Taubes & the Semmelweis Reflex

Here's a current example of the Semmelweis Reflex: today's ongoing diet wars.

Gary Taubes is an award-winning science journalist whose New York Times Magazine article, What if it's all been a big fat lie?, sparked a firestorm of controversy. In his article, and in his subsequent book Good Calories, Bad Calories, Taubes argues that
(a) the USA's dietary science community (henceforth, the "dietary Establishment") has accepted a single hypothesis as its guiding paradigm despite a lack of credible supporting evidence; and that
(b) an alternative hypothesis fits the observed facts much better, and is supported by evidence that is more scientifically credible.

This two-hour video of Taubes presenting his ideas (at UC Berkeley) is a good overview of his 600-page book.

One might reasonably expect that a community of scientists, when presented with evidence supporting an alternative hypothesis, would be all too eager to design and perform experiments aimed at testing the validity of this alternative, in order to determine the objective truth. After all, a "scientist" is, by definition, someone who practices the scientific method, which is all about the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

But that would be naïve. Instead, the response of the dietary Establishment was, and continues to be, a classic example of the Semmelweis Reflex in action. When Taubes' article and book were published, the dietary Establishment's immune system went into overdrive, engaging in every possible defense against the invading hypothesis and anyone who might sympathize with it. These immune responses weren't coldy rational, but were instead hotly personal.

For example, the dietary Establishment excoriated Taubes for getting a $700,000 advance for his book Good Calories, Bad Calories. They chose to view this as "selling out" rather than being, in effect, a research grant. The dietary Establishment did the same thing to Dr. Robert Atkins, who similarly challenged the validity of its prevailing hypothesis for 30 years starting in the 1970's. The dietary Establishment doled out generous servings of federal research funds to supporters of its chosen hypothesis, but not to anyone who might seriously challenge that hypothesis, such as Dr. Atkins. Instead, they said that he could fund his own experiments from the sales of his diet book. Of course, had he done so, then the Establishment would have discounted those studies' results as "advocacy," due to their not having been funded by an "unbiased" source. It was a classic Catch-22.

Maybe the Establishment's prevailing hypothesis is right; maybe Taubes' alternative hypothesis is right. We don't know, because so far, the dietary Establishment has refused to fund the kinds of experiments that might reveal the objective truth. Why should it? It already knows the objective truth, after all, as the defenders of any discipline's dominant paradigm inevitably claim to do.

When I was getting a BS in Geology back in the late 1970's, many of my professors were adamantly opposed to the newfangled plate tectonics hypothesis. They were invicibly ignorant, clinging to the previously-dominant geosyncline hypothesis despite mounting evidence against it.

On the one hand, this was an exciting introduction to paradigm shifts; on the other, I ended up with a weird education, half-geosyncline and half-tectonics.

I suspect that this experience has led me to be unusually open to criticisms of any domain's dominant paradigm, whether in geology, diet, music, or anything else.

Go, Taubes! As the Romans would have said, Fiat scientia, ruat coelum! That is, "Let science be done, though the heavens fall." :-)

[Interestingly, Google returns zero hits for the above-quoted English phrase. It is hard to imagine that I am the first to think of applying the well-known judicial phrase "Let justice be done, though the heavens fall" to a scientific context, as this result implies.]

[Also -- lest my Latin teacher spin in her grave -- let me point out that the Latin word scientia translates more to "knowledge" than to the modern concept of "science." Gimme just a little poetic license, OK?]

Proposal: The Learning Faster XPrize

A three-way partnership between the College Board, the XPrize Foundation, and the Gates Foundation could provide an effective infrastructure for disruptive innovation in educational efficiency.

The basic idea is this: a multi-million-dollar prize would be announced in the field of educational efficiency, using the College Board’s Advanced Placement exams as benchmarks. The College Board would define the Prize; the XPrize Foundation would determine the winner; and the Gates Foundation would provide the prize money.

The first team to achieve a specified metric of improvement to student success on a current AP exam would be awarded the prize.

What should the prize-winning metric be? It seems to me that three variables are involved in educational efficiency:
1. The educational outcome (i.e., exam scores).
2. The percentage of the total student population that attains a given outcome.
3. The cost of attaining a given outcome (including study materials, teacher time, and students’ study & practice time).

Consider the College Board’s Calculus Advanced Placement examination as an example. One could increase educational efficiency by
A. Increasing the average exam score for the current percentage of students at the current cost.
B. Increasing the percentage of students that attained the current average score at the current cost.
C. Reducing the cost of attaining the current average score for the current percentage of students.

One way to define the prize-winning metric would be to simply pick variable A, B, or C above, and to define the amount of improvement needed over the status quo that is necessary to win the prize. For example, one might define the prize-winning metric to be “reducing the cost of attaining a passing grade by 50%.”

This approach could exclude potentially prize-winning solutions that focused on improving the other variables. That’s not good.

However, this downside is ameliorated by the inter-dependency of the variables. Reducing the cost of passing a given exam, for example, will tend to enable a higher percentage of students to pass it. Likewise, those students whose study-investment remained constant, despite the lower cost of passing, would be likely to achieve higher scores, thus raising the average score.

Hence, I suggest that the prize-winning metric should focus on cost-reduction.

If the metric uses the “current average score,” however, then one way to win would be to identify the easiest-to-learn subset of material tested in the examination, teach that material only, and ignore the rest – in short, to “dumb down” the material. That’s not the Prize’s goal at all!

Therefore, rather than using the “current average score,” a much more-demanding metric such as “the current 80th percentile score” should be used.
The metric I propose, then, would be “reducing, by 50%, the cost of attaining a score equal to the 80th percentile score on the previous year’s exam.”

In the previously-mentioned case of AP Calculus, awarding the prize would indicate that students could now learn calculus twice as quickly as before, and that despite this lower investment of time, would learn more than they did before. That’s a very significant outcome, worthy of a multi-million dollar prize.

The Gates Foundation is not, by any means, the only source of funding for such a prize. The US Government has recently expressed interest in offering such prizes, and of course there are many other education-focused philanthropies -- but the Gates Foundation has the size and the focus to help make such a prize successful.

Notational Load

I define notational load as the cognitive load imposed on a learner by the notation in which a concept is expressed, rather than by the concept itself.

As examples of notational load, consider:

• Roman numerals vs. Arabic numerals: Arithmetic operations such as long division are much easier to teach, learn, and apply using Arabic numerals than Roman numerals. Indeed, the Romans’ numeric notation is often given as the main reason why the Romans contributed almost nothing to mathematics per se, whereas the Arabs made great advances in mathematics.
• Chinese writing vs. Korean writing: The use of Chinese ideograms for Korean writing restricted literacy to Korean elites until the invention of the Korean-specific Hangul writing system, which made it possible for “a bright Korean-speaking student to become literate in one day, and a slow student in ten.” Smilarly, the Cherokee-specific writing system produced a similar jump in literacy rates within the Cherokee-speaking population of the early 1800's.
• The musical staff vs. neumes: Guido d’Arrezo’s invention of sight-singing, including the musical staff and solmization, is credited with reducing the training time of Church singers from ten years to “one, or at most two” – thus reducing the cost of music education by between 80% and 90% without sacrificing quality.

The development of other notational systems, such as calculus, the Periodic Table, and Feynman diagrams, have similarly contributed to significant increases in the efficiency of education.

Perhaps of even greater importance, the development of new notations has often led to new discoveries that were literally “inconceivable” using the previous notations, because notations invariably constrain, in addition to reflecting, patterns of thought. Examples include the Arabs’ use of their numerals in developing algebra and algorithms (the names of which reflect their Arabic roots), Mendeleev’s prediction of new elements based on “holes” in his Periodic Table, and Feynman’s use of his own diagrams in making major contributions to quantum mechanics.

Cognitive load theory recognizes three kinds of cognitive loads (from an educational perspective): intrinsic load (inherent to the subject being studied), extraneous load (irrelevant to the subject being studied), and germane load (which is extraneous to the current lesson in isolation, but which reduces of the overall load of the lesson-sequence as a whole).

Notational load seems to me to be an entirely extraneous load. In opposition to this position, one could argue that the mastery of a given domain’s traditional notation is required for communication with other professionals within that domain, and that this “communication conformity requirement” makes mastery of a domain’s traditional notation intrinsic. For example, without the ability to read traditional music notation, musicians cannot read the works of other composers.

Or…can they? Using modern music notation software programs, musicians can convert any given piece of written music to alternative, non-traditional notations such as guitar tab. Many of these programs support a “plug-in” architecture that enables the developers of alternative notations to retroactively upgrade the software to support new notations The potential availability of such notation-translation software, in any given domain, and the ease of distributing it over the Internet, significantly reduces the communication conformity requirement, supporting the claim that notational load is extraneous.

Changes in notation are not easy to effect in any domain, especially among tightly inter-connected professionals. However, a dramatic increase in learning efficiency may make it possible for non-professionals to rapidly gain knowledge previously restricted to a domain’s professionals. For example, more people in the USA now read Guitar Hero’s scrolling tablature than read traditional music notation, and are, as a result, learning more about music than they otherwise would.

JIMS paper rejected (MTO)

On Monday, I received an email notifying me that my paper on JIMS Isomorphic Music System (JIMS) was rejected by the peer-reviewed journal Music Theory Online.

The rejection letter read as follows:

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From: Matthew Shaftel
Sent: Monday, July 06, 2009 1:01 PM
To: Jim Plamondon
Subject: Re: MTO Submissions

Dear Jim,

I have just spoken informally with both reviewers and we are in agreement that your submission is not appropriate for MTO. It's underlying scenario is not appropriate to our audience (who mostly teach students with musical backgrounds), and the technology you describe seems far too cumbersome for entry-level theory at either the High-School or College level. In addition, we agreed that the articles advocacy of the Thummer (and subsequent open-source iterations thereof), is simply not appropriate for an academic journal like MTO.

I am sorry that we cannot give you any better news, but I wish you luck in your continued endeavors.

Sincerely,

Matthew

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Today I responded as follows:

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From: Jim Plamondon
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 12:24 PM
To: 'Matthew Shaftel'
Subject: RE: MTO Submissions

Matthew –

To be more specific, it appears to me that your rejection is based on three claims:

1. JIMS is not compatible with traditional instruments and notation, and therefore not appropriate for students and teachers who have already mastered both. One could argue identically that Guido’s sight-reading technology was of no value to those who had already memorized the Church’s canon, as was the norm before his technology took root. Backward compatibility with established technologies is relevant only up to a point. Historically, if a new technology offers an efficiency-gain of 100% to 200% (i.e., twice or three times the previous efficiency), then compatibility with previous technologies becomes irrelevant.
2. JIMS is cumbersome. “Cumbersome” is defined as “unwieldy because of heaviness and bulk,” or “troublesome or onerous.” I can’t see how any aspect of JIMS can be fairly described as cumbersome, compared to traditional instruments & notation. I suspect that what you really mean is that JIMS “is not what I already know,” which is just a re-statement of Claim #1 above.
3. The paper’s advocacy [of the Thummer] is unacceptable. If an alternative technology is worthy of contending with the status quo, then it must provide sufficient benefits to overcome the inertia of the status quo. However, when an alternative technology is new, there has not yet been sufficient opportunity (by definition) to develop rigorous evidence to support its claimed benefits (else it would no longer be “new”). The factually-based description of *potential* advantages is, for a truly new technology, the most scientific discourse possible. Consider, for example, the metric system; before its adoption, there was considerable scientific discourse on its potential benefits – that is, “advocacy,” by your definition – which could not be rigorously proven until it had been adopted by at least one country. If JIMS is incompatible with traditional instruments, then it must be shown to be compatible with at least one novel instrument that delivers at least the expressive power of traditional instruments. This is not advocacy; it is counter-argument to the argument of incompatibility…which brings us back to Claim #1.

Hence, your only substantial criticism of the JIMS paper is that JIMS is incompatible with traditional instruments & notations. Yet this incompatibility will be shared by *any* paradigm-shifting improvement to the status quo in music theory and/or music theory education. To use this criticism as the basis of rejecting the JMS paper is to enshrine, as an editorial goal, the MTO’s reactionary defense of the status quo.

I sincerely doubt that this is your intent. You strike me as a good, reasonable, and serious person. I respect your good will, and hope that you respect mine, too. :-)

Consider your criticism of the JIMS paper’s “advocacy.” As you have noted, JIMS is incompatible with traditional notation and instruments. This incompatibility is likely to be noted by the paper’s readers, too, if only because I state it explicitly. A reader might then wonder if learning music using JIMS were a dead end, leaving no opportunity for expressive performance. Therefore, it is necessary, in any paper that introduces JIMS, to counter this inevitable argument with a counter-argument, to wit, that (a) Thummer-like instruments can be made; that (b) they can offer up to 10 degrees of freedom; that (c) this is more expressive potential than that offered by any other polyphonic instrument; and that (d) they offer the unique ability to control the novel effects of dynamic tonality. If, as your rejection suggests, the cost of incompatibility is high, then the benefits offered by any proposed alternative must be high, too. To argue that the description of such potential benefits is unacceptable “advocacy” is to require only the negative consequences of incompatibility to be discussed. This is clearly a reactionary, pro-status-quo bias.

Likewise, if the mere description of the potential advantages of an as-yet unimplemented technology is deemed to constitute unacceptable advocacy thereof, then no scientific cooperation in the implementation of such a technology is possible, because such cooperation requires exactly the shared awareness that’s blocked by this criterion. It’s a Catch-22.

Consider, for example, Mendeleev’s initial paper describing his Periodic Table, in which he described (a) a number of proposed corrections to previously-accepted atomic weights and (b) predictions that previously-unknown elements existed with the weights and properties described by “holes” in his Table. He had no scientific evidence whatsoever to support these claims; indeed, his claimed “corrections” to established atomic weights flew in the face of all previous evidence. Instead, his paper invited its readers to collaborate in conducting the experiments necessary to prove or disprove his radical claims. Those experiments subsequently bore out his claims, and enshrined the Periodic Table as one of the greatest discoveries of science.

Yet according to the standards of compatibility and advocacy you describe above, Mendeleev’s paper should not have been published, because it was incompatible with the status quo and “advocated” – that is, described – an alternative to it. Had his paper not been published, then no one would have known of its predictions, and hence none of the research to prove or disprove those predictions would have taken place (for decades, at least).

Likewise, when Wegner proposed his theory of continental drift – which has since become the basis of modern geology’s plate tectonics – his suggestions were derided as being incompatible with the prevailing theory of geosynclines, and his papers were often rejected on grounds similar to your claim of “advocacy,” because they described ways in which his theory resolved previously unresolved issues in geology, paleontology, and paleoclimatology – exactly as my JIMS paper described ways in which JIMS enables greater ease of learning, expressive potential, and freedom of tuning.

These are not isolated incidents. The history of science is rife with such examples; it is a well-recognized problem at the intersection of the peer-review system and paradigm-shifting ideas (see here, here, and here).

Your rejection of the JIMS paper on the grounds of incompatibility and advocacy is, I submit, an example of exactly this kind of implicit, reactionary, pro-status-quo bias. This is not because you’re a bad person, but rather because you are merely human, and have humanity’s inherent weaknesses…as do I. ;-)

I do not purport to have a solution to this systematic problem. I would, however, encourage you to look critically at the MTO’s use of “incompatibility and advocacy” as publication criteria; to consider these criteria’s roles in suppressing potentially paradigm-shifting innovation; and to reconsider the use of these criteria in the interest of truly advancing the state of the art.

Which is what such journals are all about, right?

Thanks! :-)

--- Jim

From: Jim Plamondon [mailto:jim@thumtronics.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 9:18 AM
To: 'Matthew Shaftel'
Subject: RE: MTO Submissions

Bummer. Semmelweis reflex in action.