The H-Prize: The ultimate in competitive science

The H-Prize takes its shape and name from the privately funded $10 million Ansari X Prize, which led, in 2004, to the first privately developed manned rocket to reach outer space twice.

Members of the House Science Committee said that their bill would draw on American’s competitive spirit. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, a New York Republican who leads the panel, said that “the potential payoff [of a hydrogen technology breakthrough] will be huge: cleaner air, less global warming, and most importantly, an economy that is not held hostage by foreign regimes or volatile oil markets.”

Both NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, have offered prizes for technology. Last year, a team from Stanford University won $2 million from DARPA for designing a robot that won a race across the Mojave Desert.

That competition saw some universities partnering with private companies, and researchers said that the H-Prize could prompt more of the same. [...]

From this interesting article in Inside HigherEd.

Academic papers in Open Access journals receive better recognition

Here’s the abstract of the paper by Gunther Eysenbach.

Open access (OA) to the research literature has the potential to accelerate recognition and dissemination of research findings, but its actual effects are controversial. This was a longitudinal bibliometric analysis of a cohort of OA and non-OA articles published between June 8, 2004, and December 20, 2004, in the same journal (PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Article characteristics were extracted, and citation data were compared between the two groups at three different points in time: at “quasi-baseline” (December 2004, 0–6 mo after publication), in April 2005 (4–10 mo after publication), and in October 2005 (10–16 mo after publication). Potentially confounding variables, including number of authors, authors’ lifetime publication count and impact, submission track, country of corresponding author, funding organization, and discipline, were adjusted for in logistic and linear multiple regression models. A total of 1,492 original research articles were analyzed: 212 (14.2% of all articles) were OA articles paid by the author, and 1,280 (85.8%) were non-OA articles. In April 2005 (mean 206 d after publication), 627 (49.0%) of the non-OA articles versus 78 (36.8%) of the OA articles were not cited (relative risk = 1.3 [95% Confidence Interval: 1.1–1.6]; p = 0.001). 6 mo later (mean 288 d after publication), non-OA articles were still more likely to be uncited (non-OA: 172 [13.6%], OA: 11 [5.2%]; relative risk = 2.6 [1.4–4.7]; p

Death of the industrial research lab

Basic research performed in industrial laboratories is declining — is the focus on profitability to the detriment of furthering scientific knowledge?

Do read this interesting article by A. Michael Noll (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California) in Nature Materials.

In metallurgy and materials science, many great researchers started their career at industrial labs. John W. Cahn (at General Electric) and Hubert Aaronson (at Ford) come to mind immediately. Of course, they both left for academia eventually.

“Research misbehaviour”

Nicholas Wade has been doing quite a bit of follow-up reporting (see the end of the post for links) on the Hwang Woo Suk scandal (aka human cloning scandal) and its aftermath . One part of the puzzle that hasn’t got too much of attention is the role of Gerald Schatten, the University of Pittsburgh researcher, and the lead author of one of the discredited papers on cloned human cells in the journal Science. The latest report from Wade has more dirt on Schatten’s role. It’s really dirty.

By convention, a senior co-author receives major credit for the research and carries major responsibility for the accuracy of the data. Dr. Schatten accepted Dr. Hwang’s offer, even though he had done none of the research and was not in a position to verify its accuracy. [...]

At the same time Dr. Schatten accepted $40,000 in honorariums from Dr. Hwang and asked for a $200,000 research grant, which he hoped would be renewed every year.

While we are on the subject of cloning, let me link to Doug Natelson’s post from a while ago comparing this scandal with another big-bang scandal that shook the world of condensed matter physics: the Henrik Schoen scandal. Let me quote just two similarities:

* Huge impact articles in major journals, with talk of Nobel prizes.

* Multiple big-name coauthors who did not spot anything wrong.

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Here are the other reports/analyses by Nicholas Wade:

Researcher Faked Evidence of Human Cloning, Koreans Report (January 10, 2006).

One Last Question: Who Did the Work? (January 17, 2006)

Lowering Expectations at Science’s Frontier (January 15, 2006)

It May Look Authentic; Here’s How to Tell It Isn’t (January 24, 2006)

More on the Hwang Woo Suk scandal

Just a quick set of links:

New York Times’ Gina Kolata has a report about the process by which a paper in Science is retracted.

Via slashdot, we learn of this crazy defence by Hwang Woo Suk; he has the temerity to talk about a long-planned conspiracy.

The most poignant reaction is by Elia Diodati (link via Tangled Bank #44) who identifies the biggest loser in this scandal: no, it’s not Hwang Woo Suk, nor his department/university, nor yet his collaborators. It’s not even the South Korean Pride. Then who?

the little guys slaving 20 hours a day over dimly lit lab benches are the ones who get the brunt of the stigmata. Imagine what it’s like to take the first tentative footsteps into the world of academia/R&D, only to see their graduate careers terminated with alacrity once their advisors commit unpardonable breaches of ethics or make similar blunders like putting all their eggs in a basket and gambling their entire reputation on a research project that simply didn’t pan out.

This is such a shame.

It doesn’t make sense!

The New Scientist has an article on ‘Thirteen things that don’t make sense‘, with a nice description of some big problems that have been baffling scientists. There are many entries there on astrophysics and cosmology, which never made much sense to my (admittedly puny) mind. But the ones on the placebo effect (at No.1) and cold fusion (at No. 13) are really interesting.

The real stunner came at No. 4: Belfast homeopathy results. It certainly made me go ‘it doesn’t make sense’!

It was 11, it then became 2, and …

… now, it is one big Zero. Zilch. Zippo.

Thus progresses the shameful saga of the fraud perpetrated by Hwang Woo Suk. Read about it in this report byChoe Sang-Hun in the New York Times.

Why should all Koreans pay for the sins of one fraudulent ’scientist’?

Nicholas Wade has a report on the immediate aftermath of the disgraceful end to the Hwang Woo Suk saga. This guy seems to have figured out how to trick the system:

The South Korean government, which promoted Dr. Hwang as a national hero and an international celebrity, has seen its investment wasted. The leading scientific journals that vied to publish Dr. Hwang’s work are re-examining their acceptance procedures. [...]

Three ingredients of his ascent were attracting generous support from the South Korean government, compartmentalizing his laboratory so that few others had any overall view of what was going on and reporting plausible advances that scientists abroad felt they, too, might have achieved if they had access to as many human eggs as Dr. Hwang obtained.

In addition, Dr. Hwang invited well-known American researchers to be co-authors on his articles, which he may have hoped would make his findings more acceptable to leading journals like Science and Nature. He even invited Dr. Gerald Schatten, a stem cell expert at the University of Pittsburgh, to be the lead author on the June 2005 report although Dr. Schatten had done none of the experiments. But Dr. Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, said the inclusion of American co-authors “certainly did not affect us.” [...]

An indication of Dr. Hwang’s good connections to the government was the inclusion of Dr. Park Ky Young as a co-author of his 2004 report on human cloning. A botanist by training, Dr. Park may not have contributed much scientifically to the task of cloning of human cells. She is, however, the science adviser to Roh Moo Hyun, the president of South Korea.

Now, this part of the article really irritates the hell out of me:

“Clearly the scientific credibility of Korean investigators has been compromised,” said Dr. John Gearhart, a stem cell expert at Johns Hopkins University and a member of Science’s board of reviewers. He referred to the fact that duplicate and misidentified photos had turned up in articles by other South Korean authors besides Dr. Hwang.

This is utter nonsense. Two or three groups have screwed up. Does it mean that you start with the premiss that every Korean scientist is a fraud until proven innocent? The response of Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science is puzzling:

Dr. Kennedy said, “You cannot avoid a sense of taint from an experience like this.” He added, however, that many leading American universities had had at least one case of scientific fraud.

Read the two sentences again. What do they really mean? Just how many scientists in these American universities suffered because of “a sense of taint”?

It’s over

A panel at the [Seoul National University], releasing initial findings of a investigation, accused Hwang Woo-Suk of damaging the scientific community with his deception, while the South Korean government threatened to pull its funding for his research.

“I sincerely apologise to the people for creating a shock and disappointment,” Prof Hwang told reporters as he was leaving his office at Seoul National University, considered the country’s top institution of higher learning.

The quote is from this Guardian story. The International Herald Tribune story is here.

Remember the NYTimes report we looked at just a few days ago? Towards the end, it had this to say about the then ongoing investigation:

But experts also cautioned that the committee’s credibility requires the addition of outsiders, and perhaps scientists from other countries, who know the field and can help ensure that the investigation will retain its objectivity.

One has to wonder how these ‘experts’ are going to react to this news.

Evolution in Action, etc.

The prestigeous journal Science has just announced the “Breakthrough of the Year”. The prize goes to — can we have some drumroll, please — “Evolution in Action”. You can read its report here. If you are wondering why a 146-year old idea is being accorded this special status now, you should read P.Z. Myers, who explains that “we’re on the edge of a Renaissance in the discipline [evolutionary biology], if we’re not already in the middle of it.”

* * *

Sunil Laxman has a nice post explaining a recent breakthrough in understanding the genetics of skin colour.

* * *

BBC has a report about some promising research on cancer (leukemia) neutralizing effects of green tea. Doctors warn, however, that it is all still early days.

* * *

For the average woman, life holds not two but three certainties: death, taxes and 35 years of monthly hormonal mayhem. Periods can be wretched. But from a young age, girls are comforted with the promise that the bleeding, cramping and radical mood swings are all part of the special alchemy of womanhood. Menstruation is — to use the mother of all feminine-hygiene euphemisms — a precious gift. Which is why the introduction of a new product that invites women to opt out of the whole ordeal is something of a cultural upheaval. Health experts are predicting that by this time next year, menstruation will no longer be an inevitable function but rather an optional feature, a bit like power steering or pay-per-view.

I am sure this quote piqued your interest. Go read all about Anya, a new contraception pill that also “provides a steady stream of hormones, [thus promising] to quash a woman’s usual cyclical fluctuations, virtually wiping out all the irksome symptoms of PMS”. It is expected to hit the drugstore shelves in the US and Canada in 2006. [Update: Anne Casselman notes some curious side effects mentioned in the article.]

Ranjit Nair on this year’s physics Nobel

Disclaimer: For this post, I am going by popular accounts of the contributions of great people like Sudarshan, Feynman and Glauber.

***

The latest is by Ranjit Nair, who has an op-ed in today’s Times of India on the issue of who deserved one half of this year’s Physics Nobel: Roy Glauber of Harvard or E.C.G. Sudarshan of the University of Texas at Austin; the other half of the Prize was shared by two experimental physicists. I wrote about this topic a while ago in my other blog. So, what’s new?

Nair, who is the Director of Centre for Philosophy and Foundations of Science (Prof. Sudarshan is the President of the Centre’s Board of Advisors) indicates that Sudarshan also missed out on credit for some of his earliest work that Feynman did sometime later (I am not sure about the details here). This particular story has also been told by Sudarshan’s thesis advisor himself (I don’t have a link), and it goes like this: Sudarshan’s Ph.D. work was presented in one or two conferences. However, the paper by Murray Gell-Mann and Feynman appeared a few months before that by Sudarshan and his advisor.

So, it appears that in both cases, Sudarshan’s contributions appeared in print a few months after the ones that went on to become highly celebrated. In the first case (involving Feynman), Sudarshan was clearly a pioneer. In the latter (involving Glauber), his ideas and work were far better, but came after those of the Prize winner.

With this retelling, it now appears to me that Sudarshan’s main claim rests on the superiority (and not precedence) of his version of the theory. Given that the Prize was already shared by three scientists (apparently, Nobel Prizes cannot be shared by more than three people), the Nobel Committee’s decision to leave him out seems, if not totally fair, at least understandable.

Unless, of course, the demand (by Sudarshan and his supporters) is for the Prize to be awarded to Sudarshan instead of Glauber. I don’t think they are making that demand.

***

See this story for more details about the Glauber-Sudarshan controversy. Peter Woit mentions it in his blog and gets a bunch of interesting comments about Feynman’s celebrated work. No, they are not talking about Sudarshan, but a German scientist called Stueckelberg!

Nanosilver

Apparently, silver (particularly in the form of silver nitrate) was used as a disinfectant before the advent of antibiotics. Today’s NYTimes has an article about the return of silver — this time, in the nanometric, elemental form — to its well known medical use. It adds that this link between silver and its disinfectant properties is not fully understood.

NYTimes’ bungled analysis of fraud in science

Today’s NYTimes article by Lawrence Altman and William Broad traces the history of fraud in science with a view to identify the underlying causes. Not surprisingly, l’affaire Hwang is the immediate provocation.

It is chilling to read the long list of high profile cases of scientific misconduct:

• “In the early 1980’s, a young cardiology researcher, Dr. John R. Darsee, was found to have fabricated much data for more than 100 papers he wrote while working at Harvard and Emory Universities. His work appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and The American Journal of Cardiology, among other top publications.”
• “In 1999, federal investigators found that a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., faked what had been hailed as crucial evidence linking power lines to cancer. He published his research in The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences and F.E.B.S. Letters …”
• “The year 2002 proved especially bleak. At Bell Labs, a series of extraordinary claims that seemed destined to win a Nobel Prize, including the creation of molecular-scale transistors, suddenly collapsed. Two of the world’s most prestigious journals, Science and Nature, had published many of the fraudulent papers, underscoring the need for better safeguards despite two decades of attempted repairs.”
• “… serious doubts about the truthfulness of published studies done in Canada and India.” (see footnote [1])
• And, of course, the Hwang Woo Suk disaster involving human cloning experiment. (see footnote [2])

Given so many high profile frauds emanating from the US laboratories, one would think that these guys would at least display some caution when they discuss frauds that have taken place in other countries. No such luck! Here are two representative paragraphs:

“The Korean case shows us that we should be a lot more cautious,” Marcel C. LaFollette, the author of “Stealing Into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct in Scientific Publishing,” said in an interview. “We have been unwilling to ask tough questions of people who are from other countries and whose systems are different because we were attempting to be polite.”

and

Experts now say that the explosive growth of science around the globe has made the problem far worse, because most countries have yet to institute the extra measures that the United States has put in place. That imbalance is at least partly responsible for a rise in scientific scandals in other countries, they say.

One really has to admire the strength of their faith in the “extra measures that the United States has put in place”. Don’t get me wrong, here; I am all for instituting them in India and other countries. However, shouldn’t these guys look at why frauds continue to happen in the US labs, in spite of these “extra measures”? After all, it is possible that the “extra measures” have no deterrent value at all in checking fraud in high impact research; and if so, we should be looking elsewhere. Is it even necessary to see the Hwang affair through the lens of “US vs. the rest”, when such a view could lead to a misdiagnosis of the underlying cause?

So, what makes the misconduct in high impact cases different from that in low profile cases? P.Z. Myers offers a possible answer.

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[1] Read this piece in the British Medical Journal for more information on the Canadian and Indian studies referred to by the article.

[2] To the list of scientific frauds compiled by Altman and Broad, we may add this and this.

Meteor impact craters

Check out this wonderful page that has marked out, on Google Maps, where crater marks can be seen on earth. I guess this is the next best thing to going up there in the sky to take a peak!

[Link via Digg.com']

Hype in science?

Let me give start with an example: I saw in nanotech wire this report. The headline screams:

Princeton’s Group Nanotechnology discovery by could have radical implications

Let’s look at the underlying paper that has led to this screaming headline: It is this paper (pdf),that was recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters (22, 228301, November 25, 2005). It actually has a much more sober title:

Optimized Interactions for Targeted Self-Assembly: Application to a Honeycomb Lattice

Read both the ‘nanotech wire’ report and the broad features in PRL paper, and compare the tone and tenor in them! Let me give you the last paragraph of the PRL paper:

The optimization scheme proposed here is only one approach to the inverse problem, and we expect that others will be needed to search for interactions (isotropic or not, additive or not) that stabilize general systems. Apart from any particular algorithm, however, a central point of this Letter is to propose the use of powerful inverse statistical mechanical techniques to exquisitely control self-assembly from the nanoscopic to microscopic scales.

And this is what ‘nanotech wire’ says:

Now Salvatore Torquato, a Princeton University scientist, is proposing turning a central concept of nanotechnology on its head. If the theory bears out � and it is in its infancy — it could have radical implications not just for industries like telecommunications and computers but also for our understanding of the nature of life.

In concluding that this work is terribly hyped up in ‘nanotech wire’, am I being clueless?