A Greek was born on the 260th day of 20 B.C. and died on the 260th day of 60 A.D.  How many years did he live?

“When in doubt, blame the journalist” is one of my favorite explanations for bad science.  So often the science behind the headline is actually good (or at least appropriately admitting of it’s shortcomings) and then a journalist comes along and mucks it all up.  I’ve often wondered how scientists feel about seeing their work so grossly misrepresented, and yesterday I stumbled upon this TED talk where a neuroscientist explains how it felt to see that done to her own work:

http://embed.ted.com/talks/molly_crockett_beware_neuro_bunk.html

It’s a good video, but if you don’t have time for it, here’s the low down:  Molly Crockett and her lab did a study on whether or not taking away tryptophan from the brain would result in worse decision making.  They did this by giving people a gross drink.  The headlines ended up blaring “eat cheese for better decision making”.  Apparently the fact that cheese contains tryptophan was enough for the writers to conclude that eating cheese would cause decision making getting better….something the study never claimed to say.

The rest of her talk is quite good.  Some interesting points:

• People are more likely to believe scientific articles that have pictures of the brain in them
• Most regions of the brain have multiple functions, so any study claiming that the area associated with a specific emotion lit up at stimulus x likely just picked the function of that part of the brain they liked best 
• Oxytocin not only promotes good feelings (like is commonly reported) but also jealousy and bad feelings

For those of you who don’t follow the activities of the Supreme Court, you missed a good one last week.  Shelby County v Holder went up before the judges, and Scalia, Roberts, Sotomayor and Kagan all got in some commentary that made headlines.   The case is a challenge specifically to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires that states with a history of discriminatory practices in voting must get any changes to their voting practices “precleared” before they can implement them.  

1. Which elections are we counting?  The census data Chief Justice Roberts was citing was from this lower court decision, which clarifies this was from the 2004 election.  I would like to see some more robust data that shows where these numbers go when it’s not a presidential election.
2. What/who else was on the ballot in the individual states in the year the data was pulled.  Some issues just effect certain groups more.  We should really at least attempt to tease out if there was any significant differences in ballot measures/state level races in 2004 before comparing the numbers.
3. Does it matter more who votes, or how much it took to get there? Voter turnout’s a funny thing…sometimes the more hurdles in people’s way, the more dedicated they get.  If two states have identical turnout rates, it wouldn’t always mean that it was equally easy for people to get to the polls. At no point in any of these decisions did I see an attempt to assess how easy/difficult people felt it was to vote.
4. How many laws have they tried to pass but not been able to? When looking at who votes, it’s important to remember that those votes were cast using the setup of laws actually implemented. Sotomayor mentioned the first day that Shelby County has had 240 laws blocked under Section 2, and as I noted above, Massachusetts has tried to pass laws that did not hold up in court.
5. Can we separate the effect of race from the effect of socioeconomic status? I voted in urban precincts for a number of years.  They can be terrible.  
6. How are other minorities doing? I mean I get why the focus is where it is, but doesn’t it matter how other races are doing to?

Hey!  Happy Friday! In celebration, I think it’s time you ask the internet “Am I Awesome?”

I mentioned that in Salt Lake City I rekindled my love affair with dinosaurs.  Thus, this Tumblr makes me happy.

This also makes me happy: the most obscenely titled peer reviewed paper you’ll see all day.

Also from io9, the scientists that would make the best superheros.

I know I’m feeling pretty burnt out on politics, but this site is pretty cool….locate your state level representation, and get the bills they sponsor, committees they serve on, and other such fiddle faddle.

In one of those weird “stalking bad data” moments today, I found this Jezebel article that claimed that women worked harder than men.  The Jezebel article linked to a Forbes article about a study from 3M, but there was no link.  Finally, someone in the comments section actually found the study and I got to take a look.

If I were to give you the equation 26 = 47 in big foam numbers, how could you rearrange them to make it an accurate equation?  You can’t add any mathematical operators or get rid of the equal sign.

Answer: more than I thought.

I finished my first midterm of the semester this week.  There was a decent section that revolved around calculating P(x|y)….in other words the probability of x if we know that y has already happened.  In simple terms, if you have a probability of something happening (x), and something else that’s related to x happens (y), the probability of x happening changes.

This is not an overly complex concept when it’s spelled out mathematically, but in real life it can be hard for people to remember that improbable events are often far more probable if you consider what’s already happened.

I was reminded of this when I was reading Dear Prudence (Slate.com’s advice column) last week and came across this letter from a man (born by artificial insemination from an unknown sperm donor) who decided to seek out his father, only to discover that it was the same man who had donated to his wife’s mother.  Oops.  And gross.  Seriously, gross.

What struck me as more though, was a response that was printed from another reader:

I know you/we cannot know, but color me skeptical that this letter is legit. The odds of such a “match” have to be very small. I can’t help but wonder if this letter is a fiction pushing a political agenda.

This seems true of course…I mean, it’s a sort of Casablanca moment right?  Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world….

But let’s think about this couple for a second:

1. They’d be the same age.  I don’t know about sperm banks in particular, but I do know that most stored bodily fluids are only considered “good” for a few years…so if two people were to result from one donor, they would likely be around the same age.  Most people tend to marry someone within a few years plus or minus their own age.
2. They’d be from the same place. Sperm donors are unlikely to trit trot around the country donating to various centers….they’re more likely to stay in the city they actually live in.  I have no particular experience with this, but I’d imagine that people looking for a sperm bank stick to their same town as well….which means these two children would like be raised in the same city, making their chances of meeting go up and the culture they were raised in more similar.
3. Their mothers had a lot in common.  From the letter, the couple is at least over the age of 30.  From what I gather, it was less common for people to use sperm banks prior to 1980.  According to this article, in 1987, only 5000 single women asked for donor sperm.  At the time the letter writers mother and mother-in-law were looking, it was likely even fewer.  This means the two shared a very unique background, and had mothers who were both counter-cultural enough to go forward with this.  This would give them quite a bit in common.
4. They’d likely have at least some similar hobbies, interests, and personality traits. I think most people would agree that at least some of our hobbies/interests/personality traits/taste in friends/what have you are more nature than nurture.  I would thus think it extremely likely that two people sharing the same father would have at least one major hobby or interest in common, making it much more likely that their social circles would cross and that they’d have something to talk about when it did.  The more you believe genetics influence who you eventually are, the better the chances they’d meet.
5. People (might) like people who look like them.  I actually had some trouble finding a good paper that proves this, but it’s a theory.  Interestingly, the only scholarly article cited in support of this on the Wikipedia page actually turned out to say they found no evidence of this.  This is why Wikipedia =/= research.
6. Their parents would likely have supported the union.  In-law issues are tough, but I’d imagine if you were a lesbian mother in the 80s and found out your adult son was going to marry the daughter of another lesbian mother from the 80s, you’d be pretty psyched.  Also, they’d very likely have been in a similar socio-economic class, as both their moms were well off enough to pursue this avenue.

There is nothing I love more than a clever phrase to describe a phenomena that bothers me.  Last night I found such a phrase in a Jezebel article about gender differences in number of words spoken per day.