I just heard about a new “big data” project called Project Tycho. They chose the name Tycho in honor of Tycho Brahe who made tons of detailed observations of the stars and planets. After his death, his data was used by Kepler to formulate the laws of planetary motion. This project wants to connect the vast amounts of public health data to scientists and policy researchers to improve their understanding of contagious diseases and their spread. Their undertaking is incredible; they digitized weekly Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System reports from 1888-2013. Now that all of the data is digitized they are working their way through standardizing it and making it amenable to analysis. This entire dataset is available for search online. Continue reading “Project Tycho: Vaccines prevent diseases!”
Things that I’m not thankful for: this week in Pacific Standard, I argue that Congress is like my former landlord, who did a major remodel on his rental property and then let his investment rot away due to neglect. The NIH budget is now substantially lower than it would have been if there had been no budget doubling, and instead, it grew at its previous, pre-doubling historical rate of 3.3% in real dollars (see figure). It’s as if the doubling never happened.
Representative Lamar Smith supports legislation to make NSF ensure each grantee is pursuing science in the national interest. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
A particularly concerning piece of legislation is making its way around the House of Representatives. This bill would require that the National Science Foundation (NSF) justify each grant it awards with respect to its contributions to protect the “national interest”. Earlier in the year, a similar bill was proposed with an extremely limited definition of what would meet “national interest” criteria. While the current bill has expanded its definition of national interest to include economic competitiveness, health and welfare, scientific literacy, partnerships between academia and industry, promotion of scientific progress and national defense, legislation like this should be getting all scientists up in arms.
Predicting which avenues of science will lead to major breakthroughs in health or energy is almost impossible. This bill would severely limit early exploratory work that has yet to prove it is in the national interest. This political interference in the operation of the scientific enterprise is a very dangerous door to open. Decisions of what is in the national interest can very quickly become influenced by party politics and the interests of lobbyists. While it is important that NSF funds good proposals of sound science, requiring immediate association with national interest will lead to exaggerated claims by scientists and the exclusion of some of the future’s greatest breakthroughs.
Whether you are a scientist or not, reach out to your representative and let them know how this qualifier will negatively affect the scientific enterprise in the United States. If you don’t know who your representative is, you can find that information here.
Today, my usual, totally biased praise of the most recent episode of Science for The People will be extra-biased. This week, host Desiree Schell interviews Christopher White about the effects of climate change in Glacier National Park. The discussion focuses on the clearly visible changes in the park, how those changes are monitored, and the cascade of effects resulting from those changes on the park’s ecology. Christopher White and I were both at the Santa Fe Science Writers Workshop earlier this year. He is one heck of a nice guy.
He did, however, miss a good reason to keep calling Glacier National Park “Glacier National Park”, even after all the glaciers are gone. The name begs the question, “Why do you call it Glacier National Park if there are no glaciers?” That question has a sobering and educational answer.
The show’s second interview, with Stephen Castles about human migration patterns, is equally interesting. Castles debunks some of the more grandiose claims about the effect of climate change on migration and refocuses the discussion on the true complexity of the issues.
Finally, how many podcasts do you know that provide links to supporting materials? Well, you know at least one now.
The literature investigating developmental differences between children from affluence and from poverty is both large and controversial. Many studies present evidence that children from impoverished homes have weaker language skills and delays in reading that cause them to lag behind their peers in school. This topic has always been fraught with controversy because it lies at the intersection of child development, racial politics, and demographic discrimination.
The Finch and Pea 