"New data from old poop"

Don't you want to learn about changes to our microbiome over time, by examining paleofeces?  You do.  See the commentary by Andrew Curry from earlier this year.

Scientist biography series

Somewhat related to the theme of recent posts (here and here), let's look at a couple of scientific biography series from the two gigantic British academic presses, Cambridge and Oxford.  

Cambridge University Press has a Cambridge Science Biographies series.  At the time of writing, there are ten volumes listed in print on the website.  These are serious biographies running into the hundreds of pages.  There are three devoted to physicists:  Galileo, Newton, and Ampere.  There are three for chemists:  Lavoisier, Humphry Davy, and Justus von Liebig.  There are two for biologists:  Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley.  Rounding out the set are Henry More and Mary Somerville.  I've always understood that Somerville was a mathematician, but the table of contents indicated she worked in physical and Earth sciences as well.  Henry More was a name unfamiliar to me.  Apparently he is primarily viewed as a philosopher, but he pursued experimental science as well, and was an influence on Newton.  Since these are substantial biographies, I would imagine no attempt is made to cover all the major figures in science.  Otherwise the choice of Ampere over Einstein would be most curious!

Oxford Portraits in Science are shorter biographies intended for young adult readers.  At the time of writing I see 17 volumes in print.  However, I own copies of the volumes on Faraday and Einstein, and they list additional volumes that may be out of print.  I will  include them here and group them collectively as follows:

Biologists & physiologists:  Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel, William Harvey, Edward Jenner, Louis Pasteur, Crick & Watson (a single volume covering both).

Chemists: Marie Curie, Linus Pauling.

Physicists & astronomers:  Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Ben Franklin, Faraday, Joseph Henry, Curie, Rutherford, Fermi, Einstein

Inventors and technologists:  Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Babbage, Thomas A. Edison.

Behavioral scientists:  Pavlov, Freud.

Anthropologists:  Margaret Mead.

Paleontologists:  Othniel Charles March & Edward Drinker Cope (a single volume covering both).

In the above accounting, I've included the Curie volume under both physics and chemistry; it could be argued that Rutherford should also be so counted.

Here, we might have a greater expectation than with the Cambridge Science Biographies, that the most important, or at least most interesting, scientists be included.  However, none of the chemists in the Cambridge series appear in the Oxford series.  The selection of biologists/physiologists is an excellent one, but could certainly be expanded further.  Again I will focus mainly on the physicists/astronomers.   The Oxford series has an excellent list - all of them are deserving.  As I've stated before, volumes on Tesla and Feynman would probably sell as well, if only they existed.  The inclusion of Franklin and Henry, American contributors to electromagnetic science, raises the question of why non-Americans in this field have not been included (such as Ampere, Oersted, and above all Maxwell).  Again it seems to me that Niels Bohr might deserve a volume.  

Finally, as a dessert for this discussion, what about Princeton University Press's "The Quotable..." series?  These are books of quotations by various authors.  Three scientists are included:  Darwin, Einstein, and Feynman.  Maybe you might consider Jung as a behavioral scientist.  Others in the series include Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, and Soren Kierkegaard.  I suppose this is the most subjective of all, since the person in question has to be very "quotable"!

Peer Review

Last week in the online magazine Physics, psychologist Simine Vizire published a call for peer review reform.  Hers is not the first, nor will it be the last.  My personal experience with peer review is mixed and I would support calls for reform.  In discussions with other scientists, I have heard appalling examples of abuse, such as the stealing of authors' work and credit by anonymous reviewers.

All the manuscripts I have submitted for peer review have benefitted from the process.  The published manuscripts are usually improved as a result of the vetting, and in most cases I prefer the published version over the initially submitted draft.  However, in two cases the published version is also shorter or more condensed than I would have preferred, and 19 and 12 years later, respectively, I'm still sore about that.  In one case, the peer review process extended for over a year, in my opinion needlessly, due to a single obstinate reviewer who added absolutely no value to the process.  In another case I eventually published a manuscript in unrefereed form (in a conference proceedings) because the journal rejected it for being "too simple".  (The talk corresponding to that paper won an award at the conference where I presented it!)  I have since pulled the same trick for a second paper, also rejected, though it gets lots of reads where I posted it (academia.edu).  I strongly believe that the taste of referees and editors does not necessarily correspond with that of readers.

As a referee, I also feel that I strongly improved every manuscript I have refereed.  However, I have seen other published research that should have been better vetted.  I have taken to posting critiques of such papers on PubPeer, a website for open, post-publication "peer review".  In my view, tools like PubPeer should be better integrated into the research culture.  Upon reading a paper that you think you may want to use, one of your first instincts should be to look it up in PubPeer.  And scientists should not hesitate to post their criticisms or discussion of published work on PubPeer.

Vazire makes some pertinent points.  We don't understand the performance of peer review because there is essentially no empirical research done on this (with the exception, she says, of medical journals) - a hypocrisy considering scientists pride themselves on being "evidence based".  She calls for giving peer review researchers access to now-confidential materials, the raw material of peer review, so as to better study the process.  (It would be a brave editor who agrees to such sharing!)

Other issues she complains about (status bias and bias due to the gender, institution, or ethnicity of authors) could be addressed by double blind peer review, a process I have participated in myself.  She calls for more diversity in recruiting referees, though the flip side of this is placing additional (unpaid) labor burden on minorities, who already bear an additional burden at their institutions in many cases.  I agree with her that mechanisms to hold editors accountable for their own abuses are nowhere near sufficient.  

I support Vazire's recommendation of disclosure of referee reports and decision letters; but such documents are taken out of context without the corresponding draft versions of manuscripts.  Thus the use of preprint servers and tools like GitHub could be used in conjunction with transparency of peer review.

Vazire also requests specialized review processes; statistical analysis is her example.  In principle this is a sound suggestion, but in practice I frankly believe statisticians might do both harm and good in this role.  Much of the damage to the research enterprise in the first place has been due to the influence of the statistical inferential framework, as I've written about previously.

Peer review is a broken process, but it should be reformed instead of discarded.  Statistical inference too is broken, but we've given statisticians a chance to reform it, to no avail.  Discarding it in most cases would be a step forward.

Scientists and Very Short Introductions

Continuing the parlor game from my last post, let's look at Oxford University Press's Very Short Introductions series, or VSIs, as well as its predecessor, the Past Masters series.  In contrast to the multi-authored Cambridge Companions, the VSIs are short, pocket-sized introductions to subjects (including famous individuals) by typically a single author.  However, like the Oxford Handbooks, the VSIs have respectable coverage of science topics, something the Cambridge Companions generally lack.  Again, the usual suspects (Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Bertrand Russell) all have volumes dedicated to them - they all did work in mathematics or physics, though that work is not what secured them their places in this series.  (Pascal's was a Past Masters that did not get transferred to the VSIs.)  There are no VSIs for individuals who were primarily mathematicians.

Again, in biology only Darwin has a volume, and I see no chemists represented.  Among physicists, we have Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Michael Faraday, and Niels Bohr.  Strangely there is no VSI for Einstein!  C'mon now!!  By the same token, Cambridge Companions needs to catch up and issue volumes for Copernicus, Faraday, and Bohr.  And any list of great physicists must include James Clerk Maxwell, though I do not know whether his influence on the humanities has been as great as the others mentioned here.  

Turning to economics, there are VSIs for Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Karl Marx, and Lord Keynes, but Hayek is missing.  (As Malthus is missing from the Cambridge Companions.)  Past Masters had a single volume covering Smith, Malthus, and Keynes, but like Pascal's, this one did not get transferred to the VSIs.

Scientists and the Cambridge Companions

Today we veer a little from our usual terrain.  The Cambridge Companions book series consists of anthologies of articles meant to introduce and provide context for major writers and thinkers, topics, and historical periods.  The subjects covered are primarily in the humanities.  The major areas listed include American Studies, Ancient Worlds, Culture, Classical Literature, Law, Linguistics, Literature and Drama, Management, Music, Philosophy, and Religion.  The list of subtopics is quite detailed, with Philosophy of Science being the only one remotely related to science, engineering, and medicine.  Yet, I've noticed a few scientists end up having volumes dedicated to them.  It is interesting to dwell on those scientists whose work has had ripple effects on the humanities.

First, to dispose of the obvious, what crops up under "Philosophy of Science"?  Four volumes, on the following subjects:  Einstein, Piaget, Darwin's Origin of Species, and Philosophy of Biology.  Not mentioned there is that there is also a Cambridge Companion to Darwin, now in its second edition, as well as volumes for Bacon and Carnap.  When you click on the subject "General Science", the volumes for Darwin and Newton (also in second edition) join Philosophy of Biology.   As far as I know, Darwin is the only biologist with a volume dedicated to him, and I can't think of a single chemist who has one.

Let's turn to mathematics.  Clicking on this subject yields two volumes, Einstein and Frege.  However, we know that others to whom volumes are dedicated have done important work in mathematics:  Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and Bertrand Russell, for instance.  It is safe to say their mathematical work is probably not the principle reason they have volumes dedicated to them, however.

Let's sidestep a little and consider economics.  Two volumes pop up when you click on that subject:  Keynes and Hayek.  However, we know that there are also volumes on Adam Smith and Karl Marx.  There are also volumes dedicated to other thinkers who wrote about economics, but who might not primarily be considered "economists", such as John Locke, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill.

What I mainly wanted to write about here though is physics.  There are 3 volumes dedicated to physicists:  Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.  Obviously, some of the individuals mentioned above (Descartes, Pascal) and others (Thomas Hobbes) with Companions of their own, did work in physics as well, but Galileo, Newton, and Einstein are the ones that can be considered primarily physicists.  It is true that these three are revolutionary figures in the history of physics, and that their work did ripple out and influence philosophy and culture more broadly.  Each of them also worked in multiple areas of physics.

So, this raises an amusing question:  what other physicists might deserve a Cambridge Companion?  One hint is a set of books, not formally part of a series, published by Oxford University Press with a very similar format.  Three 19th century British physicists have such volumes dedicated to them:  Maxwell, Kelvin, and Stokes.  They are certainly deserving and were pivotal figures in the history of physics; however it might be argued that their impact on the humanities has not been as large as Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.  (Two obvious missing physicists from that 19th-century British set include Michael Faraday and Lord Rayleigh.)  Perhaps Niels Bohr might come closer to a good candidate.  At the more popular culture level, Nikola Tesla and Richard Feynman are obvious candidates (and such volumes would probably sell well), and Steven Weinberg certainly wrote prolifically for a general audience.  I will have to say though, the selection of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein are the most obvious choices to start with, and thus the series chose wisely.

The same parlor game could be played for biology, chemistry, and mathematics.  I don't know the history of these fields well enough to suggest candidates.  However, in logic (a field that overlaps with philosophy) an obvious and deserving figure would be Kurt Godel.  In economics, perhaps Herbert Simon or James M. Buchanan might be considered.  Among the geosciences, perhaps Alfred Wegener (of continental drift) and Edward N. Lorenz (of the butterfly effect) might be considered.

Of course, with Philosophy of Biology in the series, one could easily add volumes on the other major scientific disciplines, though these are frequently well served by other publishers (like the much more expensive Oxford Handbooks series, which generally has wider coverage than the Cambridge Companions). 

A tribute to Academic Press' Mathematics in Science and Engineering series

Almost a year ago, I wrote about Academic Press' acclaimed International Geophysics book series, which published a total of 104 volumes, the last one in 2014.  Though many volumes remain in print, it is unclear if any new volumes are anticipated.

Today I'd like to pay tribute to another Academic Press book series, Mathematics in Science and Engineering.  Academic Press is now part of Elsevier, and the latter's website shows that this series, apparently launched in 1961, is still going strong, with the latest volume published earlier this year.  Volume 1 was titled Concepts from Tensor Analysis and Differential Geometry, by Tracy Y. Thomas.  Sixty years later, the series published Luigi Berselli's Three-Dimensional Navier-Stokes Equations for Turbulence.  The website seems to suggest that the last numbered volume was #213, published in 2010, and at least 7 volumes have been published since then.  The longevity of a 60-year old series is truly impressive.

Scanning the list of titles and authors, there are indeed some impressive contributions.  Remarkably, I only own one of these volumes, Morton Gurtin's An Introduction to Continuum Mechanics (1981), volume 158 of the series.

Partisan Science in America

Last Tuesday's edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an op-ed by Gary Saul Morson titled "Partisan Science in America".  Among the topics discussed are the origins of COVID-19, Dr. Fauci's pronouncements about masks and "attacks...on science", and climate change.  While DTLR does not take a position on the "lab leak" theory, which is discussed at the center of Morson's piece, in my view the rest of the article is on point.  Though Morson is a professor of Slavic languages and literature, according to Wikipedia he is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and had a youthful interest in physics.  Much of what he writes here is accurate, though sadly not well understood even by scientists themselves.

Here are some of the best lines of the piece:

If science is treated as a solid block, each part of which is as indubitable as all the others, then science has been misunderstood.  Science always contains some propositions less firmly grounded than others:  on the frontier, newly discovered, based on experiments not readily replicated.

and,

Some scientific statements prove false:  that's how science works.  Those who claim that to doubt any part of the consensus is to be "antiscience" or "a denier" are themselves being antiscientific.

and,

To doubt a scientist is not to doubt science.  Quite the contrary, personal authority is precisely what science dispenses with, as much as possible....To be sure, nonscientists often have to trust scientists to inform them what the science has discovered.  But that is all the more reason that scientists bear the responsibility of not letting political or other nonscientific criteria affect their explication.

and finally,

If scientists expect their statements to be trusted, they must themselves be trustworthy in making them.  One had better be scrupulously honest before asking people to surrender their own judgment and simply believe what they are told.  Scientists should be especially careful not to misrepresent political or policy judgments as being scientific.  And they must protest vigorously and loudly when other influential people claim to speak in the name of science while misrepresenting it.

I've heard multiple politicians say "I believe in science".  Anyone who makes such a statement has no understanding of the scientific process, as the first quote above alludes to.  This kind of talk pollutes our collective ability to think critically about science and science policy.