On Marc Hauser and Science

Things are looking very bad for Marc Hauser(via Language Log), and it's been sending shivers up and down the spines of a lot of people I know. What he's been accused of seems like the worst thing that could happen. It's like learning that someone from your neighborhood is a serial killer; the stuff of hushed conversations in the hallway. "Oh my god! I was just about to cite that paper too. And I know a guy whose brother was an RA in his lab. I mean, everyone knew some of this stuff was a stretch, but this?"

I'd like to reflect on what this news means for science. Hauser's behavior was, if the final verdict ends up being what it looks like it's going to be, completely reprehensible. Fudging data is antithetical to the progress of science, and extremely damaging to public understanding of science. To quote Shaggy 2 Dope from the Insane Clown Posse:

Fucking magnets. How do they work? And I don't want to talk to a scientist. Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed.
Insane Clown Posse, Miracles

The proliferation of attitudes like Mr. Dope's makes Hauser's (alleged) actions even more shameful, especially as it seemed like he tried to craft a lot of his work for broader public consumption.

But at the end of a day, even though a scientist failed, science was successful. According to the Chronicle of Higher Ed's story, research assistants in Hauser's lab successfully utilized the scientific method to discover inconsistencies in the data. Hauser's coding was not reproducible from the raw data, eventually leading one of his research assistants to report him to higher ups at Harvard. Here is a clear case of scientific progress at work, with no regard for the status or authority of the researchers involved.

And, I think the consequences will be positive, over all. This should serve as a reminder to us all of the importance of reproducibility or our research. There will be broader demand to demonstrate that we are not Hausering the data (you heard it here first!), which means publishing more raw data, which means cleaner, more careful research.

Britney Spears Tongue

This is a pretty interesting thing. Apparently, when singing (or at least appearing to sing in music videos) Brittany Spears has apico-labial /l/. Look up any given video of her being interviewed, and she's not doing it.



Is this a singing / acting thing?

Update:
This live footage shows her doing the same thing.


This is quite an interesting salient non-acoustic style thing.

On the bagel lady

Briefly, I think the Starbucks bagel lady's argument is probably semantically sound, but not pragmatically. Thus, she was not engaging in good social behavior.

She ordered a whole wheat bagel, and refused to specify that she didn't want anything on it. Then, she got belligerent and was escorted out by the cops. Her argument is that

When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.

So, that actually makes good sense to me. The list of things that she doesn't want is potentially infinite, so if I had to design an efficient computational system for taking orders, it would return only exactly what was requested.

However, let's get realistic / pragmatic. Who ever wants just a bagel? I'm actually someone who frequently orders everything bagels as-is, and even if I say "I'll have an everything bagel as-is," the baristas will usually clarify "So, no cream cheese or anything? Not even sliced?" Having bagels with nothing on them is unusual, and I accept that. There is a certain convention that an order for a bagel is an order for a bagel plus some spread. That's just a fact of our social world.

This lady was upset that she was asked to specify "with nothing," but I bet she'd also be pissed if she asked someone if they knew what time it was and they replied, "Yes."