Monday Science Links

This week's science:

• Over at Language Log Mark Liberman does another of his "looking at the numbers behind the words" for a scientific story in the media, this time the homosexual brains are like the opposite sex's study:If we do the same calculations for the means and standard deviations reported for the other categories, we get predictions that might have been presented as follows: Rightward hemispheric asymmetry was found in the brains of 14 of 25 heterosexual males and 11 of 20 homosexual females, but in only 13 of 25 heterosexual females and 10 of 20 homosexual males. How much media play do you think the study would have gotten, if the results had been spun like that?


• Anne Jefferson guest posts at Highly Allochthonous on how you can have a '500 year flood' two years in a row: The most important point is that a "X-year flood" is a poorly-chosen way of expressing the probability of a flood of a given magnitude happening in a given year. A 500 year flood, has a probability of 1/500, or 0.2% of happening in any given year. Just like when you flip a coin the probability of getting heads is always 50% on the next flip, even if you happen to get heads three times in a row. In the same way, if a river has a 500-year flood in 2008, there is the same probability of having such a big event in 2009. That's bad news for those flood victims with a poor understanding of probability.


• Pamela at Star Stryder talks about black holes, singularities, and gravity: As we work to understand the blending of forces, gravity refuses to play. Just 150 years ago we had 3 well recognized forces: Gravity, Electical Force and Magnetism. Under Maxwell, Electricity and Magnetism became the Electromagnetic Force, and later the Strong and the Weak forces stepped forward to explain how nuclei stay together and decay apart. Through the standard model of particle physics, these forces can be drawn together and explained through their interactions with atomic and sub-atomic particles. But, 150 years and 2 new forces later, gravity still doesn’t fit in. It breaks at atomic scales and defies the mold of quantum mechanics. It won’t play with the Big Bang mathematical models. It simply defies our current understanding.


• Wilkins at Evolving Thoughts looks at the question of where did morality come from? (Note, not morals, but morality.): A conference is being held in Sydney soon about whether God is necessary for morality. I find that an almost incomprehensible question. Of course humans are moral without gods to back up their moral systems. They can't help it. It's what humans do. We are social apes that follow rules. Sometimes the sanctions for following rules (which turn out to be sanctions for potential defectors rather than the majority, who will tend to follow rules with or without promises of reward or punishment) rely on a god. Mostly, they don't. The famous Euthyphro Dilemma (whether something is good because God says so, or whether God does it because it is inherently good) is answerable thus: whether or not a god backs it up, some rules are just to be followed by ordinary human beings, and thus we imply they are inherently good. Unfortunately for moral realists, we can't agree on what things are inherently good. But we all hold that most of the things we think are good are good inherently. But think instead about why humans are moral rule followers.


• This one's a bit older (two weeks) but I'm putting it in anyway. Jennifer at Cocktail Party Physics talks about crystal skulls: Most of the press related to the new film, however, has focused on the legends and myths surrounding the crystal skulls. Yes, Virginia, there really are crystal skulls -- 13 of them, to be exact -- and the film even identifies the most famous one by name: the infamous Mitchell-Hedges skull, a.k.a., "the skull of doom." It was supposedly discovered by 17-year-old Anna Mitchell Hedges and her father in either 1924 or 1927 (they never did get their stories straight on the year) under the altar of a Mayan temple in a ruined city in Belize, although there is documentary evidence that in fact, Anna's father bought the skull at a Sotheby's sale in 1943. (Anna herself later came up with an "explanation" for that bill of sale.") Her father, a British "adventurer" named F.A. Mitchell-Hedges, claimed the clear quartz crystal skull was "at least 3600 years old, and according to legend was used by the High Priest of the Maya when performing esoteric rites. It is said that when he willed death with the help of the skull, death inevitably followed. It has been described as the embodiment of all evil."