http://pascophronesis.wordpress.com

I’ve imported my Prometheus posts to the new site, though you should still be able to find them here.

I want to thank a few people.  Roger, for giving me the space to write.  Ami, for keeping things running online really smoothly, and handling the rare technical issue deftly.  Lisa and Kevin, for keeping me in the loop while Roger was on sabbatical, and Genevieve, who uploaded some of my earliest posts.

Last, and not least, thanks to all who read and all who commented.  Without your feedback (or pushback), my posts wouldn’t have been nearly as good, and probably focused on a narrow set of topics.  Please visit me at the new site and speak up.

As nanotechnology matures, providing more and more products with particles measured in nanometers, the risk of exposure to these particles needs to be assessed and regulated.  Being able to determine what size of particles can be expelled by the body and what sizes accumulate in the body helps shape the questions for the regulatory landscape.  But it doesn’t close off exploration into potential risks.

While other regulatory models can provide useful examples, it’s important to remember that the scale of these particles may provide unique concerns.  I would hope that the hard lessons of chemical regulation – where accumulated exposure flew under the regulatory radar for years (see Krimsky’s Hormonal Chaos for a good overview), could be used to good effect here.  It may not be enough that the small particles can be expelled.  Enough transitory exposures over time could have unfortunate effects, much like enough small doses of certain chemicals have had dramatic effects on endocrine systems.

“request the reversal of a policy now being applied by the UK Research Councils. This policy directs funds to projects whose outcomes are specified in advance.”

This reads – at least to this American – that the U.K. is essentially supporting busy work – research that is pointless to conduct since the results are known in advance.  Looking further at the petition, there is this text:

“Where a specific outcome can be predicted with confidence, then there is no research.”

…

“The UK taxpayer should not support investigations with foregone conclusions, however beguiling. UK research must not be guided by wishful thinking, nor relegated to producing footnotes for ground-breaking discoveries made elsewhere.”

There is a bit of a shift in perspective as the text proceeds.

Looking at the first sentence, it seems false to suggest that there is no research in confirming the predictive power of a model or other things that enable the prediction.  Going to the next passage, I’m not sure how foregone conclusions can be beguiling.  The second sentence suggests the real focus of this petition – that somehow the U.K. Research Councils are shifting their support away from groundbreaking discoveries.

In other words, the petitioner has done a lousy job of advancing the kind of argument Vannevar Bush did after World War II to help instill the combination of federal research support and limited management of scientific research that U.S. researchers enjoy.  Nowhere in this position is anything that even hints at Bush’s arguments about seed corn and the necessity of preserving and replenishing those stocks in order to support and benefit other research and development in support of society.

This argument can be reduced to two points: Only basic research matters in producing value and prosperity (something Bush did not even hint at in Science, the Endless Frontier), and groundbreaking discoveries can only be found in basic research.  It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the development of scientific and technological knowledge.  As the petitioner holds a faculty position and manages research in biology and chemistry, he’s more likely being disingenuous than stupid.

There is another petition on the site that better expresses what I think is the underlying concern.  This petition expresses concerns at the switch of U.K. universities to industry research centers, and feels it has restricted academic freedom to conduct basic research.  While it does succumb at the end to this same notion that only basic research can produce breakthroughs,

“that Britain can remain at the forefront of ‘revolutionary’ discoveries instead of dull ‘evolutionary’ science”

it avoids being completely dismissive of work where application is more in mind.  (Both petitioners ought to read Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions if they haven’t already).

Unfortunately, the saner petition has only 49 signatures.

Moving foward the Higher Education Funding Council will need to figure out how bibliometrics could be used in a meaningful way.  Otherwise there will be additional pressure to try and bump up citation counts and numbers of publications with little regard to the quality of either.  There are already ways to game the assessment in terms of who and what is selected by institutions to be assessed.  If bibliometric analysis isn’t crafted carefully, the ways to skew results will increase.

The New York Times article notes that

“The council was disbanded because it was designed by the Bush administration to be “a philosophically leaning advisory group” that favored discussion over developing a shared consensus, said Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer.

“President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that “offers practical policy options,” Mr. Cherlin said.”

Aside from the stem cell decision made by President Bush early in his administration, there have been few, if any, policy judgments made that received recommendations from the council.  It has issued several reports on various biomedical issues, but they were often readers on the subject, essay collections, or other documents more suited for background information than policy advice.  This is, of course, the perogative of the President.

• “three key questions that the panel will examine: whether it’s possible to reduce the gap in launch capability, what the options are for extending the use of the ISS beyond 2016, and what a timetable for missions beyond low-earth orbit (LEO) might look like, given budget constraints.”

• The panel will be advice-only.  Recommendations will be provided, but not binding.  That may have been necessary to get a NASA Administrator candidate on board
• While the panel will address the balance of human and robotic missions, it will not address other priorities for NASA.  This is a mixed bag.  While it allows the panel to focus on a specific aspect of NASA, it does not allow for an examination of overall NASA priorities – something that arguably is as needed as a general assessment of the human spaceflight agenda.

The panel is supposed to provide recommendations in August.  I would expect more meetings in a relatively quick timeframe.  You might be able to watch these meetings on NASA TV, or via the NASA website.

As the petition for a writ of certiorari reads, the issue in this case is:

Whether the Federal Circuit erred by holding that a “process” must be tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or transform a particular article into a different state or thing (“machine-or-transformation” test), to be eligible for patenting under 35 U.S.C. § 101, despite this Court’s precedent declining to limit the broad statutory grant of patent eligibility for “any” new and useful process beyond excluding patents for “laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas.”

In other words, should process patents be drawn more narrowly to apply only to those processes that are tied to a machine or make a transformation of some physical item.  The underlying case at the Federal Circuit answered yes to this question, contrary to recent practice and precedent.  If that perspective is upheld, some claim the removal of patent protection for these processes would chill innovation.  Others would counter that the costs of litigation that arise from inadvertent infringement are an impediment as well.

If the Court rules against a broadly interpreted patent, it is possible that patents in other areas that some consider too broad (genes, plant varieties, etc.), will be revisited as well.

On Friday the Department of Energy issued a press release indicating it had reached an agreement with the FutureGen Alliance (the private part of this public-private partnership).  The agreement would allow the project to move forward with needed planning, research, and design activities, with a final decision on building the plant in early 2010.  Most of the DOE contribution will come from Recovery Act funds.

NOTE: FWIW, I will continue blogging after the pending retirement of this site.  Unlike Roger, my shingle is not yet ready.  Once it is (and it should be soon), I’ll post the link here.

The conversation took place over Twitter (H/T SciTechDaily).  While many conversations have no doubt taken place via the all-too-brief service, American politicians have typically opted to use the service for broadcasts rather than discussion.  U.S. government agencies use it as another way of communicating news and press releases.  U.S. polticians appear to prefer using the service to link to statements and other press documents, and/or broadcast their immediate thoughts, often derailing the careful conditioning of their communications staff.  Others are masquerading as streams from the politicians, when the tweets are posted by staffers.

Few U.S. politicians seem to engage in a back and forth like the one Lord Drayson did.  It’s not clear to me whether he is typical of Cabinet Ministers or other British politicians in this.  I’d like to think so, because finding sniping on Twitter is all too easy.  Twitter is proving of value in following breaking events, like the current situation in Iran.  Whether it succeeds in other forms of political engagement will depend as much on those tweeting as those reading them.

“several individuals and organizations have expressed their grave concerns that some of the speakers have, in the past, made comments that have been seen to be anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic.”

Independent of the accuracy of these claims (the ScienceInsider article notes only two speakers have withdrawn over the issue, and neither are Israeli), there’s plenty wrong with why this would be a valid reason to re-do the peer review.   There doesn’t appear to be a claim that the possible bias of these speakers has influenced the work that would be presented (and supported).  In other words, no clear indication or suggestion of bad research that was missed by the review process.  This was a political request to change scientific procedures for non-scientific reasons.

There’s a lot of qualification over the alleged biases.  The claim isn’t that the speakers are anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.  It isn’t even that the minister thinks the speakers have said things that were anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.  It’s that some individuals and/or groups complained to the minister that the speakers said things that could be perceived as anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.  For this the minister asks a research council for a re-do.  However, replacing speakers, which would likely solve the kerfuffle, ordinarily does not require a new review.  The council is reviewing how this grant was handled to ensure it met their policies and procedures.

The science minister handled this badly.  If there are legitimate concerns about the view of individuals at the conference, and an independent review panel felt the workshop was worth supporting, there are other means by which someone in the Canadian government could have taken action.  The U.S. is fond of barring entry to people for all sorts of reasons, independent of whether or not they were invited to a conference.  If that wasn’t possible, the aggrieved groups are certainly free to protest the event.  Political objections ought to be handled by political means.  By asking for an additional research review without concerns about the underlying science, the minister injected politics into the process.  I am not trying to say that peer review is apolitical, just that the injection of politics here isn’t warranted.