The Casey Anthony trial and the disconect between the public perception of the trial and the legal outcome.

I was geared up to write a blog about the Casey Anthony trial, but in my researching of the story I ran in to an eloquently written blog on the disconnect between the public's feelings of Casey Anthony's guilt and the actual legal outcome. If you have been living under a rock, Casey Anthony was accused of murdering her young daughter. The appearance of the case made her look quite guilty - she didn't report her child missing for a month, she changed her story numerous times, her friends claimed that she gave the child Xanax to "calm her down", and there are pictures of her participating in a bar's dance contest during the time her daughter is believed to be missing.

From the public's point of view Casey Anthony seems incredibly guilty. From a legal standpoint, though, there was almost no material evidence. When found, her daughter's body was too decomposed to determine a cause of death. There was no murder weapon. The DNA evidence was not convincing. The jury made a rational decision based on the evidence. In this blog on Huffingtonpost.com, Princeton neuroscience professor Michael Graziano explains how the public and jury can come to such diametrically opposed decisions on Casey Anthony's guilt based on what we know about how the brain makes decisions. Read the article here!

~Eric~

You can call me HAL.

A couple of weeks ago I was watching an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher (a hilarious political commentary show on HBO, Fridays at 9PM CT) in which one of Bill's guests was the futurist Ray Kurzweil. Although I hadn't heard of him at the time, I was quickly intrigued by his personality, demeanor, and theories (the guy really looks like Woody Allen's nerdier brother!)

Kurzweil and his theories are the focus of a recent documentary called The Transcendent Man, as well as an article in TIME written by Lev Grossman, called "2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal."

Kurzweil is definitely a man of great intellect and proved to be a prodigy at an early age. In 1965, at the age of 17, he designed a "computer" that composed a piece of classical music. Since then, he has gone on to invent several inventions, possess countless patents, and create a number of scientific institutes and intellectual conferences. Even Bill Gates called him "the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence."

The futuristic ideas that Kurzweil puts forward are based upon the exponential growth of computing power and follows along the line of Moore's Law, i.e. that the number of transistors that you can put on a microchip doubles about every two years. Yet Kurzweil calls it "the law of accelerating returns" and adopts it for his futuristic prediction of human society. But the idea is certainly not novel. In the 1960's, the mathematician I.J. Good called it the "intelligence explosion." He said, "Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make." That's awesome, let's just sit back and relax! Right?

Well...if only it were that easy. If society indeed turns out the way Kurzweil predicts (and he does have a very good track record!) we will be forced to face an unimaginable number of ethical dilemmas. Kurzweil has a term for it: The Singularity. It refers to the time point at which computers will become more intelligent than humans, a time point that Kurzweil predicts will be reached by 2045.

Furthermore, for us neuroscientists out there, he estimates that we will reverse-engineer the human brain by the mid 2020's. If I understand this correctly, we will know exactly how every function of the brain works in 15 years? Being a bit familiar with the field, I am greatly skeptical of this timeline. Yes, computing power grows exponentially, but will it always do so, and will common science be able to keep up with this progress? We are but merely humans after all...

The fact that Kurzweil's first computer could create music, create art, is nearly blasphemous. If art is a form of self-expression, shouldn't it require a self? We assume that artificial intelligence can't possess the capacity for self-awareness, but is it impossible? Artificial intelligence has long been a subject of science fiction, but with the advances of science and technology, could it become reality?

What exactly The Singularity will entail is hotly debated. There are many who think that in a Darwinian world, creating a more dominant life form is a BAD idea. For instance, we could end up in a scenario much like that depicted in The Terminator. Yet, one of Kurzweil's goals is to assure that any artificial intelligence would be friendly to humans. Good luck with that... Perhaps our best bet is to join forces with them and create a synergistic cyborg partnership. Perhaps there are aspects of organic biology that are just impossible in the silicon world. And we certainly are reminded on a second-by-second basis of how important computers are to everyday human life.

One of the most direct applications of exponential computing growth will be in the biological realm of life extension. Kurzweil has established strong collaborations with other scientists in the fields of genetics and nanotechnology to create innovations for human health and survival. For instance, could you imagine cell-sized nanorobots with the processing power of a billion iPhones that patrol your body and report upon your status of health and disease? Would you want to live forever? In fact, one of Kurzweil's main priorities is to provide the ability for life extension, and selfishly to be alive when it occurs! I, for one, would probably only want to live two lifetimes, and certainly only in my 20's!
 
So, check out the article and documentary, and just imagine yourself in 35 years...

C3PO, checking out.

Broad Impacts meetings start this month!

University of Minnesota people: you are invited to a series of fun and informal events that will explore the interconnections of science, policy, and society. Broad Impacts is an exciting new group that aims to open a conversation about the important issues surrounding scientific research in this country: how science is funded and practiced, how scientific results inform policy, and how science is perceived and utilized in the public sphere. If you are a scientist, scientist-in-training, policy aficionado, or just a fan of thinking outside the scientific bubble, then this group is for you!

Scheduled sessions:
>Thursday, July 21st from 3:30-5pm, MCB 2-120. Topic: What is science policy and why should we care?
>Thursday, August 4th, 3:30-5pm, MCB 2-120. Topic: Communication of science to the public and lawmakers
>Thursday, August 18th, 3:30-5pm, MCB 2-122. Topic: Basic versus translational research

These discussion sessions will continue into the fall semester with frequency determined by interest. All are welcome to attend and participate - having a diverse set of opinions will allow for a more engaging discussion. Since this group is primarily aimed at scientific researchers, no background in science policy is required (although experts in policy are encouraged to participate).

To keep up to date on future events, follow this blog and check us out on Facebook!

Do we need more republican scientists?

In this interesting article published last December in Slate, science policy theorist Daniel Sarewitz claims that there are too few republicans in science. The numbers are damning: only 6% of scientists are republicans, while 55% are democrats, 32% are independent, and the rest don’t know their affiliation. Sarewitz attributes the rampant science denialism in this country to the fact that democrats have claimed science as their cause, leaving republicans without a foot in the scientific door, and therefore free to deny the scientific truth of things like climate change and evolution.

Sarewitz makes some interesting points, and the cited statistics speak for themselves, but the troubling part is when he claims that the lack of republicans scientists is a problem. Saying something is a problem implies that you know how things should be. Sarewitz's solution here seems to be to get more republican scientists. This solution is plagued with its own problems. How many republican scientists do we really need? Should the democrat:republican ratio be 1:1? Should it match that of the general population? Who can possibly choose this value?

Consider the case of women in science. Compared to men, the number of women succeeding in scientific careers has historically been quite low. In this case, the problem is not that the man:woman ratio is unequal. The problem is that there are barriers to scientific success that disproportionally affect women (hidden sexism, family commitments, lack of mentors, etc). Solving these problems will not necessarily make the number of women in science equal to the number of men, because that cannot be the final goal. Solving these problems would make the field more accessible to any individual interested in succeeding in it. What if, without these barriers, there ended up being more female scientists than male scientists. Would that be a problem? Perhaps that’s a topic for another blog post.

When you break down the lack-of-republicans-in-science issue into small elements, it becomes more likely that the low number of republican scientists is a cultural epiphenomenon. A great number of things factor in to this “problem,” including poor science literacy, extreme partisan politics forcing all-or-none political attitudes, inadequate communication of scientific findings to the general public, and lack of funding for science by republican administrations.

What Sarewitz gets right is that scientists should acknowledge this issue, discuss it, and think about the factors at play. Maybe in the end they will end up with great ideas on how to fix some real problems.

Welcome to Broad Impacts!

Broad Impacts is an informal group of graduate students, post-docs, and faculty members at the University of Minnesota who want to explore how science interacts with policy, politics, and society at large. Our goal with this blog is to engage with the world, both in our area and outside our university. We want to share our thoughts and to hear yours.

If you are affiliated with the University of Minnesota, we would welcome you at our discussion groups. Three sessions will be held over the summer (dates will be posted here soon), and will continue in the fall semester.

We look forward to filling this space, and your heads, with ideas about science policy!