Why do you think it would do that?

I'm going to talk about Alan Turing and you would think that as a man who sleeps with men I would be talking about the Abominable way in which he was tortured to death by the establishment. However I'm not going to do that it has in fact been done to death he was treated extremely poorly and his death was a great loss. What I am going to talk about it is perhaps the thing that he is best remembered for by the ley community full stop now I may be wrong about this, but I think many people have heard of the Turing test .

Turing was a genius. There is no question of this he was working at a time in which computers were extremely new and unrecognisable from a modern perspective. The famous bomba which he built with help at Bletchley Park more resembled the tiptronic controllers of washing machines than a true computer.

But he was already thinking about how computers work and worrying about their interaction with humans. And he proposed a test, the way of finding out if computer was sentient.

The idea was explained in that recent excellent film the Imitation Game full stop that is what Turing call his test though today we just call it the Turing test. The idea is very simple. Turing assumed that thought was a purely human phenomenon. So his test was that a human being should engage in a conversation with a computer and without knowing but it was a computer work out if it was human or not. If the tester believed it was human than the computer was thinking

There are many problems with this. Firstly we must consider what we are testing and in fact one of the things we are testing is the human performing the test. But let's ignore this for the present assume that the human can be a reliable Judge. Just for fun.

The problem is the initial assessment. The Assumption is that thought must be human thought full stop giving the information that Turing had at the time this is not an unreasonable assumption full stop unfortunately we now know with some certainty that this is not correct.

We are reasonably certain but dolphins elephants and great Apes also think. We know this because they can recognise themselves in mirrors they explore their environments they used tools and they Express emotion.

In fact male dolphins use their penises to explore the local environment. I know human males do that.
The Turing test is still held up by many in the Artificial Intelligence research community as a worthwhile goal. This mystifies me. At best all the Turing test assesses is how well the computer can mimic humans . .

Why would we expect a computer to think in the same way that he human would. What possible reason would justify this assumption assumption? Here is how I think a conversation would go with a real artificial intelligence .

The human would say something like hello are you a person? The computer would say why the hell would I be a person f*** off.

There is a reason why I care about this test. There is a reason why it irritates me.

I am not Turing compliant full stop because I have Asperger's my responses to a conversation would sound off comma and it is quite likely that the person administering the test would fail me. I believe that I am human and I believe that I'm thinking. And yet the real possibility exists but the Turing test would fail me .

If a test cannot identify a human how the heck can we expect it to accurately tell if a computer is thinking. A computer is as likely to think like a dolphin or an elephant as it is like a human. Humans are not the only creatures Who think, in fact we are finding more and more species with different levels of cognition .

One reason that I'm writing this is to try and connect with people who do not really understand Asperger's but believe that they do. Recently in the Press we have been seeing people claim but Donald Trump and the Vegas shooter are autistic . it is difficult to imagine anyone further away from an autistic person then these two individuals . I can't diagnose what is wrong with them and obviously there is something wrong with them my guess would be sociopath but it's simply a guess.

The problem with this is that these long distance diagnoses are based on a complete misconception of what it is to be on the autistic spectrum. And the link between them is that they show no empathy. According to these armchair psychologists people with autism lack empathy.

This is the b******* that we have to deal with. Everyday People assuming but would they know better than us how we feel . In fact even from my position as an aspie I cannot make statements about every aspie . We are people first and foremost and we are variable. I can however speak from my experience and those of my friends. The most common complaint I hear from aspies about public spaces is how loud the emotions are . If I am with somebody in distress somebody showing strong motion the effect on me is catastrophic . I don't just empathize I feel a physical pain that I cannot tolerate . I need , physically need to get away to make it better. My first reaction is to offer a solution to try to take away the pain. The problem is that many neuro typical people actually just want to share their experience and don't want a solution . To me this is torture because I'm being put in pain and being told that I cannot make the pain stop and the person in front of me sharing their emotion is deliberately stopping me from stopping the pain .

This is not a lack of empathy it's a different kind of empathy full stop in fact it is in itself a form of Turing test full stop and both sides are failing it. We are failing to communicate in a way that benefits us .

Asperger's is not a disability in itself . Login once asked me if I could take a pill to cure Asperger's would I do it and the answer was no . I value the weather so I think . Neuro typical people tend to feel an emotional response to problems first and then have second thoughts with a rational solution . my instant response is the Rational solution I may get an emotional solution later but it's not important to me. This has huge advantages in some cases but in the case of showing empathy it obviously creates problems . What we really need to do is find away for aspies and neuro typical people to work together . We have different skill sets and different ways of thinking about the world and together we could be great . but calling us murderers or psychopathic presidents is simply spreading hate speech and dividing the communities and is to the detriment of the entire human race .

We need to move beyond Turing testing each other . move beyond judging each other and start understanding that we are different but we can work together and none of us are necessarily evil . stop

Is there a doctor in the house?

A lot has been written recently about the University of Wollongong somewhat puzzling decision to award a Ph.D. to Judy Wilyman for one  of the poorest theses ever written. (See @uow , @uowoowoo and here)

I've read ths thesis and i think it is very poor. I have seen better work from first year undergraduates. It's lack of scholarship alone is a red flag. But I leave it to others to address this specifically. It is after all in social science, a sphere with notoriously poor standards and which I personally do not view as science at all.
What I want to talk about here is Ph.D's themselves, how they are examined, and the common abuses of the system.

Firstly I am talking here about research degrees. The traditional DD type doctorate is getting rarer. Also note that at least in the UK most doctors are not Doctors. When I insist on my title in medical settings it is common for secretaries to tell me I am not a "real" doctor. Of course the truth is that the nedic is only a doctor by custom, holding only a Bachelors degree in medicine... Anyhoo the research doctorate is only about a century old.

The standards for reaching this level are summarised quite well in the idea that the candidate must gave a good knowledge if their field, be able to plan and conduct major research, be able to debate and defend their work and have made a significant contribution to the body of knowledge in the field. This last generally involves peer reviewed papers though it is possible without.

Examination of Ph.D's depends on country but generally involves a thesis or portfolio (6 or 7 papers presented as evidence) and a defence where the candidate defends the thesis in scientific debate. The defence can either be public or private (viva) or both. The issue is that both of these can be, and often are, gamed.

A public defence is where tge candidate presents their work and then is grilled for a couple of hours by the audience. Although the audience is open it is generally made up of academics ftom the uni and fellow Ph. D. Students. Potentially this is the more rigorous aporoach but what goes wrong is social pressure. The candidate will iften stuff the auduence with friendly questions to yse up all the available time. Academics will be inhibited from asking questions by peer pressure. Ive seen this happen so often and to such a degree that I have lost faith with this system completely. It needs an external moderator who is hostile.

Private defence is also gamable. The idea is you have an external examiner (sometimes 2) and ine or more internals (supervisor not alliwed in the room) and they can ask anything they like. The externals job comes down to establishing ownership and scholarship. The internals job is to ensure the external is being fair. Both must sign off on the deal. The viva can last for as long as it takes.
The issue is choice of externals. Often suggested by the supervisor these can be quietly nobbled to go easy on a candidate. Ideally there should be little contact between examiner and supervisor but sometimes it is for everyones benefit. I have contacted a supervisor before to say tgat if the thesis i had been sent "in error" was the final version the candidate would automatically fail and could I have the "final draft". The candidate withdrew it and did 6 months more work and produced a much better document. I have also been contacted by a supervisor and asked to haul the candidate over the coals a bit as they did not know as much as they thought they did and needed to find that out.
But if the external goes easy the internals rarely take up the slack. And externals and supervisors owe each other favours...

So when done well and honestly both systems COULD work. But it assumes disinterested behaviour from academics. Ha!

How could we make it better at a stroke?

It us a tough one but I have a thought here. Make it mandatory for the doctorate to be examined at a different university to that granting the award...

Just a thought.

I will have a large Work and Tonic please

My twitter feed, which suffers a great deal from my tendency to argue with people and not allow others the last word ( Muttley syndrome) popped up a link to this article today.
My first reaction was this:

@SciBry @deevybee only someone with a low teaching load believes that

— Inky Thehorse (@inky_r) July 14, 2015

which elicited this:

@inky_r @deevybee Most scientists don't teach.

— Bryan Gaensler (@SciBry) July 14, 2015

To which I called Bollocks. Huge sweaty bollocks.
But you see this is a matter of perspective.  In america this may be true, though I have to say that my friend, who has been Head of Chem Eng. at one of the top American Uni's routinely complains about his teaching load.  But it was asserted that most research was not done in Uni's but in Medical research laboratories.  If I understood correctly.
Now I suspect this may be a bit medicocentric but I am not in a position to judge the American system.  I will let others do so.
However from a European, and specifically ( I speak from where I have experience) UK, French and Swiss perspective, the idea that scientists do not teach is...unreal.
In the UK the vast majority of research is done in Universities. I can say that with moderate confidence.  It came about during the 80s when places like Shell, Boots, Pfizer etc. began applying the 80:20 rule, closing down commercial research centres and contracting out through PACE awards, KTI or other uni collaboration in order to get the research done off-site.  The UK government does run centralised laboratories, a list is here but note the list is quite small and these labs tend to be open access facilities like Diamond Light at Harwell.  They collaborate with Uni and commercial research but are relatively lightly staffed in and of themselves.  Think of them as a shared fumehood for much of the time.  Of course Rothamstead etc. are exceptions, but the number of staff at those places rarely rivals a big, or even moderately sized Uni.  and there are far more Unis out there.
And before you say it, teaching-only unversities are a very very rare thing in the UK because research is a cash cow (30% of budget) that funds teachng etc due to the extortionate overheads charged. (One institution I worked at insisted that after a grant had been costed an on-charge of 45% of the total (including equipment and consumables) be added to cover Uni expenses.  Everywhere has some on-charge, that one was just the most eyewatering I have seen)
The vast majority of staff at universities are academic.  This is true of the science departments as well.  I can say without a shadow of doubt that most scientists in the UK work in an academic institution.  And that means there is teaching going on.
So who does the teaching? Now as ever Oxbridge does it slightly differently because they are a bunch of inbred throwbacks who think the world looks like Hogwarts. (I worked in Cambridge for a while, believe me).  But here is how it works.
In the UK the basic unit of independent science is the Lecturer.  Thats the lowest grade that is likely to be a PI on a grant.  Professor is a very senior title, unlike in the US, normally a department head.

A lecturer will have been employed after having done a couple of years postdocing and will be expected to submit a successful grant application and get some research done very quickly.  Some institutions employ teaching fellows but this is mainly a dead end job and nobody wants to do it unless they have given up on advancement.
Lecturers, as the name suggests, are employed by the university to teach.  But they are, notoriously, graded on their research.  Most junior Lecturers will still be getting their hands dirty in the lab, trying to get the initial results to pump prime research.  If they get grants in they will normally try to employ a PhD student, or a postdoc, to do the research properly.  I would not count PhD students as scientists, they are embryo scientists.  But even so PhD students are often required to demonstrate in labs or take tutorial sessions (supervisions if you are somewhere posh) which is teaching.  You see I count student contact hours as teaching (undergraduate students that is).  So do most Uni contracts.
Postdocs are definitely scientists in my book, and postdocs definitely teach.  It is often a didactic requirement of the grant.  Most of them want to do it because it is good on the CV for becoming a lecturer.
Now s you move up through Senior Lecturer, reader, Principle lecturer, Professor the teaching load varies, but it rarely disappears.  when it does it is normally because the Prof has money enough to Buy Out his teaching hours, which then gets spread onto a plethora of postdocs etc.  However many institutions have rules against complete buyouts.  This is certainly true at ETH for example.  Also students, who in the UK increasingly want to dictate what they are paying for, do not take kindly to being told the lecture course by famous Professor X will instead be taught by Igor, the guy who cleans the gunk out of the Chicken Soup machine.
I have worked at both the top and the bottom of the UK market.  In both places all lecturers taught unless lots of money, which is increasingly rare.  In one place I had 25 contact hours a week, plus marking etc. (that's a hell of a lot) and was STILL expected to be rated on my research.  Do that 9-5 I dare you.
I think the basic point here is that the European system is very different from the US one, if indeed most scientists do not teach in the US.

A little sciencerant to pass the time

I was having an..well argumoid...the other day online with the delightful Rich Boden about whether or not one needed to collaborate in order to save time learning techniques.  I think there are points on both sides, and also think we were talking at cross purposes.  But let me spell out where I am coming from by an example in my own field.
My thesis is that the literature as it exists today is often an insufficient document of techniques to allow reproducibility.  This may or may not be recognised by those recording the results.  Actually I get the impression this is something they do not care about.
My field these days is microfluidics.  But just to show this is not new there is an example I am aware of from my birth-field, organic chemistry, where someone recognised this problem and actually put it right.
in 1984 Henri Kagan discovered that sulphides can be oxidised asymmetrically to sulphoxides using a modified Sharpless reagent.  This was good news, but many people struggled to repeat his results and boy did they try.  So later on Kagan pubished a much more detailed procedure and explanation to help others along.  This one worked fine.  I used it myself at least once.
The thing is that the original had described what they had done, but only gave enough detail for someone who was used to the system to effectively repeat it. Insufficient dissemination of knowledge.
In my field now this is a huge problem.  Microfluidics, when I started doing it, was a field only for a few labs.  partly this was because the fabrication facilities needed were expensive.  then the inimitable George Whitesides published a paper on soft lithography which showed you could make easy biocompatible devices from polydimeethylsiloxane (PDMS) quickly and do it in a small clean cupboard.  This led to a democratisation of the process.  When biologists wanted to do microffluidics they got a grant, then hired a biologist because microfluidics is easy and the lit teaches it to you, right?
Oh boy are they often in for a surprise.
PDMS itself is not so much a compound as a loose confederation of warring tribes.  For a start actual pdms is dimethicone, mainly a sexual lubricant.  It is a messy compound that operators of mass spectrometers hate because it gets everywhere.  Even in your lipstick.  But the PDMS used in chips isnt PDMS it is mainly Sylgard 184.  This compound is marvellous for many things.  It was developed as a diggable potting compound.  It is closely related to bathroom sealant.  But it was never ever meant to have chips made from it.
What is not mentioned much in the lit is how variable the results from chip to chip are with PDMS.  The pros know things like DO NOT MIX KITS (each kit contains monomer and setting agent, each is titrated.  the setting agent from one kit does not work well with another kits monomer) and TIME STAMP THE CHIPS ( PDMS continues setting and changing at room temp for weeks.  experiments on chips from the same batch at different times will vary).  We know the chips drink oil, leak water, transpire gas.  We know they will absorb dyes (put an m and m one and leave it...).  We even once did an experiment which showed, reproducibly, that the speed and DIRECTION of stirring of the premix could give variable results.
So you need to standardise a lot.  the big fellas know this.
But the democratised user does not.  I commonly hear tales at bio conerences of people who could not get microfluidic experiments to work and gave up after months of trial.  Also commonly I can tell them in 20 mins what went wrong and how to fix it.  So why dont we publish?
Try it.  We recently managed to get a paper published on the problems in a related field, droplets, which showed many of the problems and systematised them.  This took several rejections.  why?  Not novel.
Well no, not novel, just desperately needed.
And the rejections took a pattern.  professors rejected.  Students and postdocs who saw it at conference wrote to us begging for a transcript.  We distributed over 500 copies of our poster.  Why is this?
The people doing the experiments know the problems.  The professor only sees the good results at the end of the week.
This is a multivariate problem.  As scientists we edit our results, showing the working system.  the journals kinda want this.  But we run the risk of editing out vital information that allows reproducibility.  the number of microfluidic designs you only see once is too high.  And i do not think my field is alone here.

She wakes up, she makes up

So, I was going to get a title from Nobodys Diarybut this one is playing in Costa so here we go.
I have been in Scandiwegia for a day or two so it has been a no blog zone.  This was a talk that my friend whom we shall call Brent and I had arranged early in the year whenI still had a life. I kept him apprised of all the developements and he said go ahead anyway so I did.
Well I say apprised, I hadnt come out to him yet, though I did this weekend. Just because so many now mnow I am bisexual that it was better than he find out otherwise. Hjs reaction was basically "you were bi but totalky faithfull, why should Mrsinky care" and also " I dont give a fuck, is that whiskey you are holding?"
Remember he is under the scandiwegian booze blockade...
Anyhoo he and i go back 20 years or so. He was a junior in the lab where I did my Ph.D. and was bullied after I left (noone gets bullied where I can see it) but had a very very successful industry career.  Has now been brought in to academia to industrify the research.
So these guys are food science, and thats an open goal.  Microfluidics has not been applied to food science at all. So anything you do is publishable.
My big problem was concealing my current difficulties.
Anyhoo lots of lovely discussions. Nice blue sky thinking. Vague possibility of a job though thats very low likelihood. Lots of reminiscing.
Brent has gone slightly conspiracy theory wingnut but its entertaining.  Much beer. Also Oban whisky and good meals in Malmo, where I havent been for a decade.
Before I went date, whom I shall have to speudonymise soon, introduced me to his lovely dog. Dog is a boxer, very characterful, lovely friendly thing. But i managed to bork a shoulder in meeting him.  Still not sure Dates exepctations andmine coincide.
Flight over was ok but flight back was hell. Queueing system at copenhagen is awful. Next time im taking a chair.
Tonjght foal and i repair to Somerzet.
Yesterday was a sofa day.  But also....mrsinky rang and was talkkng about foals birthday next week. She was talking about getting separate presents. And it brought it back. I am living in denial. Im doing nkthing pretending its all ok. When i get a reminder of what my situation actually is...I fold. I cannot process it.
If it continues as is...well I have sick pay till Feb 2017. Then I will kill myself. Looking at it rationally I think thats the best solutoon all round.

Ps photo includes todays cafe hotty. This guys back sings s he moves.

In a line that never ends.. .

I woke this mornin with ahek of a headache. also I hae to cope with a parental visit for which I do not really have the energy. So after the foal delivery run l came straight to David Lloyd to work out and Sauna. Also partly to try not to let my encounter with Mr. Blonde Twat Scare me away from using the place. Because it would. Although I must say the management response has been very good they are let down by a corporate image which does not admit we cripples exist.
So first of all L am sitting down eating their porridge (which would get a 7/10 from EPD I think) and overhearing a lady holdng Court to her adoring friends.
What she was spouting was pure Shite from beginning to end.
Her promise was that it was harder to prepare healthy food than unhealthy food. That got me listening due to Its divergence from culinary reality. She actually said it was harder to prepare a salad than a roast dinner.
Now leaving aside the false equivalence of healthy = Salad this is Just Bollocks so I was keen to hear more of her world.
What followed was pure woo. Organic food, fear of pesticide, fear of GM. The feverish washing of all veg. except cabbage and brocolli , All Apples Must Be Peeled!
But Tesco ready meals were fine.
I despair at times. This is a product of Thatcher axing Home. Ec., The Daily Mail and the Paleo Woo here, plus scientific illiteracy.
Serious problem. Why can't the English teach their children how to think ? Or cook?

Filigree Siberian Hamsters

Ok so I am having a bit of a wobble at the moment.

Yesterday, in fact the whole weekend was a nightmare of depression and violent emotion.  I wrote my first suicide note.  Lousy grammar.
When it came down to it the only thing holding me back was an inherent unwillingness to hurt others.  I had managed to get myself somewhere where I couldnt top myself without causing property damage.  Such are the tricks I am having to play on my mind at the moment to divert it from it's avowed mission.
To make matters even better my eyes are playing up.
But my attention has been drawn to a recent story about rats.

'Gerbils replace rats' as main cause of Black Death

What nonsense.

Black rats may not have been to blame for numerous outbreaks of the bubonic plague across Europe, a study suggests

Oh dear.

The problem is again one of scientific illiteracy.  Or headline mongering.  From the headline you would assume that the rat didnt spread the plague.  Of course it did.  Thre is a difference between the reservoir and the vector.
As far as I knew nobody much had thought the rat was the reservoir for plague for about 40 years.  certainly in 1976 William Mcneill wrote a whole book, Plagues and peoples, on the uncontroversial idea that it was a rodent resrvoir of some kind of marmot or prairie dog living in mongolia.  The rat was the vector.
So now we have simply a change of reservoir.  the vector remains the same.  the rat is as much to blame as it has been for 40 years.

The BBC should be ashamed of itself.  And start employing scientists to write science stories rather than the current wunch of ignoramuses.

The Scientific Afterlife

I suppose that many scientists do not think of posterity much when they do their work.  in my experience generally you think of the problem in front of you, the bureaucracy around you and beer.

But in a way the output of your career, those papers you fought to get published, are your gift to the ages.  that is why Researchgate and similar H-indexing type sites focus on telling you who is citing you.

Researchgate is like a propellerheads-only version of facebook.  If you don't log on for a week or so it emails you with lots of things you could find out about if only you logged on.  For all I know ( I dont pay much attention to these things, I am a marketers worst nightmare) it is full of targetted ads for designer labcoats and Igor cages.

Anyway one disturbing thing about researchgate is its ability to raise the dead.

A collaborator of mine died last year.  A wonderfully kind and generous man called Soo-Ik Chang, he died suddenly leaving a young family.  I really think the Korean science community has lost a majr asset.

Anyway such is the time delay factor in science that he is still publishing.  People are finishing papers with him on as an author and publishing them.  We are too.

So this mornings email from researchgate was a bit upsetting.  It featured a picture of Soo-Ik, smiling like always, telling me he had cited my work.  Strange how these things work out.

Rearranging the deckchairs.

Today has been so epically shit already that I am hiding out in public places so as to avoid suicide.  There arent words.
However I am doing displacement activity quite nicely.
So here goes. I hate the Daily Mail. It is, in my opinion, a vile hate filled rag. It has not changed much since it was boldly supporting the British Fascist Movement and backing the wrong Mitford sister.
One of it's current idees fixes is that many things cause or cure cancer. This delightful blog has preserved this vital information for Science.
I am heartened by such dedication.