Science, Media & The Mind

Introduction
On April 25, The New York Times published Gary Gutting's essay with the title "What Do Scientific Studies Show?" written for The Stone. The author argues that much scientific reporting in the media suffers from journalistic misconceptions of the methodological limitations inherent in the reported studies. As consequence, the significance of the findings tends to appear disproportionately exaggerated in the news, particularly when advances in medical treatments are at stake.

Because epidemiological studies, as much as empirical social science studies, profoundly depend on statistical analyses of covariance and correlation, Professor Gutting admonishes that association is too easily confused with causation. He proposes that journalists ought to judge the value of the observations they wish to report, ranking studies by methodological rigor. Essentially, the author encourages the media to evaluate a study's scientific merit, before the implications of its findings are reported in the news. He squarely places responsibility with the news editors and journalists.

I agree with the author that quantitative studies commonly incur the risk of unrepresentative sampling (read my essay with the title "Representative Sampling & The Mind" dated Mar. 18, 2011) and that professional science correspondents should strive to understand the limitations of the empirical sciences and their statistical methods. Best practice and scientific integrity are of utmost importance because of the wide-spread skepticism of science we find in this country today.

However, in some cases unprofessional judgment by the media is not the sole culprit of the undue embellishment of the relevance of new research findings. Rather, the exaggeration may begin with the investigators and the public relation departments of the academic institutions they are affiliated with. Below I provide one example.

The Case
Since the catastrophic nuclear reactor meltdown near Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, which blanketed vast areas of Europe with radioactive fallout, the effects of low-level ionizing radiation on public health have been of particular interest of research. The three reactor meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, two years ago brought the importance of this topic even more into the awareness of public health professionals. Which levels of ionizing radiation can be considered safe continues to be hotly debated among scientists as much as in the public, while the US Environmental Protection Agency is striving to revise its guidelines on recommended limits (Radiation Protection; Protective Action Guide updates, Mar. 2013).

Roughly a year ago the journal Environmental Health Perspectives published a research study conducted with mice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Olipitz and others, 2012). The authors could not find any statistically significant effect of low-level ionizing radiation in the mice. A discussion on simplyinfo.org brought this paper to my attention.

I found profound shortcomings in the design of the MIT study and the evaluation of the data. That is, the chosen time of exposure to ionizing radiation was shorter than that used in other studies showing dose-related chromosomal aberrations at low dose rates. Moreover, the investigators elected to integrate the results of separate experiments using different techniques, but no comprehensive statistical tests were carried out on the results. My concerns were published in a letter to the editor (Melzer P, 2012), to which the paper's senior authors responded (Engelward and Yanch, 2012).

Despite the study's shortcomings and of importance to the debate over Professor Gutting's stone of contention in The New York Times, the principal investigators brazenly chose to advertise their findings on MITnews as evidence that low-level ionizing radiation may be harmless to our health and that current emergency planning for radiological accidents may be too cautious in the assessment of the public health risks of ionizing radiation. I cite from Ann Trafton's post with the title "A new look at prolonged radiation exposure" published May 15, 2012:

“There are no data that say that’s a dangerous level,” says Yanch, a senior lecturer in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering. “This paper shows that you could go 400 times higher than average background levels and you’re still not detecting genetic damage. It could potentially have a big impact on tens if not hundreds of thousands of people in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant accident or a nuclear bomb detonation, if we figure out just when we should evacuate and when it’s OK to stay where we are.” 

Conclusion
In my letter to the editor-in-chief of Environmental Health Perspectives, I explained in no uncertain terms why the findings of this study remain ambiguous at best. In their response, the senior authors conceded that they understood their study's limitations. Therefore, it remains difficult to comprehend why the authors made such extremely far-fetched claims with profound implications for public health policy in the MITnews release.

Sadly, news releases that recklessly misrepresent research findings may not seem unexpected. Federal funding vital to investigators and host institutions alike has been tight over the last decade, taking another significant cut with this year's sequestration. The National Institutes of Health currently fund fewer than 1 in 10 investigator-initiated applications for research grants. I have written previously about the crucial role of federal funding in US biomedical research in my post with the title "Research Funding & Lost Treasures of the Mind" dated Oct. 23, 2008.

Regardless of the difficult times, studies like the one discussed here should never be embellished to influence decision making in public health policy. Moreover, news releases like the one above ought never be used to inform the public.

 References

• Engelward B, Yanch J (2012) Radiation dose-rate: Engelward and Yanch Respond. Environ Health Perspect 120:a417–a418.
• Melzer P (2012) Radiation dose-rate and DNA damage. Environ Health Perspect 120:a417–a417.
• Olipitz W, Wiktor-Brown D, Shuga J, Pang B, McFaline J, Lonkar P, Thomas A, Mutamba JT, Greenberger JS, Samson LD, Dedon PC, Yanch JC, Engelward BP (2012) Integrated molecular analysis indicates undetectable DNA damage in mice after continuous irradiation at ~400-fold natural background radiation. Environ Health Perspect 120: 1130–1136. Published online 2012 April 26. doi: 10.1289/ehp.1104294
• Trafton A (2012) A new look at prolonged radiation exposure. MIT study suggests that at low dose-rate, radiation poses little risk to DNA. MITnews.

Why Scientists like Artists

It is often said that Nashvillians possess two lives. One is spent on a day job to make a living. The other unfolds during the off hours, when we pursue our musical aspirations. If the music works out, we will quit our day job. I was once privileged to meet someone who was about to make this lucky transition. She was recording her first CD. Because I had never witnessed a recording session, I asked her whether I could not tag along to experience what it was like. She graciously agreed, and I ended up visiting a recording studio.

It was different from what I had expected. The location was somewhere in the countryside a forty-minute drive from Nashville. The producer worked out of his basement. Below the keyboards and mixers, I saw plenty computer equipment. The music could be heavily computer-generated. Essentially, this man was able to produce the sounds of all instruments in a band by himself, except the steel guitar. I was told that this was one rare instrument whose sound could not be synthesized to satisfaction yet. On my day, the soundtrack for the steel guitar was recorded. After that my friend sang. She was cooped up in a sound-insulated booth that doubled as the closet for the washer and the drier on other days. All afternoon, my friend repeated the same line until her voice almost broke and she needed a lolly pop to continue singing.

The producer was working with a man who possessed the golden finger that came down on a button exactly at the point in time when the line had to be spliced into the song. My friend had to sing the line precisely the way the man with the golden finger demanded. What he asked for was so nuanced, I could hardly hear the difference. He was profoundly insistent and perfectionist about the process. My friend gave her best to deliver. After three hours, I myself imagined hearing what the man with the golden finger was aiming at. The day went by like a breeze. My friend told me afterwards that she had spent many weeks like this and was not quite finished yet. Her hard work eventually paid off with a collection of beautiful songs, opening the way into the Bluebird Cafe. In Nashville, music means business!

I am not musically versed in any respect. I am a research scientist. What struck me most about the production process was its similarity to the work I know. The beginning of any research study is an idea, that is the hypothesis. The scientist shapes the hypothesis and designs the experiments to prove or disprove it. The results provide new insights. Things may turn out different from expectation. The hypothesis will change and experimentation proceeds until a break-through is achieved.

Watching my friend at work that day, I learned that making a song adheres to the same procedure. The singer/songwriters and producers shape the tune and the lyrics of the song until they fit perfectly together and all aspects fall in place. Eventually a new song is born. In this process as much as in scientific research, experience is essential for the design of a flawless product, pure and free of contradiction. As many scientists teach, my friend became a councilor. She published a collection of interviews with successful singer/songwriters, giving advice to those who wish to pursue this career. Today, she coaches young talent to get started. You may visit her here.

Addenda

• When we listen to Bob Boilen's segment on NPR's All Things Considered entitled "Moby: One Song, Two Days, Three Versions" broadcast today, we grasp immediately that artists and scientists are striving in the same fashion to perfect a product shaped countless times in their imagination. In that sense humans seem unique. No other creature we know is able to accomplish such act of creation (05/04/10).

• It is fascinating how similar the creative process in the arts and the sciences can be. The eminent pharmacologist Otto Loewi had the idea for the experiment that would prove the existence of neurotransmitters and win him the Nobel Prize in his dreams. Keith Richards had the fundamental idea for "I can't get no satisfaction", one of The Rolling Stones' signature songs, in his dreams as well. Loewy needed to scribble notes down on a pad that he had placed on his bed stand. He had had the dream of the experiment on a prior night, but had nothing to write it down with at that time, and forgotten the details when he awoke. When the dream re-occurred, he was prepared with pad and pencil, finding his notes next morning. Richards habitually took his guitar hooked up to a tape recorder to bed and woke up one morning, finding the basic tune for the fabled Stones song recorded on the tape. Listen to this, at times mildly strained, interview with Terry Gross broadcast on National Public Radio's Fresh Air under the title "The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards Looks Back At 'Life'" today in context with Richard's just-published memoir entitled "Life" (10/25/10).

Leonardo's View

I just was reminded of the great Leonardo da Vinci the other day. A book entitled “La Musica Celata” has just been published in which the author, Giovanni Maria Pala, lays out evidence that a musical theme is embedded in Leonardo's painting of the Last Supper. That Leonardo was truly one of a kind! His drawings and paintings reflect such a keen sense of actuality and maybe more. I am a neuro-anatomist by training. I always admired realistic drawings of the human body. In my mind, Leonardo was the first modern anatomist.

I once could visit a traveling exhibit of his drawings and notes on human anatomy at the Philadelphia College of Physicians. Beside the very impressively detailed renderings of muscles and bones, drawings on the brain caught my eye. On one parchment (Fig. 5), a schema on how the brain may work was center stage. The ventricles, that is the fluid-filled cavities, were of utmost importance. In Leonardo's time, it was commonly accepted that our thoughts, our spirit, would travel with the juice in the ventricles. The nerve cells were discovered only centuries later. However, the Maestro was not going to be fooled. If you train your eye on the lower left corner of the parchment, you discover that what looks like a smudge is the faint impression of a more detailed drawing of brain structure. As if Leonardo tried to draw something as he saw it and then erased it. The other parchment (Fig. 6) shows his method of reproducing the shape of the ventricles by filling them with wax in the bovine brain. On this parchment, again the ventricles take center stage, Yet, on the right side there is another faint drawing. This time, the shape is distinct. You see a very realistic reproduction of the cerebral cortex with its sulci and gyri. Though it may seem human, it is most likely the cortex cerebri of a cow. Yes, also ruminants have a cortex with numerous convolutions. That must have caught the Maestro's eye. I can imagine that he mumbled to himself: ”Only shows the limits of inductive thinking. This proves that cortical convolutions are no key to intellect!” And all the world's cows must have agreed with a resounding:” Moo!”

If you like to see more of Leonardo's notes on human anatomy, check in a book like Leonardo Da Vinci on the Human Body. In his studies, Leonardo was constantly struggling with the unreal views of the day and with the actuality that he saw and could not help, but draw. He must have erased his impression of reality many times, because of his fear of the authorities. Dissecting bodies was forbidden. He wrote his notes on the parchments in mirror image to conceal his thoughts from the average person who may have betrayed him. But, then he could not efface his convictions entirely. In the end, Leonardo's perceptions of the brain were correct, and he stands tall today. What can we learn from this?

Trust your own eyes more than anything, particularly when the views of the day get in the way.

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