All That Matters

Should scientific journals publish high-risk scientific research that could in the wrong hands be disastrous for us all? Although it might be sensible to keep certain results secret for a while, I argue that eventually it does not make sense to withhold results in the long-term.

What is this all about? Yesterday saw the publication in Nature of the controversial mutant bird flu paper. Bird flu (H5N1) is highly lethal, more than 50% of those known to be infected have died from it, although such figures need to be treated with caution. There might be plenty of more benign cases that went undetected so this is more of an upper limit. Still, this is scary. The good news – so far at least – is that H5N1 in the wild doesn’t spread easily between humans and unlike other forms of flu does require physical contact.

Researchers in the US/Japan and separately in the Netherlands have now studied whether H5N1 can mutate to become highly contagious, which would be a real nightmare scenario: a lethal virus that transmits easily. And as these two papers show, using ferrets this requires only a few genetic mutations. What at least the US/Japanese group has done (the other paper has not been published yet, see below), is to use genetic variants from the highly contagious swine flu virus (H1N1) to modify the H5N1 virus accordingly. These genetic modifications, however, have not been successful on their own. It is interesting what happened then: after only two further rounds of infections of ferrets the virus mutated by itself to become highly contagious! Ed Yong has more details of this on his blog. But I like to emphasize that the contagious H5N1 variant as published now appears much less lethal than the original virus.

The publication of both papers has been withheld for months out of fear such knowledge could be used by terrorists  or other mad individuals to create a deadly pandemic. Given also a reversal of opinion from a US biosecurity board,  the US/Japan paper has now appeared in Nature, and the Dutch paper is expected to appear in Science shortly. Eventually, the decision was in favour of publication, because knowledge of the mutations and their effect on the biology of the virus are so crucial to combat this disease and to possibly develop vaccines. It is not terrorists we need to be afraid of, such mutations can easily happen in nature any moment. In an interview with the BBC, Nature‘s Editor-in-Chief Philip Campbell further rationalises the decision to publish.

Other than not publishing such research at all, two further options were debated: redacting the papers, or to make them available to selected trustworthy scientists only. In an editorial, Nature has now declined such possibilities out of principle and announced this important publishing policy: Continue reading…

Neuroscience is certainly not among the usual topics for this blog, but I just read Jonah Lehrer‘s book How We Decide, and want to briefly highlight it here. Although do take my comments with caution, I am no expert in this field, so this should not be seen as a qualified review.

In How We Decide Lehrer writes about the neuroscience of decision making. Whether it is an airline pilot averting disaster, a quarterback throwing passes at the Super Bowl, or simply any of us buying strawberry jam or a new sofa – our brain takes decisions all the time. Commonly we tend to think that the best decisions are the rational ones. Look at all available options, ponder over the pros and cons and then take a decision. Well, not only would this be a painstaking process (the book describes such a case), it furthermore isn’t even a good thing to shut out emotions entirely. Psychopaths that lack any emotional response can do terrible things. And as tests with people tasting strawberry jams have shown, the more rational people are trying to be about it, the worse their choice gets because then they’re trying to include factors other than taste. On the other hand, yielding solely to your emotions can lead to pretty bad choices, too. Coming back home from shopping might be one of those moments to realize the penalty of taking too emotional decisions…

What fascinated me about Lehrer’s book is that it is very good at explaining the underlying science of decision making, how the prefrontal cortex balances emotional and rational thoughts. It illustrates horrible cases where this decision-making capability has gone wrong, but also describes cases of heroic and successful decisions, by fire fighters, airline pilots, poker players and so on. It was interesting to me to read how powerful and often correct underlying emotional feelings are, and consequently how important it is to consider these in the decision-making process. And then there are the moral implications of decisions, and the inconsistency at which we often digest information. How easy it is for us to dismiss objective conflicts with existing beliefs, ignoring obvious facts. Politics is an area where this is widespread. And I suppose that’s why the first impression is so important when meeting someone new, as it shapes our emotional response.

Either way, understanding the scientific aspect of decision making is certainly a much more informative read than most literature on this topic. So if you haven’t heard about the book yet, take a look. The book has been published back in 2009 already – yes, I am that far behind in my reading – but Lehrer has soon another book coming out, Imagine, which is on the way creativity works. In my view, after reading How We Decide the decision-making process of whether to give this latest book of his a try should be an easy one…

Reference:
(Note: in the UK the book is called The Decisive Moment, and that’s the ebook version that I read)

Lehrer, Jonah. How We Decide. Houghton Mifflin Co, 2009. 302 pages. ISBN: 9780618620111