I have a problem: scientific inquiry and bad scientific journalism

I have a problem.

Other than my headache, that is. Because apparently, on a day like today, even when I sick with nausea and a headache and chest pain and ear pain and tremors in my hand, the only thing I can do is get angry about a Huffington Post article, go into the scientific journals, just to prove one sentence wrong.

All I’m doing is minding my business, trying to rest up after my first class today, browsing the reddit’s, and I come across this article: 10 Reasons Why Every Athlete Should Meditate. First things first: any article that labels itself as a list in the title tells you 3 things:

1. They’re starving for attention and are looking for you to click. People love lists.
2. They probably spent 15 minutes on Google finding these things (more below).
3. Almost zero thought went into this article other than said-Googling and making sure they had proper grammar.

The biggest sin of science journalism, and by far the most common, and perhaps the root of all other sins, is thinking correlation equals causation. I know, I know, I know. It’s a CRAZY thing to think that just because two things are correlated doesn’t mean one must cause the other. But after working in a molecular virology lab, I’ve learned that if the molecular biologists have a hard enough time determining mechanisms, if it has to do with something as weird and barely defined as meditation, you are not going to get anywhere near causation, bucko.

Now, the way you can tell Robert Piper generated this list by Google is because his hyperlinks don’t direct you to the actual articles but rather to media releases. I mean, linking to the actual journal articles would take another…3 minutes/article * 10 articles…. 30 minutes. In the world of viral journalism, that’s like, a few lifetimes.

Specifically, the claim about meditation boosting the immune system intrigued me, because I thought, “There’s no way scientists have concluded this definitively, otherwise we’d all know about it!”. Sure enough, his hyperlink directed me to the Telegraph’s media release, which when I compared it to the media release from the journal who published the article, it was suspiciously really really close in wording but just enough off to avoid plagiarism. #classy. Sorry kids, citing a media release does not count! Definitely worse than citing Wikipedia.

So, screw it, I took the time to look up the what I thought would be an empirical article. Nope, it was a review! And a really long one (1). I specifically looked for the claims regarding the immune system, and the review cited 3 empirical studies. So I went and glanced those over. Here are the results! (disclaimer: I actually don’t know much about the immune system. Turns out, you don’t need to for this!).

Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation (2)

This article was the one I took most seriously, and the one I’ll give most attention to. Basically, they took a bunch of white people from a biotech company, randomized them, and had half of them go on a 8-week long meditation retreat. Talk about job perks, huh? 4 months after the retreat ended, they challenged their immune systems with an influenza vaccine, and measured antibody titers at 3-5 weeks post-immunization and 8-9 weeks post immunization, and then did a bunch of brain imaging as well. “Marginally significant” is a phrase used a lot in this study, essentially meaning that after manipulating their data, they were able to get it to be around p<0.1. (lol). In regards to the antibody data, they measured a 0.1 log difference in the growth of antibodies in the meditation group (those who went on the retreat built up slightly more antibodies. Like, just little).

However, let’s remember that on a meditation retreat, a person isn’t only meditating and then living the rest of their life exactly the same. Their diet, their exercise levels, and their recreation all change. So, there are too many conflicting factors, their data is only hovering on significance.

One year pre–post intervention follow-up of psychological, immune, endocrine and blood pressure outcomes of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) in breast and prostate cancer outpatients (3)

Cancer patients go on a similar 8-week long retreat. They show “good” gains in plenty of physiological parameters. I’m not going to say anything more, because the main critique is below.

Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators (4)

This one is even more lol-zy. These punks went on a 3-month-long retreat where they meditated for 6 hours/day. Enough said. They measured telomerase activity, which is actually kind of cool and the results are interesting for reasons we’re not concerned with.

Conclusion:

What does it mean if you’re taking people out of their daily lives, and changing them completely by altering their diet, their physical activity, the social structure they live in, and their recreation? How can you handle all of those confounding factors? And then, you measure things 3 weeks-1 year after these retreats, as though if after the retreat, the participants of the retreat have suddenly returned to the life they had before the retreat. LOL not likely.

And how can we apply this to real life? Who has the time to go on an 8-week retreat, let alone a 3-month long one, or who has time to meditate for 6 hours a day? We’re getting marginal results from participants who are putting in a lot of work. Furthermore, how can you apply this to professional athletes, who have to manage the daily stresses the rest of us face on top of being criticized by their fans and the media and working their body to physical extremes?

This all just beyond the pale of absurdity.

Look, I meditate. It helps me learn how to tune out the thoughts I don’t want to deal with, it helps me figure out how to lower the amount of ruminating I do, but it mostly helps me calm down and lower my heartrate before I go to bed. But we have got to stop calling out meditation as a salve for all of these problems when we have other things that work much better.

Sources:

1) Perspectives on Psychological Science, November 2011, vol. 6, no. 6, 537-559

2) Psychosomatic Medicine, July/August 2003, vol. 65, no. 4, 564-570

3) Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, Volume 21, Issue 8, November 2007, Pages 1038–1049

4) Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2011-06-01, Volume 36, Issue 5, Pages 664-681

Losing My Mind

On some nights, when it’s really bad, I stare at the ceiling. I’m usually in some chemically altered state, just having taken another dose of Vicodin alongside the other two anti-depressants I’m stuck on, one actually for my depression, the other as a “headache prophylactic”. I’ve found that sometimes I need to play Chopin or Bach alongside these chemical states. If I didn’t distract myself from the invisible vice wrapped around my head, driving phantom bolts into my temples, I probably wouldn’t ever fall asleep.

I’m angry. This constant headache has robbed me of many things I enjoy–long days in the lab, teaching swim lessons, socializing.

Sometimes, if the chest pain is bad when I wake up, I take 800 mg of ibuprofen. Just after lunch I’ll take the nasal spray and Allegra; the doctors originally thought the headache might be allergy related. I still have the headache, but they insist I continue. For when the headache grows into a full-blown migraine, I can pop an imitrex or two. At nighttime, it’s always one pill of Zoloft and one pill of the drug whose name I can’t remember. And, sometimes, dropping two Vicodin when I need to forget, I mean, remember what things used to feel like. This also makes me angry. The warm, fuzzy, droopy feeling Vicodin gives me is the closest I get to what life was like pre-headache. I can’t even exercise, but luckily I can bike most places with very little energy. I’m not supposed to drink.

I’m learning how to cope, though. I think next week I’ll be good enough at coping that I could probably do an experiment or two in lab. The week after that…if the pain, the vice, the bolts…if they are all still with me, the doctors want to do imaging. Read: they’re no longer sure of why I have a headache. Read: they’ve ruled out common causes. Read: they are going to be looking for a tumor.

So I’m taking my drugs religiously. I’m trying very hard to take it easy. Because I want, no, I need for this headache to go away before that time is reached. I’m not sure I can handle having that be a reality, but it’s difficult enough dealing with the possibility.

I only have two more doses of Vicodin left. But there’s still lots of Bach. There’s still lots of time. And miles to go before I sleep. and miles to go before I sleep.

Getting Married, Tennis, and the Life Observed

I’m really into tennis. So much so that, if I consider the past four years of my life, now that I’m graduating summa cum laude with high distinction… with a Biology B.S., there are a lot of things and people that I would attribute my successes to. But tennis is one of the most important ones.

I’ve always had an inclination to enjoy tasks that require endurance. As a kid I would devour books, and in middle school I immediately signed up for the long distance track events. Today I still enjoy runs, going out on the solitary step, mindlessly bringing your feet forward, pushing your body past some arbitrary limit as you fly down the river. In tennis, you play many points, hit hundreds of forehands and backhands, and it is the mental endurance that pushes you through. If you don’t practice the mental endurance in sports like tennis and long-distance running, you won’t progress.

Studying for a straight 6 hours for OChem isn’t for everyone. Working on a thesis for 9 months isn’t for everyone (and, I’m still not convinced it’s really for me either…). Spending the majority of your college career hearing half  the state call you immoral isn’t for everyone, but we didn’t get to choose whether to deal with that or not.

When I knew I was going to be spending the rest of my life with Scott, I knew I was in for the long haul. Not necessarily to regards to spending my entire life with Scott. Rather, I thought it would be a really really long time before we could get legally married, and we would sit through countless political votes and legal battles until it became true. Our relationship has become something of a spectacle, and a marathon, at times. Partly our fault, since we post to Facebook (like every other couple?). But we ended up on the front page of our newspaper. People have PM’d me that our relationship gives them hope. And I don’t want to seem like I’m bragging–these things are all really nice, and I know how lucky I am to have someone like Scott. But I’m so ready for the attention to not be there. To just be like everyone else. And this spectacle, of our relationship being viewed by friends and colleagues in light of popular cultural fights, has been a bit of a marathon. Sometimes people talk to you and expect you to speak as a representative of the gay community. Sometimes they send you pictures of some thing decked out in a rainbow. I love the rainbow…historically. I don’t want rainbows in my life (sans my rainbow towel because it’s huge and cuddly). No rainbows allowed at my wedding or reception. It’s a political symbol, not a personal one. Sometimes people post to you any news item related to [gay rights]. Oh, they passed gay marriage in [another random New England state]. Okay?

Gay marriage is easy because it’s what the masses of straight people understand. It’s why these celebrations for earning equality are big. The rest–homelessness, trans* rights, serious health care disparaties–those aren’t easy. Because the masses don’t deal with it, because they look dirty, because they’re uncomfortable. Gay marriage is easy because it’s putting us into the terms of them. Homelessness, trans* rights, the rest: they likely will not be solved with legislation alone. That’s why gay marriage is easy. And that’s why I’m ready for it to be done, so the dirty work can get started.

-

My wedding is going to be small. Very personal. And definitely, without question, not at City Hall. Because my wedding is not a novelty for random people gathered at city hall to gape at, it is not for reporters from blogging websites to take cute photos of, and its not a political symbol. My wedding is not a representation of the sudden equality by brothers and sisters are getting. My wedding is a simple promise to a beautiful man, not to the common public.

I’m ready for the unobserved life. I’m ready for the time when gay weddings aren’t paraded as unique and just so ADORABLE.

That’s what equality looks like. It looks like everyone else.

And miles to go before I sleep…

This week is weird.

The pelican that accompanied this morning on my run was gentle. He stopped on the bridge near me and gave me only a few seconds look. I’ve honestly never seen a pelican in the cities, but this one seemed friendly enough so I paused and enjoyed the sunrise with him. There are not many people out at 6:15 a.m., and I like making up stories in my head for why these folks are up this early walking to…the library? What else is open on the U this early? The pelican bobbed his head a few times and then took off. Til next time friend.

This week is the beginning of the rest of my life. I graduate, and I begin a one-year program to earn a license for my career. Today the Senate votes. I may get married this summer.

There are more than 400 ppm CO2 molecules in the air on average daily.

But I want to think clearly about this next year. What do I do, beyond student teaching, learning pedagogy, and continuing to help out with teaching swim lessons?

Running in the city, it’s smarter to run in the morning. There isn’t as much pollution in the air yet.

Next year, I want to discover new intellectual spaces. I want to write more, and I want to run more, and I want to learn how to program. I want to become more skilled at quantitative methods, and I wantneed to read more philosophy.

I want to explore the mystery.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

-Frost

 

The warmth of these days

On my way home last night, I noticed that the temperature had reached that beautiful threshold for absolute bliss. It was ambient. It’s the temperature that exists such that, if you’re in it, you’re at risk of not noticing it. It was just after sunset, there was absolutely no wind. You don’t notice the environment. I wonder if this is where my ancestors evolved, in a place where they felt like this everyday. I felt like this often in Asia, accented by the eyes of my love and happiness and true relaxation. Happiness is a paradox, it’s something we have to work so hard for, but it’s also something that we simply need to let happen to us when it comes. I’m still learning how to do this, but at least I know I’m not a total amateur.

When it’s warm, you can smell it. Maybe only people who go through winter can smell warm air. Because in both spring and winter you can smell the city, the asphalt and concrete, the exhaust, vague rivers of food aromas from Dinkytown. But in spring, it’s more than just the addition of flowers and leaves and grass. There’s something different in the air. Maybe it’s the humidity.

I know what death smells like. I’ve held it in my hand in the laboratory, fixed by the simple reactions of formaldehyde. I’ve smelled it after squishing an Asian beetle, it’s body juices sticky under my palm. A disgusting, waxy, vomit-like smell. I’ve smelled death after shooting a deer, tearing open the skin over it’s gut with my knife and pulling out all of the guts. I smelled it as I hung the deer in the garage with my dad, peeling off all of the skin, slowly removing the muscles, wiping our hands free of coagulated blood and loose hair. I’ve smelled death in the church, the dusty air mixing with the staleness of this place, lending an air of ultimate stagnancy to the funeral of my grandfather. I don’t remember much about that day. But I remember the cold, I remember the bleak grey sky above the place he was interred, and I remember the smell of the church. My experience with death is tangential, light, theoretical. It is for nearly all of us. My mother has tasted death, shortly after septic shock ravaged her small body. I love my mother so much, and the respect I have for her is paramount. She has looked death in the eye, she has dealt with the pain of many surgeries and infections. My mother is a warrior, and I mean that respectfully. Those who die of disease are not losers. My mother is a warrior for always holding her head high.

Once, in Colorado, after butchering a deer in the field, my father and I were lost in a blizzard. Total white-out. They tell you that sometimes, during blizzards, you stop feeling cold, you stop feeling tired, and you just have the urge to sit down and fall asleep. I never believed that, until I felt it. I felt death, offering his blanket to me while pure white chaos circled around me. My father led me out of the hills back to the tent.

A friend, lost. I don’t pretend to know what he felt, before or during. I know that there is no feeling left now. I wonder if, while he stood outside, he smelled the warmth. I don’t pretend to know his pain. All I know is regret, regret that this is what happens sometimes. Regret that we have lost a truly beautiful person.

It’s nothing now. It’s death. It’s simply…their chapter is done.

Yes, but, the pages keep turning. And they’re blank, and they’re blank, and they’re blank.

We go through life, and we lose other lives and subsequently gather more and more blank pages that we’re forced to look straight at, maybe not everyday, but it happens.

and they’re blank, and they’re blank, and they’re blank.

Fighting the Elitest Gay

First, an admission: I’m subscribed to the subreddit known as Gaybros. What Gaybros is is hard to define, and in fact, threads on the subreddit committed to forming a definition are usually downvoting or removed. At the simplest, it’s a forum to discuss the intersection of traditional masculinity and being gay. To some, this implicitly means that to be a Gaybro is to think less of gay men who do not fit the “traditional man” stereotype. Luckily, nearly every user knows that’s ridiculous. After all, being a man doesn’t involve a membership card that gets taken away if you happen to like glitter, or football, or cricket, or Lady Gaga. It’s, quite simply, a place you go to if you, for example, want to discuss the NFL draft with a bunch of guys who will metaphorically high five you when you point out a hot guy. It’s a welcoming place: both women and trans* men are welcome, and those who think otherwise are, again, downvoted into oblivion.

However, there’s a bad apple in every group. One thread started with “Androphilia – thought you guys might appreciate this book”.

Here, for you Reader, is the link to Androphilia: Rejecting the Gay Identity, Rediscovering Masculinity.

Even just reading that title, my gut reaction was

wuht

Semantic debates about what a “gay identity” or what being “masculine” really mean, what does it mean when you go to a group of guys who celebrate BOTH their gay identity and their masculinity and say: here’s a book to “rediscover your masculinity”.

Sorry, didn’t know it got lost.

But really, semantics put TOTALLY aside, this is only one thing: sexist. What happens when you piss on any trait in a man that you see as effeminate is that you piss on the entire female population as being inferior to you. Besides, what gives with saying [femininity+man by sex = gay]???

This is only another ugly arm of the beast of sexism and racism seen in the gay male population. If we don’t call these things out when we see them, thereby increasing the collective consciousness of society, things won’t get better.

What Science Looks Like

I’m in lab in my hipster pants and snap-back cap wearing gloves and goggles and a lab coat and I know that yes, this is what science looks like.

Science is not ivory tower men with white hair and extensive vocabularies running experiments beyond our comprehension. Science is done everyday by millions of people, all who are totally normal and love normal things like Justin Bieber and Led Zeppelin and pizza and watching New Girl and constellations and corny poems.

Science is not done by the people who know it all, but by the people who want to know more, regardless of what they already know.

I have passed labs blaring music from Wicked, death metal, Mika pop (oops that was me), country music, techno, MPR (a bit too common), and 80′s love ballads.

I’m thinking about this because a student asked me today about college, and they were surprised when I told them I have done research in a lab. They were surprised because a laboratory feels like a place that is not accessible to them, just after they sat there explaining how different hormones affect the development of reproductive organs of men and females. Something is wrong.

In my most wild dreams, students don’t begin doing research as sophomores/juniors, but as high schoolers, who come into the lab to learn laboratory science alongside biochemistry, general and organic chemistry, cell biology, genetics, and everything else. In these dreams, the high schoolers start to craft experiments, and begin to realize the creative power inherent in this task, equivalent to a creative essay or love poem. In these dreams, the high schoolers are the ones who ask the wildest questions, questions that are sometimes laughed away with a quick textbook reference, but sometimes questions that silence the rest of us and act as catalysts for our cognitive thoughts, as we begin to turn these thoughts into new territory.

Making science feel accessible to students is more than just using rote examples of scientists who are not white men. Why are we still failing to realize that in so many classrooms?