Sciencophile

It's the mobile phones-and-number-remembering thing all over again

2010-11-16T16:48:00.000-08:00

Can it be true? Can GPS really cause Alzheimer's?

No. Of course it can't. And the paper doesn't say that. Hell, the article doesn't say that. Of course, the Daily Tech is one of those sites that tends not to overegg the pudding too often, but every site that reports on breakthroughs in science gets a little overenthusiastic at times. So why pose the question? Because I fully expect to see a plethora of reports making just that claim in the days to come. There are already a few darkly hinting at such things; I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to dig them out.

But on the report itself (or, rather, the report of the report), I'd like to vent my spleen for a few moments.

First of all, though it doesn't mention it, watchers of science will be familiar with the concept of the hippocampus adapting itself; the 2003 Ignobel award for medicine was conferred on those who showed that taxi drivers have a bigger hippocampus than most.

It makes sense, therefore, that there'd be some degree of atrophying in those whose need for spatial awareness in the context of navigation is diminished. But... memory problems? Really?

I'm not denying the possibility. However, one has to remember that regular travel beyond one's home home town is a recent innovation; far too recent for the brain to have adapted itself. It's for this reason that I find the concept of a diminished capability somewhat hard to swallow. The most I'd be willing to accept is that our memories have improved, and that GPS goes some way to resetting that capability to pre-car levels.

Of course, Alzheimer's was hardly a problem a couple of hundred years ago; people died long before the brain had a chance to melt for the vast majority of people.

I'll just make one point about 'memory' in this context; presumably the researchers are familiar with the work others have done in field, and have therefore read the paper on cabbies and their enlarged hippocampus. One has to wonder, then about this line from the above report:

researchers are unsure as to whether using spacial strategies causes the hippocampus to grow, or if having a "robust" hippocampus causes an individual to use spacial strategies

I'm no neurologist, but even I know that the brain is a massively more complex organ than we understand, and that however much the hippocampus is associated with spatial strategies, there's a lot more to the tale than that. Are taxi drivers masters of memory, capable of memorising pi to a godzillion digits at a single sitting? Are inveterate GPS users always leaving the house with no pants? I doubt it.

Correlation is not Causation

2010-10-12T22:47:00.000-07:00

Surveys are wonderful things. They show us that Ireland has one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption in Europe, and that The Irish are amongst the happiest people in Europe. Must remember these two the next time I come across one of the ridiculous 'a causes b' stories that seem to periodically infest the media.

Will American English Become the Internet's Lingua Franca?

2010-10-10T18:23:00.000-07:00

It started as a simple question on IRC; "is the correct spelling anonymizer or anonymiser"? A simple question, but one that set me a-pondering.

Conventional wisdom, of course, dictates that if you're in the States or its hegemony, you use the z; if you're not, you use the s. But it's not really that simple. The OED, for example, has long championed the use of '-ize', much to the chagrin of many (your humble servant included). I'm not entirely clear on the reason for this antipathy towards the US' preferred spelling, even my own. It's tempting to put it down to a latent anti-Americanism, but for an Irish lad such as I there are 800 years' worth of reasons to be more anti-British than anti-American. Actually, I have my own thoughts on this matter, but to go into them here would be to drive this tract, already off-course, veering off the edge of the Cliffs of On-Topic.

To get back to the point, then: is there a correct spelling for "anonymiser"? The word itself is one of those that's come into its own on the internet. It doubtless existed long before the TCP/IP protocols were even a gleam in some nerd's eye, but these days it's a word that's definitely internet-related and, no doubt, one that will enjoy more and more currency as time goes by. As such, the question of whether it has an "official" spelling becomes a little more fraught.

It's tempting to dismiss the question as academic, but I don't think it is. Linguae francae (if that is indeed the plural) traditionally came about to facilitate spoken communication, and intricacies of spelling mattered little. However, none of those languages had to deal with search engines.

Take, for example, a simple phrase; "colour blind". Searching google for "color blind" without the quotes brings a lot of American pages, as one would expect. Changing that to "color blind uk" (again without the quotes) leads one to a BBC story where colour is spelt, ahem, properly. But by putting the phrase "color blind" in quotes leaves one once again with only US results, irrespective of whether the "uk" is appended outside the quotes.

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have opted for a US spelling on occasion when searching google. Indeed, there've been times when I've added metatags to web pages that included both US and UK spelling. This behaviour is necessary at the moment but, I humbly suggest, doomed to extinction. It's just too cumbersome.

So what's going to happen in the future? It's possible that as search algorithms get smarter, the problem will disappear, but I don't think that's likely. However much google et al try to deal with the problem, I suspect that it'll always be easier for those of us who write stuff with search engines in mind will either adopt the US spelling, or include US-friendly spelling in tags, keywords, etc. Whether this means that the internet's lingua franca will move from English in general to American English in the specific, I can't say for sure (obviously), but I think that there is a good chance.

Of course, this all assumes that we won't all be searching in Simplified Chinese in ten years' time.

Smithers, Release the Teenagers

2010-10-05T11:54:00.000-07:00

breakingnews.ie tends to be fairly sloppy as a rule with their attention to detail; at least once a week they come up with a particularly inelegant phrase that soon disappears when someone who knows the English language reads it. This, though, will probably stick around, but in case it doesn't, the headline is

Teenagers freed in hunt for Polish man's killer

The confusion -- if confusion there is for anyone except me -- revolves around the word 'in' and its relation to the word 'hunt'. It suggests a level of causation... but why am I explaining this? It's obvious.

Anyway, I suspect 'confusion' is too strong a word; while the sentence can be interpreted in two ways, there's really no doubt as to what the headline writer meant. Even so, it made me titter.

Missing the Point

2010-10-03T18:01:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading an article in the October 1 issue of Cancer and Biology Therapy (pdf) on the ethics of cancer research. Not the article I was expecting, I must confess; I was imagining some poor doctor struggling with the dilemma of making half the terminal patients in his study a control group. Or something along those lines. No; the problem Scott E. Kern has with cancer researchers is that they're a bunch of lazy bastards who are letting patients die.

When I first wrote the above line, I thought of toning it down a little, as I was probably caricaturing his position. So I reread, and decided to leave the line as it is after reading this...

During the survey period, off-site lay-persons offer comments on my observations. “Don’t the people with families have a right to a career in cancer research also?” I choose not to answer. How would I? Do the patients have a duty to provide this “right”, perhaps by entering suspended animation?

Much as it pains me to say this, I have to say that I see his point. He makes it in a way that's insulting, ham-fisted and downright disingenuous, but the question that forms the title of the essay -- Where's the Passion? -- is one that I think would occur to me, too, under the same circumstances.

One would expect that a fair number of the researchers to whom he refers have lost family or friends to cancer, and that at least some of them would have entered the field for that very reason. It seems reasonable, therefore, to expect that they'd put in a lot of extra time in the lab. So the fact that they apparently weren't was quite a surprise to me.

The reason, I'm pretty sure, is that that one of his interviewees suggested; "They see it as a 9-to-5 job." I confess to finding this a little disappointing. I'd like to think that there are many researchers for whom the job is everything, who toil all the hours available in the quest for the mythical Cure for Cancer.

So on that point, Kern and I are in accord. But that's as far as it goes.

Cancer research is a job. It's one that employs many thousands worldwide, and I've no doubt that in many labs around the world, there are people working around the clock. It just happens that in the lab in question, the lack of extra hours put in coincided with the presence of one guy who's confusing a job with a duty.

Like it or not, we live in a world where pretty much every vocation is reduced to a mere job. People look at career prospects and make their choice on that basis. Sure, it's probably always been that way, but it seems to have been getting more and more common.¹ To harangue those who approach the job this way is to miss the point completely; Kern seems to be assuming that by working in the lab, these work-shy slackers are taking jobs away from the dedicated professionals. I doubt this is the case. And by adding 'professionalism' as a tag, he's suggesting that they're not merely lazy, but negligent. This is just insulting. There are other problems with this line of thinking, too.

For example, what does he think of those who research non-fatal illnesses? Indeed, what about those who eschew research altogether? And now that I think of it, what's he doing spending time wandering around empty buildings when he should be hunched over a microscope?

Like I said, he has the makings of a point. However, like Richard Dawkins is wont to do, he frames his argument in such a way that he's just alienating anyone he hopes to convince, and ends up with a paper that'll just be passed around to be ridiculed.

Notes

1. Yeah, yeah. In the good old days everyone respected their elders, never misused apostrophes or dogs, worked a twenty-hour day at mill for tuppence a month, etc, etc.

Death of the Late Mr. Jones

2010-10-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

I picked Mr. Jones totally at random. Don't worry about it. If you're at all concerned about the Mr. Jones who lives in the flat upstairs, I'm not talking about him.

I was reading a news item about the esteemed leader of the opposition here in Ireland, and in between bouts of fist shaking and random imprecations, I wandered over to the party web site to see what manner of spin they put on Mr. Kenny's words. There was no mention of it. However, something did catch my eye in his biography; "he was first elected in a by-election following the death of his late father Henry Kenny".

This manner of phrasing jarred me; why the 'late'? It seems distinctly redundant. And if not redundant, just plain wrong. When we speak of the late Mr. Jones, we of course mean that as we speak, he's dead. But does 'late' always mean that? If we talk of the death of the late Mr. Jones, are talking about someone who died twice? Of course we're not. So, to a certain extent, this matters not a whit. However, the pedant in me twitches at the apparent tautology and won't let it go.

If we speak of the freedom of Dublin being conferred on the late Chester Beatty, we're suggesting that he subsequently died, not that the honour was conferred posthumously. So that's no help.

Webster's (and other dictionaries I checked) tell us that the word applies to those recently deceased, but I suspect that the usage has expanded a bit, and is now applied to anyone who's shuffled off this mortal coil.

I wandered over to google and searched for "death of * late", and found nearly 80 million hits, so it's not all that uncommon a phrase. Granted, a fair proportion of those were irrelevant, but there were still enough that it seemed obvious that the phrase enjoys some currency.

The next logical step, of course, is to consult some manner of corpus to see if this is a new phenomenon. Standard disclaimer here: I'm not a linguist, and not well versed in the art of corpus consultation. Nonetheless, upon searching the 400-million word Corpus of Historical American English for the same phrase, I found sporadic uses of it; one every few years up to 1990, when they disappeared.

This leads me to one of two conclusions;

I don't know how to use corpora.
The phrase has very recently become ridiculously popular.

Obviously, the former is more likely. One can't ignore the possibility that the Queen's English Society right and the language is going to hell in a handbasket, but let's face it; they're idiots, so the possibility is remote indeed.

I guess I have some learning to do. And another irritating phrase to learn to tolerate.

Keeping Abreast of the Latest Research

2010-10-01T00:19:00.000-07:00

I confess, gentle reader, that I wasn't entirely sure how to approach this story. There were three options available to me; I could titter, I could sneer or I could take it seriously.

Well, first of all, there was little to no chance of my not tittering. Not least because I get to use the word 'titter'. But to sneer or not to sneer? In the end, I opted for both. And, therefore, for all three.

First of all, boobies and poo in the one story. Let's just sit back for a moment and ponder on the sheer awesomeness of this research. Let us consider the mindset of scientists who decided that this was an experiment worth running. In fact, let us consider the mind who came up with the idea in the first place.

Actually, it's probably best not to.

But tittering aside, my ~~first~~ second thought on reading the story was that it was going to be another of those stories one reads about where some mad scientist has come up with a wacky, and monstrously inane, experiment for which copious amounts of funding have been received. Almost inevitably, a brief consideration will reveal a valid purpose behind this experiment and, even if the results are negative, it ends up adding to the knowledge available to other researchers. I've increasingly found these stories irritating the more I read, and there seemed no reason to consider this differently. Well, okay. There were two reasons. And poo. Three reasons.

If the over-shoulder boulder holder does indeed constrict the digestive system, then it's potentially a matter of concern, and one that's unquestionably worthy of study. However...

Seven healthy females (11-41 yrs) volunteered as participants

Really? Seven?

I'm no statistician, but I'm pretty sure that this is what those who crunch numbers for a living would call 'insignificant'. I doubt that this is even enough to warrant a proper study.

If it is, though, then this is the perfect opportunity for us non-scientists to play a role. With little more than a chatup line and a weighing scales, we can do our bit for the cause. We happy few, whose interaction with the brassiere all too frequently involves nothing more than sneaking a peek down one, can invite a woman around for the purposes of Scientific Research. And then bring the topic around to removal of the aforementioned apparatus.

Of course, sooner or later the magic line 'will you take a dump in this bag for me?' will have to arise. That'll be when things get tricky.

Oops. Or, Rather, Hooray!

2010-09-19T06:16:00.000-07:00

Boy, is my face red.

Barely a day has passed since I revelled in the arbitrary nature of the English language, and I find out that my example was nonsense. The possessive-before-gerund rule, which I thought perhaps to be the work of some drug-addled, charismatic loon, exists for a reason. My fevered fancies were of this wild-eyed, bedraggled prophet convincing his fellows of a way of speaking that he received from a chorus of trees, but instead it's there for the ultimate raison d'etre for any rule of grammar: to clarify.

It's pretty obvious when you think about it. Which, equally obviously, I didn't. Tragically, I do remember a specific example where I had to use the possessive to clarify the sentence, but for some reason hadn't the wit to think of it as applying to the rule as a whole.

But now I know. Nominative suggests reading the following as a participle, genitive suggests gerund.

Of course, this means nothing in everyday use; we'll all still have to rely on context to know what others really mean. And my use of it has gone from idle whim to grammatical necessity, but remains essentially unchanged.

But I'm content, suffused with the warm glow that comes from knowing that I learned something.

Thoughts on My Using the Genitive Before Gerunds

2010-09-18T08:06:00.000-07:00

A short while ago I hinted elsewhere about my uncertainty with regard to the legitimacy of the grammatical rule about pronouns preceding gerunds. Thanks to Language Log, the situation for me has become a little more complicated.

For a start, it seems that the rule — if rule it be — is a little more all-encompassing than I realised. It's not just pronouns that must take the possessive; it's nouns, too. This is news to me. I've no idea where I first encountered the rule, but since that happy day I've been in no doubt that it was only pronouns that it applied to.

Historically, its use, it seems, has been mixed, with both the nominative and genitive making appearances before our verblike friends. This, I suspect, relates to the reason I'm so fond of that rule in the first place.

Quite simply, it's because it's a silly rule. [Or so I thought. Until after I posted this and read a comment to the above link and felt the need to come clean. But I'll leave the rest of my original spiel as is, to record my naïveté for posterity.]

To be sure, a lot of the rules of grammar are arbitrary. In fact, given the way in which language evolves, this is pretty much inevitable. If enough people use it, it's a rule. It doesn't matter how or why it came about; all that matters is that it did. The fact that we English speakers tend to put the subject at the beginning of a sentence and the verb in the middle has nothing to do with logic; it's just the way the language evolved. Equally, the fact that proper nouns are the only ones that are capitalised in English in no way suggests that the Germans are wrong when they give all nouns a capital.

Those rules, though, make sense. When dealing with a gerund, though, there are a few differences.

First of all, 'my going' and 'me going' make equal sense. Irrespective of which you use, one can make a case for it. More importantly, it's a little esoteric. What percentage of the population at large could verbalise the rule, do you think? A much lower percentage, I think, than those that could tell you all proper nouns should begin with a capital. There's probably a significant number of people who couldn't tell you what a gerund is. Of course, for those people there's no need to know. It just doesn't matter. It's entirely possible to write a great work of literature without ever hearing of the word.

And that's the reason I love the rule. Not so I can beat others over the head with it; they could use the dative for all I care. But I'll always opt for the possessive for pronouns, and pronouns only. Even now, when I learn that the 'rule' tells us to use it for nouns too, I'll happily say 'he objected to the car stopping where it did'. It's my rule. I don't care how official it is. It's a silly rule that serves no purpose, but one that does no harm. And that's the best type of rule to follow.

Sesquipedalians of the World, Interosculate!

2010-09-17T21:34:00.000-07:00

Those who've been following such things recently will be aware that the Baltimore Sun recently got some flak from one of its readers about using the word 'limn' in one of its headlines. The latest to mention this is The Boston Globe, and in their piece Erin McKean suggests that an

element of showoffishness is present in many uses of rare words. It would be peculiar if the all-too-human desire for status — the motivation behind name-dropping, wearing luxury brands, listening to obscure bands, or checking in to velvet-rope places on Foursquare — didn’t manifest itself in word choice, as well

I'm not saying that this is unfair but it isn't, I think, the whole story.

First of all, those of us with a fondness for words revel not in the length or the obscurity of the words, but their meaning. I'm sure I'm far from alone in delighting in the fact that such a word as 'kephalanomancy' exists, despite the fact that I've no interest whatsoever in divining the future with an ass's head.

Yes, I've come across the occasional fool who'll deliberately use obscure, overlong or otherwise-high-falutin' words in an attempt to impress. This attempt invariably fails, however, because they inevitably get something wrong. For the most part, I feel safe in saying that those of us who constantly strive to expand our vocabularies do so not to impress, but to communicate more easily. English can be an enormously subtle language, and the right word can convey a nuance that a more pedestrian word will simply obliterate. To deliberately avoid a word because it's obscure is just as egregious as replacing a word because it's too common. In either case, one should use the best word, irrespective of frequency in some corpus.

Another point to remember is that once you know a word, it's no longer obscure. If someone uses 'limn' on a daily basis then they not only need to get out more, but they'll consider the word to be an everyday one that everyone understands.

The long word, the obscure word, isn't necessarily wrong. In fact, in most cases, it's the best word for the job.

Welcome

2010-09-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Sciencophile, the blog of one lad in Ireland who, it must be said, isn't a scientist. My purpose in starting this is to consolidate all my thoughts on matters scientific, be they heretical, mainstream or just plain uninformed. This is, of course, my way of trying to get a cheap education, in that I'm hoping that knowledgeable people will correct my misconceptions and set me on the path to enlightenment.

This blog was set up as a spinoff of sorts from my original blog, when I realised that my original effort was becoming a bit scattershot in terms of what it was covering. More details on this can be found here.