Lord of the dance

A fun story about what makes a man's dance moves attractive to women...

http://www.economist.com/node/16984701

Updated: This story was in the top five most popular items on the Economist website during the week of September 10th to 16th.

Testing times for genetics

In America, the backlash against consumer genetics has begun. If you have ever been interested in what secrets your genes might hold, take note. In the near future, your right to spit into a tube, and have someone tell you what this means might be constrained. In short, governments of all sorts have begun to wonder whether you should be trusted with your own DNA.

Our healthcare correspondent wrote a piece in the Business Section on the issue of August 14th. I wrote a leader (op-ed), and followed it up with a blog post on our technology blog Babbage. This post is the latest installment in a sequence about consumer genomics.

I felt from the start of this story that the GAO report was strangely flawed. By that I mean it seemed determined to inflict the maximum damage on the industry using incorrect and flawed information.

I'm now fascinated to read that the genetics blogger Daniel MacArthur, is now seeking full access to the full transcripts and data used by the GAO. Presumably through FOI legislation.

Behind the scenes there is speculation that the FDA put the GAO up to this report in order to ask for money to regulate the industry.

Fruit research institute squashed in Moscow court

Read my latest Economist post about the Pavlovsk genebank and fears over its imminent demise.

Marvel, too, at the fact that President Dmitry Medvedev has just tweeted that he has received the appeal over Pavlovsk and has given instructions for the issue to be scrutinised.

Incredible diversity in the ocean discovered...

Check out this wonderful story about an American-Indonesian expedition that is discovering extraordinary diversity thousands of feet below the ocean surface in the waters of the Coral Triangle.

What lies beneath, The Economist, August 5th 2010.

Image: NOAA

Seeds of change

An alarming situation is unfolding in Russia, where a valuable repository for plant genetic diversity, which contains valuable varieties of berry, could be bulldozed in order to build luxury housing. Read about it on Eastern Approaches, The Economist's blog.

* Image: David Monniaux

Sorry, Stephen

Scientist Stephen Schneider died recently.

In 2002, The Economist wrote about him. It was after he got involved in the debate about a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist (which The Economist thought was rather good).

“The fuss over Mr Lomborg highlights an attitude among some media-conscious scientists that militates not just against good policy but against the truth. Stephen Schneider, one of Scientific American's anti-Lomborgians, spoke we suspect not just for himself when he told Discover in 1989: “[We] are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place...To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have...Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.” In other words, save science for other scientists, in peer-reviewed journals and other sanctified places. In public, strike a balance between telling the truth and telling necessary lies.

Science needs no defending from Mr Lomborg. It may very well need defending from champions like Mr Schneider.”

A few months later I was in a lecture given by Stephen Schneider where he was talking to scientists about why they should reach out to the public about their research findings. He was explaining the risks and benefits of advocacy. One of the risks, he explained, was that your words would be distorted in order to attack you. Then he showed The Economist editorial and how his words had been selectively quoted back in 1989 and really read like this:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but - which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.

Let us be clear about what Schneider said he stood for: He never approved of lying in order to win public approval. He never approved of the ends justifying the means. What he wanted was for scientists to come out of their ivory towers and speak up on behalf of their science.

"Staying out of the fray is not taking the high road, its just passing the buck", he said.

But in his many talks to scientists about advocacy, he had to warn them to be careful about the line they must walk as human beings and as scientists. And so his warning was that as human beings they would want to argue passionately for what they believe in and ignore caveats. But that as scientists they had to work entirely differently.

Many scientists are uncomfortable about ignoring any caveats at all, which is why when you ask them what they think the findings of their research means they will frequently parrot, "more research is necessary". Schneider recognised that the line between science and advocacy was personal, and not something he could advise on. He explained it thus: "Every time you are faced with an opportunity to provide information, including insights on the consequences and risks of any given action or inaction, you will have to make careful judgement calls".

Schneider was always clear that he personally strove to be effective and honest. That was his point. He hoped for others that would mean doing both.

Schneider was not a liar. He was a brave and honest scientist, someone who decided to take the difficult road and argue the case for his science rather than burying his head under academic carpets. As such the world owes him a debt of gratitude for for his enormous contribution to science and, indeed, global awareness of the issue of climate change.

* Image: Joi Ito

Updated: I forgot to link to our excellent Obituary about Schneider, which I did not write.

How big is the palm oil problem in Indonesia?

One of the letters I received about my recent palm oil piece questioned whether palm oil was a really a significant component of deforestation in Indonesia.

In researching this piece, one of the pieces of Overmatter I did not use was an unpublished report by McKinsey (which was leaked to me by a source) that is pretty clear about what is known about the state of Indonesian forests. A large number of its contributors are the Indonesian forestry ministry.

The report states that deforestation of Indonesian forests peaked in the late 20th century at a rate of 1.9 million ha per year, and decreased to the current rate of 1.1 million ha between 2000 and 2005

However, it goes on to say that an increasing demand for pulpwood, palm oil, food crops will drive around 21-28 million ha of land conversions till 2030 along with mining and infrastructure. Further, that government plans for increasing pulp and palm oil production will require 11-15 million ha of currently forest covered areas to be converted.

Finally it says that deforestation and degradation is taking place across all regions and in all types of Indonesian forests--including protection and conservation forests.

We already know that between 1967 and 2000 the area under cultivation in Indonesia expanded from less than 2,000 square kilometres (770 square miles) to more than 30,000 square kilometres.

What we cannot say from these figures is exactly how bad the problem is right now. As recently as 2007 UNEP said deforestation in Indonesia for palm oil and illegal logging was so rapid that most of the country’s forest might be destroyed by 2022.

In considering how bad the problem might be, these factoids are useful:

1. each hectare of land can produce an average yield 4-5 tonnes of crude oil

2. the current average price of crude palm oil per tonne is about 800-900 US dollars. This is down from a peak two years ago of 2,000 dollars a tonne. (Oil World, and figure quoted by us)

3. although palm oil can be planted on degraded land, the conversion of forested land allows palm oil producers to use the sale of timber to fund plantations, providing up front capital prior to the first crop.

Given all these facts and figures, trying to argue that such a valuable crop is not a significant contributor to deforestation in a very poor forested country seems a tough call to me. One might as well nail $50 bills to tree trunks and expect them to stay there.

The one thing that our piece did not have the scope for was to ask that given that palm oil is such a significant contributor to economic growth in poor countries like Indonesia how does one get improvements in living conditions without causing environmental devastation? Its not easy to answer, but the fact that the government has announced a moratorium on deforestation thanks to a huge dob of cash from the Norwegian government suggests that minds are at least focusing on the problem.