A Great Day for Drunken Science!

Once again the Fortean Times breaking news section brings real news of interest. Today’s gem relates to a fascinating discovery in the field of superconductivity that may not have happened had the scientists not bee steaming drunk!

According to io9.com Yoshihiko Takano and other researchers at the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan were trying to create a certain kind of superconductor by putting a compound in hot water and soaking it for hours. They also soaked the compound in a mixture of water and ethanol.

Things were going well so the scientists decided to have a little party featuring sake, whisky, various wines, shochu (this one’s new to me), and beer. At a certain point, the researchers decided to try soaking the compound in the various drinks they had to hand and seeing how they compared to the more conventional soaking liquids.

When they tested the resulting materials for superconductivity, they found that the ones soaked in commercial booze came out ahead. About 15 percent of the material became a superconductor for the water mixed with ethanol, and less for the pure water. By comparison, Shochu jacked up conductivity by 23 percent and red wine managed to supercharge over 62 percent of the material.

None of this would have happened if the scientists hadn’t had a party and gotten pissed. Well done those men!

The Daily Mail view on cervical cancer vaccines depends on where you live

For me, Ben Goldacre’s weekly Guardian column Bad Science is essential reading. This week he asks a pertinent question, to wit “Is it somehow possible that journalists wilfully misinterpret and ignore scientific evidence, in order to generate stories that reflect their own political and cultural prejudices?”

The issue is illustrated with reference to the Daily Mail and to a blog called The Lay Scientist.

Daily Mail in Britain

Last January the Mail reported on the deaths of two girls following the cervical cancer vaccination. Reading beyond the headline showed that the cause of death in either case “could not be identified”. According to the European Medicines Agency "No causal relationship has been established between the deaths of the young women and the administration of Gardasil” (the vaccine in question).

On 6 April, under the headline, How safe is the cervical cancer jab? Five teenagers reveal their alarming stories the Mail focused on the severe side effects experienced by these five girls and mentions that (according to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority) 1,300 out of the 700,000 girls vaccinated in 2008.last year had officially reported an adverse reaction of any kind.

Although the article states that this “is a tiny proportion of the girls who have upped their protection against a dreadful disease” the thrust of both of these articles is to cast doubt in the minds of its readers about the safety of the vaccine.

Daily Mail in Ireland

Perversely the Daily Mail is campaigning vigorously in favour of the vaccine. On 29 January the Mail published an article under the headline “Join the Irish Daily Mail's cervical cancer vaccination campaign today “ The Mail called on the Irish Government to reverse its decision to axe its cervical cancer vaccination programme stating that the vaccine combined with the recently rolled out cervical cancer screening programme would cut deaths by 80 per cent.

Goldacre’s jaundiced view is that in Britain the Daily Mail raises questions about cervical cancer vaccine because it is about a government promoting promiscuity (therefore it causes paralysis and other symptoms); in Ireland the vaccine is withheld by penny-pinchers, so it is a lifesaver. I can’t help feel that there is some truth in his take on the different approaches in Britain and Ireland. After all how often do papers manipulate facts (scientific or otherwise) in accordance with their own political affiliations? The Guardian and Observer are of course not exempt from this either.

Ah well, at least the Mail does not describe the vaccine as “Labour’s new sex jab for schoolgirls” as the Express does...

Science can be fun

On Friday I went to see the recording of an episode of a new comedy quiz called "What on Earth?" It's a science based quiz, chaired by Marcus Brigstocke. A very enjoyable time was had, the highlight being a wonderful scientific joke:

- What's non-orientable and lives in the sea?

- Mobius Dick.

My sides were splitting. In search of other science-based mirth I found this
website which is chock full of  scientific belly laughs: The mathematicians
among you will surely enjoy this rib-tickler:


- What do you get if you cross an elephant with a mountain climber.

- You can't do that.  A mountain climber is a scalar.

Or How about this biochemical funny that will have them rolling in the aisles

"A bloke walks into a pub, and asks for a pint of Adenosinetriphosphate.
The barman says "That'll be 80p please!" (ATP geddit?)

All of this reminded me of a book that is still available called the
Biochemist's songbook, not something that I bought along with Stryer's
Biochemistry or Selkurt's Physiology. But here is one set of lyrics
to be sung to the tune of the British Grenadiers:

In Praise of Glycolysis

Some pathways lead to glory, like Hatch and Slack and Knoop,
Utter, Calvin, Cori --- a most distinguished group,
But of all of nature's pathways, we sing the praise today
Of Embden, Meyerhof, Parnas --- the glycolytic pathway.

Glucose, by hexokinase is turned to G6P
(You might use glucokinase, you must use ATP)
And, note, glycogenolysis (when stores are in the cell)
Gives G1P which then mutates to G6P as well.

The moiety of glucose, in the succeeding phase
Is transferred to a ketose by an isomerase
Phosphofructokinase now, acts on that F6P;
Fructose 1,6 bisphosphate is the product that's set free.

The kinase is affected quite complicatedly
And as you'll have suspected it uses ATP;
FBP by aldolase is split reversibly
To phosphoglyceraldehyde, also DHAP.

The former and the latter can each equilibrate ---
It really doesn't matter for metabolic fate ---
So follow PG aldehyde and double what you see,
You'll get the total balance sheet for a hexose moiety.

There's now a novel facet, for NAD's reduced
But carboxylic acid is not what is produced,
Delta-G's substantial, and energy's conserved
(For otherwise the pathway would, quite frankly, be absurd).

The complex oxidation of PG aldehyde
Gives by phosphorylation an acid anhydride,
And that bisphosphoglycerate reacts with ADP
The kinase making ATP, of course reversibly.

The product's composition, 3-phosphoglycerate
From 3 to 2 position can readily mutate
And now 2-phosphoglycerate does something rather strange ---
Electrons on C2 and 3 proceed to rearrange.

The redox-dehydration, catalyzed by enolase
Gives PEP formation and bond energy raise
So phosphoenol pyruvate reacts with ADP
The kinase making ATP, but not reversibly.

In anaerobiosis, pyruvate's not the end;
The problem we suppose is not hard to comprehend;
The dehydrogenation to phosphoglycerate
Would grind to halt if NAD could not regenrate.

The answer is quite subtle, pyruvate is reduced,
Instead of glycerol shuttle, lactate is produced;
Lactate dehydrogenase performs that noble feat,
NADH is oxidized, the pathway is complete.

The balance sheet you'll see shows transfer of energy,
Two ATP's from glucose and three from G1P.
That's good, but oh to use the way where pyruvate's reduced
With decarboxylation first, the ethanol produced!

Bad science (or just plain offensive science)

Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in the Guardian is essential reading for a Saturday morning. His last Saturday’s column, titled “Evolutionary regression back to 1866” concerned a recent paper on Down ’s syndrome (or just Down, both are correct) in the scientific journal Medical Hypotheses.

Down's Syndrome used to be called mongolism, a term (along with Mongolian idiocy) that was invented by John Langdon Down in 1866, We now know that the disorder is caused by chromosome 21 trisomy (where a person has a an complete or partial third copy of this chromosome) but in his study “Observations on the Ethnic Classification of Idiots" he put stated that the condition was an evolutionary regression to (what he viewed as a) less advanced form of humanity. Mongolism and Mongolian idiocy are, mercifully, now obsolete as descriptive terms having been superseded by the expression Down’s syndrome in the 1960s

Ben Goldacre was thus shocked to come across an article from 2007 entitled “Down subjects and Oriental population share several specific attitudes and characteristics”. Written by Federica Mafrica and Vincenzo Fodale the article puts forwards the idea that the parallels between Down syndrome and "oriental" people are deeper than a vague facial similarity. His Bad Science website publishes the article in full.

The article contains a number of statements that beggar belief in this day and age: -

• "Down subjects adore having several dishes displayed on the table, and have a propensity for food which is rich in monosodium glutamate."
  

• "The tendencies of Down subjects to carry out recreative-rehabilitative activities, such as embroidery, wicker-working, ceramics, book-binding, etc., that is renowned, remind [us of] the Chinese hand-crafts, which need a notable ability, such as Chinese vases, or the use of chopsticks employed for eating by Asiatic populations."

• "Down persons during waiting periods, when they get tired of standing up straight, crouch, squatting down, reminding us of the 'squatting' position ... They remain in this position for several minutes and only to rest themselves.... This position is the same taken by the Vietnamese, the Thai, the Cambodian, and the Chinese, while they are waiting at a bus stop, for instance, or while they are chatting."

• "There is another pose taken by Down subjects while they are sitting on a chair: they sit with their legs crossed while they are eating, writing, watching TV, as the Oriental peoples do."

The article ends:

• “Furthermore, it may be interesting to know the gravity with which the Down’s syndrome occurs in Asiatic population, especially in Chinese population. This study may offer the possibility of to know better the neuropathology mechanisms that are responsible of mental retardation in Down’s syndrome and to open a new diagnostic and therapeutic way for to operate precociously. Perhaps we could even clear Langdon of all blame from the accusation of being a ‘‘racist’’ for having first observed a sort of twinning which could be looked at in more depth in the light of modern knowledge on the heredity of features and on genic expression and inactivation.”

By the same token you could argue that anyone who likes buffet lunches sells at craft fairs, or does yoga must have a similar oriental connection too. I agree with Ben Goldacre’s when he described the article as “so fantastical and so thoughtlessly crass that it's impossible to experience anything like outrage”. Two thoughts also sprang to mind:

• Are Fodale and Mafrica having a laugh? If so it is a pretty bad joke. It was published in the February edition so it wasn’t an April fool’s day thing. Also I don’t think that the article was intended as a homage to Alan Sokal and his hoax paper "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity"

• Where was the peer review? Apparently, the journal http://www.harcourt-international.com/journals/mehy/ Medical Hypotheses is a forum for “radical ideas in medicine and related biomedical sciences”. It does not operate a peer review system - the editor simply chooses to publish what are judged to be the best papers from those submitted.

Vincenzo Fodale appears to be a reputable scientist. He is the “Aggregated Professor of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care” at the University of Messina and has published widely, mainly on anaesthesiology as would be expected, but also on other matters including “the cholinergic system in Down’s Syndrome” (the nerve cells that use Acetylcholine as a neurotransmitter). What the hell is he doing, penning such unscientific and downright offensive nonsense?

Also check Tom Hamilton's excellent post at Lets Be Sensible