Sex and the Scanner

I have commented on the ridiculous ways in which the media can use results from scanning experiments before, but I feel I should clarify my position on the issue, particularly with regards to MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging).

(In the interest of fairness, I should point out that I've not had much experience with actually using MRI scanners in my previous research, but I have been a subject for the experiments of others many, many times. I'd estimate I've spent over a day in total in an MRI scanner of some form, so I feel sufficiently qualified to comment on MRI scanning in general in the following piece. However, I may well have many more experienced scanning-centric neuroscientists read this who are able to pick me up on errors that I've made. If so, please feel free to leave comments about this and I'll link to them)

First and foremost, I'm all for MRI scanning and other imaging techniques. It's amazing technology, and a modern privilege that I don't think enough people really appreciate. Until relatively recently, seeing your own brain was very rare. It was possible, but given the typical circumstances that would allow someone to see their own brain in the old days, it was probably the last thing they experienced. What they thought about it was impossible to determine. However, thanks to MRI scanners, seeing detailed images of our own, living brain is a common occurrence these days. One could get quite philosophical about that kind of thing, looking directly at the source of our minds, memories, thoughts, feelings, everything we are and every aspect of our being. The fact that it resembles nothing so much as a steroid-abusing walnut just makes it more unnerving for many.

There seems to be this weird view among a lot of non-neuroscientists (or as we call them, Morlocks) that the only thing preventing a complete understanding of the brain's inner workings was the fact that we couldn't directly observe it. Ergo, once you can observe the brain doing its thing, you can figure out how it works. But it's not like this, at all. A smartphone is an impressive bit of technology, but I doubt many people understand exactly how they work. Prising the cover off and looking at the guts of the device probably won't make it less complicated, more likely the opposite. The brain is like this, except orders of magnitude more complex and made of wobbly grey bits.

So, simply putting someone in an MRI machine and making them do a task will not inevitably show which specific part of the brain processes that task. Human's aren't that simple, any task or action will use several faculties at once, and the relationship between mind and brain is still  relatively poorly understood. Useable results from MRI, or more accurately in this context, fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) are obtained by analysis of the blood flow to certain brain regions observed during specific activity. Not neural activity directly, but the (supposedly) associated changes in blood flow as the metabolic demands of certain areas increase in line with activity. This is not as easy as it sounds, and I have not tried to make it sound easy. You need baseline activity rates, threshold readings, anatomical precision which differs from person to person, and so on. It's a very useful, but complicated and time-consuming task.

However, most media mentions of scanning 'experiments' seem to think that you just put someone in an MRI scanner, and if you stimulate them in some way then a bit of the brain will light up. That isn't neuroscience, that's 'Operation'. But still, brain scanning is 'cool', so is often shoehorned into the most meaningless 'science' stories.

This is something that irks me a lot, but you learn to put up with it. But sometimes, this sort of thing can reach satirical levels.

I was recently contacted by Dr Petra Boynton via that there twitter. As a rather clued up and intelligent Sex educator who works with the media quite a lot, she's often contacted by TV types who want to get her input on their latest sex-based documentary, a programme format which seems to show no signs of going away. This is understandable, as they offer an intellectual discourse on one of the more intriguing yet taboo aspects of human society. But also, tits!

Sadly, the majority of sex-based programmes seem to deserve the degree of cynicism with which I've just described them. Many seem to be far more concerned with titillating, provoking strong reactions, conforming to the prejudices of a target demographic, or just mawkishly parading the intimate details of strangers around for the audience to gawp at. An evidence-based and rational discussion of sex, sexual behaviour or its myriad features seems to be way down the list of priorities.

But like I said, sometimes these attempts to dress up our morbid fascination with sex as serious scientific investigation crosses a line, and the whole thing just becomes farcical. Dr Boynton was recently contacted and asked to give an opinion on a new programme which aimed to investigate whether a new type of sex toy could provide measurably more pleasure in women who use it (compared to other sex toys). Why? I don't know, even though I was forwarded the email conversation that occurred. But there you go. They did specify that they wanted to do a proper and respectful analysis of women's sexual behaviours and needs, and if that's true then it's a reasonably noble aim. Dr Boynton's response was very reasonable, what with sex research and education being a lot more complex than most people realise. She advised against the use of things like MRI scanners, on the grounds that a) they are usually just used as a shorthand for impressive science visuals and b) have little or no practical use when it comes to sex research.

The TV people have seemingly decided to go with the use of MRI scanners anyway, purely on the grounds that they look impressive and make for good TV. Lacking sufficient expertise in the area, Dr Boynton then tried to get some more persuasive arguments against this approach from more neuroscientific people. Sadly for her, the discipline of Neuroscience, the media and you good people reading this, that included me. So, if you're someone from the media and are thinking about putting together a programme with a setup like this,  please let me explain why this is unwise.

If I've interpreted them correctly, the suggested experiment aim(s) can be summarised as follows;

Use advanced brain imaging techniques to quantitatively demonstrate that a specific sex toy gives women using it more pleasure than other sex toys, and do this in a way which makes enjoyable television

Now, as you can probably tell from my previous ramblings, I have several problems with this. Let's go through them all.

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•       Measuring 'pleasure' is very difficult: It would be in this context, anyway. There are numerous brain regions that are involved with the processing of rewarding and enjoyable stimuli, I'm not arguing that. But 'pleasure' as a term is like 'intelligence', or 'irony', in that everyone knows what it is, but it's actually quite hard to write down a coherent explanation of it that everyone would agree on. This is even more true of sexual pleasure. How do you measure such a thing? There is no one single thing that every woman finds sexually stimulating (as far as I know), and a person's sexual preferences are a complex neurological system based on their own experiences, biology and so forth. You could feasibly scan the brain activity of a large number of women attempting to achieve sexual pleasure in the exact same way, but the readings would probably be very different. Any data applicable to all of them would probably be too general to be of any use in studying a neurological effect as complex as sexual pleasure. A reputable science programme wouldn't show some meaningless data and then just make their own conclusions, would they?... Would they?... Hello?
•           Sex and masturbation aren’t the same thing: A minor point, but possibly relevant if you're wanting to make a programme about how sex is perceived/experienced. Although they have a lot of biological and anatomical processes in common, sex and masturbation are perceived and experienced differently. Obviously, as with sex there is at least one other person there, and they tend to be very close (spatially, if not in other ways). This is a very big stimulus (even if one partner does not possess a particularly big stimulus, so to speak) and something that is by definition absent during masturbation, so the sendory processing being done by the bain will be drastically different. Some experiments have apparently revealed that intercourse is a qualitatively different (better?) experience to masturbation, so any results obtained from this TV study may not be applicable to sex, per se.
•           fMRI requires stimulus to occur in real time: Obviously I don't know the exact set-up for this potential experiment, but I do know that if you want to see what parts of the brain activate in response to specific stimuli, you have to scan the brain while that stimuli is occurring. Ergo, if you want to see what effect a sex toy has on a woman's neural activity, she has to be experiencing it while in the scanner (in this case hving the stimulation occur and then scanning them will give you 'post-coital comedown' data, and that's probably even more vague). Given the remit of the experiment, is this something you can get away with showing on national television? Even if you use the classic 'thermal imaging' cop-out, that's still potentially quite a graphic image to broadcast. I imagine you'll have trouble getting that past the censors, but then I'm not an expert.
•           fMRI is very sensitive and subjects are secured in place: This is something that really should be flagged up in advance, if you plan to go through with this. Obviously, there are many different types of MRI and maybe I have the wrong idea here, but if you want to do an fMRI, in my experience you have to be very still indeed, as the machine is trying to measure very subtle changes in blood flow through tiny capillaries in a small region of the brain. The precision required to detect such small changes means the subject has their head secured in place very firmly, and usually the rest of the body too. Even minor movements can render the whole thing pointless. Bearing all this in mind, how exactly are you going to measure women's responses to masturbation when they're not allowed to move? Some may prefer to have sex in this manner, but I know women masturbate in a different way to men (this is normally where I'd link to something to back this up, but to be honest writing this piece has already rendered my browser search history quite unspeakable) and it logically must involve a reasonable degree of body movement, particularly if using a sex toy. MRI scanners are also usually require the subject to be inserted into a tube, which necessitates a 'legs closed' bodily arrangement, thus compounding the problem.  If you do want to do this right, you'd probably have to have someone using the sex toy on the women while she's being scanned. In all honesty, I don't think lab techs are trained for this sort of thing. And even if you do somehow get approval to do this, getting to show it on TV would be even more of a headache than the last issue.
•           Taking mechanical devices into an MRI is seriously not a good idea: Even if you were to get approval for all of the above, and somehow manage to work out a system where you can 'run the experiment', so to speak, how do these sex toys work? Hopefully they're just shaped plastic, but I'm getting the implication that they're mechanical in some way. This should present an insurmountable hurdle as you can't take any metal into an MRI scanner, particularly if it's ferrous. It's best not to even have it in the same room. A lot of people are surprised by this, because if an MRI is completely safe for humans, surely an inanimate metal object would be even less affected by it? But you can use this same logic for a typical bath; a human can sit in the bath without experiencing any ill effects, but throw a toaster in there too and you've got problems. MRI's use incredibly powerful magnets to pick up minute changes revealed by movements in our iron-containing blood. If you've ever watched House, they like showing what happens when tiny amounts of metal find their way into an MRI (I know it's just a TV show, but they've done their research there). Some professionals have also kindly arranged some practical demonstrations. In summary, if you want to have women use a metal-containing sex toy in an fMRI scanner, you may as well have them masturbate using a lit stick of dynamite. It's just as safe, and the results of any 'accidents' would be just as spectacular. I suppose this would make for impressive visuals, but I imagine the sort of audience you'd get for them is not going to be your target demographic.
•           MRI Scanners; Erotic?: Even if you do manage to get round all the issues mentioned above, being in an MRI scanner is confining, boring, potentially claustrophobic, incredibly loud, very chilly, or possibly all these things at once. Again, I'm not an expert in female sexual preferences, but none of that strikes me as conducive to achieving a state of mind that would be required to achieve orgasm. If you do want to go through with all of this, you'd need the sort of women who would be willing to be filmed masturbating/being masturbated while staying very still in a very distracting and intimidating environment, then having it broadcast on TV. Therefore, the only women you could use would either have some very 'selective' turn-ons, or be the sort of person for whom public displays of bizarre sexual antics are commonplace.  This may be doable, but you're seriously veering away from any noble 'how normal women experience pleasure' ethos you may have started out with.

So, that's why I don't think that programme would work. Even if you do manage to overcome all the problems I've mentioned, what are you left with? Nothing that would give you any useable information, at any rate. It would be cheaper and easier just to set up a fake MRI and have the subjects do whatever it is you want them to do, and just use footage of a different MRI scan, there are plenty around. This may seem dishonest, but it's as scientifically valid as the proposed experiment, and this way is probably much cheaper and frees up an expensive MRI in case anyone wants to do some actual science.

Rant over. I apologise to well intended media types and any disappointed men who have found their way here as a result of a more 'questionable' web search.

Twitter: @garwboy

SCIENCE NEWS ROUND-UP: 2010

A round-up of the most significant science stories from the year 2010

World’s Largest Particle Betting Pool Nearing Conclusion

Scientists at the World’s largest Particle accelerator (The Large Hadron Collider, LHC) recently announced that they were closer than ever to finding an eventual winner of the world’s largest betting pool concerning elementary quantum particles.

“We’re all getting really excited about the eventual discovery of the ‘God particle’” says leading physicist Professor Brian Delacour. ‘The pool’s been running since before the collider was built, but since then both the theory and the technology have really come along drastically, so we have been able to really expand the number of eventual candidates for the ultimate particle and really flesh out the betting pool.

According to most scientists, the particle that gives rise to mass, the aforementioned ‘God particle’, is the Higgs Boson, although this is yet to be conclusively proven. It is this proof that many of the largest particle accelerators are attempting to discover. When asked about this, Professor Delacour said ‘of course, the Higgs Boson is the most likely candidate, but that option was picked out of the hat by a San-Franciscan at a conference in 2003. He’s not even a physicist, he’s a conservationist or something, but you know how pissed people can get at conferences, nobody had a clue at the time. So now we’re hoping to discover the most elementary particle is not the Higgs, but something a bit more exotic again. Anything so that jammy bastard doesn’t walk away with the prize fund“

When asked whether this was the noblest aim for experiments using equipment costing billions, Professor Delacour was surprisingly frank. “Of course it isn’t, but then to be honest, we probably stopped finding out generally useful things sometime in the mid-80’s, so now gambling and spite are the main motivators for us carrying on. I’m not optimistic about my chances, I’ll be honest. A few of my colleagues have drawn things like types of quark or neutrinos as the most fundamental components of matter. What do I get? Odd socks! That would help iron out some issues in the whole missing-matter problem, but I reckon it’s a long shot. My co-investigator got Styrofoam pellets, and there’s a Swiss quantum theorist lecturer who got potpourri. We all had a good laugh and that, but we’re not really feeling as motivated as we once were, and that’s a fact’.

When asked when he expected a winner of the pool to be announced, Professor Delacour was noncommittal. “Knowing this thing, it could be anytime from tomorrow to twenty years from now”, he said, before vigorously thumping the section of the LHC he was stood beside for emphasis. “We’ve got to keep it at close to absolute zero. Every time it suffers a glitch we have to reboot the whole bloody thing, and that takes about 14 months. It’s like Windows Vista, but colder.

When asked, Professor Delacour revealed that the prize fund for the particle betting pool currently stands at 458 Euro (£391). “It’s the biggest in the world, but that’s not saying much given the subject matter. Hah! ‘Subject Matter’! I’m writing that down!” He then ran off to find a pencil.

Ancient humans “not quite as Genocidal as first thought” say Palaeontologists

Although assumed to be responsible for the untimely extinction of every species to suffer such a fate, recent discoveries by palaeontologists suggest that one of the more famous extinct species, Woolly Mammoths, may have died out as a result of its own incompetence.

Doctor Michael Lalsow, Head of Prehistoric Studies at the Institute for Anthropology in Inverness, welcomed the findings. “It seems to be taken as read that ancient humans were savage insatiable killers and all other creatures were noble, wise beasts, perfectly in tune with nature. However, research now suggests that primitive humans were weedy half-formed idiots and other animals were lumbering vacuous morons that evolved themselves into unsustainable predicaments”.

Recent research has revealed that mammoths died out as a result of the depletion of grasslandsfollowing the end of the ice age, rather than excessive hunting by contemporary humans. “It’s ironic when you think about it, people complain about deforestation in order to raise cattle, but it was reforestation that killed off even bigger grazing quadrupeds, so if anything the forests are just reaping what they sew. That’s an agriculture joke there, by the way, so it works on two levels” Dr Laslow reassured us.

Dr Laslow also admitted to always being sceptical about the original overhunting hypothesis. “You ever seen a mammoth? About 7 tons of angry orange fur and giant tusks. It’ll take more than a dimly aware primate waving a stick to bring one of them down, let alone ALL of them. They’re not like Pandas; they wouldn’t need round-the-clock attention just to make sure they don’t shit themselves to death after eating the wrong kind of twig. If they hadn’t been so dependent on grass they would still be around today. My mother always said, ‘stay away from that grass! It’ll be the death of you!’ I used to think she meant the ‘grass’ as in drugs, but then she was massive with orange hair as well, so maybe it was racial memory.’

However, not everyone is so eager to dismiss the overhunting philosophy. A contrasting view was put forward by Buck McChickford, professional hunter and president of the Sarah Palin Fan club (Wyoming chapter).

“My great-grand daddy brought down at least 5 o’ them woolly mammoths in the winter of ’38 using nuttin’ but his old colt and a fishin’ pole. Had to build a bigger cabin just to mount the heads.” When asked how this could be true when mammoths largely died out around 10,000 years ago, Mr McChickford laughed and pointed out that this ‘were plum stupid, boy! God only gone done made the world some six ‘hunnerd years ago’. This argument continued, but the rest was unintelligible. When asked if he’d ever killed a mammoth himself, Mr McChickford replied by saying “You callin’ me a Queer?” before scratching his unfeasibly large and suspiciously sock-like genitals.

Brain Scans Reveal Direct Link between Enthusiasm for Brain Scans and Scientific Incompetence

Recent studies have shown that the more impressed a researcher is by brain imaging techniques, the more likely they are to produce studies and data that are about as useful as a rice-paper catheter. A metastudy conducted on a substantial body of recently published papers revealed an inverse relationship between a), a researcher’s reliance on impressive brain scanning techniques in their research, and b), their ability to make even the vaguest sense of all the cool flashing lights they’re looking at.

This came as no surprise to many experts in the field of Neuroscience. Doctor James Van Johnson, head of Cerebrology at the Maidenhead School of Brain Biology, explains.

“The technology to study living, functioning brains was a very important breakthrough in neuroscience. However, it’s important to remember that it’s a painfully complex process requiring extensive analysis and data collection before we can even achieve results beyond that offered by random guessing”. However, many recent studies have reportedly used neuroimaging techniques to link certain behaviours and traits with specific brain regions. When asked if he took issue with these studies, Dr Van Johnson responded by swearing profusely. When he had calmed down (which took 73 minutes, including coffee breaks), the following conversation occurred.

“Do you know what an active brain looks like?” asked Dr Van Johnson. Our reporter suggested that it was probably a warmer, leakier version of an inactive brain, which is reminiscent of a dense grey blancmange trying to impersonate a walnut.

“Fair point yes” agreed Dr Van Johnson, “But I meant on an imaging scanner? It depends on the technique you use of course, there are several, but it’s generally all over the place. That whole thing about us using ‘only 10% of the brain’ is complete bollocks, we use all of it all the time, and that’s reflected in a scan. To find a significant level of activity in a certain area in response to a certain process, that takes substantial time and effort. But some people just see the cool flashing colours that represent someone’s thoughts and they assume it must be like reading a book. Not even a proper book with normal words, but some sort of brightly coloured Fisher-price book, about the alphabet or a monosyllabic story about a dog. An inflatable one that you can take in the bath, at that. Well, it’s not, it’s a damn sight more complicated than that. I have a PhD in this sort of thing, I would know.”

Other researchers, however, disagree with the findings of the metastudy and intend to pursue the use of brain imaging techniques in studies linking bits of brain with hard-to-define abstract behaviours. Recent papers have linked enlarged amygdalas with expanded social circles, political views with differing brain structures, meditation with an above-average sized hippocampus, and a more densely-innervated Shatner’s Bassoon with a love of dark satirical comedies.

“It’s a whole new paradigm” said Doctor Terence ‘Moonbeam’ Gustafson, a researcher in Neuroholistic tendencies at the University of Omnicultural Research (online only). “With this technology we can see directly into the mind, into the psyche, and eventually, into the soul. We are morally obligated to use this technology to take science beyond the crusty neo-fascist restrictions of the established institutions and into the realms of spirituality and oneness”. When asked if he believed the use of scanning technology could ‘bring Phrenology into the 21^stcentury’, Dr Gustafson said “Yes! Yes exactly! That’s precisely what we’re doing here”. When it was pointed out that phrenology was based on scientifically unfounded theories and widely discredited during the 19^th century, he added “except for that bit”.

Other researchers also object to Dr Van Johnson’s views. Professor Harold Wyszynski, of the Brain Imaging Centre for Investigative Studies in Detroit, wished to give his views on why brain imaging techniques are both crucial and informative for research. In order to demonstrate this effectively, he insisted that the interview be conducted from an MRI machine and that we derive the answers to the questions from the images produced by his brain. When asked why he felt brain imaging techniques were so useful, his answer was BLUE FLASH-GREEN FLASH-YELLOW BLUR-RED FLASH-BLUE SPLODGE SHIFTING INTO GREEN SPLODGE-LARGE DARK GREY STRIPE-BLUE SPIRALLY THING-GREEN FLASH-ORANGE PULSE-BLUE FLASH-LOCALISED BLUE FLASH. He then sneezed and the scanner needed to be recalibrated.

Moon Landing Conspiracy Gets Even More Elaborate

More than 40 years after the original conspiracy to convince the world that man had landed on the moon was initiated, NASA continue to add yet more layers of complexity and detail to this ludicrous but far-reaching notion that humans are capable of travelling to Earth’s natural satellite.

The most recent addition to the vast body of fabricated data that supposedly supports the possibility of a moon landing is the ‘discovery’ of large bodies of water ‘on the moon’. Professional moon-landing debunker Keith Armstrong stated that “this is just yet another example of the elaborately concocted fiction by NASA in order to perpetuate the myth that humans are somehow capable of travelling to the moon”. When asked why he thought it was that numerous international scientific bodies not affiliated with NASA or the US government were treating the information as genuine, Mr Armstrong stated that “That’s exactly how they do things. They buy off all these scientific groups and bodies so they’ll back up their lies. That way NASA gets to keep their budget”. When it was pointed out that NASA’s budget wouldn’t even come close to enough for bribing that many international scientific bodies, Mr Armstrong pointed out that “they’re cunning, you see. They planted that water on the moon in order to fool the scientific community into supporting their agenda”.

When asked about the logical paradox behind the contention that NASA went to the moon in order to perpetuate the myth that they went to the moon, Mr Armstrong accused our reporter of being ‘one of them!’ and ejected them from the premises. Further attempts to contact him for a quote proved unsuccessful, possibly due to a combination of his tin foil hat and poor phone signal in his mother’s basement where he lives.

Other sources take a more optimistic view of the alleged findings. Doctor Nathaniel Price, Conspiracologist at the Centre for Bizarre Beliefs (Surrey), suggests that there is great potential in the claim of discovering water on the moon.

“The nature of the moon-landing conspiracy means it has endured for some considerable time, despite the limited material available from the 60’s and 70’s for effective debunking, which has been repeatedly assessed countless times over the intervening decades and is in danger of growing stale. This new development could lead to a much more extensive volume of claims and data to refute. Moon bases, established communities on the lunar surface, regular transit of the Earth-Moon distance, structures that would be clearly visible from the Earth’s surface with any decent telescope, there are so many possibilities offered by this latest development for conspiracy theorists to vociferously deny in the face of considerable evidence. This ‘discovery’ could breathe new life into the moon-landing debunkers conspiracy, and fire up a great deal more interest and investment for the 21^st century. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the New World Order on the other line…”

Rationalists Suffer Side Effects after Poorly Judged Alt-Med Protest

Alternative medicine practitioners claimed vindication this week after a large group of skeptic protestors were discovered to have suffered serious side effects after a coordinated mass-overdose of homeopathic remedies back in January. The original point of the protest was to demonstrate that the mass-produced alternative medications have no active ingredients and thus cannot lead to overdose or side effects, but pro-homeopathy experts now claim that the protest has backfired.

“The argument that they have no harmful side effects is only valid in terms of accepted medical definitions. However, as homeopathy is clearly an alternative medicine, then logically it would have ALTERNATIVE side effects that differ to standard medicine” claims professional alternative medicine proponent Harrison Ford (no relation). He then went on to detail the significant alternative side-effects suffered by the protestors.

“An excess of homeopathic remedies can have dangerously powerful soporific effects. As such, it’s highly likely that nearly 100% of the protestors will have experienced prolonged periods of unconsciousness, around 7-9 hours on average, within 24 hours of their overdose. In many cases, this can be compounded by some form of minor respiratory obstruction, resulting in excessive noise production of a nasal/throaty sort during the unconscious period. This is most commonly experienced in males”

Mr Ford also pointed out that the benign, alternative mode of action of alternative remedies meant the side-effects occur outside the usual time frames. “Unlike harsh, dangerous traditional medicines, alternative medicines have a more subtle action, and as such most ill effects will take a while to occur, which is why it only looked like they didn’t happen to the impatient protestors. For example, the positive energies resulting from homeopathic remedies mean the immune system is less active and so becomes sedentary, and this means that the protestors will have become more susceptible to viruses. I’ll be many of them suffered some form of cold or similar infection between 0 to 2 or 10 to 12 months of their overdose. But not so much outside their time frames. Outside of those times, the homeopathic remedies will have built up in the skin cells, so they would have, around 6-8 months of the overdose, found the skin on their arms and faces to be browner/redder than normal. The areas of skin normally covered by clothing won’t have been affected as much because of science”.

“Women in particular may have found themselves suffering serious ill-effects for several days every month since the overdose. They may claim that this had been occurring for many years before the overdose, but this overlooks the fact that homeopathic remedies work retroactively; they cure illnesses you suffered before taking them, which means they didn’t happen at all. That’s how good they are”

“In extreme cases, a homeopathic overdose has been known to lead to an insatiable desire to appear on radio talk shows and other media outlets in order to criticise homeopathy. This is because their bodies are subconsciously rejecting to the presence of homeopathic agents but do not know what to do about it”

Several sceptical activists were contacted for comment, but all of them just laughed at our reporters. Renowned Placebologist and raconteur Dr A. A. Alan was also contacted via email, but declined to answer any questions. He did, however, wish us a happy new year and assured us he would ‘be back in the office on January 3^rd’.

“I am not playing God!” insists bearded, thunderbolt-wielding Scientist

Despite claiming to have created the world’s first synthetic organism and the subsequent backlash, Dr Craig Venter insisted that he is in no way playing God, in an interview conducted while Dr Venter was dressed in white robes and sat on a large golden throne.

“The accusations being thrown at me are ludicrous” he asserted, “Granted, I have created a completely novel life form, this life form would definitely not exist without me, so therefore I gave it life, and if it were to develop in complexity to the point where it could think and reason then it would be unsurprising if it eventually came to recognise me as its creator and worship me accordingly. I certainly didn’t have this in mind when I performed this ‘Genesis’, if you will, but if it should come about then I certainly wouldn’t interfere, because that’s not how science works”.

Periodically, when confronted with a question he didn’t like, Dr Venter proceeded to shock the interviewer with his fingers, using a nearby Van de Graaff generator to create ‘lightning’. When asked how he responded to accusations that these synthetic life forms could be dangerous, Dr Venter was dismissive.

“Yes yes, old news. Every possible scientific advance has led to the old ‘possible dangers’ accusation, and it’s always people themselves who are the deciding factor in whether something is harmful or not. Now these life forms I’ve created, they won’t do anything deliberately dangerous”. It was asked if this was due to the fact that they are single-celled organisms currently confined to a Petri dish. In response, Dr Venter became visibly uncomfortable and adopted an expression that could be described as ‘vengeful’.

“For now” he admitted, portentously. “But these life forms could develop to unprecedented levels of sophistication. But there’s nothing to worry about, if it turns out they display dangerous behaviours, I’ll instruct them to resist their natural tendencies. See, what’s God-like about that?”

Following an awkward pause, Dr Venter continued “The potential of these life-forms in astounding. We could create medical breakthroughs that are unthinkable to modern science. We could take a damaged organ and they could synthesise a new one, no matter how complex. An eye for an eye, and all that. There’s nothing God-like about what I’m doing here, although I’ll wage war on anyone who tries to copy me. No others other than me, that’s my motto. Anyway, God doesn’t exist, and I do, so if anything I’m better than God.”

When asked if he had any advice for people who were still worried about the potential dangers of his synthetic life forms, Dr Venter gave us a set of crucial instructions for the safe use of his discovery. He urged us to tell everyone about these instructions, despite the fact that they were carved into large stone blocks. He then kicked us out of his elaborate garden.

Dr Venter would like us to point out that his original request to conduct the interview via flaming shrubbery proved unworkable.

Celebrities in “Knowing absolutely piss-all about anything Scientific” shocker

Recent revelations have shocked the scientific community to its core in no way whatsoever by showing that many celebrities hold views that are not only unscientific, but are barely consistent with reality on the most basic of levels. Some of the more wacky celebrity theories and views include wearing bracelets that improve strength and fitness, reabsorbing sperm to improve combat prowess, eating charcoal to mop up ‘toxins’, and worshipping a zombie carpenter who existed 2000 years ago. None of these things have any basis in science, but then neither do the majority of celebrities.

“It’s hardly surprising when you think about it” says Professor Eugene Schmembly, head of optically-compromising widespread data at the Devon University of Humanology (DUH). “Your typical celebrity is someone who’s paid extravagant sums to knock a ball about in some specific fashion, which doesn’t really encourage much rational thinking, or get’s paid extravagant sums to convincingly pretend that a situation or occurrence which demonstrably isn’t real actually is real, and that actively discourages rational thinking. Of course there are also the celebrities who are famous for willingly revealing oversized body parts, but if you rely on them for important information then you deserve everything you get, frankly. If I want medical advice, I go to a qualified doctor, but if you’d rather consult the woman who was in Grease 30 years ago, a coronation street actor or some mindless thug with a thyroid problem who’s only famous for marrying a woman with so many silicone implants she probably qualifies as a cyborg, then be my guest. But don’t expect me to mourn your removal from the gene pool”

Given the relative scarcity of celebrity scientists and the seeming abundance of celebrities who hold unscientific views, is there something about celebrity itself that promotes unscientific thinking? Professor Schmembly believes that there may.

“I’m not a celebrity myself so can’t speak from a completely informed viewpoint, but from what I’ve seen and heard, most celebrities are overly pampered vacuous airheads who get paid ridiculous fees for doing nothing of consequence and are constantly surrounded by people agreeing with whatever they say for fear of them ever being told they’re wrong about something. But again, that’s just my opinion. In these circumstances, it’s understandable that you’d end up thinking that your own opinions are significant enough to alter the fabric of the universe in order to accommodate them, rather than what they really are; meaningless guff spouted by someone whose existence has actually depleted from the pool of human knowledge.”

Professor Schmembly’s application to be in the final series of Big Brother was rejected, and his unicycle act never made it to the live showing of Britain’s Got Talent, but he insists he isn’t bitter about it.

Bacteria sue NASA for Libel in landmark legal case

In what is sure to be a groundbreaking event in legal history, a group of bacteria from Mono Lake, California, are suing the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) for libel, after misrepresenting them in the mainstream media.

According to preliminary reports, the bacteria in question were “grievously offended” and suffered “considerable mental anguish” after NASA held a press conference and engaged with international media where they claimed that the bacteria in question were able to ‘thrive on arsenic’, instead of the more traditional phosphorous, which is essential for numerous critical cellular processes.

Although the American legal system does not have any provisions for allowing a federal institution to be sued by single-celled organisms, the fact that the press coverage was international allowed the offended bacteria to take advantage of English libel laws, which are notoriously complex and archaic, to the point where they take into account periods before multi-cellular life occurred.

A spokesman on behalf of the law firm representing the bacteria (Carter-Ruck) made the following statement.

“Our clients were grievously offended by the accusation that they thrived on the poisonous chemical arsenic, which as most scientists have realised, is incorrect. They were not permitted any opportunity to put their own views or claims across, they were not consulted as to this veracity of this statement, they did not give their express consent to be removed from their natural habitat and studied extensively but incorrectly before arriving at the erroneous, slanderous conclusion. By making the aforementioned claims, our clients have found themselves ostracised from every other known life form on Earth. They have even struggled to find legal representation, but thankfully Carter-Ruck have never shied away from representing poisonous, subhuman claimants”.

A spokesman for the campaign for libel reform had this to say, “The fact that this case can be brought before the courts at all reveals how badly the English libel system needs to be overhauled. In order to be more in-keeping with modern society, it should be limited to Eukaryotic organisms at the very least.”

(All Science News Updates can be found HERE)

Most of the above never happened. It's an attempt at satire. Just so you know.

E-mail: humourology (at) live.co.uk

Twitter: @garwboy

Meditate on THIS!

It must be nice to be a proper science blogger, having the skills and experience to analyse and assess scientific stories, features and articles, picking them apart where appropriate and presenting a well-rounded assessment of the merits and criticisms as applicable.

Science bloggers can educate, alert people to problems/issues, and further the cause of understanding with their writing. This is unlike what I do, which seems to consist mostly of being flippant and satirical about things that happen to me and/or attract my interest in an attempt to be 'funny' in a forlorn effort to distract from the yawning chasms that are my inadequacies as a scientist, comedian and member of society.

The only way I can possibly hope to contribute to the real world of science bloggers is if there is some sort of news story or something that is about my specific area of expertise, but is also ridiculously misleading and poorly put together.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

Look what was in the Telegraph recently. Apparently, meditation makes you smarter by growing your brain. Dear lord, where to begin...

I'd like to point out that I have nothing against meditation. It is no doubt relaxing, calming and has connections with yoga, a form of exercise practiced by my wife and mother-in-law with much enjoyment. It's unfortunate that meditation and yoga have become largely the property of the alt-med communities, as they are clearly good for you in practical terms. I have been told of an individual who is convinced that yoga can cure AIDS (and presumably other serious conditions). It's as if he believes that all illness is somehow the fault of inflexibility of the body and muscles, and that health can be altered by manipulation of posture and joints and that. Seriously, who would believe nonsense like that?

However, someone has now tried to put meditation and its benefits firmly within the realm of science.

The article begins thusly:

For thousands of years, Buddhists, hippies and spiritualists have claimed that the mental discipline promises a higher state of consciousness.

It has been taken so seriously that schools in America are considering including meditation as part of their curriculums, thanks to the championing by the film director David Lynch who has set up a foundation promoting the technique.

Now scientists have discovered that regular meditation appears to actually increase the size of the brain.

I won't argue the first few lines. What Hippies and Buddhists think is not my business, and I'm not in any position to question these claims. But obviously I understand how any theory/technique has to be taken seriously if David Lynch champions it, known as he is for his commitment to logic, rationality and reason. I've not seen Twin Peaks for years, but I'm pretty sure it was a detailed, well-researched documentary about the geological processes that produce some of the more interesting features of mountain ranges in the Americas.

Seriously though, what else could it be?

Anyway, the last sentence is incredibly loaded. No scientist worth his salt would claim to have discovered anything like this, especially not to the Telegraph. And, in the unlikely event that such an affect was proven to exist, why is this being lauded as a good thing? Our brains are too big for our heads as it is. It is possible for our brains to get bigger, but when this happens it often requires some pretty heavy-duty neurosurgery to make it stop before it kills us.

Admittedly, 'meditation causes severe headaches and death' would be a much more urgent headline, and would probably have been noticed by now if it were the case, by all the hippies, Buddhists, and spiritualists. And David Lynch would probably be arrested. At the very least, Rhys Morgan will have taken him to task.

So the article probably isn't really claiming this is the case. Surely, all will become clear as it progresses.

In the latest research scans revealed "significantly larger" amounts of grey matter in people who had been mediating long term.

The inverted commas tell you a lot about this statement. But what does a 'larger amount' of grey matter (significant or otherwise) actually mean? This statement, to a neuroscientist, is hopelessly vague. Overall, it could be said that, in the brain, grey matter does the processing of information, white matter carries the information around. Logically then, you could say that if you have more grey matter, you can process more information, and are therefore smarter.

Except it's not even close to being that simple. The amount of grey matter we possess is barely, if at all associated with how intelligent we are. People who have had half their neocortex removed at a young age in drastic but essential surgery develop to become grown people of perfectly normal intelligence, despite just over half as much grey matter as your typical idiot. There are also conditions where the brain grows abnormally and with much less overall mass than a 'normal' brain, but these conditions are usually only diagnosed after a scan, as the 'sufferers' show no noticeable ill effects from the condition, despite having drastically below average brain mass.

There is no real defining neurological factor that correlates precisely with intelligence, and this includes 'amount of grey matter'. This statement is of no use, and as potentially misleading as me saying 'I have a significantly higher body mass than a typical featherweight boxer' in a discussion about health and exercise. Used in this context, it's like I'm saying that this fact makes me fitter and healthier than professional athletes, whereas I could just be significantly fatter. I'm not though, this is just an example.

Actually, I most definitely am.

It continues...

High-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showed their hippocampus – a key area of the brain associated with memory and learning – was bigger.

I'd love to comment on this sentence, if only I'd spent nearly 4 years studying the hippocampus and its functions.

Oh, yeah. I did.

There have been many experiments that have revealed that certain people have bigger hippocampuses than others. The hippocampus is indeed strongly implicated in memory and learning. It is also a key area for spatial perception and navigation. A very simplified generalisation would be to say that the hippocampus receives information from the myriad sensory inputs and combines it into specific useful configurations for use to remember and exploit when needed, e.g. the spatial layout of a room or area, or the combination of spatiotemporal factors that make up an episode (otherwise known as 'what' happened, 'where' and 'when', commonly known as episodic memory).

OK, maybe that wasn't so simplified. But suffice to say, the hippocampus is indeed associated with memory and learning. And it does appear that the hippocampus, like a lot of neurological regions, has muscle-like properties; i.e. the more it's used, the bigger it gets. Eleanor Maguire and colleagues discovered that London taxi drivers, those who have 'the knowledge', have significantly larger hippocampuses than your normal person (remember that the hippocampus is also implicated in navigation and spatial awareness)

This may be an unfair stereotype, but when I think of the terms 'meditation', spiritualism' and 'inner peace', the first thing that comes to mind is rarely 'London Taxi Drivers'. This seems to be another excellent example of a mainstream media article confusing correlation with causation, which is a common mistake. It could be that those who practice meditation are well travelled, actively pursue different cultures and practices, spend a great deal of time on concentration and self-analysis, all of which would potentially increase your information intake and ergo increase the size of your hippocampus. A tendency to meditate, like hippocampus size, could easily be another symptom of their lifestyle, rather than a cause.

On the other hand, people 'blessed' with a larger and/or more efficient hippocampus due to some genetic or other environmental factor could find their enhanced ability to encode and retain information quite stressful and distracting, and may eventually turn to meditation as a means to relax for once. Maybe the hippocampus size is the CAUSE of meditation, not an effect?

I bet if you performed a similar assessment, you'd find that a significant percentage of people involved in car crashes had suffered fractured or broken bones at some point in their lives. Therefore, breaking bones causes an impairment in driving ability (presumably this increases substantially with how close in time the breakage and attempt at driving are).

Obviously, that last sentence is not the most obvious conclusion to jump to.

Other parts linked to emotion were also larger than in people who did not practise the ancient technique. The finding was made by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who published the results in the journal NeuroImage.

Yes, I expect the parts 'that linked to emotion' were indeed larger. If the hippocampus is larger, I'd be worried if they weren't, seeing as the hippocampus is heavily involved with memory processing, so processes pretty much everything we experience, and nearly everything we experience has an emotional aspect. This is encoded via the amygdala, a neural region closely linked to the hippocampus and also pretty much essential for effective memory processing (I assume this is what they're referring to when they say 'other parts linked to emotion' if you were wondering). To put is as harshly as possible, let me enter incredibly sarcastic mode:

Wow! They found that both the hippocampus AND the amygdala were larger? That's AMAZING! Almost as amazing as that time I found out that very tall people have longer leg bones AND longer leg muscles! I mean, who'd have even expected it?!?!

There, that's enough of that. I think you get the point.

I like how they also felt it necessary to point out both the city and the state the University was in, I imagine that makes all the difference. Not sure how reputable a journal Neuroimage is, but going by this article alone, I'm guessing 'not particularly'. I'm willing to be proven wrong, though.

The authors said that previous research had "confirmed the beneficial aspects of meditation. In addition to having better focus and control over their emotions, many people who meditate regularly have reduced levels of stress and bolstered immune systems".

Confirmed? Really? Beware any scientist who drops the C-bomb so casually, there's usually a sharp learning curve approaching. And as for the rest of the statement, it's incredible isn't it! People who consciously choose to spend hours every day practicing a relaxation technique which involves sitting still and shutting out external stimuli, which is strongly linked to yoga and a variety of practices dedicated to improving health, these people have less stress and better immune systems? You don't say.

What does 'bolstered' even mean, anyway? I'm pretty sure it's not a standard scientific term. In fact, I'm pretty sure it usually involves cushions.

But less was known about possible links between meditation and brain structure which is thought to affect intelligence.

The team studied the brains of 44 people – half of whom had practised various forms of meditation for between five and 46 years.

More than half said that "deep concentration" was an essential part of their routine, and most meditated for between ten and 90 minutes a day.

The MRI scans showed "significantly larger cerebral measurements in meditators".

...What?

Of course less was known about possible links. Until this article, I didn't think there were any. And I'm a neuroscientist.

44 people.

Half of these were controls (it's suggested, at any rate), so that's 22 people in the meditating group.

"[Mediating] Between five and 46 years".

Bloody Hell! Talk about your variation between subjects, the error bars for this group must have been off the chart (and that's the most literal use of that cliché you'll see for a while, I'll wager). People who've been meditating for 46 years? Even if they started as a 10 year old, that still means they're close to 60 years old. That's a lot of life to remember, and this may lead to an enlarged hippocampus. "Living for a long time increases your brain size" isn't so much of a story though, I guess. (Also, I don't know why in the original statement one number is spelled out and the other isn't, but then I'm not a journalist working for the Telegraph).

It's possible that all the subjects were within a very narrow age range and just started meditating at different times, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

"'deep concentration'".

Which is...? Not really something I'd trust myself to measure unless it could be quantified in some way. Perhaps I'm just pedantic.

"most meditated for between ten and 90 minutes a day"

'Most'? Between '10 and 90' (only one spelled out again)? Well, as long as it's between 10 and 90, that's fine. I mean, 10mg and 90mg of morphine have pretty much identical effects, so it doesn't really matter how much a subject gets if you're studying the effects of the stuff, as long as they get some. "Consistency is overrated by science" is a thought I have very regularly (ironically).

The MRI scans showed "significantly larger cerebral measurements in meditators".

I imagine if you'd put me in an MRI scanner right now I'd also show increased cerebral measurements as I desperately try to figure out what the phrase 'increased cerebral measurements' means in this context. I had to go to hospital once after an accident. I no doubt showed 'increased physiological measurements' at the time, due to my injuries. Exactly what anyone would have done with that information is anyone's guess, as it's so generalised as to be meaningless.

The lead researcher Eileen Luders said the changes in the brain could explain why people who meditate "have a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions".

Do people who meditate have 'a singular ability to cultivate positive emotions', then? Exactly how would you measure or even quantify such a thing? We're not talking about mass or speed here, these aren't things that can be worked out with an equation or set of scales. I'd really like to see some evidence for this beyond the anecdotal/observational. A lot of people who practice meditation would logically be in a position where they are educated enough to discover it and learn it as a practice, have enough free time to indulge in it for prolonged periods, and find that it works for them so continue. What I believe we have here is a sampling bias and a lot of wishful thinking.

"The differences in brain anatomy might give us a clue as to why meditators have these exceptional abilities," she added.

Not arguing that, if these exceptional abilities can be said to be real. But this in no way automatically means that meditation is behind all this. These people all meditate. Do they all wear black underwear too? Maybe they all had a dog when they were younger? It's easy to make associations when you pick and choose your data.

Previous studies have shown how the brain can change its structure over time.

[...Slow ....Hand ...Clap]

The researchers found significantly larger brain measurements in meditators compared with others, including larger volumes of the right hippocampus and increased grey matter in the right frontal cortex.

Because these areas of the brain are closely linked to emotion, Ms Luders said, "these might be the neuronal underpinnings that give meditators' the outstanding ability to regulate their emotions and allow for well-adjusted responses to whatever life throws their way".

This seems to be the article reiterating the same points in a different way in order to make it look more substantial than it really is. I won't do the same here, I think you've got the gist now. I don't know how many 'brain measurements' they took (seriously, what? This article is starting to cause fluctuations in my 'health numbers') but I've gone over the issue with grey matter and all that already.

I like how they've dropped the whole 'makes your brain bigger' angle by the end though, as that was misleading even by the standards of this article. As it happens, the biggest brain on record was about 3.5 kilos, and belonged to a mentally-retarded* epileptic. So claiming that meditation makes your brain bigger could be interpreted as 'meditation makes you retarded*', it's just as tenuous a link as a lot of the arguments put forward here.

There we go, my first piece that combines my passions for Neuroscience, cynicism, skepticism, nitpicking and sarcasm. I think I need a cigarette...

* = This is the term used when I read about it, I mean it purely in the scientific sense.

Email = humourology (at) live.co.uk

Twitter = @garwboy

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