Political persuasion and your brain

An article in the Globe and Mail discusses a recent study finding that the brains of liberal and conservative people are often structurally different. The study found that liberals have a larger anterior cingulate cortex and conservatives have a larger amygdala. The scientists who performed the study state, according to the article, that the findings suggests liberals are better at dealing with conflicting information and conservatives are better at recognizing threats.

Of course, it is unclear if an individual's political persuasion is formed based on the shape of their brain at birth, or if different influences through an individual's life shapes both the person's brain and their political preferences.

Since our understanding of the brain is still fairly primitive, I would not put too much faith in the hypotheses generated from this study... but it is an interesting finding nonetheless...

Open Sourcing Research Software

An article in the Guardian calls for researchers to open source (release to the public) the computer code they use in their research.

As a former programmer, I think that this is a great idea. It is surprisingly easy for even the most talented programmer to make simple mistakes in their code that cause their program to provide erroneous, misleading results. Asking for the computer code to be released to the public will allow skeptics and peer reviewers the chance to criticize how data was analyzed. This criticism can catch mistakes and lead to more powerful experiments, but will researchers have too much ego to release their code?

In industry, programming errors are caught by demanding that programmers test their own code and then having a team of testers test the code. Unfortunately, the luxury of a robust testing team is not afforded to many researchers. Also, it is hard to expect, for example, a biology researcher, who is a self taught programmer, to create a detailed and powerful test harness for his software.

I would actually be surprised to see the open sourcing of research code become a common practice because I think many inexperienced programmers who program for research will be too embarrassed to release their code in a domain where professional software developers are able to criticize their work. I blame this on the programming profession rather than the researchers. Programmers are notorious for being outspoken and rude when commenting on amateur code. Another barrier to this practice is that code that is being released to the public domain needs to be readable/understandable, instead of being readable to only the programmer who wrote the code. This preparation will add time to the already busy schedules of most researchers.

Unfortunately, I suspect this will be one of those great ideas that many support, but few practice.

Need Up-To-Date Research...Now?

The Public Library of Science has released a new website, PLoS Currents, to rapidly share research pertaining to influenza in response to global fears regarding H1N1.

The website is a joint venture with google that allows researchers to present their results to the world while side-stepping the lengthy publishing process. The research articles are looked over by expert moderators; however, the articles are not peer-reviewed in detail (peer-review is usually the rate determining step for publishing). Peer-review allows fellow researchers in the same field criticize the methodology, analysis, results, and conclusions of a research project. It is a check and balance in the scientific community. Peer-review ensures that an unjust conclusion that may incite unnecessary fear is not released to the general public.

However, the peer-review process certainly delays the distribution of scientific knowledge. A delay that may have disastrous consequences in the presence of a global pandemic.

I'm interested in seeing if the lack of a peer-review process results in PLoS Currents doing more harm than good with regards to rapidly spreading scientific knowledge. The PLoS openly states that results on their Currents website should be considered preliminary and they do point out that the articles have not been peer-reviewed, however, readers may not heed this warning. I believe that a hybrid publication system, involving immediate publication and peer-review, would be a huge win for everyone; I just hope it works.