often it goes undetected by either party. (And how often there are later recriminations – "but you said…"!)

Simplifying biology?

The final part of the extract above also caught my attention, as I was not sure what to make of it.

My heart beats, my lungs breathe, my brain is sending millions of signals to my body, at all times.

Correct.

Again, even, I mean, faster than the speed of light, right?

Correct.

Millions of signals every nanosecond, right?

Yes.

How frequently do our brains send out signals?

I am a chemistry and physicist, not a biologist so I was unsure what to make of the millions of signals the brain is sending out to the rest of the body every nanosecond.

I can certainly beleive that perhaps in a working human brain there will be billions of neutrons firing every nanosecond as they 'communicate' with each other. If my brain has something like 100 000 000 000 neurons then that does not seem entirely unreasonable.

But does the brain really send signals to the rest of the body (whether through nerves or by the release of hormones) at a rate of nx10⁶/10^-9 s^-1 ("millions of signals every nanosecond"), that is, multiples of 10¹⁵ signals per second, as Mr Nelson suggests and Dr Tobin agrees?

Surely not? Dr Tobin is a professor of medicine and a much published expert in his field and should know better than me. But I would need some convincing.

Biological warp-drives

I will need even more convincing that the brain sends signals to the body faster than the speed of light. Both nervous and hormonal communication are many orders of magnitude slower than light speed. The speed of light is still considered to be a practical limit on the motion of massive objects (i.e., anything with mass). Perhaps signals could be sent by quantum entanglement – but that is not how our nervous and endocrine systems function?

If Mr Nelson and Dr Tobin do have good reason to believe that communication of signals in the human body can travel faster than the speed of light then this could be a major breakthrough. Science and technology have made many advances by mimicking, or learning from, features of the structure and function of living things. Perhaps, if we can learn how the body is achieving this impossible feat, warp-drive need not remain just science fiction.

A criminal trial is a very serious matter, and I do not intend these comments to be flippant. I watched the testimony genuinely interested in what the science had to say. The real audience for this exchange was the jury and I wonder what they made of this, if anything. Perhaps it should be seen as poetic language making a general point, and not a technical account to be analysed pedantically. But I think it does raise issues about how science is communicated to non-experts in contexts such as courtrooms.

This was an expert witness for the prosecution (indeed, very much for the prosecution) who was agreeing with the defence counsel on a point strictly contrary to accepted science. If I was on a jury, and an expert made a claim that I knew was contrary to current well-established scientific thinking (whether the earth came into being 10 000 years ago, or the brain sends out signals that travel faster then the speed of light) this would rather undermine my confidence in the rest of their expert testimony.

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Court TV: science in the media

Keith S. Taber

I realised that there was something fascinating about the forensic nature of legal proceedings some years ago (1985) when I saw a television dramatisation of the tribunal into the death of Steve Bantu Biko in police custody in (then still apartheid) South Africa. Although this was a re-enactment, it used actual transcripts to present a reconstruction.

Although like most people I was disgusted with apartheid, I probably would not have known about Steve Biko if it had not been for Peter Gabriel's (1980) anthem ('Biko') protesting his killing – that was the hook that got me to take a look at the film. Although expecting I might find it dry or distressing – it was fascinating. Something that I intended to watch almost out of a sense of liberal duty was totally engrossing.

The cover of the single version of 'Biko' https://petergabriel.com/release/biko/

I have recently spent some time looking at footage of the trial of former police office Derek Chauvin regarding the death of George Floyd. (A case which of course has parallels with Biko's death.) This came from discovering I had access to a whole TV channel (currently) dedicated to showing the court case. I have largely moved from that (as I had less interest in all the commentary which added little to the court 'action'*) to reviewing some of the daily footage from the courtroom available on line.

[Read 'Do nerve signals travel faster than the speed of light?']

(* I was especially unimpressed by the trailers for forthcoming cases in U.S. States with the death penalty, where the show anchor gleefully told viewers we could watch verdicts where we would see the the accused as they found out if they were to live or die.)

Scene from inside the courtroom: Derek Chauvin represented by his attorney Eric Nelson

The application of science

In this particular case there is a good deal of physics, chemistry and biology (and indeed their interactions) being presented and argued over. I am not sure I would encourage children to watch (and certainly not to approach as an alternative form of entertainment) such serious proceedings – but any who are watching the expert testimony being presented may appreciate a lot about the nature of science (and in particular how data does not become evidence in isolation ). There is a potential counter here to all those TV shows where the whole history of the universe is unproblematically pieced together from some DNA collected by a detective offering a suspect a drink of water. (Okay, I exaggerate, if only a little.)

I initially, accidentally, fell upon coverage of pre-trial arguments about what evidence might be admissible in the forthcoming trial – and started to see how the defence may be offering a story quite inconsistent with the widely accepted narrative (based on the much shared film of the incident). I realised that despite thinking I was the kind of person who tries to always look at different perspectives and seek alternative understandings, and reserve judgement until it is due, I had (without being aware of it) already decided what had happened in this case, and in my own head the presumption of innocence had not really been applied.

This then led to me watching some of the footage of jury selection. This is a process I had been aware of, but had not considered in that much detail – and had certainly not fully appreciated why it might take so much time. After all, if I already had a pretty strong assumption of guilt, and I do not even live on the same continent, selecting people from the local area who have lived through the aftermath (protests and riots) and could put aside everything they had previously learnt, to focus purely on what was presented at trial, was not going to be easy.

There is a television programme, 'Would I lie to you?', where celebrities are given tall autobiographical tales to tell, some of which are true (though I suspect sometimes embellished in the telling) and where points are awarded to the two sides according to whether a person on one team misleads the other team into incorrectly determining 'truth or lie'. This came to mind in watching jury selection.

BBC Promotional shot for 'Would I lie to you?'

As the potential jurors were interviewed I found myself forming hunches of when the judge might excuse someone (who clearly was not going to be able to be fair to both sides) or when one of the attorneys might ask for a potential juror not to be selected to sit. Of course, there is a very big difference in nature between a popular entertainment show where some people act out the telling of a 'lie' (which is not really a lie, as there is no intention to mislead beyond the point of reveal within the game), and the very serious matter of jury selection, but the process of thinking about 'what will they think about this person's presentation?' in observing these different events seemed very similar.

Clearly, the Chauvin prosecution is a very high profile case, given the viral video of the incident and its importance (especially given its wider context as just one more in a continuing sequence of incidents with similar outcomes) in triggering worldwide condemnation of racism and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

However, my interest was piqued less by the highly charged public interest in this particular case (important as it is even in its own terms – a man has died in police 'care'; another may be incarcerated for 20 years or more depending on the verdict) than as the window into a real court. I was fascinated by aspects of the legal process. One feels very familiar with the U.S Court system though fictional works (Ally McBeal, The Good Wife/The Good Fight, etc.) but that is entertainment, and accounts of the legal process are very much condensed.

Interpreting data as evidence for a theory

I have always felt an interest in the law, and I think that is not surprising, given that the law acts as a set of formal guidelines (on process, and what is admissible and so forth), and the legal process is forensic, and evidence based, and adopts arguments to suggest how data can be construed as evidence within particular narratives of events.

This all seems parallel to science, and research more generally.

I have even used the law as an analogy in my teaching to suggest how one difference between the kind of theory-directed research which offers generalisable findings and is suitable for publication and context-directed research that may inform a practitioner's day-to-day decisions in the classroom as these can be seen to have a different burden of proof akin to the difference between criminal and civil courts (Taber, 2013). That is:

theory-directed research (claimed to be generalisable and worth reporting in the research literature) – should make its case beyond reason
context-directed research (such as action research carried out to address a local issue) – should make its case on the balance of probabilities, that is, (local) action should be informed by what the evidence suggests is most likely the case

Moreover, in many cases (and certainly very much in the Chauvin trial) science is heavily involved in making arguments and developing the cases for prosecution and/or defence.

The examination of witnesses in trials has a strong, if warped, parallel with research interviewing. The warping comes in because in research an interviewer should look to be unbiased and should be seeking 'the truth' as their informant understands it. In a trial, however, the lawyers for the two sides are each seeking to build a case, and so to ask questions that seek answers most in keeping with the scenario they are looking to establish as best representing the actual situation around an alleged crime.

So, there is much of interest in terms of how science is applied in expert testimony, but perhaps also some lessons from the advocates in how not to do science by seeking to re-shape all the data to fit one's hypothesis.

Work cited:

Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.

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An International Conference on Chemistry (Education and Research)?

Invitation to be an Honorable speaker, but perhaps at a dishonourable conference?

Keith S. Taber

Dear ***** ***** (Program Coordinator: 'Chemistry Education 2021')

Thank you for the invitation on behalf of the organising committee, to be the Honorable Speaker at your upcoming 4th International Conference on Chemistry Education and Research, and for sending me the link so I could check out the details of the conference. Thank you, also, for suggesting that I share my thoughts on the conference. As someone who has become quite concerned about academic standards, and, in particular, how new academics find their way in the current chaotic scholarly environment, I am happy to do that.

Given the excessive number of invitations I receive to write or edit or talk in areas where I clearly have no expertise, it was reassuring to be invited to talk on a conference that, on the face of it at least, is related to my own area of research.

Despite this I feel I must decline the invitation for a number of reasons.

A very practical reason is that you have invited me to talk at less than four weeks' notice. When I do present, I take this responsibility rather seriously, and would want to plan and prepare a talk carefully. Whilst it is not impossible to produce something of quality on a short time-scale, I have various existing commitments that would need to be put to one side to concentrate on preparing a talk on such a time-scale. I would need a very good reason to do that – and so would need to feel this was indeed an important place to present.

In that regard, you tell me this is a "prestigious" conference, but I am not convinced. This is not just because I feel I am familiar with the prestigious conferences in my area of work, and this is not one of them. This is also based on the evidence available in response to the kinds of questions I advise research students and new researchers to consider when evaluating conferences they might consider committing their time to attending.

The first point is that this conference seems to be organised by a commercial company, 'Conferenceseries LLC Ltd'. Whilst it is certainly not impossible for a serious and worthwhile conference to be convened by such an organisation, the more prestigious conferences are usually organised by professional societies and learned bodies and research associations in specific fields and disciplines. Your site refers to having "support from 1000 more scientific societies" which sounds at once both impressive, and yet vague. The link you give lists organisations publishing with 'OMICS International' – so is that another name for the same organisation?

More substantively, you refer to the invitation being from the organising committee. When I taught research methods sessions on presenting research I would recommend that students interrogated the membership lists of scientific or organising committees of conferences they were unsure about. Do they include well-known academics in the field – people who they are confident are leading names in the area and who suggest the conference has sufficient prestige to commit valuable time (and often money) to a meeting? I cannot find the list of the committee on the website. It does not seem to be there, suggesting you do not have a list of top people in the field prepared to be publicly associated with this conference. (If the listing is there and I have missed it, I would appreciate being directed to it.) This is often a sign of a predatory conference (that is one whose primary purpose is making money for its sponsors, not furthering knowledge.)

This impression is reinforced by details of the conference programme itself.

For one thing there is some ambiguity about the conference name and theme – something I associate with predatory conferences which are not managed and organised by experts in a field. How is 'Chemistry Education and Research' to be parsed? (n.b. "It is also an opportunity for researchers, chemistry professors, students to present and discuss the most recent advances and challenges on Chemistry Education and Chemistry Research.") The conference details are listed under the subheading 'CHEMISTRY EDUCATION 2021', and the first track is 'Chemistry Education' – but there are 21 other tracks which seem to be about other aspects of the chemical sciences, not education.

Under the first track, 'Chemistry Education' a number of specific 'sub-tracks' are listed:

Track 1-1 Developing theories Science and math ability
Track 1-2 Conduct research Perseverance
Track 1-3 Attending to data Analytical skills
Track 1-4 Curiosity Follow through skills
Track 1-5 Utilizing formulas Perform experiments
Track 1-6 Process data Observation and decision making
Track 1-7 Work independently and in groups Technological skills
Track 1-8 Oral and written communication Remain objective

I find it very difficult to believe that any experts in chemistry education would have devised that set of convoluted and incoherent themes for conference sessions. It reads more like a list that has been put together by a child asked to undertake an internet search in a subject that they have never studied. Presumably there are 16 items here which have been inadvertently paired-up on no particular basis. Indeed this list seems to appear, with exactly the same flaw, at the website of an American University where it is described as "interests and values … related to Chemistry Education". Surely your organisation has not simply copied and pasted from another website without anyone checking to see that that an already questionable list of features of undergraduate chemistry had lost half of its bullets?

Major to Career: Chemistry Education (Brigham Young University-Idaho website)

To return to your association with formal learned societies, I see you list an apparently impressive collection of international societies under the Chemistry Education track: – including the Royal Society of Chemistry (of which I am a Fellow, so I know it is not based in Belgium as your site suggests).

European Chemical Sciences
Society of Austrian Chemists
Royal Society of Chemistry
Chemical Society of France
Society of German Scientists
Association of Greek Chemists
Association of Hungarian Chemists
Italian Chemical Society
Polish Chemical Society
Portuguese Society of Chemistry
Slovak Chemical Society
Swedish Chemical Society
Swiss Chemical Society
Royal Dutch Chemical Society
Norwegian Chemical Society
American Chemical Society
American Institute of Chemists
American Institute of Chemical Engineers
Association of Analytical Communities
Canadian Society for Chemical Technology
Chemical Society of Japan
Chemical Research Society of India
Japan Association for International Chemical Information
Korean Chemical Society
The Chemical Society of Thailand

The implication would seem to be that these societies from around the world have some formal association with the conference and are, if not supporting it as such, at least offering it some credence by allowing their names to be used in this way. But I wonder if that would be correct?

Your site does not actually specify ANY formal linkage at this point – it just presents a list under the subheading 'Societies'. I therefore assume that although you would like it to be read as a form of accreditation or recommendation of your conference by relevant organisations, it is actually no such thing – rather the list should be read simply as societies whose members you would hope might be interested in your conference. Am I wrong?

In all then, I am unable to find any indicators here of the "prestigious" conference you suggest. Rather I see an inept and incoherent presentation that does not seem to have been developed or informed by experts in the field. Indeed, there are several signs that commonly indicate the kind of predatory conference that is designed to take money from delegates who are misled into signing up for something that has a veneer of academic respect, or who choose to share in the pretence as they wish to expand their own c.v./résumés with conference presentations (and perhaps cannot get their papers accepted at well-respected conferences) and so enter into the conceit and collude with the organisers to mislead others who may assume from the title that this is indeed a prestigious academic conference.

You will appreciate that in the circumstances I would not wish to attend your conference as an honorable (or even honoured) speaker, both as in my evaluation this would not be a good use of my time, and as my involvement could be used to mislead other more junior colleagues in the field to assume this was a conference they should consider investing in and attending themselves.

Best wishes

Keith

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Temperature is measuring the heat of something …

Keith S. Taber

Image by Peter Janssen from Pixabay

Bill was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. Bill, then in Y7, was telling me about work he had done in his science class on the states of matter, and what happened to the particles that made up objects during a change of state. He suggested that "when a solid goes to a liquid, the heat gives the particles energy to spread about, and then when its a liquid, it's got even more energy to spread out into a gas". Later in the interview I followed up to find out what Bill understood by heat:

Now you mentioned earlier, something about heat. When you were talking about the experiment you did.
Yeah.
Yeah. So tell me about the heat again, what's, how does the heat get involved in this solids, liquids and gases?
When I heat, when heat comes to a solid, it will have, erm, a point where it will go down to a liquid,
Okay,
A melting points of the, the object.
Do you know what heat is? If you had a younger brother or sister, and they said to you, 'you are good at science, what's heat?'
I'm not sure how I can explain it, 'cause it's, it can be measured at different temperature, it can be measured at temperature, erm, by degrees Celsius, degrees Fahrenheit, and – I'm not really sure how I could explain what it is, but, I know it can be measured and changed.
So is it the same thing as temperature, do you think, or is it something different?
Erm, I think temperature is measuring the heat of something.
So they're related, they're to do with each other?
Yeah.
But they are not exactly the same?
No.

Bill appreciated that heat and temperature were not the same, but was not entirely clear on the relationship. Distinguishing between heat and temperature is a recognised challenge in teaching and learning physics.

We commonly introduce temperature as a measure of how hot or cold something is – which relates to phenomena that all students have experienced (even if our actual perception of temperature is pretty crude). Heating is a process, and heat is sometimes considered to be energy being transferred due to a difference of temperature (although energy is a very abstract notion and there is much discussion in science teaching circles about the best language to be used in teaching about energy).

Put simply, it is reasonable to suggest a very hot object would have a high temperature, but not that it contained a lot of heat. So, it is strictly wrong to say that "temperature is measuring the heat of something" (and it would be more correct, if not very technical, to say instead "temperature is measuring the hotness of something – how hot something is"). Perhaps the idea Bill wanted to express was more about the heat that one can feel radiating form a hot object (but likely that is an interpretation suggested by the canonical science use of 'heat'?)

This is one of those situations where a student has an intuition or idea which is basically along the right lines, in the sense of knowing there is an association or link, but strictly not quite right – so, an alternative conception. In a teaching situation it might be useful to know if a student actually has a firm conception that temperature measures the amount of heat, or (as seems to be the case with Bill) this is more a matter of using everyday language – which tends to be less precise and rigid than technical language – to express a vague sense. If a student has a firm notion that hot objects contain heat, and this is not identified and responded to, then this could act as a grounded learning impediment as it will likely distort how teaching is understood.

The teacher is charged with shifting learners away from their current ways of thinking and talking, towards using the abstractions and technical language of the subject, such as the canonical relationship between heat and temperature – and this often means beginning by engaging with the learners' ideas and language. Arguably the use of the term 'heat capacity' (and 'specific heat capacity') which might suggest something about the amount of heat something can hold, is unhelpful here.

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I could not have been born to different parents…

A reflection on free will, determinism, justice, ignorance, and identity

Keith S. Taber

This morning I listened to a really interesting podcast on 'Free will, retribution and just deserts', with Prof. Gregg D. Caruso being interviewed about his ideas by David Rutledge.

The question of free will (as opposed to a rigid determinism) is one of those matters that most people seem to instinctively feel they know the answer to: we all feel we have free will. Why did I decide to write this blog rather than do something else this evening? Clearly I think that I freely decided to do this because this was something I wanted to do. Yet, that it feels like a free choice, means little. We may also think that life would lack any meaning in the absence of free will, and that being free agents is a much more attractive proposition; but wanting something to be the case is not much of an argument for thinking it is so.

If everything is predetermined (perhaps by the initial conditions of the big bang plus the fixed laws of the universe) then those people who think they have free will must have no choice but to think so (as it was determined), just as those who (correctly, in this scenario) reject free will cannot be given credit for this insight. (Actually, I doubt anyone really believes that they do not have free will, not even any off-duty philosophers, as I am not sure how one can live one's life that way – as just an observer of the automaton that others identify with you, as a viewer of the unfolding movie that is your life?)

How much is ending up here an accident of birth rather than the outcome of deliberate 'free' choices? (Image by jraffin from Pixabay)

I found much of Caruso's argument convincing, in particular in relation to the justification of judicial incarceration. My moral instincts are that if the state takes away someone's liberty this should be because it is acting to protect society or its vulnerable members, and not as an act of retribution.

Caruso argued that we should take note of how so many people in the prison system have mental health issues or addictions, and he pointed to the strong associations between convictions and poverty or other limiting or damaging socio-economic conditions. This raises issues of social justice, and when treatment and rehabilitation are more productive responses to crime than punishment per se. Caruso was primarily using the example of the situation in the United States, where he suggested most inmates have mental health issues, but his general points apply more widely.

The lottery of life

However, there was one point at which I became uneasy with the argument, where Caruso brought in what is sometimes referred to as the "there, but for the grace of God, go I" position. If we accept that people born in poverty and squalor, or brought up in neglect or abuse, are those most likely to enter the criminal justice system as offenders, then those of us fortunate enough to have been born into relative privilege should acknowledge how lucky we were in the lottery of life, for "there, there, but for the grace of God (or, indeed, pure chance), go I".

Caruso noted:

"I could just have easily been born into low scoio-economic status, or homelessness, or born with a mental illness".
Gregg D. Caruso

Image by Michelle Maria from Pixabay
Image by Herbert Hansen from Pixabay

I know exactly what he means, and agree we should acknowledge our advantages over those less lucky than ourselves, but, strictly, I cannot accept that argument.

I think the argument can only work if one believes (a) in an immaterial soul, which is only housed in the body during mortal life, and could have just as easily journeyed through life in a different body; and (b) even if that soul may impact on the actions of that body in its environment, it is is not changed by those experiences; and (c) that this soul is the true 'I', the identity of the person who refers to themselves as I (in "I could just have easily been born into…"). Of course, some people may believe just that. But I suspect most people who do believe in some kind of dualism involving something like an eternal soul imagine it is able to (and perhaps even intended to) learn from its incarnation(s).

Who am I?

Even having the debate assumes that one accepts that it makes sense to acknowledge a discrete and relatively stable 'I' (and there are plenty of commentators who feel that this individual self identify soon starts to dissolve when examined too closely). I am happy to acknowledge a kind of distinct and not-overly-plastic 'I', as I think I know what I mean by 'I', and my experiences of that self seems stable and discrete enough to reify it. My self certainly changes, but not so radically and quickly that I awake a stranger to myself (sic) each morning.

But then this 'I' could not just have easily been born into low scoio-economic status, or homelessness, or born with a mental illness.

I was very lucky to be born in a country at peace, in an open society that had a national health service and free education for all; and to loving, caring and supportive parents who were never violent or intoxicated. Money was tight when I was a young child, and the flat where I spent my first few years might not have passed health and safety inspections by today's standards: but we never went hungry, or had to wear torn or dirty clothes; and we slept in proper beds in a secure building; and there was coal for the fire each winter's morning. (For younger readers, coal is a carbon-rich combustible rock which was delivered to homes and used as fuel in open fires in the distant past – releasing filthy dust when handled, and producing choking, polluting smoke when burnt. But, once upon a time, even the rich used it for home heating!) My father always had at least one part-time job alongside his full-time employment to make ends met, but he still always found time to spend with my sister and I when he could be at home. Yes, in the lottery of life, I was very lucky.

Could it have been different?

As I started this post talking about determinism, I should acknowledge that if everything is predetermined, then clearly it could not have been any different! Although I cannot logically refute this possibility I behave as though it has been rejected.

It would seem

a) if I do not have free will then I am only appearing to make choices about what to type (and whether to think I have free will), and even if there was any point worrying about this, whether I do worry about it or not is totally out of my control;

and

b) if I do have free will then I gain nothing by assuming, or acting, as though it is otherwise.

(That is, there is a kind of parallel to Pascal's wager going on here – if you have free will than a bet on anything other than free will looses everything; and if you do not have free will then there is no actual bet to be had, only the illusion of one, and nothing more can be lost).

So, assuming that the course of my life has been the outcome of the choices I have made, and those of my parents, and my friends, and my teachers, and everyone else who's decisions have ever had any influence on my life, then the self I identify with today has been constructed through my experiences of the world, impacted by others, and iteratively built up as I reacted to situations by developing my values and personality; which then influenced (i) my actions and interactions in the world, and so (ii) others' responses to me, and so (iii) the experiences I drew upon in developing that self further…

This is of course just a variation on the constructivist account of learning as incremental, interpretive, and iterative – as we build up our conceptual structures, our mental models of the world, our perspectives, our worldviews, our value systems, our ideologies, our beliefs, our attitudes, our habits, our metacogniti0n, our preferences, our epistemological commitments, and so forth (and these all interact of course) we build up our selves. Indeed, what is the self, if not the gestalt, or perhaps the subsuming system, of these facets of our selves?

Counterfactual 'me'?

So, if my parents had neglected or abused the child who grew to be me then that child would have become someone different to the person I am now, someone else. Even if I had not ended up incarcerated 'at her majesty's pleasure' [sic, a term which reeks of retribution rather than restoration], I very much doubt I would have ever been admitted to a University, or become a teacher, or met my wife (when she decided to do an evening class in physics), or got to teach at Cambridge…

This was Caruso's point, of course, that 'there, but for the grace of God…' – but it would not (by definition) be me who was someone else, as I (the person writing this now) would never have existed. How different that other person would have been is an open question, but I suspect substantially and significantly different.

The sins of the fathers…

But then my parents could not have neglected me or abused me. I do not mean that the people who became my parents could not, under different circumstances, have become very different people and so different kinds of parents – of course that might have been possible. But those hypothetical people are not the parents I know – they would have been quite different people.

If I had been born in another country… but then no, I could not have been.

Perhaps, under different circumstances, my parents might have emigrated before I was born (not so unlikely as relatives emigrated to Australia and New Zealand when I was young). But my parents, as they developed in their actual circumstances, were not those people, and if the people who became my parents had, under other circumstances, under different life experiences and influences, moved abroad before having children, then again, the self I am would not have developed.

The lottery of making life

Indeed, the resulting person might have been very different. After all, I am, not just the result of a social environment, but the unfolding in dialogue with that environment of a biological potential that is genetic. My particular set of genes is not only a unique combination because of the unique genotypes of each of my parents, but is one of myriad potential unique permutations of crossing those two unique genotypes – one particular outcome of the lottery of making life.

If the people who became my parents had emigrated to another country (or even moved to another town) before having children then I would almost certainly not have been born. The number of possible genotypes that could have resulted from crossing my parents (so to speak) is immense. The chances of my genotype becoming the basis of an implanted zygote, and leading to a child, is minuscule (except in the deterministic scenario when it is 1, but I have chosen to (/been predetermined to) disregard that scenario). If my mother had conceived somewhere else – it would not have been me that was conceived.

For, without wishing to be insensitive here, if conception had taken place the day before I was actually conceived, or the day after, it would (almost certainly) not have led to the same union of gametes, and the same me. Indeed, if conception had been delayed a few minutes to make a cup of tea, brush hair for longer, clean teeth… or perhaps had been brought forward by not brushing hair or teeth for as long… then if conception had still occurred (by no means assured) my genotype would almost certainly not have arisen, but would likely have remained one of the vast multitude of possible human genotypes that has never been called upon to guide (or channel, or afford) the biological development of a person.

Given that, you can probably anticipate how I might respond to the hypothetical "had I been born to different parents" – it is a meaningless question. I could not have been born to different parents. We are all very unique. We are also very lucky to be here at all.

Had, say, Henry VIII not fallen out with the Catholic Church, or had Luther's theses blown away, or if Alfred had taken more care over the cakes, I almost certainly would not have been here at all, in the sense that my genotype would likely have never have been expressed (given that it only takes a trivial change in a small domestic detail in the preceding generation to abort or trigger a specific conception, think about the knock-on effects over many generations once one conception is changed), and I certainly would not be here as the person I am today. (And if by some strange fluke of extreme improbability – anything that is not impossible could happen – a baby with 'my' genotype had been born in Victorian England, or even the same time as me but in a Welsh mining village (where they extracted those rocks we all used to burn), then despite some likely similarities, my 'twin' would not be me. After all, even actual 'identical' twins born on the same day in the same place to the same parents are not actually identical (e.g., they develop different fingerprints.)

The veil of ignorance

So the 'there, but for the grace of God, go I' argument does not really make sense to me ,as it should really be 'there, but for the Grace of God, goes someone else' – which rather lacks the same rhetorical impact.

However, I was recently listening to a different programme where Rawls's theory of justice was being discussed, and his notion of the veil of ignorance. The argument here is that people should judge what seems fair on the basis of having no knowledge of their own position in the pertinent social system.

So, perhaps at the end of a science lesson a teacher complains that the practical apparatus and materials have not been properly put away. The teacher offers the class a choice: everyone can miss the start of their break, till everything is cleaned and tided away; or, she will draw lots and select six students to do all the cleaning and tidying, and the rest can go to their break on time. As long as the class decide their preference BEFORE the teacher draws lots, they remain behind the veil of ignorance.

So, in the context of the penal system, the principle suggests that, for example, one needs to decide whether or not it is just and appropriate that someone who has been convicted for the third time of a minor drug offence should be sentenced to many years of imprisonment (at great public expense) before one knows whether one is lucky enough to be brought into the world in a loving, comfortable home, or born to a childhood of poverty and neglect.

Of course, that is, in principle, one should decide from the other side of the veil – we cannot actually regress to that state of ignorance. (Imagine that science teacher first telling the class which six students would be assigned the detention, but then asking the class to chose between the two options without taking that into account!)

In practical terms, this seems little different to Caruso's formulation, as both involve an impossible hypothesis (being born in different circumstances but being the same person; making an intellectual judgment before being born at all!)

Yet I think there is an important difference from the perspective of science education.

Asking someone to make a judgement on what is just without regard to their particular circumstances, whilst sensible in theory, is surely obviously impossible in practice: we cannot put aside knowledge that is essential to us, so it clearly can only be a kind of thought experiment where people do their best to disregard knowledge that actually frames or permeates every aspect of their thinking.

From my perspective, as outlined above, the same should be true of the "what if you had born born in poverty/to abusive parents/in a totalitarian state, etcetera." formulation as that is equally non-viable, and can only be a hypothetical argument. Yet, I am not sure sure that is so obvious to some people. There is something of a common notion that a person is their genes, or at least their genes determine them. Science suggests otherwise.

These two individuals share a lot of genes – but not all their genes! (Image by klimkin from Pixabay)

Whilst it is certainly true that with different genes 'you' will be a different person (and indeed with enough different genes… 'you' may be a carrot – that is, with different genes, there is no you, but someone/thing else), but it is certainly not true that someone with your set of genes will necessarily be the person you are. Your genotype had the potential to support the development of a vast range of different people (albeit that range is still a tiny region of the even more enormous array of possible people the general human genome could give expression to).

Unless, that is, my wager is lost and everything is determined. Then you must be you, but not just because you could not have had a different genotype, but also because that genotype could not have been expressed in a different environment, so the developing person that became you could not have had any different formative experiences either.

Sources cited:

Rutledge, D. (2021, 31 Jan). Free will, retribution and just deserts. The Philosopher's Zone.

Watts, R. (2021, 21st Jan). John Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice'. Arts & Ideas.

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A tangible user interface for teaching fairy tales about chemical bonding

Once upon a time there was a nometal atom that was an electron short of a full outer shell. "I wish I had an octet" she said, "if only I knew a nice metal atom that might donate their extra electron to me"… Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay

an invitation to read — Once upon a time there was a nometal atom that was an electron short of a full outer shell. "I wish I had an octet" she said, "if only I knew a nice metal atom that might donate their extra electron to me"… Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay

So this account is a mixture of the generally correct; the potentially misleading; and the downright wrong.

Agrawal and colleagues describe an ingenuous apparatus they had put together so that students can physically manipulate tokens to see ionic bond formation represented. This looks like something that younger secondary children would really enjoy.

They also report a small-scale informal evaluation of a classroom test of the apparatus with an unspecified number of students, reporting very positive responses. The children generally found the apparatus easy to use, the information it represented easy to understand, and they thought it helped them learn about chemical [ionic] compound formation. So this seems very successful.

However, what did it help them learn?

The teaching model

"For example, when a token representing [a] sodium atom is placed on the table top, its valence shell (outermost shell) with 1 revolving valence electron is displayed around the token. When the student places a chlorine atom on the table, its valence shell along with 7 revolving valence electrons is displayed. The electron from the sodium atom gets transferred to the chlorine atom. +1 charge appears on the sodium atom due to loss of electron and -1 charge appears on the chlorine atom due to gain of electron. Both form a stable compound. The top bar on the user interface turns green to show success and displays the name of the stable compound so formed (sodium chloride, in this case). The valence shell of the atoms also turns green to show a stable compound."

Agrawal et al., 2013 (no page numbers)

Which sounds impressive, except NaCl is not formed by electron transfer, and with the ChemicAble the resulting structure is a single Na⁺-Cl^– ion pair, which does not represent the structure of the NaCl compound, and indeed would not be a stable structure.

Does it matter if children are taught scientific fairy tales?

The innovation likely motivated learners. And the authors seem to be basing their 'ChemicAble' on the curriculum models set out in the model science books produced by the Indian National Council of Educational Research and Training. So, the authors have produced something that helps children learn the science curriculum in that context,and so presumably what students will subsequently be examined on. Given that, it seems churlish to point out that what is being taught is scientifically wrong.

So, I find it hard to be critical of the authors, but I do wonder why governments want children to learn scientific fairy tales that are nonsense. The electron transfer model of ionic bonding seems to be popular with teachers, and received well by learners, so if the aim of education is to find material to teach that we can then test children on (so they can be graded, rated, sequences, selected), what is the problem? After all, I am a strong advocate for the idea that what we teach in school science is usually, necessarily, a simplification of the science – and indeed is basically a set of models – and not some absolute account of the universe.

Here the children, the teacher and the researchers have all put a lot of effort into helping learners acquire a scientifically incorrect account of ionic bonding. We think children should learn about the world at the molecular, naometre scale as this is such an important part of chemistry as a science. Yet, to my mind, if we are going to ask children to put time and effort into learning abstract models of the structure of nature at submicroscopic levels, even though we know this is challenging for them, then, although we need to work with simplified models, these should at least be intellectually honest models, and not accounts that we know are completely inauthentic and do not reflect the science. This is why I have been so critical of the incoherence and errors in the chemistry in the English National Curriculum (Taber, 2020).

Otherwise, education is reduced to a game for its own sake, and we may as well ask students to learn random Latin texts, or the plots of Grimms' Fairy Tales, or even the chemical procedures obscured by disguised reagents and allegorical language in alchemical texts, and then test them on how much they retain.

Actually, no, this learning of false models is worse than that, because learning these incorrect accounts confuses students and impedes their learning of the canonical scientific models if they later go on to study the subject further. So, if it is important that children learn something about ionic bonding, let's teaching something that is scientifically authentic and stop offering fairly tales about atoms wanting to fill their shells.

Sources cited:

Agrawal, M., Jain, M., Luthra, V., Thariyan, A., & Sorathia, K. (2013). ChemicAble: Tangible interaction approach for learning chemical bonding. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 11th Asia Pacific Conference on Computer Human Interaction.
Butts, B., & Smith, R. (1987). HSC Chemistry Students' Understanding of the Structure and Properties of Molecular and Ionic Compounds. Research in Science Education, 17(1), 192-201.
Taber, K. S. (1994). Misunderstanding the Ionic Bond. Education in Chemistry, 31(4), 100-103.
Taber, K. S. (1997). Student understanding of ionic bonding: molecular versus electrostatic thinking? School Science Review, 78(285), 85-95.
Taber, K. S. (2013). A common core to chemical conceptions: learners' conceptions of chemical stability, change and bonding. In G. Tsaparlis & H. Sevian (Eds.), Concepts of Matter in Science Education (pp. 391-418). Dordrecht: Springer.
Taber, K. S. (2020). Conceptual confusion in the chemistry curriculum: exemplifying the problematic nature of representing chemical concepts as target knowledge. Foundations of Chemistry, 22, 309-334. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-019-09346-3

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The relationship between science and religion: A contentious and complex issue facing gynaecology and obstetrics

Is 'Gynae & Obs' really the kind of specialism where experts should be informed by amateurs?

Keith S. Taber

The 9th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics sounds like a pretty serious sort of conference where medical practitioners and researchers might wish to focus on the latest developments in research and practice.

Recollecting medical training

So, on the face of it, I am probably not an obvious candidate to be an invited speaker. My best qualification for this role is sharing a flat for a year with two medical students undertaking their clinical post-graduate work, giving me some insight into that community.

I would say they were training to become 'doctors', but at Nottingham, at least, those successfully completing their BSc then proceeded to undertake a carousel of specialist placements (each about 6 weeks, as I recall) to work towards two further bachelor's degrees, of surgery, and medicine.

This was a fascinating process for an outsider (I was in my final year of a chemistry degree) to observe, as each specialism seemed to involve about a month or so of intense experience working as part of a medical (or surgical) team – in effect working in legitimate peripheral practice as the most junior members of a professional community headed by a consultant; followed by some days of exam. preparation (and, typically, very little sleep); and then finally a few days of (depending on the individual) either intense sleep, or, more commonly, hedonistic-induced stupor.

The process seemed to be a cycle of extreme extended stress, punctuated with occasional release, and designed mainly to ensure those making it through could cope with anything later practice might present to them. I seem to recall that the 'gynae and obs' placement offered particular challenges as the student was expected to participate in a minimum number of deliveries during their time with the team – which relied on the expectant mothers and due babies fitting with the training schedule, something that could not be taken for granted.

My talk will be one of the highlights of the congress

Despite my recollections of time 'in the field' (and a flat shared with medics seemed to fit that description at times) as an informal anthropologist, I am still not convened that qualifies me to talk to a conference of gynaecologists and obstetricians. So, the invitation from the programme coordinator of the 9th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics seemed a little misplaced.

Whilst it is nice to be told that:

"You are an internationally acclaimed scholar assuredly and have made a great contribution to this field. Your participation as Speaker will be among the highlights of the conference."

that does not make it an accurate evaluation.

It was suggested that I might

"present a talk on 'The Relationship Between Science and Religion: A Contentious and Complex Issue Facing Science Education' "

which would be feasible, as I have written a book chapter with the very title "The Relationship Between Science and Religion: A Contentious and Complex Issue Facing Science Education"!

What worries me is that, should I present on that topic – and the invitation suggests the Congress is not virtual, but in Lisbon in July; whereas I am in the third English 'lockdown' of the current pandemic and have not left Cambourne in about 6 months, so that does not look a likely opportunity – although the talk might be a highlight for me, listening to someone present about science and religion in science education would, at best, be light entertainment for most of the "Doctors, Nurses, Professors, Scientists, Researchers, Students, and other healthcare professionals" keen to learn about the latest developments in Gynae & Obs.

I can only conclude that despite its impressive title, the 9th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics is another of those predatory conferences that have become legion in recent years, where extracting conference fees to profit the organisers is the main purpose, not the sharing of scholarship, research and good practice.

(Read about 'Conferences and poor academic practice')

Update at 28th April

A further invitation came today – although strangely the 9th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF GYNAECOLOGY AND OBSTETRICS (ICGO-2022) seems to have been re-branded as… The 8th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics-2022.

The programme appears to be filling up. Presumably enough of these invitations are getting to people who are actually in the field who are enticed and consider this a genuine specialist conference. At least, the names and titles seem authentic:

Vitamin D supplementation during Pregnancy: What Do We Know?: Dr. David F. Lewis, Professor and Dean of School of Medicine, Louisiana State University Health Shreveport, USA

Nomogram based on Radiomics Analysis of Primary Breast Cancer Ultrasound Images: Prediction of Axillary Lymph Node Tumor Burden in Patients: Dr. Qingli Zhu, Professor, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, China

Hypertensive Complications of Pregnancy in Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD): Dr. Natalia Kozlovskaya, Professor, RUDN University, Russia

Assay for Fetal Hemoglobin RBCs: Impact of IVD Regulations and Expanded Applications into Sickle Cell Disease Management: Dr. Bruce H. Davis, Professor, University of Porto, Portugal

Fetal Cardiac Alteration in Intrauterine Growth Restriction: Dr. Fabio Ruiz Moraes, Professor, Federal University of Tocantins, Brazil

Labor Induction of Oral Misoprostol Solution for Term Pregnancy: Dr. Xiu Wang, Director of Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Affiliated Guangren Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, China

Nuchal Cord Is Not Associated with Prolonged Labor or Higher Cesarean Section Rate: Dr. Kimitoshi Imai, Director, Imai OB/GYN Clinic, Japan

Umbilical Vein Varix vs Persistent Extrahepatic Vitelline Vein Aneurysm" Dr. Il Woon Ji, Professor, Chungbuk national University, South Korea

Stimulation Options for Poor Responders Based on New Insights in Follicular Development: Dr. Peter Kovacs, Medical Director, Kaali Institute IVF Center, Hungary

"Seat to Eat" – Infant Feeding Position and Prevention of Ear & Respiratory Disease: Dr. Efrat Danino, Director of the Academic Campus of Nursing, Shamir Medical Center, Israel

Platelet Aggregation and Acetylsalicylic Acid Treatment during Pregnancy in Women with Recurrent Miscarriages: Dr. Lennart Blomqvist, University of Gothenburg, Sodra Alvsborg Hospital, Sweden

Isolated Large Vulvar Varicose Veins in a Non-pregnant Woman: Dr. Abdullah M. Alwahbi, Associate Professor, King Saud University for Health Sciences, Saudi Arabia

This only makes me even more convinced that those who are attending really do not want to hear about "The Relationship Between Science and Religion: A Contentious and Complex Issue Facing Science Education"!

Update at 28th July

The International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics seem keen for me to give a speech at their meeting, as I've had a further follow-up invitation:

It is clearly not as obvious to the conference organisers, as it seems to me, that 'The Relationship Between Science and Religion: A Contentious and Complex Issue Facing Science Education' does not really fit in the remit of a meeting on Gynecology & Obstetrics. So, I've asked for clarification:

Dear Cathy

Thank you for your kind and creative invitation on behalf of the Congress committee for me to give a speech at The 8th International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetrics-2022.

You have suggested that I might talk about "The Relationship Between Science and Religion: A Contentious and Complex Issue Facing Science Education" which would indeed, in principle, be a feasible title for me to talk to.

However, you also tell me that "The purpose of the three-day conference is to highlight the innovative treatments of Gynecology & Obstetrics diseases" and that "the program will focus on topics such as General Gynecology, Gynecologic Oncology, Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Obstetric Medicines, and Reproductive Medicine, etc". Those themes seem eminently sensible for a conference on gynaecology and obstetrics.

Perhaps I am being unhelpfully linear in my thinking, but I am struggling to see why a talk on the relationship between science and religion in the context of science teaching might contribute to delegates' discourse about the innovative treatments of gynaecological and obstetric conditions. Perhaps you would kind enough to explain the link? I would like to think that delegates might be fascinated by the mooted topic, which is of course of great importance in science education around the world. But I also suspect that colleagues interested in learning about innovative treatments of diseases, and giving up time from their busy schedules as clinicians, researchers and practitioners concerned with gynaecology and obstetrics, might feel that the conference programme would be better populated with talks about, well, "innovative treatments of gynaecology & obstetrics diseases".

So, I would very much appreciate learning more about your thinking about why the committee believes that my giving an invited speech would be especially pertinent at a conference on gynaecology and obstetrics. You will appreciate I need to protect my limited time and energy, and whilst I am open to giving occasional talks presenting on topics where I have some expertise to audiences with a genuine interest in my work, I would need some persuading that the delegates at your conference would have any professional interest in this topic. The International Congress of Gynaecology and Obstetric committee (which seems to include many eminent people in the field*) would seem to have identified a connection here between my work and gynaecology and obstetrics that I have been missing. I look forward to learning about their insightful rationale in issuing this imaginative invitation.

Best wishes

Keith

I will see if I get any kind of explanation by way of response.

* I do not personally know people in this field, but the conference website [https://www.bitcongress.com/icgo2022-europe/ProgramCommittee.asp] gives a long list of people who seem to be genuine professioanals in areas related to reproductive health (as listed below). A websearch of several of these names suggests they do serious and important work, and it seems unlikely such people would knowingly give their names to give credence to a predatory conference.

Dr. A. A. W. Peters, Professor, Leiden University Medical Centre, the Netherlands
Dr. Amy S. Yee, Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine, USA
Dr. Brennan D. Peterson, Assistant Professor, Chapman University, USA
Dr. Chan Celia Hoi-yan, Assistant Professor, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Dr. Denise Pugash, Clinical Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada
Dr. Denise Tahara, Assistant Professor, New York Medical College, USA
Dr. Eric L. Jenison, Chairman, Akron General Medical Center, USA
Dr. Esther Uña Cidón, Professor, Clinical University Hospital of Valladolid, Spain
Dr. Fabio Ruiz Moraes, Professor, Federal University of Tocantins, Brazil
Dr. Faye Cagayan, Associate Professor, University of the Philippines Manila College of Medicine, USA
Dr. Gabor T Kovacs, Professor, Box Hill Hospital, Australia
Dr. Gary R Morrow, Professor, University of Rochester Cancer Center, USA
Dr. Geoffrey W. Cundiff, Professor, Head, University of British Columbia, Canada
Dr. Gita Radhakrishnan, Professor, University College of Medical Sciences, India
Dr. Göran Westman, Professor, Umeå University, Sweden
Dr. Graeme Morgan, Associate Professor, Sydney IVF, Australia
Dr. Hassan Noman Sallam, Professor, Alexandria University, Egypt
Dr. Horacio Croxatto, Professor, Chilean Institute of Reproductive Medicine, Chile
Dr. Jennifer Salerno, Assistant Professor, University of Michigan School of Nursing, USA
Dr. Joann Bodurtha, Visiting Professor, Pediatric Geneticist, Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, USA
Dr. John Yovich, Director, PIVET Medical Centre, Australia
Dr. Joong Sub Choi, Professor, Director, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Korea
Dr. Jürgen Engel, President, Aeterna Zentaris Inc. USA
Dr. Kathie Records, Associate Professor, Arizona State University, USA
Dr. Kenneth Foster, Associate Professor, Texas Woman's University, USA
Dr. Kristi Watson Kelley, Associate Clinical Professor, Clinical Pharmacist, Auburn University, USA
Dr. Le Mai Tu, Professor, University of Sherbrooke, Canada
Dr. Lily Wu, Professor, David Geffen School of Medicine at University of California, USA
Dr. Lisa McKenna, Associate Professor, Monash University, Australia
Dr. Mahesh Shetty, Clinical Professor, Chief Physician, Women's Center for Breast Care & MRI, Baylor College of Medicine, USA
Dr. Mary L. Chavez, Professor, Texas AM Health Science Center, USA
Dr. Margaret Kemeny, Professor, Queens Hospital Center, USA
Dr. Matthew W. Gillman, Professor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, USA
Dr. Mehmet Uzumcu, Associate Professor, The State University of New Jersey, USA
Dr. Meleesa Schultz, Senior Resident Medical Officer, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Australia
Dr. Mike A Smith, Professor, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Dr. Maurice Bucagu, Medical Officer, World Health Organization, Switzerland
Dr. Molina B. Dayal, Associate Professor, George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, USA
Dr. Padma T Uppala, Associate Professor, Loma Linda University, USA
Dr. Peter Temple-Smith, Associate Professor, Monash University, Australia
Dr. Red M Alinsod,Program Director and Chairman, South Coast Urogynecology, USA
Dr. Rodney E Phillips, Professor, Oxford NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, UK
Dr. Ruola Ning, Radiology Professor, Electrical and Comp University of Rochester, USA
Dr. Sabine de Muinck Keizer, Associate Professor, ErasmusMC/Sophia Children's Hospital, The Netherlands
Dr. Sandhya Pruthi, Associate Professor, Mayo Clinic, USA
Dr. Shabih U. Hasan, Professor, University of Calgary, Canada
Dr. Suling Liu, Research Investigator, University of Michigan, USA
Dr. Terence H Hull, Professor, Australian National University, Australia
Dr. Terry Lichtor, Associate Professor, Department of Neurosurgery, Rush University Medical Center, USA
Dr. Therese Hesketh, Professor, University College London, UK
Dr. Tim Mould, Consultant Gynaecologist, Royal Free Hospital, UK
Dr. Xi Huang, Professor, Department of Environmental Medicine, New York University School of Medicine and NYU Cancer Institute, USA
Dr. Xinguang Chen, Professor, Wayne State University, USA
Dr. Ying Huang, Associate Professor, State University of New York, Upstate Medical University, USA
Dr. Yihong Wang, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School, USA
Dr. Yunhan Hong, Professor, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Dr. Yung-Feng Yen, Director, Taipei City Hospital, Taiwan
Dr. Zhonghong Eric Guan, Head, Emerging Market Business Unit at Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, USA

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Not me, I'm just an ugly chemist

Keith S. Taber

Actress **Francesca Tu** playing an 'ugly chemist', apparently.

The 1969 film 'The Chairman' (apparently released in the UK as 'The Most Dangerous Man in the World') was just shown on the TV. I had not seen it before, but when I noticed it was on I vaguely recalled having heard something about it suggesting it was a film worth watching, so thought I would give it a try. And it had "that nice Gregory Peck" in it, which I seem to recall was the justification given for one of my late wife's sweet little Aunties going to see 'The Omen' (wasn't that also about the The Most Dangerous Man in the World?).

Nobel prize winner AND man of action

Dr John Hathaway (played by Gregory Peck): scientist and international man of mystery

Peck plays a Nobel laureate chemist, so I got interested. He had received a letter from a Chinese scientist, an old mentor who had worked with him at Princeton, warning him not to go to visit him in China, which (a) piqued his interest as (i) he had had no contact with the colleague for a decade, and (ii) he had no plans to go to China, and (b) told us viewers he would be off to China.

Peck's character, Hathaway, is an American who is currently a visiting professor at the University of in London. He contacts his embassy, suspecting there must be something of international significance in the message.

Hathaway's love interest (played by Anne Heywood) is seen teaching in the biophysics department

It transpires that this Nobel prize winning chemist had some kind of background in "the game" – intelligence work (of course! Well, at least this gets away from the stuffy stereotype of the scientist who never leaves the lab.), but had reached an epiphany three years earlier when his wife had been killed in a road accident while he was driving, and the experience of being with her as she died had led to him deciding that every life was unique and precious (as he later explained to Mao Zedong, the eponymous Chairman of the title) and he would no longer take on a job that would oblige him to kill. (Later in the film Hathaway seemed to have forgotten his high principles when he accepted a pistol as he made an escape in a stolen armoured car.) The intelligence communities had become aware that China had identified a natural product that could be extracted in tiny quantities, an enzyme which allowed any crop to be grown under any conditions.

The film seemed to be intended to make some serious points about detente, the cold war, the cultural revolution and the cult of Mao, and political and moral imperatives.

It is the responsibility of all to cultivate themselves, and study Marxism-Leninism deeply. / [Thinks: Sure, as soon as we've finished cultivating this rice.]

The allies argue that China will keep the new discovery to itself and use it to bring developing countries with food shortages into its sphere of influence, and Hathaway seems motivated to ensure all of humanity should share the benefits, thus he accepts the mission to go to China; later Mao agrees to provide a written promise that if Hathaway helps in the research then he can leave China at any time he likes and take with him whatever information he wishes to share with the world.

For the rest of the film to make any sense, Hathaway and the viewer have to assume that the promise and document will not be honoured (and it seems to be assumed that a character simply suggesting this is all Hathaway, or indeed any of us, need to be convinced of this). Yet, (SPOILER ALERT) when Hathaway is safely back in London, and has decoded the structure, he is told that the Western authorities have decided not to share the discovery.

I was not sure what a young audience who do not remember the context might make of some aspects of the film. We are told that the operation to obtain the enzyme, operation Minotaur *, has according to the US officer in charge cost half a billion federal dollars (which seems a lot for 1969, even allowing for some exaggeration) and was supported by the UK with a contribution a British intelligent officer suggests was likely "two pounds ten" (i.e., £2.50).

I wondered whether Chinese agents actually operated so easily in moving into and out of Hong Kong as is suggested, and there was some interesting brief news footage playing on a hotel television suggesting (British) Hong Kong police were responding to civil unrest in a way that does not seem so different from contemporary reports under the already notorious 2020 Hong Kong national security law.

Anyway, I will try and avoid too many plot spoilers, but suffice to say I was interested and intrigued in how matters would pan out for the first three quarters of the film (until people started firing guns and throwing grenades, at which point I lost any investment I'd had in what would happen.)

Science in the media in 1969

The science in the film was far-fetched, but perhaps not too far fetched for a general audience in 1969. 1969 was after all, a different age. (In 1969 the Beatles were still together, 'In the Court of the Crimson King' was released, and NASA's landing on the moon showed just what the USA could achieve when a President believed in, and encouraged, and resourced, the work of scientists and engineers.)

A transmitter made of undetectable plastic parts, suppposedly

Hathaway was bugged (through a sinus implant) such that his US /UK handlers (and USSR observer) could hear everything he said and everything said to him from half a world away through a bespoke satellite that the Chinese had not noticed recently appearing over their territory. The Americans initially had serious trouble with signal:noise and just made out the odd consonant, and so could not understand any speech, but a UK intelligence officer suggested simply filling in the gaps with uniform white noise, which, amazingly, and (even more amazingly) immediately at first attempt, gave a much cleaner sound than I can get on FaceTime or Zoom or Skype today (Implied message: the British may be the poor relatives, but have the best ideas?)

High stakes communication

What Hathaway did not know (but perhaps he should have been paying more attention when he was told the implanted transmitter was a 'remedy' in case the Chinese would not let him leave the country?) was that the implanted transmitter also had an explosive device that could be used if he needed to be terminated.

Indeed there was supposedly enough plastic explosive that when Hathaway was invited to meet Chairman Mao (was he meant to be 'the most dangerous man in the world'?) it raised the issue of whether the device should be used to remove the Chairman as he played table tennis with Hathaway (asking us to believe that democratic governments might sanction the violent summary execution of perceived enemies, without due legal process, in foreign lands) *.

Is it stretching credibility to believe that democratic governments would sanction the violent summary execution of perceived enemies, without due legal process, on foreign soil?

The command code to explode the device was stored on magnetic tape that took over thirty seconds to execute the instructions (something that seems ridiculous even for 1969, and was presumably only necessary to provide faux tension at the point where the clock counts down and the audience are supposed to wonder if the British and Americans are going to have to kill the film's star off before the movie is over).

Equally ridiculous, the implant supposedly had the same density as human tissue so that it would not show up on X-rays. (A wise precaution: when in Hong Kong, Hathaway is lured to some kind of decadent, Western, casino-cum-brothel where Chinese agents manage to covertly X-ray him from the next room as he enjoys a bowl of plain rice with a Chinese intelligence officer – quite a technical feat).

Of course, human tissue is not all of one 'density' (in the sense of opaqueness to X-rays), or else there would be little point in using X-rays in medical diagnosis – actually a sinus should show up on an X-ray as an empty cavity!

Highly technical information appeared on screens at the listening post as displays little more complex than sine waves – not even the Lissajous figures so popular with 1970s sci-fi programmes.

At one point Hathaway broke into a room through a thick solid metal floor by using just a few millilitres of nitrohydrochloride acid (aqua regia) that was apparently a standard bench reagent in the Chinese biochemistry laboratory (these enzymes must be pretty robust, or perhaps Professor Soong had a side project that involved dissolving gold), and which Hathaway was quite happy to carry with him in a small glass bottle in his jacket pocket. The RSC's Education in Chemistry magazine warns us that "because its components are so volatile, [aqua regia] is usually only mixed immediately prior to use". Risk assessment has come on a lot since Dr Hathaway earned his Nobel.

Laboratory safety glasses: check. Bench mat: check. Gloves: check. Lab coat: check. Fume cupboard: check.

The focal enzyme was initially handled rather well – the molecular models looked convincing enough, and the technical problem of scaling up by synthesising it seemed realistic. The Chinese scientist could not produce the enzyme in quantity and hoped Hathaway could help with the synthesis – a comparison was made with how producing insulin originally involved the sacrifice of many animals to produce modest amounts, but now could be readily made at scale. I seem to recall from my natural products chemistry that before synthetic routes were available, sex hormones were obtained by collecting vast amounts of 'material' from slaughterhouses and painstakingly abstracting tiny quantities – think the Curies, but working with with tonnes of gonads rather than tonnes of pitchblende.

Before Hathaway had set out on his mission he had pointed out that the complexity of an enzyme molecule was such that he could never memorise the molecular structure as it would contain anything from 3000 to 400 000 atoms. So, the plot rather fell apart at the end (SPOILER ALERT) as he brings back a copy of Mao's little red book, in which his mentor had hidden the vital information – as the codes for three amino acids.

Ser – Tyr – Pro

Hm.

Beauty and the chemist

You are beautiful, just like your mother – but OBVIOUSLY not as clever as your dad.

But, what sparked me to wrote something about this film, was some dialogue which brought home to me just how long ago 1969 was (I was still in short trousers – well, to be honest, for about half the year I am still in short trousers, but then it was all year round). Hathaway is flown to China from Hong Kong, and on arrival is met by the daughter of his old mentor:

Soong Chu (Francesca Tu): I am Professor Soong's daughter

Dr. John Hathaway (Peck): You look a great deal like your beautiful mother.

Soong Chu: Not I. I am just an ugly chemist

Hathaway: I read your recent paper on peptides. I thought it was brilliant – for a woman.

Soong Chu: Oh, I agree, but my father helped a great deal.

Working in the dark to avoid any more comments on her looks?

I was taken aback by the reference to just being an ugly chemist, and had to go back and check that I'd heard that correctly. Was the implication that one could not be beautiful, and a chemist? Nothing more was said on the topic, but that seemed to be the implication. And what is meant by being 'just' a chemist?

Hathaway's comment that Soong Chu's paper had been brilliant, was followed by a pause. Then came "…for a woman". Did he really say that?

Not bad for a girl

I was waiting for the follow-up comment which would resolve this moment of tension. This surely had to be some kind of set up for a punch line: "It would have been beyond brilliant for a man", perhaps.

But no, Soong Chu just agreed. There did not seem to be intended to be any tension or controversy or social critique or irony or satire there. So much for Soong Chu's membership of the Red Guard and all the waving of the thoughts of the Chairman (she would have known that "Women represent a great productive force in China, and equality among the sexes is one of the goals of communism").

"The red armband is the most treasured prize in China…[representing] responsibility…[as] a leader of our revolution"

Soong Chu had needed the help of her father to prepare her paper, but he had presumably declined to be a co-author, not because his input did not amount to a substantial intellectual contribution (the ethics of authorship have also come on a bit since then), but because his daughter was a woman and so not able to stand on her own two feet as a scientist.

This dialogue is not followed up later in the film.

So, this is not planting a seed for something that will later turn out to be of significance for character development or plot, or that will be challenged by subsequent scenes. It is not later revealed that Soong Chu has a parallel career as Miss People's Republic of China (just as Hathaway is a chemist and also a kind of James Bond figure). Nor does it transpire that Professor Soong had been senile for many years and all of his work was actually being undertaken for him by his even more brilliant daughter.

Sadly, no, it just seems to be the kind of polite conversation that the screenwriters assumed would be entirely acceptable to an audience that was presumably well aware that females cannot be both beautiful and scientists; and that women need help from men if they are to be successful in science.

Times have changed … I hope.

* Interestingly, I've now found a poster for the film which seems to suggest that the whole purpose of the operation was not to acquire the enzyme structure at all, but to get Hathaway close enough to Mao to assassinate him.

Getting viewers to watch the film under false pretences

This seems to describe a very different cut to one I watched – where the audience with Mao seems to have surprised everyone, and the senior intelligence officers contacted their governments to alert them of this unexpected opportunity!

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Sandstone looks like it is made out of sand

Keith S. Taber

Sandstone looks like it's made out of a load of sand stuck together

Sophia was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. Sophia (when a Y8 pupil) had been learning in class about different kinds of rocks, including

rocks that erupt from volcanoes,
rocks that are formed underground, and
rocks that 'come from mountains' that 'get worn away':

When rocks … come from mountains, they like get worn away.
Mm, so what happens when you wear away the rock then?
Does it go like into a river, like a spring, and then gets carried – down, and gets smaller….when it gets tiny, tiny would it turns into sand?
And then what happens to the sand, it just stays as sand does it?
Prob¬ [Probably]… Yeah. …
Have you heard of a kind of rock called sandstone?
Yeah.
Any idea, what sandstone is?
It's sand like, on the rock, it just looks like it's made out of a load of sand stuck together.

Despite having been taught about the three categories of rock formed in different ways, Sophia had apparently only remembered the erosion stage in formation of the sedimentary rocks.

Erosion leads to rocks being broken down into sand. And sandstone 'looked like' it was made of a lot of 'sand stuck together', but for Sophia this seemed to be little more than a coincidence. She did not make the expected connection.

This seems to be an example of a fragmentation learning impediment, where the learner does not perceive the relevance of prior learning, and so does not use it to interpret teaching in the way intended by the teacher. So, here there was a lack of conceptual integration with material that was meant to be related being learnt as discrete facts.

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A special waiver for my paper in 'The Educaitonal Review, USA'

I have been critical in this blog and elsewhere about the behaviour of predatory journals that use dishonest methods and/or which short-cut proper peer review to attract business. I just received an invitation that at first sight seemed to fit into this category, although on closer inspection I suspect is actually something more sinister.

The message was as follows:

As the screen-shot above shows, the email was from er@cutablw.com, but the email was set up to send replies to education@hillpublisher.com. That seems odd as the email is from a completely different domain name (and from a time zone ahead of the UK, so not the US) – a common indicator of some kind of scam.

Another predatory journal?

At face value I was being asked to submit a paper for publication, by November 10th for publication on November 16th, apparently with no peer review and so avoiding all that delay and extra work of modifying a perfectly good paper in order to meet the misjudged and idiosyncratic suggestion of reviewers who clearly have not read the work carefully and do not really understand the topic. Well, sometimes it seems like that – but if we want the credit of publishing in peer reviewed outlets then the cost is peer review.

[Read about 'Peer review in academic publishing']

This was not the first invitation of that kind I had received, so 'The Educational Review, USA' (or if you prefer, 'The Educaitonal [sic] Review, USA') seemed to be just another predatory journal, albeit one which was considerate enough to apparently be "dedicated to improve [my] paper's impact".

The logic of such journals is that academics have to publish to get promoted, sometimes to keep their jobs, and even to get appointed in the first place, so they will surely pay good money for publication. If the focus of the journal is to maximise income, then it needs to publish as many papers as possible, and peer review would just get in the way by slowing things down and even losing some contributions. The logic here is to persuade an author of an easy publication, so they are prepared to pay a substantial fee.

[Read more about 'Predatory journals']

Yet here I was being offered a waiver.

So, was this one of those offers that I would find had finished yesterday and my paper could still be published but at cost, or was the offer only available on my third publication, or was some other condition attached? Well, there was at least one condition attached: I had to submit my paper by replying to education@hillpublisher.com.

There was still a credible explanation: sometimes when journals are relatively new, or not getting much interest, they may try to increase their impact by inviting and publishing well-established authors (which perhaps increases internet traffic, or reassures other authors that this is a decent journal). So, offering waivers to particular authors at specific times might still be a tactic that is consistent with an overall strategy to maximise income by selling publication.

I learnt more

The email had a link to find out more. I went where angels fear to click. This led me to the webpages of 'The Educational Review, USA' published monthly by Hill Publishing Group with the ISSN identification shown in the email.

I was able to find from the website that normally being published in that journal would lead to a fee (f0r someone in a high income country) of $400 for a paper up to 15 pages, with a further charge of $50 for each additional page. Given my verbose nature, the waiver being offered would save me many hundreds of US dollars. If I had something ready to publish, and was not sure where to send it, or was worried it might be too weak to survive peer review, then this was looking like a good option.

A waiver on peer review?

However, I was also able to find on the website details of the peer review process. After initial screening,

an Associate Editor with appropriate expertise in the subject area or study design… is responsible for identifying at least 2 external peer reviewers with expertise in the topic or specialty [sic, speciality] of the paper. The peer review process may require 2 to 4 weeks before the decision is reached…
After the authors submit their revision, the manuscript undergoes another peer-review, or it will be sent to the Editor-in-Chief for a final decision, if appropriate.

This did not sound so different to a serious journal, one that actually sought to only publish work of reasonable quality.

So perhaps by avoiding the on-line submission and replying directly to education@hillpublisher.com I not only got a waiver on the fee, but avoided peer review altogether. Sometimes even decent journals publish invited contributions identified as such without full peer review. This would normally be an article from an especially distinguished scholar. Obviously [sic] my status as a giant in the field (I was being enticed to think) meant I was being asked to make an invited contribution that would not need peer review.

Some kind of scam?

But I am fairly sure this is actually some kind of scam, although I've not yet worked out how this is meant to work to the scammer's advantage – unless after I submit my paper I twill hen get told there will be a fee after all. Apart form the different domain name of the actual sender, I also noticed a redirect on the link to find out more.

The embedded link was to http://i7q.cn/5LFrGY – a form of address which both shortens the full URL, and in doing so also hides any domain information. Although it did take me to the Hill Publishing Company (where there does indeed seem to be a Jim Morrison operating, spoiling my illusion that the scammer worked alongside Janis and Jimi and Sandy, and maybe even Elvis), only after being redirected from a page telling me

出错啦！！您访问的内容不存在或被安全软件禁止了…

which Google Scholar kindly suggested might mean

Something went wrong! ! The content you are visiting does not exist or is banned by security software…

Another clue is that although replying to education@hillpublisher.com seems to be sending a message to the Hill Publishing Group, the journal's actual email address is edu@hillpublisher.com. Now it is certainly possible for organisations to have multiple email addresses assigned to the same department (e.g., journal), but a websearch suggests education@hillpublisher.com is not used publicly anywhere – although, intriguingly the 'The Educational Review, USA' seems to have previously used the email address education@hillpublishing.org.

A definite scam?

So this looks like a definite scam. Even quite unsophisticated schemes of this kind can be effective as if enough emails addresses are targeted, then even a very tiny response rate may be productive. But would serious scholars really believe that they might be able to get their work published in a research journal without peer review, and in less than a week after submission? Sadly there are enough journals out there which seem to have little concern for academic standards and are just about extracting money from authors by making such offers that this approach could have been seen as quite convincing.

The state of academic publishing has become so degraded that it has become difficult to distinguish a genuine invitation to pay to publish without regard to quality standards, from actual criminal activity!

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The chemistry curriculum, mental health, and self-regulation

Keith S. Taber

Dear [Assistant Editor]

Thank you for your message about the special Issue entitled "Mental Health Intervention and Self-Regulation in Childhood and Adolescents", to be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

I am honoured, of course, that you think that, based on my expertise in this field, I could make an excellent contribution.

I was, however, rather unsure on what grounds that you considered I have expertise in "the field" – assuming the field you refer to here is one of Mental Health, Self-Regulation, Environmental Research, or Public Health.

Whilst I am very happy to be contacted in relation to the expertise I do actually have, the lack of any obvious basis for your evaluation of my expertise in relation to this particular special issue theme made me suspect that your message is really just direct marketing for your business rather than a genuine attempt to reach out to a scholar engaged in relevant work. I have been subjected to my fair share of shoddy approaches of that kind (https://science-education-research.com/academic-standards/journals-and-poor-academic-practice/).

So, I have done a search to see if I could find the earlier message that you refer to. I find that in your previous message you had explained that you ("we", so I assume you and Profs. Pichardo Martínez and Romero López) thought that I could make an excellent contribution based on my expertise and my paper "Conceptual confusion in the chemistry curriculum: exemplifying the problematic nature of representing chemical concepts as target knowledge", published in 'Foundations of Chemistry'.

I would like to think that you were really impressed with 'Conceptual confusion in the chemistry curriculum: exemplifying the problematic nature of representing chemical concepts as target knowledge' and could see some obvious link between this work and the topic of how self-regulation can become a fundamental element that underlies much of the behaviour, both adapted and maladaptive, which develops during childhood and adolescence. Sadly, I am not seeing the connection.

Perhaps this is a failure of my imagination, in which case I would be very happy to hear from you, or from one of Prof. Pichardo Martínez or Prof. Romero López, about how you see my expertise as potentially offering insight into the special issue.

If I do not hear back from you with a feasible explanation, then I will simply conclude your messages are dishonest and that you see no more connection between my paper and your journal issue than I do, and this is yet another example of a journal that does not adhere to normal academic standards of conduct (presenting itself as if a serious scholarly endeavour whilst actually treating academic publishing as no more than selling a commodity).

I look forward to hearing what you found so interesting and pertinent about "Conceptual confusion in the chemistry curriculum: exemplifying the problematic nature of representing chemical concepts as target knowledge". I would be very pleased to find my cynicism is misplaced and that your approach was truthful: that you have indeed studied my paper and found something of genuine interest in my analysis of the presentation of chemistry concepts in the English school curriculum that you feel suggests I am in a position to make an original contribution about the influence of self-regulation on the personal, social, and academic development of children and adolescents. I look forward to your reflections on my paper.

Best wishes

Keith

On 22/10/2020 12:10, [Assistant Editor] wrote:

Dear Dr. Taber,

We contacted you on 10th of August, regarding a Special Issue entitled "Mental Health Intervention and Self-Regulation in Childhood and Adolescents", to be published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601, IF 2.849). Prof. Dr. M. Carmen Pichardo Martínez and Prof. Dr. Miriam Romero-López are serving as Guest Editors for this issue. Based on your expertise in this field, we think you could make an excellent contribution.

The main objective of this Special Issue is to explore how self-regulation can become a fundamental element that underlies much of the behavior, both adapted and maladaptive, which develops during childhood and adolescence. In general, this Issue aims to collect original contributions that work on issues related to the influence of self-regulation on the personal, social, and academic development of children and adolescents.

...


We look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,

...
Assistant Editor

On 10/08/2020 11:02, [Assistant Editor] wrote:

Dear Dr. Taber,

The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601, IF 2.849) is currently running a Special Issue entitled "Mental Health Intervention and Self-Regulation in Childhood and Adolescents". Prof. Dr. M. Carmen Pichardo Martínez and Prof. Dr. Miriam Romero-López are serving as Guest Editors for this issue. We think you could make an excellent contribution based on your expertise and your following paper:

Conceptual confusion in the chemistry curriculum: exemplifying the problematic nature of representing chemical concepts as target knowledge. FOUNDATIONS OF CHEMISTRY 2020, 22, 309-334.

The main objective of this Special Issue is to explore how self-regulation can become a fundamental element that underlies much of the behavior, both adapted and maladaptive, which develops during childhood and adolescence.

...
We look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
...
Assistant Editor

Update: a response to my letter

Dear [Assistant Editor]

Thank you for getting back to me.

I am surprised that you found 'some contents related to learning behaviours in children in [my] published work "Conceptual confusion in the chemistry curriculum: exemplifying the problematic nature of representing chemical concepts as target knowledge"' as the paper was a philosophical analysis of some aspects of a curriculum document in relation to canonical disciplinary knowledge. I do not recall any specific content that was substantially about learning behaviours in children.

However, I am pleased that you were able to find something of interest in your reading of the paper.

Best wishes

Keith

On 10/08/2020 11:02, [Assistant Editor] wrote:

Dear Dr. Taber,

Thank you for your kind feedback.

We found that there are some contents related to learning behaviors in children in your published work "Conceptual confusion in the chemistry curriculum: exemplifying the problematic nature of representing chemical concepts as target knowledge". We now understand that there may be a deviation between them.

We are sorry if this Special Issue does not fit into the scope of your research.

Kind regards,
...
Assistant Editor

At least the journal did me the courtesy of replying, and behaving politely. I chose to ignore the 'disclaimer' that "You may not copy this message in its entirety or in part, or disclose its contents to anyone" as I am not prepared to receive unsolicited emails on that basis. If people do not wish me to share their messages then they have the option of not bothering me in the first place. [Read: "It's a secret conference invitation: pass it on…"]

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Chlorine atoms share electrons to fill in their shells

Umar was a participant in the Understanding Chemical Bonding project. When I spoke to him in the first term of his course he was unsure whether tetrachloromethane (CCl₄) would have ionic or covalent bonding.

When I spoke to him near the start of his second term, I asked him again about this. Umar then thought this compound would have polar bonding, however he seemed to have difficulty explaining what this meant ⚗︎ . Given his apparently confused notion about the C-Cl bond I decided to turn the conversation to a covalent bond which I knew, well certainly believed, was more familiar to him.

Is it possible for chlorine to form a bond with another chlorine?

[Pause, c.2s]

Yeah.

What substance would you get if two chlorine atoms formed a bond?

[Pause, c.2s]

You get, it still, you get, if you had like two chlorines it depends what groups are attached to it, to see how electronegative or electropositive they are.

What about if you just had two chlorine atoms joined together and nothing else, is that possible?

[Pause, c.3s]

No.

No?

On their own.

Not on their own?

No.

Umar's response here rather surprised me, as I was pretty confident that Umar had met chlorine as an element, and would know it was comprised of diatomic molecules: Cl₂.

So you couldn’t have sort of Cl₂, a molecule of Cl₂?

[Pause, c.1s]

Yeah, you could do.

Could you?

[Pause, c.2s]

They might be just, they might be like, be covalently bonded.

Perhaps the earlier context of talking about polar bonds and the trichloroethane molecule somehow acted as a kind of impediment to Umar remembering about the chlorine molecule. It seemed that my explicit reference to the formula, Cl₂, (eventually) activated his knowledge of the molecule bringing to mind something he had forgotten. Although he suggested the bond was (actually "might be") covalent, this seemed less something that he confidently recalled, than something he was inferring from what he could remember – or perhaps even guessing at what seemed reasonable: "they might be just, they might be like, be covalently bonded".

As often happens in talking to learners in depth about their ideas it becomes clear that thinking of students 'knowing' or 'not knowing' particular things is a fairly inadequate way of conceptualising their cognition, which is often nuanced and context-dependent. This suggests that what students respond in written tests should be considered only as what they were triggered to write on that day in response to those particular questions, and may not fully reflect their knowledge and understanding of science topics. Other slightly different questions may well have cued the elicitation of different knowledge. Now Umar had recalled that chlorine comprises of covalent molecules, I asked him about the nature of the bond:

So what would that be, covalently bonded?

They share the electrons.

So how many electrons would they have then?

They’ll have

[Pause, c.7s – n.b., quite a long pause]

like the one on it, the one of the chlorines shares electrons with the other chlorine to fill in its shell on the other one, and the same does it with the other.

In thinking about covalent bonding, Umar (in common with many students) drew upon the full shells explanatory principle that considered bonding to be driven by the needs of atoms to 'fill' their outer electron shells. (The outer shell of chlorine would only actually be 'full' with 18 electrons, but that complication is seldom recognised, as octets and full shells are usually considered synonymous by students).

So how many electrons does each chlorine have to start with?

In the outer shell, seven.

And how many have they got after this?

They’ve got seven, but they share one.

[Pause, c.1s]

Maybe.

So that’s a covalent bond, is it?

Yeah.

So how many electrons are involved in a covalent bond?

[Pause, c.3s]

Erm,

[Pause, c.3s]

Two.

Two electrons.

So where do those two electrons come from?

They like, one that fills up the gap, fills up the – last electron needed in one of the chlorine shells, and the other chlorine shell fills it up in the other one.

So where do they come from?

Each chlorine. Outer shell.

One from each chlorine?

Yeah.

Okay, and that’d be a covalent bond?

Yeah.

Here, again, Umar is using the full shells explanatory principle as the basis for explaining the bond in terms of electrons 'filling up the gaps' in the electron shells, rather than considering how electrical interactions can hold the structure together. Umar's suggestion that the sharing of electrons "fills up the – last electron needed in one of the chlorine shells" demonstrates the anthropomorphic language (e.g., what an atom wants or needs) commonly used when learners have acquired aspects of the common octet rule framework that is developed from the full shells explanatory principle and used by many learners to explain bonding reactions, chemical reactions, patterns in ionisation energy, and chemical stability.

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Curriculum statement	Commentary
"…the electrons present in the outermost shell of an atom are known as the valence electrons."	Fine
"The outermost shell of an atom can accommodate a maximum of 8 electrons."	This is only correct for period 2. It is false false for period 1 (2 electrons), period 3 (18 electrons), period 4 (32 electrons), etcetera.
"Atoms of elements, having a completely filled outermost shell show little chemical activity. Of these inert elements, the helium atom has two electrons in its outermost shell and all other elements have atoms with eight electrons in the outermost shell."	Fine – apart from the reference to "completely filled outermost shell" Of the noble gases, only helium and neon have full outer shells. 'Atoms' of the heavier noble gases with full outer shells would not atoms, but ions, and these would be extremely unstable – i.e., they could not exist except hypothetically under extreme conditions of very intense electrical fields.
"The combining capacity of the atoms of other elements is explained as an attempt to attain a fully-filled outermost shell (8 electrons forming an octet). The number of electrons gained, lost or shared so as to make the octet of electrons in the outermost shell, gives us directly the combining capacity of the element called the valency."	Hm – generally the valency can be identified with the difference between an atom's electronic configuration and the 'nearest' noble gas electronic configuration – which would be an octet of valence shell electrons, except in period one. However, the equivalence suggested here "a fully-filled outermost shell (8 electrons forming an octet)" is only true for period 2. An octet does not suffice for a full outer shell in period 3 (full at 18 electrons), or in period 4 (full at 32 electrons), etcetera. And, in the statement, valency is described as being related to the intentions of atoms: "is explained as an attempt to attain…" (and "…electrons gained, lost or shared so as to…") which encourages student misconceptions. [Read about 'Learners' anthropomorphic thinking'.]
"An ion is a charged particle and can be negatively or positively charged. A negatively charged ion is called an 'anion' and the positively charged ion, a 'cation'. Metals generally form cations and non-metals generally form anions."	Fine.
"Atoms have tendency to complete their octet by this give and take of electron forming compounds."	This is a common notion, but actually suspect. Some elements have an electron affinity such that the atoms would tend to pick up an electron spontaneously. However, for an element with a valency of -2, such as oxygen, once it has become a singly charged anion (O^–), it will not attract a second electron, so apart from the halogens, this is misleading. The negatively charged O^– ion will indeed spontaneously repel/be repelled by a (negatively charged) electron. Metallic elements have ionisation enthalpies showing that energy has to be applied to strip electrons from them – they certainly do not have a "tendency to complete their octet by this giv[ing]" of electrons.
"Compounds that are formed by electron transfer from metals to non-metals are called ionic compounds."	This is not usually how ionic compounds are formed. Although it is possible in the lab. to use binary synthesis (e.g., burning sodium in chlorine – not for the faint-hearted), that is not how ionic compounds are prepared in industry, or how the NaCl in table salt formed naturally. (And even when burning sodium in chlorine, neither of the reactants are atomic, so even here there is no simple transfer of electrons between atoms.)

Agreeing – but talking about different things?

Simplifying biology?

How frequently do our brains send out signals?

Biological warp-drives

The application of science

Interpreting data as evidence for a theory

Work cited:

Invitation to be an Honorable speaker, but perhaps at a dishonourable conference?

A reflection on free will, determinism, justice, ignorance, and identity

The lottery of life

Who am I?

Could it have been different?

Counterfactual 'me'?

The sins of the fathers…

The lottery of making life

The veil of ignorance

Sources cited:

Ionic bonding – an often mislearnt topic

Ionic bonding – an often mistaught topic?

A curriculum model of ionic bonding

The teaching model

Does it matter if children are taught scientific fairy tales?

Sources cited:

Is 'Gynae & Obs' really the kind of specialism where experts should be informed by amateurs?

Recollecting medical training

My talk will be one of the highlights of the congress

Update at 28th April

Update at 28th July

Nobel prize winner AND man of action

Science in the media in 1969

High stakes communication

Beauty and the chemist

Not bad for a girl

Sandstone looks like it's made out of a load of sand stuck together

Another predatory journal?

I learnt more

A waiver on peer review?

Some kind of scam?

A definite scam?

Update: a response to my letter