The petabyte children

Chris Anderson the former editor of Wired Magazine, several years ago, published an article entitled The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete. He believed that the age of “big” data would be “the end of science as we know it.”

We've had kilobytes, megabytes and terabytes, in other words, floppy disks, hard disks and disk arrays. In the Petabyte Age the “stuff” is stored in the cloud. Knowledge now begins with massive amounts of data. And can we deny in 2014 that those under thirty years of age are not constantly gazing into the virtual cloud?

Anderson said back in 2008 that data will be viewed mathematically first and a context for it established later. Correlations are the future young man. Causal analysis be damned! He ended his article by asking, “What can science learn from Google?”

Predicting the future

Regarding the future, I think a major challenge of the 21^st century is acquiring a better understanding of the brain—and the mind, if any future is to become a reality. In the spirit of speculating I shall shamelessly promote my own ebook novel A Genetic Abnormality, which will be coming out on September 1, 2014. For more information go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/463326

The modern scientific process began in the 17^th century, and viewed against the thousands of years of human existence, science developed only yesterday. It's also “difficult” in that it goes against how we humans traditionally think.

If scientific thinking can be called analytic and objective, traditional thinking is more subjective and

associative, associative meaning we humans can see causal relationships between actions and events and sometimes indulge in quasi-magical thinking. Of course, at the same time, we appear to be the only species that can meditate on ourselves in ways other animals cannot.

The history of science has focused on ideas rather than methods. Theories are constructed based on observations and measurement of natural phenomena. It is a world of both inductive and deductive reasoning and creating hypotheses requiring testing, and in the best case can be repeated and replicated. Science likely has a lot more to teach all of us. The question still is what can Google learn from science?

For Americans in particular and global enlightenment in general

If human beings are basically tradition-bound, irrational creatures, how did science ever develop in the first place? The short answer is, “With difficulty.”

(Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science, by Alan Cromer)

A state of bliss

Buffoonery has become a pervasive condition in America, as observed on an almost daily basis, especially among the political class. The latest example is a relatively obscure Republican congressman from Texas, Representative Lamar Smith. Mr. Smith, with no scientific expertise and apparently no understanding of the basic scientific process, happens to be the Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Representative Smith has drafted a bill that, while directed at The National Science Foundation, one of the premier scientific institutions in the world, wants to set in motion a process for all federal science agencies. His goal is to replace peer review and reduce the importance of scientific replication with some kind of “criteria” chosen by Congress, a criteria that seems to have less to do with science than it does with politics and what Mr. Lamar and some of his colleagues like or dislike.

The chairman of the committee wants to be certain that any grant given out by the NSF has “intellectual merit.” He claims to want to halt “frivolous” and “wasteful” research being funded and insure that any research that is funded be extremely important to “society at large.”

Now how could anyone be against good governance and saving taxpayer money? ( The proposed 2014 science budget is approximately 0.2 percent of the $3.77 trillion federal budget.) After all, U.S. Senator James Inhoff has made a career promoting climate change as a hoax. It's about greedy scientists wanting research grants, as Inhoff will tell anyone who will listen. For details on this dismal and ideally short-lived episode see “Additional Reading.”

The expanding universe

What we refer to as modern science began more than 300 years ago and it has met with resistance of one kind or another the same length of time. Yes, there have been some eureka moments but mostly knowledge was built on what went before. Scientists always owe a debt to those who came before them.

Over the same period of time the scientific method was developed and improved upon. It didn't matter if you didn't like the outcome of the experiment or that your familiar world view turned out to be wrong. The Earth really does go around the sun and it can be demonstrated by a lot of people. Our planet is more than 4 billion years old, and best of all it's not a closely held secret known to only a chosen few.

Scientific research, both public and private, must be robust and intellectually honest. It can be hypothesis driven (to answer a specific question) or discovery based (no specific hypothesis in mind). Above all, none of us--anywhere--can be complacent whenever the usual suspects attempt to turn science into something it's not. It is time to once again confront the usual buffoonery. Make it loud and persistent. It's in the self-interest of all of us.

Additional Reading:

U.S. Lawmaker Proposes NewCriteria for Choosing NSF Grants

A rebuttal to Lamar from theranking member of the House Committee

National Science FoundationMerit Review (The NSF process for reviewing a grant application)

The Scientific Method: AnOverview (An explanation of the scientific method for high school and junior high school students)

SOPA creator's latest billproposes stripping peer-review from science funding

2014 proposed science budget

A new perpetual motion machine

Laura Snyder, a science historian and professor of philosophy, has stated that the word “scientist” was used for the first time 180 years ago at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, on June 24, 1833. Has it been only 180 years?

Prior to this time those who pursued “scientific” endeavors, mostly gifted amateurs, called themselves natural philosophers. All this gradually changed as deductive reasoning ( testing hypotheses and theories) became a key component of science, along with the creation of new scientific institutions, external funding for scientific projects and a growing belief that science ought to be for the public good.

Patenting of nature

Fast forward 180 years and we currently have a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that deals with the very structure of life itself. It's unlikely that the majority of Americans and most people on the planet for that matter have the slightest idea what is being debated and the potential outcome, regardless of the Court's ultimate decision.

In simple terms, the case before the Supreme Court is whether or not a company can patent human genes. This is a case that could effect everyone—because it involves DNA, the blueprint for life.

What constitutes a new gene? Will research be stifled and the flow of information impeded? How does a company recoup its investment, sometimes millions of dollars? Who will have access to affordable new tests and procedures as a result of any genetic breakthroughs? These are only a few of the questions that will have to be debated--publicly--and which go way beyond the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Joe Barton's rule

Joe Barton, a conservative Republican congressman from Texas and strong supporter of the fossil fuel industry, once apologized to BP (the company that caused the worst oil spill in U.S. history) because the White House demanded that the company pay millions of dollars for the clean up of the Gulf.

While the congressman claims that climate change does exist, he has consistently denied that there is any human connection to climate change. He cites the great flood in the Old Testament, before humankind burned hydrocarbons, as proof that the climate certainly changes, but humans have nothing to do with it.

Congressman Barton clearly has every right to his beliefs and he can certainly cite the Old Testament as “proof,” but it has nothing to do with modern science, and that is a big problem and not just for Americans.

Magical thinking

If you were to Goggle “perpetual motion machines” you would uncover a colorful history going back to at least the Middle Ages. Hope springs eternal. The pmm is a machine that continues to do work forever without acquiring energy from an external source. The problem is that it violates all the laws of known physics, like conservation of energy, thermodynamics and Newton's laws of motion. But people keep trying. It's the Joe Barton rule and that is a big problem.

The ecological economist Herman Daly has said that it's “politically impossible to stop growth,” while at the same time it's “biophysically impossible to continue it ad infinitum.” We may need another 180 years.