misciwriterseditors Research, science behind the scenes, Science communication

La ciencia tras bastidores: Correlación y causalidad

Escrito en inglés por Belle Moyers, traducido al español por Thibaut R. Pardo-García y editado por Attabey Rodríguez-Benítez.

Cuando hablamos sobre problemas científicos, la frase “correlación no implica causalidad” a veces es utilizada. Pero, ¿Qué significa esta frase? La ciencia hace declaraciones sobre causa y efecto. Por ejemplo, el fumar causa cáncer de pulmón, las emisiones de carbón causan cambios climáticos y altas temperaturas causan un aumento en violencia. Claramente, los científicos tienen alguna manera de inferir relaciones causales. Pero, ¿Cómo es que ellos luchan con la idea de que “Correlación no implica causalidad”? Si no utilizan correlación, ¿Qué herramientas utilizan para inferir causalidad?

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misciwriters Research, science behind the scenes

Science behind the scenes: The costs and payoffs of science

By: Belle Moyers

Edited by:  David Mertz, Shweta Ramdas, Scott Barolo, Kevin Boehnke

Why haven’t we cured cancer?  Physicians have known about cancer for over 5000 years, and the United States spends nearly $5 billion per year on cancer research.  But there’s still no cure.  Also, where is our clean, renewable energy?  We can’t even catch half the energy in sunlight, and solar panels don’t come cheap!  Why don’t we have a moon colony yet or a male birth control pill?

In the U.S., science funding comes from many sources, including the taxpayers.  As an example, half a percent of the federal budget goes to fund NASA, before considering all of the money that goes to the National Science Foundation (NSF) or the National Institutes of Health and other federal science organizations.  It is reasonable that publicly-funded science should provide some benefit for the public, but it seems like there’s a lot of scientific research out there that’s not giving us the technologies and discoveries we want and need.   So why do we throw money at projects that don’t seem to deliver?

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misciwriterseditors blog, Mathematics, Research, science behind the scenes, Science education, Technology

P-values, or: infinite shades of grey

Author: Peter Orchard

Editors: Theresa Mau, Belle Moyers, Alisha John

Peter Tea_and_MilkAlmost 100 years ago, the English biologist and statistician Dr. Ronald Fisher was enjoying a cup of tea with his Cambridge University colleagues when another biologist, Dr. Muriel Bristol, made an interesting claim. Bristol asserted that just by tasting her tea, she could infer whether the tea was poured into the cup before the milk, or the milk before the tea.

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misciwriterseditors Biology, blog, Chemistry, Mathematics, Opinion, Physics, science behind the scenes

Science behind-the-scenes: Which fields are “real sciences”?

Author: Belle Moyers

Content Editors: Christina Vallianatos, Molly Kozminsky

Senior Editor: Alisha John

“Well, that field isn’t really science.”

“Oh, that’s just a soft science.”

Most people who work in the sciences have probably heard phrases like these.  Translation: that field is lesser.  The physicists say it about everyone lower than them in the pecking order, as do the chemists, biologists, and so on down the line.  The nuclear physicist Ernest Rutherford famously said, “All science is either physics or stamp-collecting.”  People argue about this at scientific conferences and in the media.   The science and pop-culture webcomic xkcd has even parodied the issue.

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misciwriters science behind the scenes, Science communication

Communicated, not classified: The importance of collaboration in science (Science behind-the-scenes)

By Molly Kozminsky

Close your eyes and picture a scientist. What do you see?

In 1983, David Wade Chambers published results from a study conducted on 4,807 children as they progressed from kindergarten through fifth grade in the United States and Canada. The test? To draw a scientist. In what must rank as one of the most adorable research experiences ever, the drawings were scored for seven indicators of a “standard image of a scientist:”

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misciwriters Research, science behind the scenes, Science communication

Science behind-the-scenes: Correlation and causation

By Belle Moyers

When talking about scientific issues, the phrase “Correlation doesn’t imply causation” is sometimes thrown around.  But what does it mean?  Science makes statements about cause and effect.  Smoking causes lung cancer.  Carbon emissions cause climate change.  Higher temperatures cause increased violence.  Clearly, scientists have some way of inferring causal relationships.  But how do they grapple with the idea that “Correlation doesn’t imply causation”?  If they don’t use correlation, what tools do they use to infer causation?

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misciwriters Public health, Research, science behind the scenes, Science communication, Science education

Science behind-the-scenes: “And that is a scientific FACT!”

By Belle Moyers

In the film Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, there is a scene where the quartet of male leads is screaming at their boss.  They are outraged over the hiring of a woman for the position of news anchor.  At one point, David Koechner’s character leans forward over the desk and announces:

“It is anchorMAN, not anchorLADY, and THAT IS A SCIENTIFIC FACT!”

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misciwriters Opinion, Research, science behind the scenes, Science communication, Science education

Science behind-the-scenes: (Almost) Everything grade school taught you about science is wrong

By Belle Moyers

Do you remember being taught the “Scientific Method” in school? There were always slight variations, but it went something like:

  1. Ask a question
  2. Do background research
  3. Form an educated guess (hypothesis)
  4. Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment
  5. Analyze your data and draw a conclusion
  6. If your hypothesis is wrong, return to step 3 with a new hypothesis.
  7. Communicate your results

These steps seem like a great tool to introduce students to science.  They’re simple and easy to understand once the teacher explains words like “hypothesis” and “experiment”.  If you’re like me, perhaps you remember it seeming straightforward—scientists follow a linear set of steps that produce powerful results. Teachers drilled that method into us grade after grade.  If only they weren’t completely wrong.

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misciwriters Opinion, Research, science behind the scenes, Science education

How fireflies illuminated our understanding of the world

By Noah Steinfeld

In the early 1950s at Johns Hopkins University, William E. McElroy, a young professor, wanted to figure out what makes fireflies glow. He would pay a quarter to children in the Baltimore area for every 100 fireflies they brought him. McElroy was regarded as a curiosity in the community: the stereotype of an eccentric scientist. But what these people didn’t know was that as a result of this research, McElroy would one day create a tool that would revolutionize the way scientists do biological research.

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