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Mind The Gap II: What’s a Scientist to do?

Posted by Jenna Capyk on October 11, 2011

We’ve been talking a lot on the show lately about problems in mistranslation or misrepresentation of science in communication to the general public. Throughout history ruling bodies have known that knowledge gives people power. Ruling classes or oppressive groups have always tried to restrict independent access to information through discouraging or forbidding literacy, outlawing certain forms of publications or writing, outlawing public forums or discussion of certain topics, etc. In short, political power has time and time again been protected through censorship. Of course, this goes on today as well. It’s sometimes most obvious in countries with overtly oppressive governments, but is a crucial consideration in democracies like our own True North Strong and Free. In fact, our votes determine who gets into office and this puts an enormous emphasis on our individual understanding of the issues and our abilities to make decisions based on them. As it global cooperation on scientific initiatives becomes more and more important to ensure the continuation of society as we know it, scientific issues are becoming more vital political issues. This means that we, as a general public, really need the ability to understand such issues. If we don’t, we are susceptible to being fed slanted information (or misinformation) and making bad political and social decisions. Fostering public scientific understanding and forthright, effective scientific communication strategies should be a topmost priority.

While members of the mainstream media bear some responsibility for science reporting, there is, of course, another major partner in the creation of scientific communications: scientists. A recent piece in Nature Chemistry by Matthew Hartings and Declan Fahy called “Communicating Chemistry for Public Engagement” looks at some of the challenges faced by scientists in holding up their part of the bargain, as well as some of the strategies available to them for effective communication.

According to these authors, one of the major problems that scientists face in communicating chemistry to the public is a state they call “chemophobia” This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: people not wanting to talk, (or hear) about chemistry because they’re afraid of it. Often when people hear about scientific topics it is in the context of something very serious and dangerous. For example, we hear about radiation in the event of malfunctions or bombs, but not the fact that that’s what the sun does all day long. We here about BPA and the dangers of our water bottles, but not how plastics have enabled things in medicine and industry that are simply not possible with any other material. We pay attention to pollutants, drugs, chemical warfare, and other scary things. The problem is that without a firm intellectual grasp on the pertinent scientific principles, our minds connect the fear we feel with any science in that field, lumping them all together under the banner of “I don’t fully understand it but it scares me.” This “chemophobia” or more general “scienceophobia” creates a ready-made hostile audience that can make engaging science news a hard sell.

Communicating science to the public can be difficult, but this is not an excuse to not try. Just like for the journalists and papers trying to make a buck, motivation for scientists to effectively communicate their research might not be particularly strong. In fact, it may be non-existent. For most research scientists the central goal of their day-to-day career is to run the lab. This means securing research grants and that process doesn’t require presentation of the research outside of one’s own field, or at least not very far outside of it. Similarly, to be respected in one’s field, you really don’t need to leave it (academically speaking). Sharing current research with a general audience can also be discouraging because the inherent lack of absolute truths and neatly finished stories is unsatisfying to people outside the sciences. The public rarely gives really positive feedback upon being presented with baby steps in a slow progress, and few people get excited about boring others. Think of working on a project for a decade and making what you consider excellent progress and then having people scoff at you because you don’t have all the answers after a whole decade. The current barriers to general scientific literacy are the same, then, between scientists and the general press: inherent challenges in doing a good job and few motivations to try.

The overarching communication strategy put forward by the authors of the abovementioned Nature Chemistry article is engaging the audience through tailor-made rather than cookie-cutter techniques. Start with the target audience and the desired outcome of the communication and work backwards, without assumption, to design the most appropriate communication strategy. This seems very logical but, like many things that are very logical, is not often a doctrine that is followed. It’s a reminder to consider your audience as a part of the interaction, and to evaluate your own method and its effectiveness in reaching your goals. At every decision one can ask: is this the most effective way to get this specific point across to this specific audience in order to make them understand this subject matter?

To truly engage an audience, you have to include them in the discussion, and to recognize them for what they are. This includes thinking of the general public not as one big homogeneous group, but as a highly segmented population made up of countless groups with distinct aptitudes, motivations, lifestyles, and beliefs. For scientists it can be tempting to see people as “scientists” and “non-scientists” because a lot of them feel this distinction runs deeper than just career choice. For many people in the sciences, being a “scientist” is more of a personality trait than a profession. This kind of broad categorization, however, is lethal to effective communication. Communication to any audience can only be effective when people doling out the information take the time to understand to whom they are speaking.

The model of engaging communication also includes establishing multidimensional communication channels, and not a one-way flow of information into science-empty heads. The idea of filling a knowledge deficit by providing knowledge is intuitive, but continuing experience and research is revealing that this model simply doesn’t work. By providing only facts, however well presented, scientists encourage a culture of intellectual elitism, essentially making themselves the gatekeepers to scientific truths. The problem with this strategy isn’t the information; it’s the relationship with the audience. We want people to feel that knowledge makes them powerful, not powerless, and giving people information alone does not give intellectual power. I think of this as the facts being like raw pasta and a grasp of the underlying fundamentals like a boiling pot of water. You can eat the raw pasta, but its not very palatable and you might not go back for more. Understanding needs to be an active process such that the teacher and teachee work together to build those fundamentals and cook dinner.

What this boils down to is creating a trust and an appreciation on both sides of the communication. This means the “please hold your questions until the end” model for presenting science cannot be used to engage a general audience. The public is not a vessel to be filled, but a body to collaborate with. Integral to this strategy is complete scientific honesty. Given the mistrust for the dangerous outcomes of some science, it might seem intuitive to avoid talking about such topics. For example, information sessions on nuclear power rarely talk about nuclear warfare (maybe never talk about nuclear warfare). According to people dedicated to building an effective public communication relationship for the sciences, this is a mistake. Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffman said in his address that it is a major mistake to avoid talking about detrimental aspects of chemistry along side beneficial ones. Open honesty about the consequences of research is what will build public trust in the scientific body. People need to know that they have access to all of the information, openly and honestly, and not just the bits and pieces cherry picked for their consumption.

Luckily, we now live in an age where we have more tools at our disposal than ever before. We still, of course, have many of the traditional medias which cannot and should not be ignored, but new models for using them to foster scientific literacy are being worked on. For example, there has been an explosion of popular and best-seller books on scientific topics. The Brain that Changes Itself, the Poisoner’s Handbook, A Brief History of Time, all of these books are on profoundly scientific topics but it has nonetheless become “cool” to read them. This kind of enthusiasm for consuming science is gold. These works are also actually written BY scientists who were willing to alter their normal communication styles to produce an effective work for their target audiences. Scientists can and should be communicating in their own field, but not necessarily by their own rules.

Of course a major new venue for interactive scientific communication is, you guessed it, the Internet. Science blogs other online tools make front-line science available to a broad audience from a number of different sources. The beauty of this model is that the same science can be communicated through many different voices. This means that people in that fractured, multi-faceted “public” can find a voice that speaks to them, increasing the effectiveness and pervasiveness of the message. Another major benefit is that two-way communication is encouraged in a way that traditional print-media doesn’t allow. Public two-way discussions can happen on the internet, allowing us to build that intrinsic trust in the communicators. It is crucial in this model for scientists and science communicators to welcome question and critique, rather than dismissing or ignoring it.

When it comes to scientists communicating science, the most important thing seems to be not only to get out of the ivory tower but to burn it down. In my science-communication utopia people are standing around the water cooler discussing what would not be considered mundane science, and kids would be shunned for being uncool if they didn’t understand the difference between correlation and causation. For this level of public engagement scientists, journalists, and the consuming public need to stop being adversaries and start being on the same team. Scientists shouldn’t fancy themselves as preachers, but as the best kind of teachers, those that reach their students personally, and learn from them as well. Everything in the “real world” involves science, maybe someday everyone will believe it.

Posted in Blogs, Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: education, popular science, public engagement, Science communication, Scientist | 1 Comment »

Baby Steps: Why Small Science Stories are Boring

Posted by Jenna Capyk on September 27, 2011

We’ve all heard of them, the “Eureka!” moments. Those heart-stopping instances of blinding discovery, overturning paradigms in an instant and making whole fields take notice at once. Yes, we’ve all heard of them. Even in the most complicated scientific fields with the most technical language and concepts a half-decent communicator can make this moments into great news stories that can truly capture the attention and imaginations of the general public. The problem? The vast majority of the time this is not the way that science moves.

For the most part, scientific discovery is like constructing something large and strong out of many many small pieces. In reading the scientific literature it quickly becomes apparent that not only is each piece of the puzzle small, but that standing alone, most of them are pretty unconvincing. Often it’s the mutual consistency of many findings that give them weight within our current theories. In many fields, building scientific understanding involves a model with pieces of evidence either confirming or calling into question this model. These two types of results then lead to either strengthening of the model and current theories, or revision of the model to take into account newer findings. Consider putting together a puzzle with all of the pieces but no template for what it’s supposed to look like. You might have an idea from the individual pieces that it’s a scene of a house and sky. As the pieces come together you might confirm that there is a sky, but find that it’s a fence and not a house. Sometimes, especially if the pieces are small and numerous enough, you might find that what you thought was a sky is actually an ocean, or a mirror, or something else that really changes the model all together. At this point you begin working to test this new premise.

In this metaphor, each puzzle piece represents one small discovery, one finding, one scientific paper. This is what makes it so difficult to write traditional news stories about most scientific findings: they just don’t say much on their own. Imagine trying to get a balanced, accurate, and vivid picture of a whole puzzle by interviewing someone very familiar with one piece. Unless the interviewee is uncommonly enlightened, that interview is going to be slanted toward the minutiae of that piece. Don’t get me wrong, those details can be incredibly fascinating to the correct audience, but will not necessarily capture the attention of many people outside of the immediate field. Further problematic, from a reporting point of view, is the need for endless qualifiers and indefinite language in the description of a single discovery. Because each piece on it’s own doesn’t say too much, a conscientious scientist really can’t say that it does. Often this has the effect of watering down a discovery to the point of complete irrelevance in the minds of many consumers.

As I see it, it follows that one problem with scientific communication in the mainstream media is a need to adapt reporting methodologies to reflect the nature of scientific subjects. Often interviewing a single voice about a “new discovery” results in an unbalanced story or one that is simply boring to most people. For the most part, scientific advancement is pretty hard to pigeon-hole into the “breaking news” category. They’re different kinds of stories, requiring a different communication approach to help everyone see just how amazing they really are.

Posted in Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: Communication, Media, model, reporting, science, theory | 1 Comment »

Mind the Gap: Problems in Public Communication of Science

Posted by Jenna Capyk on September 19, 2011

Navigate to the homepage of any major news provider and you’re likely to see a tab for a science and technology news section on the site. At first glance, this might seem like great news for the public and scientists alike: current research science is being reported to the public! The general population has access to knowledge about the outcomes of publicly funded research! You can find info on your friendly neighbourhood scientist from the same place you get the rest of your news! The problem? Often times the reported findings and actual findings are as different as Nonna’s fettuccini Alfredo and mac ‘n cheese from a box. What’s really going on in mainstream science reporting? Is there a gap in scientific communication? What exactly gets lost in translation? Do we now have the putty (or the two-by-fours) to fill that gap?

Lets first establish that there are some fundamental differences between “scientific communication” and “public communication”. These tend to be strictly segregated in different venues with scientific communication happening in peer-reviewed journals, scientific meetings, scientific reports, etc. and public communication occurring in more publicly accessible venues. It’s worth noting, however, that you don’t need a member card to access the scientific venues; they are formally open to consumption by everyone. The accessibility of scientific communication is restricted by the communication style rather than by rules. As discussed earlier when we were talking about scientific jargon, the dense, precise, and technical nature of classical scientific communication renders it virtually indigestible to the general public, thus limiting access to the information.

The different venues and styles of public and scientific communication can become problematic for the public feeling as though they have access to what should be public information. As an example case, a BC government scientist, Kristi Miller, was recently in the news quite a bit for allegedly be “muzzled” by the government. Allegations in the press outlined that she was being prevented from publicly sharing her scientific findings because they were against the interests of current government policy making. The scientist herself was unable to contribute to the public media discussions about her until recently. According to her, however, there was no muzzle involved. Although she had been asked not to speak to the pres, she assserted that she had not been prevented from publically publishing her work in a scientific journal. She states that she had been asked not to speak to public press to reserve her comments for the Cohen Commission, a public and official channel to investigate practices and consequences associated with salmon farming. The bottom line is, the information from both the commission and the journal is publicly available but not open to the same types of “I sort of understand it” interpretation and sensationalization that science so often suffers on the evening news. The “muzzle” the government had been employing was to restrict dissemination of the scientists’ findings to venues for scientific rather than public communication. This is type of situation, however, is highly symptomatic of the scientific information gap, where the preferred communication venues of science providers and news consumers are decidedly different.

Some people might cry out that this reeks of elitism or a mistrust of those outside of the scientific community to understand science on a basic level. Surely it’s better to ask the general media to disseminate scientific information to a broader audience? In a world of no misunderstandings and without the need for eye-catching headlines, I would completely agree with this last statement. In our world, however, sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the mainstream media has a habit of reinterpreting scientific data to fit the story of the day. I would like to stress that this is not done, most of the time, with any nefarious intent, and probably often without the knowledge of the reporter who’s twisting the data. What I’m trying to say is that over-interpretation of data is very very easy, and so is slightly misinterpreting data. Scientists get this wrong too, but are constantly being reminded to only draw conclusions supported by the data. Reporters and editors without a scientific background, however, have myriad factors stacked up against staying within these very limited boundaries. In this way, the different training and conventions inherent in science and journalism can create basic misunderstandings in the way data is interpreted and presented.

To illustrate this point, lets look at a case where the press got it wrong. As many of you know, London, England, was recently rocked by a series of riots during which extensive damage was done to businesses and other property in the city. As we experienced after our own hockey-precipitated riot here in Vancouver, people start looking for the “why” after an occurrence like this. Thanks to on-the-fly journalistic interpretation of some recent science, many publications in Britain, and indeed around the world, found and reported a potential “why” purportedly backed up by solid science. The problem? The scientists don’t agree.

The real paper, from a group of scientists at Cardiff University, established a correlation (read correlation, not causation) between the neurotransmitter GABA and a certain type of impulsive personality. Basically they found that people who exhibited more rash impulsivity also had lower levels of GABA in their frontal lobes. After this interesting finding, the scientists wrote up the paper, and as was encouraged by their university, issued a press release. This is where things went south. Before long, the press was reporting stories with titles like: “Brain chemical lack “spurs rioting””. The “spurs rioting” is in quotation marks, insinuating that this conclusion was drawn by the scientists. Further, some members of the press actually invented a nasal spray to cure the deficiency, claiming a cure for rioting could be just around the corner based on this finding. Obviously this constitutes a major misappropriation, of the scientific data. Basically it is an example of horrible translation from the science to the public, leading to a sensational and false idea of the research. I also have some personal experience in this area as I was once interviewed for some research I was presenting in a scientific conference. I gave the interview, stating what we had found and its general relevance to the area of tuberculosis research. I would like to stress that I made no claims whatsoever about any cure for TB in the works. The evening news, however, had different ideas and painted me as a TB-curing researcher which I certainly am not.

In a Guardian article titled “Riot control: How can we stop newspapers distorting science?” some of the scientists involved in the research expressed their concerns about what had happened and asked some pretty important questions:

1) Why does the public lap up research like this (by which I assume they mean research linking chemicals and behaviour) and why is it so readily misunderstood?

2) How much damage is really done when science is distorted in the press?

3) What can we do, as a community including both scientific professionals and members of the press, to prevent this type of misinformation spread from happening?

Before discussing some of their views, and mine, on the answers to some of these questions, I’d like to point out that these specific questions are indicative of the fear the scientific community can hold of popular press. Many, including myself in some instances, would argue this fear is well warranted in the current journalistic climate, as evidenced by stories like this one. This is not to say that I think scientists should hunker down in the holes of their official communication channels, but rather that changes are needed throughout the communication network to create an environment where freedom of information is not hampered by fear of misinterpretation.

As far as the first question posed in this article, about why people are so interested in and so bad at understanding this type of research, lots of speculation can be made. This type of research is about how we, humans, tick. I don’t think it’s much of a surprise to anyone that we humans like to learn about ourselves. In any case, research linking brain chemicals to behaviour seems to be especially intriguing to people as, when misinterpreted, it seems to provide many of the same excuses as the idea of fate: we are not responsible for our actions. The chemicals made me do it. Problematically, chemicals make us do everything, and are also consequences of everything we do. Our bodies are bags of chemistry and to a brain chemical scientist, separating the “self” from the chemicals is a lot harder than for much of the public who may be more prone to see the “self” influenced by chemicals, rather than the chemicals being completely integrated into the biological (and mental and arguably spiritual) self. Although endlessly fascinating, this is obviously not the only kind of research that it is important for people to get accurate information about. Each discovery, in any scientific field, can be dangerous if misunderstood.

The second question may be the most important for this discussion: what types of damage are done when science is reported poorly? The Cardiff scientists behind this Guardian article posit that there are basically three things that can happen if science is misreported in the press. Firstly, people have the option to not believe the article and mistrust the reporting: that is they are skeptical of the article because they think the press got the science wrong. If the article really is misrepresenting the science, this is the objectively correct response. Unfortunately, according to the scientists in this article, this response was almost completely absent in the comments and blogs on articles misquoting their science; most people didn’t read it and say “the press got this wrong,” but rather responded in one of the two other ways.

A second way people respond is by believing the story, and spreading it. This is how stories of riot-curing nasal sprays made their way all the way around the globe. Obviously this causes harm to the public, depending on the severity of the mistake. I’m not sure we really have to go into why having the wrong information is a bad thing. I think everyone can pretty much think of their own examples here.

The third response is possibly the most dangerous. This is to not believe the article, but do so because you don’t believe the science or the researchers. Unfortunately, according to these authors, this is a very common response. This type of reaction is “why are scientists wasting public money studying this? They always say they’re going to cure something but they never do. This sound like bull-s$*!” When this happens, inaccurate reporting breaks down the confidence the public has in scientists, broadening the gap between scientific research and public knowledge. This is incredibly important and incredibly damaging. The reason that we have scientists and do spend public money on scientific research is to provide vital, dependable knowledge for public safety, etc. It’s when the trust in science breaks down that people ignor scientific research in areas such the realities of climate change, or the benefits of vaccines. Basically, when the public distrusts the scientific community about one issue, even when the misinformation didn’t originate from the science, they will distrust scientists on other issues as well.

Why does this happen? People from the different camps of scientists and journalists (which are for the most part, unfortunately, rather separate camps) can go back and fourth about who is to blame for this situation. For example, this Guardian article I’ve been talking about demonizes the press a bit, saying that scientists have to accept the realities that original sources are often being neglected in favour of simply repackaging press releases. This point has some merit, and I know I’ve heard Rebecca Watson of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe discuss this point repeatedly. In a terrifying twist to such laziness, I recently saw an article in the New York Times detailing how computer programs are already being used as journalist substitutes to write articles appearing in print. Right now these are sports articles, but it’s not hard to imagine a damaging leap to science reporting.

These authors also say that some members of the press “play fast and hard with the truth, with little regard for the reputations of scientists and no regard at all for the public.” I myself am not convinced that all of the blame lies on the journalistic side of the spectrum, but rather that all parties are culpable for the outcomes of chronic miscommunication. The financial realities of the news industry result in strong motivations for eye-catching headlines, but I think scientists are remiss if they negate the effects of an opposing motivation of journalistic integrity. The truth of the matter is that where many journalists do not have the time, interest, or energy to fully understand the scientific matter their reporting, many scientists make this no easier by assuming that understanding is the job of the journalist. A communication is a partnership, and both sides need to understand each other for effective information transfer to take place.

The misunderstood GABA authors also stress this point saying that engagement of scientists with the press is necessary, suggesting a couple of solutions. For example, they suggest that scientists are happily available for quick fact checking, and that info should be okayed with the scientists themselves before publication. I would contend that with so many media sources, this is probably an impractical solution. They also suggest more interaction between scientists and the press to foster an understanding of basic scientific methodology, such as hypothesis testing, uncertainty, and the vital difference between correlation and causation.

Personally, I would take this a bit further and suggest that having scientists engage with the press is a good idea, but not nearly enough. I would posit that it’s important to incorporate scientists as members of the press in a more widespread capacity, and that this could help effectively translate accurate interpretations of data into publicly digestible forms. Even further than this, instead of fostering understanding of scientific practices in the press, we should have our sights set on fostering this type of understanding in the public. I think as skeptics we can all agree that providing better tools to interpret information is better than giving these tools only to those disseminating the information. As one wise Saturday morning cartoon put it: “Knowledge is Power” (thank you school house rock).

Obviously filling the scientific knowledge gap is a complicated problem needing much dedication on the part of the scientific community and some innovative solutions. I plan to go into these issues, including some of the views of my friend and fellow science-blogger Matthew Hartings, published in a recent issue of Nature Chemistry, in future segments and blog posts.

Posted in Blogs, Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: Communication, communication gap, interpretation, Media, Press, science | 1 Comment »

Back to School: Uniforms that is

Posted by Jenna Capyk on September 13, 2011

As the nation’s children start out a new school year, many have laid out their clothes for the first week, (or the first month) so as to best display their new wardrobe. Many others are slipping on the same jeans and t-shirts they wore last year. The very industrious/creative/desperate are slicing up the same jeans and t-shirts they wore last year to make them look like a new wardrobe. There is also a separate category of school kids donning their backpacks to head off and pick up some knowledge: those clad in mandatory clothing lovingly picked out by their very own school officials. That’s right, we’re talking about school uniforms. Although it might be easy to limit the discussion to plaid skirts and white socks, we’re going to take this in a slightly more mathematical direction to talk about the real effect of school uniforms, statistically speaking.

To uniform or not to uniform, that is the age-old debate that has arisen in schools ever since the first un-uniformed schools started to emerge. Given the interest so many parties have in the future of our collective youth it is not surprising that many views and theories have been brought to the table on both sides of the debate. On the pro-uniform side, the concept of neutralizing school atmospheres has been one of the prevailing motivations for strapping ties around the necks of our youngsters. The theory here is that if everyone looks more or less the same, then no one stands out as financially disadvantaged, having poor style sense, belonging to a specific cultural or social group, etc. This argument has also been used in consideration of gang or pre-gang affiliations. By painting everyone with the same brush, so to speak, proponents of this theory hope to cut down on appearance-related peer pressure, labeling, and bullying. The opponents of school uniforms, on the other hand, argue that this same plaid-washing stifles creativity and removes a much-needed outlet for children to express themselves and establish a personal identity.

A less nebulous and more quantifiable, if arguably less significant, argument is that uniforms cut down on the amount of time it takes students to get dressed in the morning. This, of course, is leveled more toward female students, and for me conjures up Clueless-esque images of Cher taking Polaroids in front of a revolving closet. Nonetheless, some reports conclude that teenage girls can take in excess of an hour to ready themselves to be seen by their peers, a process that could quite possibly be reduced by forced fashion.

Another set of opposing uniform theories centres around the idea of discipline and general school atmosphere. Opponents of uniform policies assert that forcing children into creased pants and buttoned collars will force them to rebel in more serious ways. This is the, “I have to wear this tie so I’m not going to do my homework,” theory. On the other side of the debate we have the, “I’m wearing this tie, guess I’m not a bad boy. I guess I don’t have to uphold that image, so I might as well go and do my homework,” argument. This is more or less the idea that the discipline implied by being surrounded by uniform-wearing peers bleeds into the student, instilling a desire to fit into this ordered world.

All of these ideas are pretty conjectural, and logical arguments can be made on both sides of the debate. To investigate the question further, let’s see what the numbers have to say. Given the raging debate in many a PAC meeting, it is surprising that there have not been a great number of formal studies investigating the efficacy of school uniforms in improving kids’ school life. Of the few studies that have been done, however, most show no significant effect on absenteeism, behavior, substance abuse, or academic performance. In interpreting these results there are also many data-acquisition puzzles to be considered that can meddle up the straight line of cause and effect with regard to uniforms and student outcomes. For example, schools with discipline problems to begin with are more apt to adopt uniforms. Also, parents who are more inclined to choose schools with uniforms are also more likely to influence their children’s outcomes in other ways, making the effect of uniforms hard to discern. Also, adoption of uniforms is not necessarily a cause of school environment so much as a reflection of the educational ideology of the school leadership. That is to say the principals and other school governance bodies who prefer more rigid educational strategies overall are more inclined to enforce uniform policies, again making it difficult to tease out the effect of the uniforms themselves.

A new study from the National Bureau of Education looked at schools in Massachusetts and tried to address some of the confounding factors inherent in this type of investigation. They included in their calculation models factors based on constant elements across the criterion categories and across time. This measure was in an attempt to normalize for factors discussed above, and therefore discern the effect of the uniforms themselves. Even with this new methodology, however, this study found basically the same result as previous studies; they found school uniforms have almost no effect.

The two categories where improvement was found was in teacher retention in elementary schools and in student attendance in middle and high school categories. Apparently teacher attrition is a major problem in the school district examined, and teachers were found to be more likely to stay at their jobs teaching elementary school if their students were required to wear uniforms. Uniform adoption also increased attendance in older students, especially for female students. Given the arguments outlined above about girls taking hours to dress themselves this can of course be attributed to being able to catch the bus to school fully clothed (gently veiled sarcasm).

In the areas of disciplinary incidents, academic achievement, dropout rates, and students moving schools, however, the uniforms made no statistically significant improvement. That is to say that although the adoption of uniforms has practical and symbolic meanings and assumed outcomes for many, the actual outcomes for students and impacts on their future has once again been measured as nothing.

Although this study has been made public before formal peer review, the newer statistical methodology still seems to confirm previous efforts in this field, and serves to strengthen the academic consensus on the subject. This, of course, doesn’t preclude newer evidence changing the current paradigm if this new evidence proves to be scientifically convincing. For now, however, thousands of school children are trudging to school wearing their seemingly useless uniforms.

Posted in Blogs, Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: discipline, mandatory, School uniforms, students | Leave a Comment »

Caffeine and Cancer Prevention: For Reals?

Posted by Jenna Capyk on September 1, 2011

Ask any graduate student and they might tell you caffeine is a lifeline. Ask a health enthusiast and they might tell you it’s a poison. Ask a physician and between sips they might advise you that it’s fine in moderation. If you decide to ask the researchers behind a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, they’ll let you know that caffeine can help prevent skin cancer. As a bonus, they’ll even tell you why.

Before we can talk about what role enzymes play in cancer, we need a very brief description of how cancer works. Cancer occurs in pretty much all life forms that exist, like us, as groups of cells. This is in contrast to single-celled organisms like bacteria and yeasts. Cancer is basically uncontrolled growth of specific cells. All the cells in our body usually divide to form new cells, thus growing the tissue, at specific rates and under specific circumstances. Cancer is when the cells divide very rapidly without obeying the rules, so to speak, of when they are supposed to replicate. One of the reasons that normal cell division is so regulated is to make sure that the new cells coming out of cell division are healthy and have accurate copies of the parent-cell DNA. When replication is happening too quickly, there is no time for the cell “quality control” mechanisms to check that everything is honky dory, and the result can be new cells with mistakes in the genetic code. These aberrant cells not only have functional due to the mutations, but will also go on to divide rapidly, causing a cascade of rapidly dividing, unhealthy cells that form the tumors associated with cancer. So what is the trigger for this cascade? What causes that initial cell to start dividing too fast? As I mentioned, normal cell division is closely regulated, and if something causes a problem in one of the tools the cell uses to regulate division, the regulation system can go out the window. The genes coding for these regulatory tools are often called oncogenes (basically “cancer genes”) as mutations in these genes are likely to cause cancer.

There are many things coming at us every day that can cause DNA damage and, if we’re unlucky, cause mutations in an oncogene. These range from UV-rays to charbroiled steak to chemicals we make inside our own cells or mistakes by our cellular DNA-manipulation machinery. In fact, much DNA damage is done every day inside each one of us, so why are we still up and walking around? Enter the enzyme. Not one enzyme, in fact, but an arsenal of enzymes, each with a specific job to do in DNA-maintenance. In thinking of enzymes in your body, you can think of each one having a very specific skill, like trades-people working to build a house. The plumber doesn’t put in the electrical work and only the floor guy puts in the tile. With enzymes it goes even further, so that in laying the tile you’d have one guy lay the grout, one guy pick up the tile, another to position it, another to press it down, another to wipe it clean, etc. In talking of DNA, there is a set of enzymes for making the DNA, specific sets of enzymes to repair specific types of DNA damage, and specific sets of enzymes to detect specific types of damage at specific times and signal to the DNA repair enzymes to get to work.

Before we get too jittery, lets talk about how caffeine affects this process. We all have an enzyme called ATR that is involved in a couple things we’ve talked about. This enzyme is a kinase, meaning that it catalyzes transfer of a phosphate group from one molecule onto another enzyme. This might seem a bit inconsequential in the context of something as huge as cancer, but this one transfer reaction is a recognizable signal in the cell that is passed along and amplified, eventually triggering the action of enzymes tasked with repairing certain types of DNA damage, including that caused by UV-rays. The enzyme ATR also happens to be part of the division regulation “tools” that we talked about. It’s a kinase that performs its role as part of a cell division checkpoint, a time when activities in the cell determine if it will go on to divide, or kill itself in a process called apoptosis.

Caffeine binds to ATR and stops it from doing its job. This means that when some kinds of DNA-damage is detected, ATR does nothing (instead of transferring that all-important phosphate), the DNA is not repaired, and instead of replicating, the cell dies. Wait a second, this sounds like a bad thing; how does this prevent cancer? The problem with DNA repair enzymes is that for certain types of DNA damage, there is no way for them to ensure that the DNA is put back together exactly like it was before the damage. Sometimes these enzymes can only physically fix the break and hope that the sequence is repaired by luck, or that it was in a spot that didn’t matter much anyway. If this type of repair happens in an unlucky spot, however, like an oncogene, the repair makes the DNA look physically okay, but the resultant mutation can have cancerous consequences. In these cases, NOT repairing the DNA effectively causes cellular suicide before the very first cancer cell can form.

Enzymes have a role in everything our bodies do, from detecting signals and passing messages, to constructing and repairing cellular components. Everything is controlled in a delicate balance, and often this control is itself achieved by enzymes. As this example illustrates, turning an enzyme “off” is an important component of cellular control mechanisms. Although our bodies have many built-in off switches, outside chemicals can also interact with our enzymes with ultimate results that can be difficult to predict. So next time you’re chowing down you can look at your food and ask, “hey, what enzyme are you hooking up with?”

If you liked this post, you might want to check out others on my blog: And That’s Science!

Posted in Blogs, Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: caffeine, Cancer, cell division, enzyme, kinase | 2 Comments »

Free-Range isn’t all it’s Cracked up to be

Posted by Jenna Capyk on August 26, 2011

I have a confession to make: I buy free-range eggs. That’s right, I shell out the five bucks for those dark-yolked wonders and pass through the cash line at the grocery story without blinking an eye. This type of attitude, however, could be looked at as distinctly unskeptical based on new research from our friends, the poulty-ologists.

In a study published in the July edition of Poultry Science (yes, this journal does exist, and publishes editions monthly) researchers outlined their findings comparing eggs from free-range chickens and those housed in cages. The results? They were were unable to establish any significant nutritional advantage to free range eggs, although they did find that the free-range chickens produced eggs with higher levels of beta-carotine, possibly accounting for the delectably dark yolks characteristic of the pricier eggs.

Yes, there is still the question of animal welfare inherent in the great egg debate. After all, us top-of-the-chain omnivores shouldn’t be concerned exclusively with our own nutritional requirements; there is poultry welfare to be considered as well. So for those who want to be kind to our fine feathered friends, by all means, pay the extra dough for your over-priced oeuvres (I know I will). But for those who are buying free-range for the extra “oomph” in your egg, you might want to consider putting that weekly three bucks toward an extra helping of quinoa.

Posted in Blogs, Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: eggs, food, free range, nutrition | Leave a Comment »

Getting Meds to Market: Clinical Trial Cashflow

Posted by Jenna Capyk on August 24, 2011

Almost all of us, at some point or another have had some kind of physical ailment and taken regulation-body approved chemical therapies: drugs. These drugs don’t just spring out of the ground, however, but are the result of a long and arduous research and development process undertaken by thousands of scientists. How this research goes down can have major effects on the quality of the pills we end up popping.

Drug research happens in three major stages: basic research (looking into a biological process), preclinical drug studies (studying the effect of a compound on a condition but not in humans), and clinical trials (studies in people to assess safety and efficacy). The cost of drug research is undertaken by both public funding like government research grants; and private funding, like that from drug companies or “big pharma.” There are, of course exceptions, but for the most part public funding is concentrated in early research with pharmaceutical companies taking much of the responsibility for funding later in the process, including clinical trials.

Most of the clinical drug trials that are taking place are directly or indirectly funded by drug companies. Direct funding includes, for example, a grant specifically funding a drug trial granted by a drug company. Indirect funding includes financial conflicts of interest involving the company and one or more of the principal investigators. I should mention that “conflicts of interest” do not preclude researchers from doing the work, but rather must be declared when the research is being reported to ensure transparency.

What we have to consider as the drug-consuming public is the consequences of large pharmaceutical companies funding drug clinical trials. A meta-study looking at literature examining this very topic was recently published in two parts in the Deutsches Ärzteblatt International.

This group found that the consequences of Big Pharma funding were, in fact, discernible, and that they fell into several categories. The first category is the actual outcome of the study, or whether or not the drug passes the clinical trial stage and is licensed for sale. As it turns out, studies funded by “big pharma” tend to have more favourable outcomes for the company. Statistically, more drugs in privately funded trials get approved for sale than drugs in publicly funded trials. It should be mentioned that this particular finding does have a couple of confounding factors. Public funding is more common for trials of “priority review” compounds which tend to differ more in action and form from previously approved drugs. It’s easy to imagine, therefore, how the “standard review” compounds more often funded privately might have an easier time getting through as there is precedent for modes of action, etc. However, it’s potentially significant that privately funded drug trials tend to go better for the patent holder than those funded publicly.

This meta-review also found that the funding companies were able to influence study protocols. This includes such paramaters as what placebos were included, etc. They also found, however, that this did not affect the protocol quality. All of the methodologies themselves were up to snuff with current standards, but crucial decisions which can have an effect on study outcome could be influenced by the funding bodies.

Another major problem this study found was with clinical trials in general, and not necessarily specific to those funded by pharmaceutical companies: selective publication. This is sometimes called publication bias. Basically, you report (or publish) results where the study showed positive results, but fail to publish either inconclusive studies or studies that turned out negatively for the drug. This can also include multiple publications of positive results. This is not really allowed in any scientific arena but people do get away with repackaging old data and not making it completely explicit that it has been published elsewhere. Publication bias is not a problem exclusive to drug trials either, but is pervasive in all research science. There are many reasons for this, causes of it, and dimensions to it. Suffice it to say that in the context of a drug trial, if negative results are not published, new trials of the same drugs can be designed that are slightly tweaked to come up with a more positive result. This is obviously questionable in the context of medicines.

In order to combat publication bias in clinical trials, all trials are supposed to be publicly registered PRIOR to the study reaching its conclusion. Researchers are supposed to report the study methodology, and importantly, the criteria they are using to evaluate study outcomes. The literature study we’re discussing also found that privately funded trials were often not registered, or not completely registered. This opens the door for publication bias through not publishing a study with negative results, as well as provides the opportunity for changing study criteria after the data is in to alter the overall study outcome. Again, this is pretty questionable when we’re talking about evaluating drugs.

In the same sort of vein, it was also found that often privately funded clinical trials with-held knowledge of adverse drug reactions. This can potentially slip through the cracks even if the trial is properly registered as registration talks about expected outcomes and study criteria but not necessarily unexpected side effects. Obviously its a bad thing if side effects coming out of a clinical trial aren’t reported as it hinders the ability for licensing boards to determine whether a drug is safe, or more likely to evaluate possible contraindications or situations in which a certain drug is not appropriate.

The final findings of this study unearthed more issues regarding publication. Firstly, there are often publication constraints put on study authors severely limiting their ability to publish study-related data independently. This of course gives extra control of information dissemination to the funding body. Finally, the company can also introduce an element of “spin” by using ghost writers or guest authors. Ghost writers include writers that did contribute to the work (often company statisticians) who don’t get listed as authors and are not acknowledged to have worked on the project. Guest authors are sort of the opposite, big name scientists listed as authors who really did not contribute significantly to the work. Either case is deceptive and can help skew perspective with respect to how the work is received.

In short, there are some serious issues innate in private bodies funding clinical drug trials. These are not always happening on purpose or with some nefarious intent, but statistically these problems do exist. The funding burden for drug development is split between private and public sectors, and I for one am not convinced that either could manage to fund these necessary innovations on their own. It is, however, vital that consumers and regulators are aware of the pitfalls and insist upon measures designed to minimize them.

Posted in Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: Big Pharma, clinical trials, conflict of interest, drugs | Leave a Comment »

The Amazing (Bioinorganic Chemistry) Meeting

Posted by Jenna Capyk on August 15, 2011

As I sip my luke-warm coffee and straighten my notebook, I can’t help but notice the vague aura of hang-over clinging to my colleagues walking into the lecture hall. I am not, as you might think, in an undergrad class following a holiday weekend, but rather attending an academic research conference with some of the top minds from around the globe. That’s right folks, pick up your programs, study those abstract books, and polish your poster presentation. It’s time for the science conference play by play!

I came to research science four years ago as all undergraduates do: with a fuzzy understanding that I would perform bench work, publish papers, lose my personal grooming skills, and some day stand in a funny hat to accept a graduate degree. One of the tasks/treats/academic trials that I was not aware of was the International Research Meeting. These academic get-togethers are where scientists from all over the planet converge upon a single university (or resort in the best cases) to meet, greet, schmooze, drink, and give impossibly condensed presentations on their life’s work. Each meeting has a topic that can run the gambit of generality, depending upon the number of delegates expected. This is not to say, however, that there is anything so general that a truly “general audience” could make heads or tails of it; in truth talks in my own field often soar high above my own head. Each meeting also has a program of talks, social events, and poster sessions stretching over anywhere from two to five days. With all of these scientific proceedings and pseudo-scientific social responsibilities, navigating a scientific conference can be an experience rife with professional rewards, intellectual stimulation, and the odd personal trauma.

Let’s first consider the conference program. For bigger meetings, there are often more than one session of talks happening at the same time in adjacent rooms. Four or five speakers discussing semi-related subject matter will be slated to speak sequentially in a single session lasting a couple of hours. The first panicked series of questions naive delegate might ask of themselves: “Is this like a movie theatre? Do I have to pick one and stick with it? Will I lose my seat if I have to dash to the bathroom? Is coffee REALLY not allowed in the lecture hall?” Some more experienced delegates, although few might admit it, might also be asking: “Did my boss see me fall asleep just now? Are all the ‘cool grad students’ in the other session? Is this the coffee left over from yesterday?” Probably the most perplexing questions arising from this scenario are often: “Should I be sitting in this session or am I missing something I should be listening to else-where?” and more importantly, “What the heck is this guy talking about?”

Both the problem and the benefit to these meetings is the density of cutting edge research. I’ve been in situations where any one of the talks would have tickled the biochemist inside me straight to a higher energy orbital. They are jammed so closely together, however, that I come out of the meeting like coming out of a dream: remembering many details but having much of what I would like to retain seep directly into my subconscious. Again analogous to dreams, this effect can be very effectively countered by taking very rapid, variably detailed notes. This not only serves to remind a delegate of the finer points of what’s being presented, but is also a potent method for remaining awake. I find filling in gaps in the presentation with notes such as “that guy over there just picked his nose” are particularly effective for sustaining consciousness.

Perhaps an equally important component to research meetings is the socializing. I don’t mean this in the “being social helps personal growth” vein that might be applicable for keg-guzzling undergrads, but rather that networking within the scientific community can make or break a scientist’s career. You might assume this is due completely to politics for peer review and grant panels, but fruitful collaborations and resource sharing are also vital consequences of these types of interactions. Inter-scientist chats about, tangential to, or entirely unrelated to the the science at hand are so important that these events tend to be built directly into the conference program. A great example is the catered (and cash bar) poster session. Although everyone is milling around, reading and discussing everyone else’s newest findings, the connections built at these types of events on a personal level can often be the nucleation point for valuable partnerships inside the scientific community. This doesn’t mean, however, that all socialization takes place under the watchful eye of Mother Science. As any researcher will attest to, the pub is as good a place as any to forge lasting relationships within the research community. As someone at my last meeting groggily informed me of an adjacent table of colleagues the night before: “They sent us shots, we sent them pitchers, we all ended up making a night of it and I’m sure glad the talks this morning are interesting.”

Posted in Blogs, Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: Collaboration, Conference, Meeting, Research, Scientist, Symposium | Leave a Comment »

With God as my Witness, and Attorney, and Judge, and Jury…

Posted by Jenna Capyk on August 2, 2011

There is an almost unending list of talking points when it comes to the case of Warren Jeffs. I’m not going to go into the moral or even the legal intricacies of the case, but will rather focus on some of the latest developments.

By way of very brief background, Mr. Jeffs is the ecclesiastical leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints and is currently being prosecuted for child sex abuse in Texas. The charges are related to self-proclaimed “fundamentalist Mormon” practices: specifically polygamy involving the taking of child brides. Mr. Jeffs himself is being prosecuted for the sexual assault of two brides, aged 12 and 15. Legally there are a few angles that Jeffs and his legal teams have tried to take advantage of in defending his acts. Chief among them is the concept of “freedom of religion” guaranteed in the United States Constitution. He and his legal team have also tried to have the presiding judge removed from the case twice before now. All of this, however, was when he actually had a legal team.
In a recent move, Mr. Jeffs took the theatrical route of deciding to represent himself. After having gone through seven lawyers before the trial began, he kicked his carefully selected legal team to the curb right before opening statements. To many of us, this may seem like a risky move, but that’s assuming conventional legal standards and practices. Mr. Jeffs, however, seems to have something quite different in mind. In a move that has Hollywood screenwriters chomping at the bit, Jeffs has started to employ an unconventional legal strategy. Instead of addressing the DNA and testimonial evidence of the prosecution with contradictory evidence or even denial, Jeffs has elected to present different evidence: the direct word of God. This is not the abstract or objective, “look, it’s a sign!” type evidence, either; no, we’re talking actual declarations from the Big man himself. He has filed a formal motion to have the judge overseeing his case removed; this motion is based on a revelation he was granted from God himself. His outbursts in court have also included threatening the jury and other parties with sickness and bodily harm. Well, not threatening them directly, just passing on the message from You Know Who. Furthermore, he appended to his motion a document described as “Exhibit A” which included 29 orders directly from God. If that’s not solid evidence, I don’t know what is.

Clearly these proceedings have proceeded a little off-centre. If I’ve learned anything from TV court proceedings it’s that the opposing legal team must be given the opportunity to independently examine the evidence. If Jeffs’ star witness does manage to come through, good luck to the prosecution. Otherwise, it is my personal prophesy that some prison is about to gain a passionate new preacher.

Posted in Blogs, Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: religion, Warren Jeffs, court | Leave a Comment »

The Academic Scenic Route

Posted by Jenna Capyk on July 26, 2011

If I’ve learned anything in my four years squeezing pipets in a research lab it’s that science costs money. Lots and lots of money. Although some money is doled out for some interesting studies with questionable applications (i.e. does tequila make fish more aggressive than vodka…) a lot of money is pumped into scientific efforts aimed at coming up with new medications to treat human disease.

There are two main basic approaches you can take when doing drug discovery research: target-based or phenotypic screening. In the first, you identify a target, which can be a component of a human cell or a bacterial cell or viral component, and then you try to rationally discover compounds effecting that target. The second approach, phenotypic screening, is a more shotgun approach in which you take the process you’re looking at and throw a bunch of compounds at it (either from an estabilished library or a bunch of “natural products” from a natural source) and basically see what sticks. That is you determine what compounds effect the process you’re looking at. In the target based approach you know what physiological mechanism you’re looking to have an effect on, whereas with screening you know the effect but might have to go looking for the mechanism. Both of these approaches make sense on paper, but which one tends to have the better outcome for drug development?

A piece in Nature Reviews: Drug Discovery titled, “How were new medicines discovered?” (Swinney and Anthony, 2011) went back over the literature and examined new drugs brought to market over the last ten years. They found that for new classes of small-molecule drugs almost twice as many were derived from screening approaches than from target based approaches. Strikingly, this is during a period that drug development efforts and associated funding has been dominated by target-based research. So although most people are concentrated on target-based research, this approach is yielding fewer viable results.

These kinds of papers bring up a lot of issues for me because they hint at the (sometimes conflicting) motivations in scientific research. The public wants science it can use, in this case, functional drugs. The public funding agencies tend to want the same things as the public wants because that’s what keeps the money coming in (and not diverted exclusively to building tanks). Some scientists want functional drugs because they can/it’s good for society/they like developing stuff/etc. There are lots of scientists, however, who are essentially curious human beings and want to study interesting stuff. In an immediate sense, target-based research is better for this last scientific motivation, because it involves directly studying the target. Scientists get to approach an area of interest not only in the context of possible drugs, but in all kinds of other ways as well. This method allows for intentional investigation of the natural world in a broader context than drug discovery. Screening also lead to many basic-science discoveries, as knowing a compound that effects a process often leads scientists to find out how it effects that process and leads to understanding of the process itself. This phenotypic screening approach is, however, much more drug-centric, no matter which way you slice it.

This paper points out that what many scientists want to do isn’t actually in line with producing the outcomes that the greater public want to see. This is, in my personal opinion, the not-so-dirty dirty little secret of medical research science: its not all about improving human health, but also about general exploration of life science. As as research scientist who truly values gathering knowledge in any field, I for one hope this secret doesn’t get out too widely; I’m frankly dubious about how happy the public would be to fund basic research without an immediate societal benefit, especially if they could see the price tag…

Posted in Blogs, Jenna's Blogs | Tagged: drug development, drugs, research funds, screening, target-based | Leave a Comment »

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