Sunday soundbites

Will my neurotic personality negatively affect my career? No, but my current academic salary will not decrease my neuroticism over time.

Is the university dead? We have no idea. In other depressing news, here's the state of tenure according to Nature.

Also in Nature are the results on one journal's experiment with making peer review transparent.... followed by some hand-wringing about its high rate of retractions.

The Simpson's take on grad students and PhDs.

The ability to imagine the future seems independent of the hippocampus.

An excellent review of the (in)famous Little Albert experiment over at The History of Psychology.

More good history: Bering in Mind has a great article on the history of obesity.

The great Facebook Oracle of data mining can predict when romantic breakup are most likely to happen.

Vogue-it til you make it: power posing your way to success.

Data-driven dieting

The interesting thing about dieting is that while everyone knows what you need to do to lose weight (eat less and move more), very few people know much about how to get yourself to do these things.

So, how do you increase your willpower? 

1. Don’t get too hungry.

It seems that there is a link between blood sugar and self control. For example, this study showed that when you perform an act requiring self-control, your blood sugar drops, and that when you have low blood sugar, your performance on subsequent self-control tasks decreases. This is a good reason to heed the oft-quoted diet advice to eat small meals 5-6 times a day as this stabilizes the blood sugar and keeps the cookie monster at bay.

2. Use your imagination.

Tempting treats are nearly everywhere around us at this time of year: leftover Halloween candy, holiday parties, home-baked treats, etc. How should you respond to a tempting, but fattening treat in your vicinity? According to this study, try to imagine it in non-food context. Instead of seeing brownies, see chocolate door stops. Instead of candies, checkers pieces. Just try to think of as many non-food uses for the item. Researchers found that subjects who were told to think of non-food uses for tempting chocolate rated chocolate as less appealing than those who were instructed to think of chocolate as delicious.

3. Adjust your mental model.

Earlier, I wrote about a recent paper refuting a long-held model of self-control that asserted that self-control is a limited resource that gets depleted with use. This paper demonstrated that not believing in this model led to higher performance on a self-control task.

Gailliot, M., Baumeister, R., DeWall, C., Maner, J., Plant, E., Tice, D., Brewer, L., & Schmeichel, B. (2007). Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source: Willpower is more than a metaphor. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92 (2), 325-336 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.2.325


Hofmann, W., Deutsch, R., Lancaster, K., & Banaji, M. (2009). Cooling the heat of temptation: Mental self-control and the automatic evaluation of tempting stimuli European Journal of Social Psychology DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.708

Funny stats video

But what is your p value???

Getting Savage on evolutionary psychology

Now, I love sex advice columnist Dan Savage. I have been a faithful purveyor of his columns, podcasts and blogs for some time now. And sure, I don’t agree with him on every bit of advice, but he bats a solid .900 and articulately calls out many forms of B.S. But right now, I have a beef with Mr. Savage over his love affair with the new evolutionary psychology-inspired book Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. This is an example of the all-too-common use of science-y thinking as justification for a particular belief, in this case, the use of evolutionary psychology to endorse the “naturalness” of polyamory.

My contentions are the following: 1. while I am all for the promotion of reading and scientific literacy, we need to be especially vigilant against accepting poor science that confirms what we already believe; 2. that we need to critically examine whether science can inform social policy discussions; and 3. we need to divorce the notion that the “naturalness” of an act means that the act is desirable.

Problems with evolutionary psychology

I need to point out in the spirit of full-disclosure that I have not read Sex at Dawn. However, from Mr. Savage’s multiple interviews with Dr. Ryan, it is evident that the apple of this book does not fall far from the tree of Buss and Baker.

Evolutionary psychology offers only post-hoc fits of theory to data

            In evolutionary psychology, one asks how human evolutionary history can explain aspects of current human behavior. Functionally, it amounts to doing thought experiments on questions such as “how did a cave man’s life influence the shape of the human penis”? The problem with this kind of problem statement is that you are looking at some data (in this case the shape of human penises) and looking for a model that fits this data. You can come up with many such models, because you are fitting the data after the fact, but you have no guarantee that your model is correct.

Let’s take a case in point of an issue brought up in the latest interview with Dr. Ryan on the Savage Lovecast. The question: why are human penises larger than gorilla penises when gorillas are larger than men? The given answer: because they were designed as plungers to remove the semen of rival males from the reproductive tract of a female. The larger theory behind this answer lies in the idea of sperm competition, the notion that females practice selective non-monogamy as a means of maximizing genetic quality in the offspring. The male, worried that he might be cuckolded into investing resources into offspring not genetically related to him needs adaptations to keep his partner from being impregnated by rivals. Therefore, it is to his advantage to have a “plunger penis” that will reduce the probability of pregnancy from a rival.

           

It’s kind of like an intellectual Rube-Goldberg machine, isn’t it? Or perhaps more fittingly, like one of Kipling’s “just-so stories”.

The “scientific data” for this claim come from this paper, which might be the most hilarious scientific study I’ve ever read (and this includes the smoking pot in the fMRI scanner study). From the abstract:

Inanimate models were used to assess the possibility that certain features of the human penis evolved to displace semen left by other males in the female reproductive tract. Displacement of artificial semen in simulated vaginas varied as a function of glans/coronal ridge morphology, semen viscosity, and depth of thrusting. Results obtained by modifying an artificial penis suggest that the coronal ridge is an important morphological feature mediating semen displacement.

 

Yes, kids… this is research with dildos and masturbation sleeves. Other great sound bites from the article include the “recipe” for artificial semen: 

Simulated semen was created by mixing 7 ml of water at room temperature with 7.16 g of cornstarch and stirring for 5 min. After trying different mixtures of cornstarch and water, this recipe was judged by three sexually experienced males to best approximate the viscosity and texture of human seminal fluid.

And in addressing limitations of the current paradigm:

A limitation of our attempts to model semen displacement was the greater rigidity of the prosthetic as compared to real genitals. The artificial vaginas did not expand as readily as real vaginal tissue nor did the phalluses compress, and, as a result, semen displacement was assessed on the basis of a single insertion. The effects, however, were robust and generalized across different artificial phalluses, different artificial vaginas, different types of simulated semen, and different semen viscosities.

…Sigh…. My own research seems so vanilla in comparison! But in all seriousness, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this is not that evidence.

 

Evolutionary psychology does not make uniquely falsifiable claims

The hallmark of actual science is that it makes predictions that can be falsified and separated from other possible explanations. Evolutionary psychology does not do this. For example, the fact that men who have spent more time away from their partners find their partners more attractive and desirable, and ejaculate semen with higher sperm counts during copulation are taken as evidence for the sperm competition hypothesis. The argument is that as the man has not observed his partner, he is threatened by sperm competition, so it is to his advantage to copulate often and with… uh, greater virility. Although these studies control for time since last copulation, it doesn’t take much creativity to come up with alternative explanations.

Another example: the sperm competition hypothesis would predict that men would be more concerned with sexual infidelities of a partner (as this could result in cuckoldry) and women would be more concerned with emotional infidelities (as this could result in him leaving her without resources, or diverting resources into another partner). To test this prediction, David Buss conducted many surveys with many different groups asking them whether they would theoretically be more upset by a sexual or emotional infidelity. As nicely shown in David Buller’s critique of evolutionary psychology, although more men than women say that sexual infidelity is more upsetting, half of the men are still choosing emotional infidelity as more upsetting, so this model is far from complete.

Evolutionary psychology assumes that we know what psychological pressures existed for our ancestors in the Pleistocene.

We don’t. 

A closely related problem is that evolutionary psychology assumes that the mind evolved to the problems of the Pleistocene and then remained static for over 12,000 years. This seems implausible as large species-wide shifts have been observed in as little as 18 generations (less than 500 years for human generations).

However, many people who hate evolutionary psychology do so for irrational reasons

Evolutionary psychology is fine for intellectual masturbation, but we should strongly question its place as an actual science. However, many of its loudest critiques are based on emotional and political responses, rather than on the quality of the academic content.

Consider Megan McArdle’s critique of Sex at Dawn for The Atlantic. She writes:

“For example, like a lot of evolutionary biology critiques, this one leans heavily on bonobos (at least so far).  Here's the thing:  humans aren't like bonobos. And do you know how I know that we are not like bonobos?  Because we're not like bonobos.”

(Emphasis in original). 

Although I am sure Ms. McArdle is more articulate in other matters, it is true that when our beliefs are challenged, we are quick to say that scientific inquiry into the matter in question is useless.

Evolutionary psychology stirs up a political hornet’s nest. If we believe that our minds evolved to solve problems of the Pleistocene and have remained largely unchanged, this suggests that our minds have little capacity to change. Therefore, we can do little about real social problems such as war, racism and rape.

As Steven Pinker points out, ignoble tendencies do not have to lead to ignoble behavior. In other words, what “is” is not the same as what “ought”. The confusion between these two concepts comes from a fallacy confounding what is natural with what is good. Which leads me to my last problem with Dan Savage’s promotion of this book…..

Things that are natural are not necessarily desirable

Let’s step back and assume for a moment that the science of evolutionary psychology was solid, and that Ryan’s hypothesis about the polyamorous nature of humans was true. There would still be a major problem with Dan Savage’s use of this book to endorse polyamorous relationships: just because some behavior is fundamental to the nature of human beings does not mean that it’s a desirable state for current human beings.

Let me be clear on this point - I am not saying that humans shouldn’t be polyamorous. I believe consenting adults should do whatever they like. However, I am saying that the “naturalness” of polyamory does not inform its desirability.

Savage and Ryan are implicitly stating that since polyamory occurs throughout animal species and in human evolutionary history, it is natural. OK, but so are war, conquest, exploitation and rape and we do not condone these.

Dan, you are a smart guy…. Don’t get sucked in to poor science just because it tells a compelling story that you want to believe!

Sunday soundbites

The same intervals that sound sad in music also sound sad in speech.

Only in Texas would a university put together a spreadsheet showing how much money each professor is making for, or costing the university. Times, they are a' changing in academia...  and it looks like someone with similarly jaded views turned them into a movie.

Speaking of metrics, Academic Productivity has a great piece on new alt-metrics for measuring, well, academic productivity.

And the extent to which Google tools can inform peer review can be found here.

Oliver Sacks has just released a new book on vision. Hear his interview on NPR's Fresh Air. See also the review in Nature. I can't wait to get my hands on this book!

The Neurocritic takes on some over-made claims about low female libido and the brain. See also Neuroskeptic.

A new study shows that methylphenidate (Ritalin) increases activity in an attention network while decreasing activity in the default network.

The Neuroethics and Law blog takes on the neuroscience of marijuana legalization in time for the Proposition 19 vote in California. Like most public policy issues in neuroscience, it's complicated.

What would be the impact of training 10,000 more science and math teachers on American scientific innovation? As reported in Science, no one knows.

Your "inner voice" of self control might really be a voice.

Brain control

This week’s Nature has a cool article on the conscious control of medial temporal lobe neurons. In this work, the authors studied twelve patients with intractable epilepsy who have had electrodes implanted in their brains to monitor for seizure activity before neurosurgery. The electrodes were recording from brain areas that have been associated with high-level visual recognition, including place recognition, object recognition and navigation.

In the paper, the researchers identified neurons that selectively responded to one of four pictures of celebrities (i.e. a neuron that fires to Marilyn Monroe, but not Michael Jackson). Then, participants were given a target image (e.g. Marilyn Monroe) and then presented with images that consisted of two of the celebrities overlapped with 50% transparency, one was the target and the other was one of the three other celebrities. The neuronal activity from the four neurons of interest was recorded, and in near-real time, the transparency of the image could be adjusted to show more of the preferred image of the most active neuron. The patients were instructed to do whatever necessary to make the display turn into the target celebrity.

The patients were able to consciously control the neural firing to change the display to the target image about 70% of the time. The even cooler thing is that they were able to do this on the very first trial over half of the time! What were the subjects doing to control brain activity? Many reported that instead of engaging in mental imagery, they formed conceptual associations.

Overall, I think this paper is cool for two reasons: 1. it shows strong top-down modulation of high-level perceptual areas (and without needing massive amounts of training) and 2. using these regions and decoding algorithms might help new brain-computer interfaces for rehabilitation.

Cerf, M., Thiruvengadam, N., Mormann, F., Kraskov, A., Quiroga, R., Koch, C., & Fried, I. (2010). On-line, voluntary control of human temporal lobe neurons Nature, 467 (7319), 1104-1108 DOI: 10.1038/nature09510

Big data

It took 13 years to crunch through the 3 billion base pairs that make up the human genome. These data have been violating our assumptions ever since. My introductory biology textbook, published in 1996, speculates that there might be up to 100,000 genes in the genome. It turns out there are a lot less: about 20,000-30,000 by more recent estimates. The Human Genome Project sequenced only a few individuals, and combined all into one genome. However, many of the big questions we have about genetics concerns the differences between individuals.

We are starting to get answers to these questions. In today’s issue of Nature, a paper was published from the 1000 Genome Project, a massive collaborative effort from three continents that is designed to describe and explain the variance between individual’s genomes.

In this work, several types of variance were investigated as independent pilot studies. First, patterns between several mother-father-child trios were examined. Second, a group of 179 people had their whole genomes sequences. Last, more sparse sequencing was done on ~700 people from very diverse genetic backgrounds. While this paper is mostly serving as a progress report, and proof of concept, one very interesting bit is the finding that on average, any given person carries 50-100 gene variants that have been associated with higher risk of illness. This is very reminiscent of last week’s PNAS article showing that possessing such “risky” alleles does not decrease your lifespan to a statistically significant degree.

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(2010). A map of human genome variation from population-scale sequencing Nature, 467 (7319), 1061-1073 DOI: 10.1038/nature09534