science – understand-culture

10,000 ways that won’t work

From the Guardian article linked below: “One man that exemplified the science of taking massive actions is Thomas Alva Edison, an American inventor and one of the greatest innovators of all time. During his career, Edison patented over 1000 inventions, including the electric light, the phonograph and the motion-picture camera.

In the period from 1878 to 1880, after Edison had built a small laboratory in New Jersey, he worked on at least three thousand different theories to develop an efficient incandescent lamp. Many inventors had tried ever before him, but couldn’t produce perfect incandescent lamps.

By January 1879, Edison had built the first high resistance incandescent electric light, just as he desired, but still the lamp only burned for few hours. To get the perfect ‘filament,’ he went from one experiment to another, tested thousands and thousands of numerous materials to use for the filament, but they did not work with the tools available at that time.

He tested carbonised filaments of every plant imaginable; he tested no fewer than 6000 vegetable growths. He was never discouraged or inclined to be hopeless of success, despite his several mistakes. He finally discovered that they could use a carbonised bamboo filament that last over 1,200 hours.

After thousands and thousands of failures, mistakes and errors, Edison finally invented the first practical incandescent light. Though it took him about 10,000 trials to make the light bulb, he gave the world some of the best invention that has heralded the ‘modern’ world.

When a reporter tried to ridicule his various attempts by asking him how he felt to have failed for 10,000 times, he said something that stunned the whole world: “I have not failed 10,000 times; I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” He has an unbreakable record; he not only eventually succeeded, but established a system of electric power generation and distribution to homes.

Edison also developed the first movie camera and was the first to record sound. He gained worldwide acclaim for his inventions and continued working, even with advancing age and in frail health, amassing a total of 1093 patents, more than any other inventor at that time. His last patent was obtained at age 83 and he died at 84 on October 18, 1931 in New Jersey.

Three days later, on the night of October 21, as a national tribute proclaimed by President Herbert Hoover, millions of Americans turned out their lights to plunge the country into momentary darkness in order to illustrate how the world was before Edison discovered the light bulb.

When someone called him a genius, Edison made the famous reply: “Genius is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration,” a statement that testify to his virtues of tenacity and persistency even in the plethora of his errors. An overzealous reporter once wrote a headline about Edison: “God said, ‘let there be light’ and there was Thomas Edison.” He was a light to the world, for when Edison died, the lights were put out as a tribute to this legend that set the world aglow with the discovery of the electric bulb light.

Death by Robot

The first recorded human death by robot was in 1979, when Robert Williams, a 25 year old Ford Motor assembly line worker, was slammed by a robot arm as he gathered parts in a storage facility. The incident occurred in Flat Rock, Michigan, and Williams’ family was awarded 10 million dollars in damages after the jury agreed that Williams’ death was the result of a lack of safety measures on the part of Ford Motor.

These days, robots have become fairly commonplace, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes that robots are likely to become the focus of the next technological frontier. With increasing advancements in the field of robotics, more and more Americans are becoming concerned about these machines. The two primary concerns are that the robots will replace the need for human workers and that robotic intelligence may exceed human intelligence.

Robot: a real or imaginary machine that is controlled by a computer and is often made to look like a human or animal; a machine that can do the work of a person and that works automatically or is controlled by a computer. First known use: 1922. The word “robot” comes from the Czech word for “forced labor.”

Laboratory Turnaround Time

A report of the National Insitute of Health from November 2007 states:

Quality can be defined as the ability of a product or service to satisfy the needs and expectations of the customer. Laboratories have traditionally restricted discussion of quality to technical or analytical quality, focusing on imprecision and inaccuracy goals.

Clinicians, however, are interested in service quality, which encompasses total test error (imprecision and inaccuracy), availability, cost, relevance and timeliness. Clinicians desire a rapid, reliable and efficient service delivered at low cost.

Of these characteristics, timeliness is perhaps the most important to the clinician, who may be prepared to sacrifice analytical quality for faster turnaround time. This preference drives much of the proliferation of point-of-care testing seen today.

Richard P. Feynman

Richard Feynman was an American physicist who is best known for his work on QED (quantum electrodynamics, and a pun on the Latin phrase ‘quod erat demonstrandum’). He also developed the now-standard Feynman diagrams and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

Feynman was a strong advocate for simplicity and explaining things so that the average person could understand them. He believed that anyone who understood something should be able to explain it to a layperson.

In fact, he believed this so vehemently that once, when he was asked to explain why spin one-half particles obey Fermi Dirac statistics, Feynman initially said that he would prepare a freshman lecture on the subject.

Later he admitted “You know, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reduce it to the freshman level. That means we really don’t understand it.” It’s also believed that Feynman said “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t really understand it.”

Feynman on Simplicity

Feynman-thoughts on simplicity:

You can recognize truth by its beauty and simplicity. When you get it right, it is obvious that it is right – at least if you have any experience – because usually what happens is that more comes out than goes in. Sympathetic Vibrations

When I found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real, I wasn’t upset; rather, I was relieved that there was a much simpler phenomenon to explain how so many children all over the world got presents on the same night! The story had been getting pretty complicated. It was getting out of hand. What Do You Care What Other People Think?

We can’t define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: “You don’t know what you are talking about!”. The second one says: “What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?” The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I, 8-2

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. The Character of Physical Law

Cargo Cult Science

There have been attempts in the U.S. to convince people to stop presenting only the good aspects of products and instead present both the good and bad. In 1974, Richard Feynman, a renowned physicist, gave the Caltech commencement address. In his speech, he spoke primarily about something which he called “cargo cult science“, which is something that looks like science, but is lacking scientific integrity. Feynman denounced this form of “science” wholeheartedly.

One of the examples he used to illustrate the point was an advertisement for Wesson cooking oil, which claimed that it doesn’t soak through food. Feynman said that although this was true, the advertisement failed to mention that no oil soaks through food at certain temperatures, and that any cooking oil, including Wesson’s, will soak food at other temperatures.

Another example Feynman used was one of his colleagues, a cosmologist/astronomer, who tried to explain the “everyday” applications of his work. When Feynman heard this, he told his colleague that there weren’t any everyday applications. Although the colleague readily agreed with Feynman, he said that he still had to make it look like there were applications, otherwise he wouldn’t get any more funding.

Feynman was very angry and said “If you’re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you’re doing – and if they don’t want to support you under those circumstances, then that’s their decision.”

Despite Feynman’s warning in 1974 (and similar warnings from other scientists), cargo cult science has continued in the U.S. One of the more prominent examples of this was the cold fusion debacle. In 1989, at the University of Utah, chemists Stanley Pons (American) and Martin Fleishmann (British) made headlines.

They called a press conference proclaiming that they had produced fusion at room temperature – much colder than the high temperatures that were thought to be required for this process. At the conference, the chemists glossed over most of the details of how they had achieved cold fusion, and stated that their paper would not be available for several weeks.

Because of their conference the two chemists were granted a high amount of extra funding. However, even before their paper became available, several scientists managed to find unauthorized copies of their work. Most of these scientists quickly denounced it as full of errors, and both Pons’ and Fleishmann’s reputations were ruined.

Fracking

Fracking is a way of mining underground gas, but it has been linked to earthquakes and tap water that burns (at least when you run it over a lit match).

The method was first discovered during the American Civil War, when Union Colonel Edward Roberts noticed the effects of explosive Confederate artillery plunging into the narrow millrace (canal) near the battlefield.

Americans, who enjoy using any potential resource once it becomes apparent, soon began experimenting with the new procedure, and these days there are several fracking operations taking place in the US.

Although there have been attempts to legalize fracking in Germany, so far it seems like Germans would prefer not to risk the potentially dangerous method in order to gather new resources.

If you get killed, at least you won’t know it.

In some cases, Americans are willing to take risks even if no corrective measures are possible. This has been particularly evident in Americans’ willingness to risk death during air and spacecraft testing and early use.

Apollo engineer Jerry Woodfill once said “Among the early space missions, I’ve always believed that the greatest courage was needed by their first crews. Whether it was Al Shepard, the Apollo 1 crew, or shuttle astronauts John Young or Bob Crippen, the most likely danger would be the first time any new space craft was launched into space. Flaws in design or manufacture could very well be fatal during maiden missions.”

American Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier, once said “It’s your duty to fly the airplane. If you get killed in it, you don’t know anything anyway.”

Some examples of Americans who knew they were risking death to go into space include:

On April 13, 1970, two days after its launch, an oxygen tank aboard the Apollo 13 spacecraft exploded.

This led to a desperate attempt for the astronauts to return to earth alive – one that nearly didn’t succeed. Less than a year later, despite having just witnessed an almost-fatal mission, the Apollo 14 spacecraft launched with three crewmembers on board.

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lift-off, killing all seven crew members on board. However, prior to the launch, the astronauts were warned that some of the engineers were worried about the effect of unusually low temperatures on the seals for the solid rocket boosters.

Although they were not told the extent of the engineers’ concerns, they were warned that launching on January 28^th would be more dangerous than waiting for the next available launch date, and asked if they wanted to postpone. All seven decided that their mission was worth the risk of launching on schedule.

Life on Mars

In January of 2014, NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity took a picture of a location that it had recently photographed (12 Martian days earlier), but now there was a new object in the image.

Nicknamed “The Jelly Donut” NASA assumed that the rover had caused a nearby rock to move, but because of the odd appearance of the rock, decided to conduct a short investigation of the object.

However, neurologist and author Rhawn Joseph didn’t believe that NASA was doing enough to investigate, and demanded that NASA perform a much more thorough examination of what he called “a biological specimen on Mars.”

When the organization didn’t respond, Joseph filed a lawsuit to compel NASA “to perform a public, scientific, and statutory duty which is to closely photograph and thoroughly scientifically examine and investigate a putative biological organism.”

Additionally, because NASA referred to the object as a rock, not a biological lifeform, Joseph also made sure to claim that the discovery of life on Mars was done “by Petitioner” (a.k.a. Joseph himself).

Reconstructing Memories

“The uncritical acceptance of eyewitness accounts may stem from a popular misconception of how memory works. Many people believe that human memory works like a video recorder: the mind records events and then, on cue, plays back an exact replica of them.

On the contrary, psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than played back each time we recall them. The act of remembering, says eminent memory researcher and psychologist Elizabeth F. Loftus of the University of California, Irvine, is “more akin to putting puzzle pieces together than retrieving a video recording.”

Even questioning by a lawyer can alter the witness’s testimony because fragments of the memory may unknowingly be combined with information provided by the questioner, leading to inaccurate recall.”

From: “Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts”, Hal Arkowitz and Scott Lilienfeld. Scientific American magazine, January 8, 2009.