…and this is a 
I read this story with mounting disbelief. Every paragraph had me increasingly aghast. It's another case of physicists explaining biology badly.
It started dubiously enough. Paul Davies, cosmologist and generally clever fellow, was recruited to help cure cancer, despite, by his own admission, having "no prior knowledge of cancer".
Two years ago, in a spectacularly enlightened move, the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) decided to enlist the help of physical scientists. The idea was to bring fresh insights from disciplines like physics to help tackle cancer in radical new ways.
Uh, OK…I can agree that fresh insights can sometimes stimulate novel approaches. Cancer is an extraordinarily complex process, but maybe, just maybe, the scientists studying it are so deep in the details that they're missing some obvious alternative avenue that would be productive to study. I can think of examples; for instance, Judah Folkman's realization that inhibiting angiogenesis, the process by which cancers recruit a blood supply from healthy tissue, would be a clever way to attack cancers beyond just bashing the cancer cells themselves. But then, Folkman wasn't ignorant of cancer…he came up with that strategy from a deep understanding of how cancers work.
So I'm doubtful, but prepared to read something that might be new and interesting…and then I read Davies' suggestion. Gah.
A century ago the German biologist Ernst Haekel pointed out that the stages of embryo development recapitulate the evolutionary history of the animal. Human embryos, for instance, develop, then lose, gills, webbed feet and rudimentary tails, reflecting their ancient aquatic life styles. The genes responsible for these features normally get silenced at a later stage of development, but sometimes the genetic control system malfunctions and babies get born with tails and other ancestral traits. Such anomalous features are called atavisms.
Charles Lineweaver of the Australian National University is, like me, a cosmologist and astrobiologist with a fascination for how cancer fits into the story of life on Earth. Together we developed the theory that cancer tumours are a type of atavism that appears in the adult form when something disrupts the silencing of ancestral genes. The reason that cancer deploys so many formidable survival traits in succession, is, we think, because the ancient genetic toolkit active in the earliest stages of embryogenesis gets switched back on, re-activating the Proterozoic developmental plan for building cell colonies. If you travelled in a time machine back one billion years, you would see many clumps of cells resembling modern cancer tumours.
The implications of our theory, if correct, are profound. Rather than cancers being rogue cells degenerating randomly into genetic chaos, they are better regarded as organised footsoldiers marching to the beat of an ancient drum, recapitulating a billion-year-old lifestyle. As cancer progresses in the body, so more and more of the ancestral core within the genetic toolkit is activated, replaying evolution's story in reverse sequence. And each step confers a more malignant trait, making the oncologist's job harder.
I'm almost speechless. I'm almost embarrassed enough for Davies that I don't want to point out the profound stupidities in that whole line of argument. But then, there's this vicious little part of my brain that perks up and wants to leap and rend and gnaw and shred. Maybe it's an atavism.
Please, someone inform Davies that Haeckel was wrong. Recapitulation theory doesn't work and embryos do not go through the evolutionary stages of their ancestors. We do not develop and then lose gills: we develop generalized branchial structures that subsequently differentiate and specialize. In fish, some of those arches differentiate into gills, but those same arches in us develop into the thyroid gland and miscellaneous cartilagenous and bony structures of the throat and ears.
It's better to regard embryos as following von Baerian developmental trajectories, proceeding from an initially generalized state to a more refined and specialized state over time. Limbs don't reflect our ancient aquatic ancestry in utero, instead, limbs develop as initially blobby protrusions and digits develop by later sculpting of the tissue.
Sure, there is an ancestral core of genes and processes deep in metazoan development. But Davies seems to think they're lurking, silenced, waiting to be switched on and turn the cell into a prehistoric monster. This is not correct. Those ancient genes are active, operating in common developmental processes all over the place. You want to see Proterozoic cell colonies? Look in the bone marrow, at the hematopoietic pathways that produce masses of blood cells. The genes he's talking about are those involved in mitosis and cell adhesion. They aren't dinosaurs of the genome that get resurrected by genetic accidents. but the engines of cell proliferation that lose the governors that regulate their controlled expression, and go into runaway mode in cancers.
But even if their model were correct (which is such a silly way to start a paragraph; it's like announcing, "If the Flintstones were an accurate portrayal of stone age life…"), it doesn't help. We don't have tools to manipulate atavisms. We don't see any genetic circuits that can be called atavistic. The Flintstones might have made record players out of rocks, but that doesn't imply that the music recording industry can get valuable insights from the show.
Oh, well, I shouldn't be so negative. I'm alienating possible sources of work here. I understand the physicists have encountered some peculiar results lately. Have they considered bringing in a biologist consultant with no prior knowledge of particle physics? I have some interesting ideas that might explain their anomalies, based on my casual understanding of phlogiston theory and ætheric humours.
Life Science
Medicine & Health
Comments
Posted by: CanadianChick
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April 26, 2011 9:47 AM
Wow. Just...wow.
I'm not any sort of scientist, haven't formally studied any science in well over 20 years (and that was in high school) and I know how very wrong this is.
There ARE physicists who know better than this - I hang out with them at Skeptics in the Pub.
Posted by: jspenguin
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April 26, 2011 9:49 AM
If you ask a physicist to cure cancer, you'll get a solution that only works for spherical humans in a vacuum.
Posted by: Dhorvath, OM
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April 26, 2011 9:53 AM
On a frictionless plane.
Posted by: Brenden
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April 26, 2011 9:53 AM
I genuinely like the idea of cross-sectional science teams, and think they're likely to be the key to some currently unfathomable discoveries. But, all of the players should probably do a little backgrounder on the facts first ...
Posted by: hyperdeath
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April 26, 2011 9:56 AM
At absolute zero.
Posted by: Gus Snarp
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April 26, 2011 10:04 AM
You don't even have to get into the weeds of this to see he's got a problem: he calls it a "theory" and then says, "if this theory is correct..." What he has is a hypothesis at best, a half-assed conjecture at worst. Please people, we all use the colloquial meaning of theory on occasion, but when discussing scientific ideas, if one cannot be bothered to differentiate between theory and hypothesis (or speculation), then one can hardly be called a scientist.
Also, what's with this "enlist the help of physical scientists"? Am I wrong on my definition? I thought biology was a physical science. Maybe that's just because I come from a strange field that isn't sure if it's a physical science or a social science, but I thought biology was sure?
Posted by: derelicthat
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April 26, 2011 10:04 AM
Not a good model for cancer research, but I think he's got a great start for a made-for-TV SyFy movie.
Posted by: Alice Bluegown
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April 26, 2011 10:06 AM
I'm pretty sure that "theory" was the basis for a particularly bad David Tennant-era episode of Dr Who...
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip
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April 26, 2011 10:07 AM
If there aren't a whole bunch of ancient genes in my cells just waiting to be switched on, then how will I gain my Atlantean psychic superpowers?
Posted by: harold
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April 26, 2011 10:12 AM
While the quote is inarticulate and makes reference to incorrect yet persistent lay stereotypes about embryology, it is not quite as wrong as it sounds. I would argue that it fails more in being an inarticulate and pompous statement of the already extremely well-known (once the false statements about embryology are removed).
One way to conceptualize cancer is that it is a breakdown of cellular regulation and differentiation.
The individual cells of a multicelluar organism each contain approximately the same genome, but each individual cell is constrained to a differentiated role, and, except for circulating cells, to respect highly specific anatomic boundaries.
Cancer cells don't differentiate and respond to regulatory signals in a normal way.
That's probably true of many somatically mutated cells that just die, but cancer cells also survive, proliferate, and metastasize (disregard anatomic boundaries). They are selected for relative to normal cells, since reproduction of the latter is tightly constrained by regulatory signals. Eventually, though, they kill the host.
Cancer cells don't all die, of course, of they wouldn't be cancer cells, and thus they do preserve, by definition, ancient biochemical pathways necessary for cell survival.
Unsurprisingly, the genetic abnormalities present in cancer cells are often related to genes/proteins involved in development/regulation (for a starting point see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncogenes and then use that to expand your reading, if interested).
So some of what Davies is saying is arguably quite accurate, but basic.
He seems to have learned the alphabet, and then concluded that he invented it.
Posted by: mxh
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April 26, 2011 10:12 AM
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing when I started reading this. Though, I expect physicists to say that "biology is just physics anyway, not the other way around."
Posted by: oihorse
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April 26, 2011 10:13 AM
Wait a minute - where is the outrage, mutterings of disbelief, and hanging of heads in shame from the scientists at NCI?
Surely there should be brains imploding at this outlandish 'theory'.
Right... right?!
Posted by: Zeno
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April 26, 2011 10:14 AM
Isn't all scientific knowledge fungible? There was that old sf movie ("Crack in the World?") where one character was described as "the world's greatest physicist" and the other was "the world's greatest scientist." I guess there are only a couple of categories, so it all lumps together very nicely! (Except for "physics" and "science", of course.)
Posted by: KG
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April 26, 2011 10:16 AM
I understand the physicists have encountered some peculiar results lately. Have they considered bringing in a biologist consultant with no prior knowledge of particle physics? - PZ
Following PZ's link to a sceptical take on the "3-sigma bump" at Fermilab, I can't help wondering if psychologists and social scientists might be helpful: would this have been reported so prominently if Fermilab were not soon to close? I'm not saying they're trying to keep it open - as I understand it that's just not going to happen and everyone knows it - but it's very understandable to want to go out on a high, and so persuade yourselves you've got more than you have.
Posted by: PZ Myers
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April 26, 2011 10:17 AM
I don't know that I like the idea of cross-sectional science teams. They have a couple of possible outcomes.
1. As in this case, you get a couple of people who are way outside the relevant discipline, and you get a fantasy that might have come from Steampunk Mars.
2. Davies could have been paired with a cancer biologist, but then all that would have happened is the biologist would have spent all his time training Davies in the basics, and it would have slowed research.
It might work if all parties have prior knowledge of the subject at hand. Just throwing in some guys who know nothing at all and expecting innovation is a waste of time.
Posted by: Gus Snarp
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April 26, 2011 10:20 AM
And to start the flood of people posting the same link and not realizing it was already posted: the obligatory XKCD reference.
Posted by: R. Schauer
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April 26, 2011 10:22 AM
I think the NCI folks were following F.D.R. who said something like, "if you don't know which button to push, push them all." It is a strategy and should be acknowledged as such but, in hindsight, isn't very rational or focused. OK, let's learn and move on - making all aware of this fallacy. But it is too bad cancer isn't responsive to human stupidity or it would have been cured long-ago.
Posted by: jennyxyzzy
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April 26, 2011 10:24 AM
The contrarian in me says that maybe we should wait and see if Paul Davies manages to produces some tests that would differentiate between his hypothesis and the standard model of cancer before drawing and quartering him. After all, the guy has done some pretty decent work in physics, he must understand how science works...
But then the realist in me kicks in and reminds me that Davies already has a rather poor record with respect to magical thinking, so I'm really not holding out much hope :-/
Posted by: frog, Inc.
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April 26, 2011 10:25 AM
Have they considered bringing in a biologist consultant with no prior knowledge of particle physics?
Yeah -- cause bringing in folks who did pre-med in college because they had trouble adding above ten while wearing shoes is EXACTLY like bringing in someone steeped in mathematical skillz to try to find some unifying simplification.
Folks who say things like "cancer is very complicated" as if it meant something useful, rather than just a cry of despair are just as smart as folks who manage to find underlying simplifications for the evolution of mega-structures in the universe. Just as smart, right.
I'm now convinced that the best thing we can do to get biology moving again is to cut funding by 50%. We've returned to pre-Darwinian biology, where the "it's very complicated" people spend life-times counting legs on beetles and laughing at people like Darwin and Haeckel who tried to develop simplifying approximations to their very complicated world.
"But Darwin doesn't explain why Curcolinidae have ten percent higher chitin density than other beetles!" Aaaargh, indeed. Indeedy deed.
Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy
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April 26, 2011 10:28 AM
No, it's a soft womany science.
</sarcasm>
Save that bon mot for the conference. :)
Posted by: Gus Snarp
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April 26, 2011 10:28 AM
@frog, Inc - Have you always been such a reading comprehension impaired idiot?
Posted by: mxh
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April 26, 2011 10:30 AM
Posted by: latsot
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April 26, 2011 10:31 AM
My job for about a decade was to bring lots of scientists, engineers, social scientists and anyone else who had anythig cool to say together and to give them money, sometimes quite a lot of money. The money was filtered out of a computer science department and therefore required a computing core, but we got all kinds of people working together - productively, not just fighting over money. For example, we had biologists reviving the sort-of waning parallel computing business. We had service, grid and cloud computing (which was kind of novel back then) convincing biologists, chemists, geologists, geographers and all sorts of other people to do things a little differently. We encouraged a whole lot of engineers, architects and so on to work with scientists of various kinds. I myself allocated something like £9m on collaborative projects, crossing the boundaries between disciplines.
And then there were particle physicists. They wouldn't work with us except to take some money and go off and do their own thing and leave people like me to explain what happened to the funders. They expected extra funding and got it. They imagined that their work was more important than anyone elses and the UK government at the time agreed.
Posted by: Kemist
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April 26, 2011 10:32 AM
Well, depends if their expertise is relevant. A physicist might be relevant, for example, in optimizing cryotherapy or gamma knife. Or as cristallographers (most of which are either physicists or chemists). This kind of thing is not new.
But to throw them at fields like molecular biology, without any meaningful experience and limited knowledge of the field is frankly a waste of time for both physicists and biologists.
I've met a couple physicists who did just that (as grad students), and while they could manage themselves in a lab after the usual undergrad-type blunders, their understanding of the field remained blotchy at best.
Combined with a tendancy to overestimate said understanding, because, you know, biology isn't as "hard" a science as physics, it's not a recipe for success.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/8bqrWi8P1phCrnAok4RRCdF08oVztw5MjQ--#a8fc8
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April 26, 2011 10:32 AM
The SF reference that comes immediately to mind is "Genesis" from season seven of ST:TNG. I want that hour back.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 10:32 AM
Especially annoying as they could have just explained it better by the Lazarus experiment being an artificial regeneration that was botched. It's already established less favorable conditions for a regen can potentially create a nonhumanoid end product.
Posted by: DLC
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April 26, 2011 10:34 AM
These guys should have been given a couple introductory courses in biology first, then they might have got at something. They still might, once the biology community stops laughing at them and they do a bit more thinking.
PZ@ 15: Hey, I kinda like steampunk. well, the artwork is kinda fun to look at.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 10:35 AM
Frog, Fuck off.
Posted by: Ethan
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April 26, 2011 10:39 AM
I am a distinguished physicist. I will be happy to make suggestions about what cancer researchers should be doing. You can pay me in beer.
That is all.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 10:42 AM
Yes...that's why he went into high math based fields because reading is hard.
Posted by: Blattafrax
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April 26, 2011 10:42 AM
There are cancer researchers at the NCI right now asking how much they are paying Paul Davies to point out the blindingly obvious in a New Agey hand-waving sort of way while throwing red herrings in all directions.
I loved Paul Davies' books 20 years ago. His pop-sci cosmology was detailed and very readable. I'd recommend The Mind of God to anyone - but you might want to leave out the last chapter if you have a sensitive face or palm.
This though, is embarassing.
Posted by: GermanMan
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April 26, 2011 10:43 AM
To be fair, there's already a lot of physics in curing cancer -- from X-rays and MR imaging to the latest forms of radiation therapy. Sticking to what they know physicists are a great asset in cancer research. No excuse for publishing ignorant-of-the-field ideas, though.
Posted by: john.s.wilkins
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April 26, 2011 10:45 AM
What both professions need are philosophers, because we have such a good record of making the world better.
Posted by: Ian Edmond
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April 26, 2011 10:46 AM
Templeton Prize Winner, 1995. Just saying...
Posted by: bananacat
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April 26, 2011 10:47 AM
As part of my engineering curriculum, every student had to take intro bio and chem freshman year. And even in that short overview class, we learned about Haeckel's theory and why it's wrong. There's just no excuse for this.
Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/VAmwWdkfyPUOpUVQtDTumOX6ZwLQNg--#16a6b
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April 26, 2011 10:51 AM
Now, being a systems biologist, I might be a little bias, but I'm all in favor of physicists in biology. For too long biology has been a science with lots of data, lots of ideas and no formal models. The ability to build formal models, whether they be math based, like differential equation models, statistical, like Markovian processes, or logical, like Boolean networks, is what physicists bring to biology. That along with the conviction that just knowing isn't enough. One has to understand as well. The days of biology as the science for people who don't like math are over.
And once you strip away the hyperbole from the article its not really that outlandish either. What is it saying? That early organisms evolved to replicate efficiently with out constraint. That when multicellular life evolved, that capacity to replicate had to be controlled, and so a number of control mechanisms were put in place to do this. Now whether you see the removal of those mechanisms as a positive thing (the reactivation of dormant proliferative pathways) or negative ( the loss of control mechanisms preventing unwanted proliferation) really is purely interpretative. And he does provide a way in which his theory can have an effect on experiment: studying the genetics of proliferation in single celled organisms. Studying cell cycle in single celled organisms is hardly heretical now is it? CDC25 anyone?
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 10:54 AM
@yahoo
Reading fail
Posted by: cowalker
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April 26, 2011 10:54 AM
If Paul Davies' theory is correct, perhaps the cure for cancer is Blair Brown?*
*see the movie "Altered States"
Posted by: elronxenu
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April 26, 2011 10:56 AM
He's screwed the pooch from the very first paragraph.
I'm just waiting to hear about Quantum Cancer.
Posted by: beachton
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April 26, 2011 10:56 AM
Look, anybody who says, "The implications of our theory, if correct, are profound," is a douchebag. I wish you wouldn't besmirch the rest of us physicists. He's less like a physicist and more like that real estate developer who puts "Prestigious Homes" on the sign at the entrance of his new subdivision. What a douche. I expect other developers are embarrassed by that bourgeois gaffe same as I'm embarrassed by this.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 10:57 AM
<poisoningthewell>
Isn't that the Paul Davies who won Templeton a few years ago?
</poisoningthewell>
Anyways, I am a physicist and I did not know that there was a market for all the great insights about unreleated fields that I have had over glasses of red wine all the time. Where can I apply as interdisciplinary advisor?
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 10:59 AM
Something about this to me screams "bullshit statistic". What's "Little changed" by what number? And does that just mean 'death' is it counting the difference in how long people could live with a cancer? There's a difference if 30 years ago you died within a year and if now you die within ten...that's still a huge achievement.
For someone who is supposed to be pure math he did a shitty job there.
Posted by: harold
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April 26, 2011 11:01 AM
frog -
I find your comments grossly incorrect.
In reality, of course, any biomedical undergraduate major requires a fair amount of math, and vast numbers of people cross train in very advanced math and computer sciences/biomedical science. Not knowing this shows that you know nothing whatsoever about biomedical science. Yet you shoot your ignorant mouth off.
1) Does the original article suggest that a "unifying simplification" is the issue here?
2) For that matter, there are a number of basic, unifying principles about cancer that are already known, and Davies does seem to repeat some of them. One of my irritations with the quote by him - and I personally hope that he will do something worthwhile despite the quote - was his implication that he invented them.
As a former pathologist, I can assure you that cancer is indeed very complicated, by any reasonable standard. Your denial of this merely serves to accentuate your total ignorance.
I have no idea what this word salad means, beyond the obvious fact that it means that you try to babble "fancy words" in a vain effort to deceptively present yourself as possessing some sort of expertise.
Fortunately, you are just an ignorant, powerless buffoon, blabbering nonsense on the internet.
If by "we" you mean some bizarre group that you belong to, this could be true.
If by "we" you mean mainstream biomedical science, then you must be exceptionally dishonest, and probably exceptionally ignorant, to make such a statement. Certainly nothing of the sort is taking place.
Again, here, your bizarre comments border on the incomprehensible.
Haeckel made important contributions but, as with almost all great nineteenth century scientists, had some ideas that have since been found to be wrong.
Unusual characteristics in a beetle population would generally be understood in the context of the theory of evolution.
Posted by: kitsune.rei
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April 26, 2011 11:04 AM
I should note here there are a lot of physicists who work on cancer and in the medical field. There's a whole branch of physics dedicated to it - medical physics.
They mostly work on radiation type stuff, and I had an ex who worked on a medical physics project which involved modelling blood clots with really cool things. They also seem to also go to medical school, because both people I know who did medical physics went to medical school as well shortly thereafter.
So physicists curing cancer? Not a absurd proposition. A cosmologist curing cancer, however, is rather absurd.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 11:04 AM
@Harold
Frog is a well known idiot who doesn't think biology is real science and a whole bunch of bullshit because he has to be the King Nerd of Shit Mountain.
Posted by: Bernard Bumner
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April 26, 2011 11:04 AM
Ah frog, you fucking know-nothing idiot, back again with that chip on your shoulder about biology.
Biology moves on and continues to provide useful insights and technology. The fact that you think biology is a stagnant, soft science is due to nothing more than your own ignorance.
Why do you insist on subjecting us to your opinions? - You are simply not amusing enough to excuse the terrible waste of oxygen implied by your continued abilty to post comments
Posted by: Kemist
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April 26, 2011 11:05 AM
What if it cannot be simplified ?
What if the best you could hope for was modeling an extremely complex system using the best of what computer science and biological data have to offer ?
Good news : it's already being done. Physicists, chemists and biologists already collaborate together with those weird new guys called bio-informaticians. It's called systems biology.
First learn what's being done and freakin' try to understand the problems, then you might have something meaningful to say.
Yes, now is the time to cut off funding, while biology is generating data by the truckload for all of us to use. Very smart.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmVT1LBhwmO9ej9LNg7a5e9d-AVJ8ezfmE
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April 26, 2011 11:07 AM
Consider a cancer as a sphere...
(whenever I encounter the "why haven't we cured cancer yet" meme I refer them to Orac's excellent post explaining that 'cancer' is really hundreds or thousands of different things that can go wrong with you. Orac, in case you're reading this: thank you!)
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
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April 26, 2011 11:15 AM
jeezus, frog, Inc.
You display precisely the ignorant/hubristic attitude for which PZ and commentors are castigating Davies. It is the height of ignorance to suggest that what the War On Cancer needs is 'unifying simplicity'. One could make a good case that the arguably disappointing results of the past 40 years of intensively funded research show that a search for magic bullets and one-size-fits-all simplicities will not work, because it has not worked.
Why hasn't it? Because cancer is hellishly complex. Far from a single disease, every tumor is different in the combinations of genes and environmental triggers that describe their etiology. The jerry-rigged (because evolved) systems involved are simply more complicated than anybody understands yet. That's fact, not an excuse.
The idea that the next thing to do is parachute in some mathematical physicists to model the damn thing and explain the unifying simplicities in differential equations is beyond ludicrous.
Posted by: Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
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April 26, 2011 11:16 AM
Indeed.
Posted by: harold
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April 26, 2011 11:18 AM
@#36 YahooStuff -
You did not have a "reading fail"; in fact, much of what Davies does, as others have noted, is repeat the obvious/already-well-known, in a way which deceptively implies that he discovered or invented these concepts.
I do have some mild problems with your first paragraph. I am also strongly in favor of interaction between biology and physics, of course, but still have some problems here.
While the second sentence here is not so bad (actually it is math which brings these things to both physics and biology) the first one seems false to me. Although I'm not an academic biologist by profession, I flat out disagree that biology has no formal models. It has many.
I find this obnoxious and unforgivable. How dare you make such a grotesque and unjustified comment about the entire field of biomedical science?
Another cheap swipe. As one who enjoys both biology and math, I find this obnoxious and stupid.
Any major university has programs in biophysics, biochemistry (which requires a fair amount of physics and phys chem), biology and math, biostatistics, etc.
What the hell is the matter with the dickheads on this thread who are implying otherwise?
Posted by: Bernard Bumner
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April 26, 2011 11:24 AM
Interdisciplinary studies form the basis for most science, and the vast majority of people consider this to be a good thing in principle.
Biology continues to make good use of physicists and chemists. Chemistry continues to make good use of phycisists and biologists. Specialists within each domain collaborate within and between their own fields.
Yes, it is. What you've done is not to strip away hyperbole, but to paraphrase the article to the point of changing the meaning. You've offered the most liberal interpretation of the broad thrust of the thing and ignored the most egregious mistakes in the specific details.
Davies theory, as stated in the article, is little more than archaic, garbled pseudo-biology.
Posted by: dbakolas
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April 26, 2011 11:25 AM
First comment on the blog to say that I actually disagree with the post, speaking as a trained molecular biologist. I think that in general, we biologists lack the mathematical and modelling skills of modern physicists and that this is an area where they can contribute. This has happened before, after the Manhattan project, many physicists decide to turn to biology, perhaps out of remorse (or out of lack of better options). to them we owe some of the equations we have to describe various phenomena, and of course, the double helix was co-discovered by a physicist (Maurice Wilkins) trained in molecular biology. Of course, in order to contribute, one needs to have more than a superficial knowledge and this is not evident in this example. However, it is true that most of us are too engrossed in the details and occasionally fail to see a grander picture that may be more apparent to someone trained in a different discipline.
Posted by: harold
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April 26, 2011 11:29 AM
A final comment -
In getting my bio undergrad degree, I was required to take a general physics, general chem, organic chem, calculus, and statistics, of course, as well as basic computer programming. I went a bit beyond what was required in probability/stats and phys chem. I'm no physicist or programmer, but I don't have a gaping, moronic hole of ignorance with regard to those subjects either.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work the other way with some people in physical sciences or IT. There is no biology requirement for these degrees in most places.
That in itself is fine. Take electives or read on your own if interested, do a dual degree (as many do) if strongly interested.
Unfortunately, some people with gaping, moronic holes of ignorance with regard to the biomedical sciences choose to comment ignorantly on them.
Also amusing - a recent business partner of mine with a PhD in EE was fond of telling people - accurately, I believe - the he went into EE rather than biomedical sciences because he "couldn't stand the sight of blood".
But times are changing, and Physics is no longer a degree for people who can't stand the sight of blood.
Posted by: Dan L.
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April 26, 2011 11:29 AM
Physics is the Engineering Department of science, with all the intellectual hazards that implies.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmVT1LBhwmO9ej9LNg7a5e9d-AVJ8ezfmE
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April 26, 2011 11:37 AM
Hey, PZ - you should write a letter to the folks at the Large Hadron Collider, offering to come and give a "Biologist's Perspective" on what they're doing. C'mon, you gotta admit their reply could be pretty funny. Or maybe Orac could offer them his "Oncologist's Perspective"
Posted by: Glen Davidson
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April 26, 2011 11:37 AM
Wow, that sounds about like Freud's "reasoning" for the "death wish."
And like Freud, it sounds Lamarckian (or at least as Lamarck is commonly understood, which some claim is wrong). As if there were just these stages in life to which one could return, rather than evolution that has in many cases hopelessly compromised what once was, so that it could never be exactly reconstructed.
Glen Davidson
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 11:40 AM
Actually when dealing with stuff that generates radiation and that like I'd imagine an Oncologist might have some insight...
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 11:44 AM
@harold
What?! Er, no, you mean physicians. understandable mistake.
@Dan L.
Yes, and cosmology is definitely the Engineering Department of physics. Which makes biology the Engineering Department of cosmology. And so on in that fashion. QED
(This insight (TM) was brought to you for free by a mathematically trained commenter working in the electrical engineering equivalent of physics.)
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmAoqMlPvhIRK0mkZl4yD5XUsv2rVZXIZ8
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April 26, 2011 11:46 AM
59 comments and no one's said "oncology recapitulates phylogeny" yet?
Posted by: harold
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April 26, 2011 11:47 AM
dbakolas -
I do not think that you disagree with the post. I think you misinterpreted the post (the title is misleading).
The post does not say "people trained in physics have nothing to offer biology". That would be a stupid thing to say.
The post says "one particular physicist, who is being paid to be involved with cancer research, made some dumb comments about cancer research, dumb comments which, among other things, indicated a lack of basic knowledge about some important issues in biology, and an attempt to take credit for already well-known and long-established principles in cancer research".
The post is correct. Your comments are correct (with the caveat that mathematical skills are not limited to physicists). Your comments and the post are not at odds with each other.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 11:49 AM
Which reminds me, a lot of the LHC public relations stuff back when it first switched on did sound a lot like "The LHC recapitulates cosmology", didn't it? And it's almost just as wrong. Yes Prof. Cox, I'm looking at you.
Posted by: Sastra OM/COR
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April 26, 2011 11:54 AM
Can I just say here for one moment that I have a new theory about cancer? Well you may well ask me what is my theory. What is it that it is - this theory of mine. Well, this is what it is - my theory that I have, that is to say, which is mine, is mine. This is it. My theory that belongs to me is as follows. This is how it goes. The next thing I"m going to say is my theory. Ready?
My theory by Paul Davies. This theory goes as follows and begins now:
Cancer tumours are a type of atavism that appears in the adult form when something disrupts the silencing of ancestral genes.
That is my theory, it is mine, and belongs to me and I own it, and what it is too. The implications of my theory, if correct, are profound. It's been a lot of fun. Saying what my theory is. And whose it is. Because it's a theory from a physicist.
(Ok, probably unfair, but it's been a lot of fun. Doing that.)
Posted by: theshortearedowl
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April 26, 2011 12:01 PM
I'm sure xkcd already covered this... something like "there's nothing as annoying as a physicist discovering a new field for the first time?"
What disturbs me the most is how many of the comments at the Guardian website are along the lines of "very interesting, I think this will lead to new therapies" or "cancer is caused by the Western diet and lifestyle, we should all eat more wheatgerm and goji berries".
Posted by: WCorvi
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April 26, 2011 12:06 PM
How about if we lump all Intelligent Designers in with biologists, and then declare that all biologists are nincompoops because of 'some' of them? PZ seems to love to do this sort of thing with other disciplines, such as exobiology, astronomy, and physics. If you want new ideas, then you can't despair over new ideas.
Posted by: Peter Ashby
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April 26, 2011 12:19 PM
He probably read once that many developmental genes are oncogenic in adults. But not all cancers are due to such oncogenes so it is not a particular insight. It might give insights into why melanomas are so invasive since the neural crest cells they are derived from are perhaps the most mobile and wide travelling in development. But again, that sort of insight doesn't help you cure skin cancer, mainly because replicating the cellular environments that keep NC cells under control in embryos would be greatly counter productive in adults. Which is why a developmental biologist like me or PZ don't usually have enormous insights into cancer even though we might study some of the same gene networks. Different contexts matter.
Posted by: Bernard Bumner
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April 26, 2011 12:20 PM
Your analogy is entirely dissimilar to the situation being discussed.
Does he? Where does he publish such strange and dishonest claims?
You most certainly can if they offer precisely no insights into the problem, are seemingly rooted in a basic lack of understanding of said problem, and for some unfathomable reason are given undue prominance in mainstream media outlets.
New and novel are certainly not the same as useful and incisive.
Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau
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April 26, 2011 12:26 PM
Hey, you got boing'd!
Posted by: rob
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April 26, 2011 12:37 PM
i'm a physicist and i have a whole lot better theory of how to cure cancer.
if Lamarckian inheritance is correct, all you have to do is remove all cancer tumour atavisms in kids before they are sexually mature. then when they start popping out kids, the kids won't have any of the atavisms and *PRESTO* they won't get cancer.
cancer cured!
you can all pay me in beer. PZ: i will split it with you.
Posted by: Travis
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April 26, 2011 12:45 PM
My first thought when I saw this story being reported last week was that physicists already work in cancer research and have for a long time. I know a number of people who work in medical physics. Now Davies might might have slightly different equipment in his toolbox and perhaps he might be useful in the right circumstances but I doubt this is one of them.
Interdisciplinary research can be very fruitful. Sometimes I think people push it as a necessity too much (some of the chairs at one of my previous universities loved that buzzword and seemed to feel all projects should be interdisciplinary), not everything lends itself well to the approach. I am sort of an odd duck as I currently work in the very mixed world of computational biology full of CS people, biologist, chemists, and engineers. I am part of the computer science aspect of this. But I also have a background in experimental particle physics so I know about that side of research as well. I think some of the people in the field would be very good and useful in the right context, maybe once they got a good grounding in whatever area of bio they were going to try to contribute and if they were reigned in and not allowed to speak publicly about things they do not grasp very well.
Posted by: bbreuer
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April 26, 2011 12:48 PM
"Haekel": makes it sound like Haeckel's name derived from crocheting ("häkeln"). Not so true, AFAIK.
Interdisciplinary panels and work is all fine and dandy, as long as one doesn't expect it to lead to Instant Insights (tm). That said, since you want to consult for the physics department, perhaps I could offer this humble musicologist's services to your discipline? :-)
Posted by: PZ Myers
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April 26, 2011 12:48 PM
To all the people talking about math:
1. Notice, please, that Davies' hypothesis does not involve math at all. Telling me about his fantastic intrinsically physicist math skillz means doo-dah here.
2. Biology does not mean non-mathematical. Keep it up, and all the neuroscientists and population ecologists and quantitative geneticists and epidemiologists and bioinformaticians are going to come to your house and kick your ass.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 12:49 PM
I also want beer. rob said
I know I am stating the obvious, but in Darwinian theory we would have to kill everyone who has cancer and also kill their children.
Corrolaries:
- Darwinism leads to evil
- Lamarckian theory is vastly preferable to Darwinism from a medical and ethical point of view. How many more arguments do you need?
Cheers,
a physicist
Posted by: defides
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April 26, 2011 12:55 PM
Re #60: made me laugh. Such a good pun I didn't see it for 30 seconds or so. Thanks!
Posted by: tiger-salad
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April 26, 2011 12:56 PM
@#63
So Paul Davies is Mojo Jojo?
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine
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April 26, 2011 12:56 PM
I am afraid that my chosen field is particularly susceptible to this kind of error. Physicists are used to looking at simple systems--and then we simplify them even further so we can make headway.
So, when we are exposed to a truly complex system, we are often at sea. We look for a model to simplify things...
And when we get the wrong model and mistake the model for reality, well, hilarity ensues. And when you are in an unfamiliar field, it's really easy to get the wrong model.
And at the same time, the methods we learn in physics are powerful. They really allow you to attack a broad range of problems. They are successful enough of the time that we can over-estimate their applicability.
So, basically, this was kind of a silly project from the word go. To do it right, they'd probably want a more applied physicist and pair him to work closely with a very tolerant biologist to nip most of the stupidity in the bud before it did any harm.
Posted by: Markita Lynda: Healthcare is a damn right
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April 26, 2011 12:58 PM
Wow. I fail to see how that poetic notion would inforn the design of therapies for cancer.
I can see the usefulness of intensely practical cross-functional teams. Add people who can help you design your experiments or sensors to the limits of materials science, electronics, submicroscopic imaging, computational power, bacterium wrangling, biochemical interaction, tool fabrication, microsurgery, or statistics.... but not someone who will spin you a new fairy tale.
Posted by: feralboy12, der Ken-Puppe Sie außerhalb in 1983 verlassen
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April 26, 2011 1:12 PM
And this is what happens when a biologist gets outside his field into the realm of prehistoric technology. Those of us who have studied the subject know that those record players would not function without a sharp-beaked bird acting as a stylus.
Posted by: Ray Moscow
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April 26, 2011 1:12 PM
@75: Davies is Anne Elk.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 1:16 PM
"Every decade, billions of dollars are poured into cosmology research. However, almost a century after Einstein's groundbreaking work, the fundamental mechanisms are still not understood.
The implications of my new theory about cosmology, if true, are very profound. The theory says that the expansion of space is probably due to quantum physics of some sort which leads to fluctuations. Quantum theory has explained a lot of phenomena successfully in the past, and fluctuations of some sort have played a vital role in this. The fresh perspective from a brilliant biologist's point of view was needed to remind physicists of this simple, yet fascinating insight. This theory has the potential to explain dark matter and dark energy and may lead to a theory of everything."
Posted by: hinakuu
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April 26, 2011 1:20 PM
Oh the phlogiston theory, i remember learning that in my history of chemistry class. almost as silly as intelligent design.
Posted by: Brownian
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April 26, 2011 1:24 PM
As an analyst in cancer surveillance, I'd like to let the physicists know that not-made-up statistics on the group of ~200 or so diseases we collectively call 'cancers' are ridiculously easy to come by, so there's really no need to invent your own.
Posted by: Sam C
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April 26, 2011 1:27 PM
Drifting slightly off-topic: one sad development a few years ago was that the replacement for Richard Dawkins as Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford Uni was Marcus du Sautoy.
Du Sautoy is (afaik) a decent and knowledgeable guy but he is a mathematician. Mathematics is important and useful, and sometimes even interesting, but it's not science because it's not grounded in the world of observation of the real world and experimentation and analysis. Du Sautoy had a series of programmes on BBC radio a year or so ago where he clearly judged the value of any scientific discipline according to how mathematical it is. Biology especially only became interesting in his view when there was some mathematics involved.
Mathematicians and physicists risk coming unstuck when they don't appreciate the distinction between simple and simplistic.
As for Davies mis-using the word "theory", shame on him: Grauniad readers would certainly understand the term "conjecture", which (as earlier posters indicated) would be correct.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 1:30 PM
"The theory predicts that the accelerated expansion of space which has been observed by astronomers, is not at all due to dark energy, but rather due to an intrinsic property of quantum space which causes it to expand at an accelerated pace, and space-time is rather like a continuum of cosmic foot soldiers. As time progresses, they march on and on, and more and more of the fluctuations within the quantum space-time are activated, replaying the collapse of quantum bubbles in reverse sequence at a cosmic scale. And each step in time confers more extreme fluctuations, making the cosmologist's job harder."
Posted by: TJ
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April 26, 2011 1:33 PM
To quote the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Lev Landau:
“Cosmologists are often in error but never in doubt”.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 1:37 PM
"There is some good news buried in this conclusion. The quantum fluctuations will be limited to a set of specific values and therefore present a well-defined target for calculations. To build up a full picture of cosmology as a quantum thingy, we have to map not just the cosmic microwave background but the radiation from the oldest known objects, including those of galaxies, black holes and supernovas, and work out how cosmology relates to these phenomena too. It will be in the convergence of astrophysics, particle physics and cosmology that the answer to cosmic expansion will lie. Nor will this confluence be a one-way street. By studying the cosmos, physicists can gain clues about how the laws of nature came to be in our cosmos, and maybe in parallel universes too."
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip
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April 26, 2011 1:47 PM
Heck, physicists still haven't unified a mere four forces! I mean, how hard can that be? Maybe they need a biologist to provide some simplifying assumptions.
Posted by: Bill Door
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April 26, 2011 1:49 PM
Physicists can be very useful to biology.
But not in this case.
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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April 26, 2011 1:50 PM
WCorvi:
He's complaining about a specific physicist being an idiot. An idiot who is so far out of his field that he doesn't even know the basics. It's sad that you can't recognize his frustration.
But, then again, this wouldn't be Pharyngula if there wasn't at least one person per thread complaining about PZ being a big meanie.
(And, come on, did you even read the posts about astrobiology? It seems that field has more than their fair share of crackpots. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/i_am_getting_a_very_poor_impre.php http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/did_scientists_discover_bacter.php )
Posted by: pointless
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April 26, 2011 2:01 PM
Oh come on. Paul Davies? Are you kidding? Although he may formally belong to that discipline, Davies isn't much of a physicist. He's more of a woobly theist. Most physicists consider his views to be a joke. Tarring all physicists by the likes of Davies is like tarring all biologists by the likes of, say, Duane Gish.
Posted by: gillt
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April 26, 2011 2:05 PM
Posted by: coyotenose
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April 26, 2011 2:18 PM
@CanadianChick,
Seriously. I'm an English major who had no real introduction to science before this blog (though I've since convinced creationists to read Why Evolution is True), and Paul Davies' ideas above were just one long eyeroll. How can he be so oblivious?
Posted by: Greg
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April 26, 2011 2:23 PM
A few people are jumping unreasonably to the idea that it's always a mistake for people to come to biology from a background in physics. Sure, in this particular case, we have a pretty absurd example of this done completely wrong, but when it's done rigorously... well, that's pretty much how the field of X-ray crystallography, and the subsequent characterization of DNA happened. There's quite a few significant ways that present day biologists owe a debt of gratitude to physicists who applied their expertise to problems in other disciplines.
That said, this guy is a complete loon citing a discredited hypothesis. Mock away.
Posted by: truthspeaker
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April 26, 2011 2:26 PM
It's more likely that you're biased.
As a linguist, I predict that within 100 years, American English will have dropped the past tense markers on verbs ending in -s, -t, and -d.
That was free. For my insights into biology or physics, I'll need $50/hour.
Posted by: https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmVT1LBhwmO9ej9LNg7a5e9d-AVJ8ezfmE
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April 26, 2011 2:37 PM
PZ writes:
Keep it up, and all the neuroscientists and population ecologists and quantitative geneticists and epidemiologists and bioinformaticians are going to come to your house and kick your ass.
Fatwa?! JIHAD!
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 2:40 PM
@truthspeaker.ncse
Who da thunk...
Can you give me a preview while I go grab some cash?
Posted by: Orac
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April 26, 2011 2:44 PM
Oy vey.
As a cancer researcher, when I first heard the idea of recruiting physical scientists to help with cancer research, I actually thought it was a good one. There's a lot in the way of biophysics and even the physics of how the various molecules in the cell interact that are not well understood that could help us with our understanding of cancer. I even almost wrote a blog post about it after a meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research a couple of years back. I still think it's a pretty good idea.
What went awry here, I think, is that we had two non-biologists, one a physicist and one an astrobiologist, trying to figure out the biology of cancer without a cancer biologist to guide them. Moreover, when they wandered into evolutionary biology as a model for understanding cancer (which, by the way, has been done with some success before), they needed an evolutionary biologist to tell them that...well, that Haeckl was wrong!
The problem with bringing in scientists from unrelated fields is that they don't know the mistakes that scientists have already made. As a consequence, they frequently end up reinventing the wheel (i.e., rediscovering old models and hypotheses) and failing to notice that the wheel is broken (i.e., that these models and hypotheses were found lacking long ago).
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip
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April 26, 2011 2:47 PM
Bah. I could of told you that.
Posted by: tnn2
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April 26, 2011 2:48 PM
My suspicion is that this is just as bad as the popular-press stuff, but as a professional courtesy (I'm a biophysicist), I should probably post the actual article:
"Cancer tumors as Metazoa 1.0: tapping genes of ancient ancestors" (PDF)
This is sort of a strange paper for an astrophysicist to be writing, as there doesn't seem to be any insight coming from, y'know, math or physics. (Also, check out Davies' email address, deepthought@asu!) He's also into astrobiology: google "Signatures of a Shadow Biosphere."
A different perspective on where physicists are useful in biology: Does cell biology need physicists?.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 2:50 PM
@Orac
I think there is an important distinction to be made between physics aspects of biological problems such as how molecules interact (something that seems a straightforward application of physics know-how to biology), and physicists trying to model biological systems mathematically like they would model a physical system such as the electrons in a solid or a galaxy. That might also be productive, but that's not as obvious to me as a physicist, and hides more pitfalls.
Posted by: truthspeaker
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April 26, 2011 2:54 PM
Orac - are you saying that I shouldn't use Aristotle's treatise on the four bodily humors to guide my contributions to medicine?
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 2:55 PM
Yeah, those past tense markers are definately on there way out.
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine
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April 26, 2011 2:56 PM
Sam C.@83 says,"Mathematics is important and useful, and sometimes even interesting, but it's not science because it's not grounded in the world of observation of the real world and experimentation and analysis."
Except that Godel's incompleteness theorems showed that even arithmetic cannot be reduced entirely to logical deduction from a few axioms. Even arithmetic is at some level an empirical science.
Posted by: johnm55
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April 26, 2011 3:00 PM
When I read the offending article in this morning's Guardian, my thoughts were I don't think this guy knows what he is talking about. The opening paragraph claimed that current death rates from cancer are the same as the were forty years ago, blatantly untrue.
Now I'm a Mechanical Engineer, my knowledge of biology is basically the bits that have stuck with me from High School, and if I can see that his arguments are wrong, without necessarily being able to analytically take them apart, thanks PZ, how wrong must they be?
Posted by: Midnight Rambler
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April 26, 2011 3:11 PM
Look, here's the rub - it's not that physics has nothing at all to contribute to biology. As noted at #93, it was required to elucidate the structure of DNA, as well as in the treatment of cancer itself. But the thing is, those actually involve physics.
Leaving aside the particulars of Davies himself, where is the physics in his hypothesis? There isn't any. It sounds like something that a high school sophomore came up with in response to the question, "why do cancer cells arise?" In high school Haeckel is often sloppily taught at face value; it's clearly not written by someone who took college biology. I'd give it moderately high marks for creativity, not so good for accuracy.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 3:23 PM
@a_ray_in_dilbert_space
No it isn't. The mathematics part of the whole thing is proving theorems with a Gödel undecidable statement and, if you like, with it's negation. In the very moment you start doing empirical work to see which of the two options describe a certain aspect of reality better when you apply your mathematical framework to it, you have stopped doing mathematics.
Posted by: James F
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April 26, 2011 3:23 PM
Not surprising. From what I've seen, there's often a pro-physics, anti-biology bias among scientific institutions regarding a person's training.
Posted by: Hercules Grytpype-Thynne
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April 26, 2011 3:53 PM
Not to mention plural markers on nouns ending in -ist.
Posted by: Species8472
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April 26, 2011 4:01 PM
I'm a physicist, and would like to apologize on behalf of my profession :)
This reminds me of Feynman's story about when he tried to do biology. At least he was humble enough to admit he didn't really know what he was doing.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 4:04 PM
In which direction will language evolve... An interesting question.
To paraphrase Feynman, imagine our civilization was wiped out today, and by chance all that remained was a hardcopy of lolcats.com.
Posted by: seriesdivergentes
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April 26, 2011 4:04 PM
Audley #89:
And yet, PZ titled this post "Aaargh! Physicists!".
Sam C #83:
You can make that argument with any scientist in any discipline, with small adjustments, so it is hardly an argument at all. Eg:
Disclaimer: I do not believe the previous paragraph, neither on Dawkins nor on biology (nor Du Satoy and mathematics, needless to say).
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 4:18 PM
@seriesdivergentes
You can also make it with nonscientists, but the claim here is (i think) that physicists are simply more frequently caught messing with other disciplines, and at least some which have received some publicity seem to be less afraid to go way out of their depth in their public speculations on things, and do more so than professionals of other disciplines. Whether that is true or not is to be debated. I could offer my sociological insights on this, but I am a physicist and I am afraid to make a fool of myself ;)
Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies
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April 26, 2011 4:52 PM
So?
Did you read past the title?
Posted by: KevinS
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April 26, 2011 5:09 PM
I had to look into this myself. And, you're right, since 1975 mortality rates have declined across the board with few exceptions. The gross incidence rate on the other hand has remained mostly steady. Individually incidence rates have fluctuated. Lung and bronchial cancers have increase about 8%. Colon and rectum cancers have decreased 15% (see link below). The combined total is a wash. I'd love to suggest that Davies was merely confused and replaced the word "incidence" with "mortality" in his article, but given the rigmarole that is the rest of his article, I kinda doubt that. From the very first sentence the man is talking out his ass.
Browse the SEER cancer statistics website for details..
"Let's have fun. With science!" - GLaDOS
Posted by: stripey_cat
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April 26, 2011 5:11 PM
Ugh. A huge number of people don't seem to get that it's actually pretty easy to come up with innovative, outside-the-box, novel ideas. Most of us can manage quite well with the aid of a bottle of wine, mild sleep deprivation, sugar, and your best friend. The tricky bit, in creative art just as much as in science, is to be able to rogue out the bad ideas, ideally before you've put too much energy or public reputation into them.
This of Davies' looks like he jumped straight from brainstorming to publication, without bothering with hypothesis-formation, data-gathering, falsification-attempts, or any of the other boring bits in the middle. Sort of like the people who hang around writing forums wondering why no publisher will give them an advance for their cool new novel concept, of which they have an outline of sixty words on the back of a cocktail menu.
Posted by: maddogdelta
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April 26, 2011 5:16 PM
Interesting.... Hire a physicist who doesn't have a clue to tell them thar kanser reesershers wat to do.
I am getting a kick out of this because my brother in law is a cancer researcher who decided to try a different angle, and recently has been producing some promising results by looking at cancer from a thermodynamic perspective. But it didn't take a Nobel prize winning physicist to do that, just an intelligent researcher.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 5:20 PM
@maddogdelta
Paul Davies is not a nobel laureate. Not that there is a shortage of wacky nobel laureates though...
Posted by: Ant
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April 26, 2011 5:26 PM
Perhaps PZ thought there was one Paul Davie and another Paul Davie. Of course, they’d have to be in different spin states because of the Paul exclusion principle…
When I was doing my physics degree, our lecturer outlined the proposed solutions to the solar neutrino problem (which was eventually solved by the understanding that there are oscillations between three generations of neutrinos with non-zero rest masses), one of which was that the statistical description that was used to predict the neutrino flux was wrong. And why was it wrong? Because statistics was developed by biologists… Srsly!
There’s a song from Oklahoma! that springs to mind…
Posted by: KevinS
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April 26, 2011 6:17 PM
I lol'd.
Posted by: JMH
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April 26, 2011 6:21 PM
While it's pervasive elsewhere as well as here - pretty much throughout the online science enthusiast community - it's particularly ironic and apropos in this case that so many commenters with professed backgrounds in physics or the life sciences are eager to jump into the domain of philosophy (mostly epistemology and the philosophy of science) without any apparent background in it. Which is not to say that everything that's being put forth on mathematics and empirics, or theory justification, etc. is wrong or stupid, of course, but rather just that many of these discussions would be more fruitful, and less repetitive and dogmatic, if the bulk of the participants had some formal background in the tools and distinctions used in that field which is dedicated to precisely this sort of meta-analysis.
Personally, I think every scientific peer review process should include field-dedicated statistician-philosopher teams. "Scientific" psychology and certain parts of the biomedical field, at least, seem to have built a whole industry on not looking too closely at their inferential justifications. Physics, as well, continues to struggle with how or even whether to interpret its most abstract theories and results, and with the often controversial and ill-defined boundary between empirical and metaphysical claims about its subject matter.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 26, 2011 6:25 PM
@JHM
Are you being serious? Getting an article reviewed takes long enough the way it is, and I don't know what, on a general subject, a philosopher would have to contribute to the referee report - unless the subject is philosophy of science.
Posted by: Kemist
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April 26, 2011 6:30 PM
I came here to kick ass and chew bubble gum. But I'm all out of gum.
Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM
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April 26, 2011 6:47 PM
I wonder if I could interest Davies in the darkon theory of light?
Posted by: chigau (◦_◦)
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April 26, 2011 6:54 PM
#124
spam alert
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 7:06 PM
JMH
Philosophy is like masturbation. Sure you could study it and all but no expertise is required.
Posted by: seriesdivergentes
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April 26, 2011 7:06 PM
Audley #114:
Yes. That's how I see the title gives the wrong idea.
It's not the first time PZ does that: In the post titled Why do physicists think they are masters of all sciences?, he is complaining of one physicist (Kaku) replying nonsense to one question in the media.
I guess it's a way to reply to the many jokes physicists do about biologists, anyway.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
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April 26, 2011 7:12 PM
Yes!
Commando squads of statisticians and philosophers of science to swoop in on high horses when necessary to Correct! mere scientists whenever the poor sods undertake to try their pitiful hands at statistical inference or, like, whatever it is philosophers of science do.
Excellent idea!
Can there be bioethicists too?
I think the berets should be a tasteful and understated grey and the jackboots steel-toed.
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook
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April 26, 2011 7:57 PM
If you are under the impression that those things are missing from current biology, then you have a whoooole lot of catching up to do. Decades worth, at least. Try googling "bioinformatics", just for a start.
Posted by: elainethepirate
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April 26, 2011 8:06 PM
The thing about physicists is that they agree 100% with Lord Rutherford who wrote that "the only real science is physics, the rest is stamp collecting"
As one who left the field, I confess to having thought this myself at one stage.
Studying nature at that fundamental level is interesting, but not better or more important than more applied fields. Contrary to the department I studied in, studying physics over other sciences does not make you smarter or more informed - it just means you know more about physics.
In citing Lord Rutherford, many forget that he won the nobel prize for Chemistry.
Posted by: KingUber
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April 26, 2011 8:10 PM
Reminds me of that one Star Trek episode where the crew turned into prehistoric creatures because their DNA fucked up or something. One guy turned into a spider.
Posted by: Ing: PhD Trollologist
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April 26, 2011 8:16 PM
@Kinguber
Which is especially stupid as Spiders are not in human linage and the common ancestor is REALLY far back and looks nothing like a spider.
Posted by: Cath the Canberra Cook
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April 26, 2011 9:09 PM
Ing, KingUber - I think that classes as "You Fail Biology Forever" (I'm not linking to tvtropes; too dangerous.)
Posted by: PZ Myers
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April 26, 2011 9:21 PM
Seriesdivergentes: Yes, I'm responding to the fact that the most likely discipline to foster that kind of hubris is physics. Chemists, biologists, geologists, etc. all seem to have sufficient respect for their own field and that of others to manage to avoid assuming that they're master of them all.
If you're objecting to the generic mention of "physicists", you've got no grounds to complain, since you did exactly the same thing.
Posted by: Kseniya
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April 26, 2011 9:48 PM
Maybe this hypothesis can somehow be used to support the idea that tumors are really spontaneously-occurring balloon embryos.
Posted by: Ichthyic
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April 26, 2011 9:51 PM
Maybe this hypothesis can somehow be used to support the idea that tumors are really spontaneously-occurring balloon embryos.
HA!
nice.
Posted by: Thunderbird 5
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April 26, 2011 10:51 PM
As a nurse who interacts with cancer patients every working day, I don't know whether I want to weep or hit someone.
I got my Physics A-Level several years before I started my nursing program as I was a kid who definitely leaned towards the sums-and-stuff end of science rather than the bodies and the grue. I only went into nursing because I was broke and homeless.
Anyway, even I knew recapitulation theory was a dead end when I read that the penguin egg brought back from "The Worst Journey in the World" was biologically useless. I was 9.
Posted by: Midnight Rambler
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April 26, 2011 11:53 PM
stripey_cat @116:
Hell, he took a bigger shortcut than that - he didn't even bother running it by someone who had taken Intro Bio 101.
Posted by: seriesdivergentes
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April 27, 2011 12:18 AM
PZ: I was being humorous, of course, as many biologists, chemists, etc. make jokes about physicists, too. I am a mathematician, and of course I know about jokes and stereotypes made of mathematicians, as well as the ones we make about everyone else.
However, being serious, I agree there are physicists who would believe their own topic is more important/fundamental/whatever than others, even between physicists (theoretical vs. experimentalist, particle vs. nuclear, etc.). But I don't think is worse among physicists: you can find such people, and pretty much in the same proportion, in every other discipline.
Posted by: mikee
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April 27, 2011 1:48 AM
on the plus side for physicists, there do seem to be quite a few of them willing to take on pseudoscience and getting involved in science education - e.g. Sagan, Krauss, Feynman.
Each area of science has it's own contributions to make, and luckily different people find different fields interesting - wouldn't it be terrible if everyone wanted to be a biologist or a chemist of a physicist
Posted by: Sven DiMilo
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April 27, 2011 2:40 AM
Look, if somebody castigates "physicists" or "engineers" or "turtle physiologists" they're clearly not castigating every single individual physicist or whatever*. The fact that the rule--a certain repeating pattern--is perceived is because enough [members of the group in question] have [done whatever prompted the castigation] for people to notice. Unbunch your underoos and smugly congratulate yourself on being an exception to the perceived rule.
(see, in biology, variation around the mean is assumed)
Holy Metaphor, Batman!
Please identify a molecular "lawyer".
Also, all metazoan cells are of course eukaryotic.
Not. Biology.
Thanks to whomever linked the paper. It's mighty crappy.
1) set up straw man
2) puncture it using recent developments everybody else already knew about and had therefore abandoned the stupid strawman years ago
2) mention penetrating new insights based entirely on Weinberg (2007)
3) Dress up Weinberg's straightforward ideas with ridiculous ignorant crap about atavisms and recapitulation
4) claim originality
5) claim huge implications of stupid ideas for Teh Cure
6) publish
7) ?
8) profit
I note with some amusement Davies' academic address:
which is pretty damn pompous right out of the gate
Surprise, technology will save us all!:
Because, see, once we use supergenomics to figure out the exact order in which oncogenes evolved (which must, of course, perforce be the exact order in which they are atavistically activated in a developing tumor), we'll...we'll...
We'll use New Technology! See? All better, thanks to the penetrating insights vouchsafed to Physicists alone.
*except for Evolutionary Psychologists; they are all the same!!11!
Posted by: Blattafrax
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April 27, 2011 4:20 AM
The Bcl2 family of pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins? Is. Too.Well, the first bit - maybe not, although all the coolest uses are for biological purposes. But the second part is all biology. Re-read Watson & Crick's 1953 paper(s). It's all about explaining the biology - very little physics in there.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 27, 2011 4:36 AM
@elainethepirate
The thing about sweeping generalizations is that they are always wrong (except in physics), and make the person making them look stupid.
That being said, I am shocked, shocked I say, that Lord Rutherford had anything to do with the despicable subject of chemistry, a discipline that is even worse than biology, and twice as dull.
That is all I have to say now, this, and also that I find the repeated use of the word physicist in this forum objectionable and offensive.
Thank you
Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine
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April 27, 2011 5:14 AM
P. Zed. says, "Chemists, biologists, geologists, etc. all seem to have sufficient respect for their own field and that of others to manage to avoid assuming that they're master of them all."
Now hold on a wee minute here. I'll certainly cop to training in physics rendering the unwary physicist vulnerable to hubris. However, I don't think it is anywhere close to unique. A brief perusal of climate denialism websites will net you a whole passel of geologists, engineers, economists and even the occasional chemist in addition to a few physicists.
I do think that perhaps biology may attract more than its share of dim-witted physicists in part because biology seems to an uninitiated observer to be less mathematical and may give a naive observer the idea that there is low-hanging fruit. However, this is just it. It usually attracts a mind that is looking for an easy problem to solve--that is a second-rate mind to begin with.
I will say this: biologists seem to have been innoculated against this tendency to pontificate in unfamiliar territory. Perhaps the inherent difficulty of their subject--which would send any sane physicist running in terror--breeds a certain humility.
Posted by: mikee
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April 27, 2011 5:54 AM
@Alex #143
"That being said, I am shocked, shocked I say, that Lord Rutherford had anything to do with the despicable subject of chemistry, a discipline that is even worse than biology, and twice as dull."
Hmmm. Yes, how tedious chemistry is. And so useless. After all we really don't need medicines, plastics and refined metals do we? I'm sure you are sitting there typing on your wooden computer aren't you?
I've enjoyed being a chemist for the past 20 years. Always enjoyed it more than biology and physics, though love working on projects that work with other disciplines. Always found that a healthy respect for the talents and interests of other scientists makes life a lot more productive and interesting.
Different strokes for different folks.
Posted by: David Marjanović
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April 27, 2011 6:34 AM
Argh. If you went back a billion years ago, or any number of years ago, you would not see multicellular beings composed of undifferentiated clumps of cells.
That's because cells need to breathe and eat. They need to be close enough to a surface, either the outer body surface or something complicated like blood which may not yet have existed a billion years ago.
This is precisely why angiogenesis is indispensable for cancer. Tumors that can't get blood vessels to grow into them cannot grow.
Davies hasn't understood this uttermost basic fact about biology. That's why I share PZ's skepticism about how Davies can possibly help.
The Terminator has said it best:
"Fuck you, asshole."
Laugh?
How many biology papers have you read in the last 20 years?
What's going on is that we don't try to find such an extremely overarching explanation anymore – because we already have it!
Darwin having clarified the big picture, we're now clarifying the details. The Modern Synthesis clarified the details that Darwin missed. Gould clarified a detail that the Modern Synthesis missed, and so did Dawkins. Darwin clarified how evolution works, Wiens, Fröbisch, Milner and others are clarifying how paedomorphosis, peramorphosis, and miniaturization worked in the evolution of temnospondyls and modern amphibians.
Physics simply isn't there yet. It's still testing the Higgs boson theory and the supersymmetry theory, and there's still no unification of relativity and quantum physics. Biology is there.
Of fucking course there's an evolutionary explanation for the higher chitin density of curculionids. I don't know it, but that's because I don't work on beetles, not because there isn't one.
Quite so. For instance, apoptosis was a big discovery. When they're damaged, animal cells commit suicide; when the suicide pathway is damaged, they can go on accumulating mutations and proliferating till a tumor grows. And indeed, many cancers have a mutation in the gene p53 which regulates apoptosis. But I have personally driven HeLa cells into suicide in an introductory lab course; evidently, p53 still works in this extremely aggressive cancer.
And the phylogeneticists. And the divergence daters. And... I had two obligatory courses in physical chemistry for molecular biologists... that was hard math.
Uh, no. What's happening with those is (again!) that the -t, which is already unreleased, is disappearing. I've read there are already people in Texas for whom the plural of breakfas is breakfases.
Isn't Ceiling Cat a rather deist figure? :-)
Tell me, was that deliberate, after you read the comments on linguistics? :-D
Who didn't.
*blink*
That's such treknobabble I overlooked it the first time around.
Every metazoan cell is eukaryotic; every one, mammalian red blood cells and platelets excepted, contains a nucleus. And do you know what karyon means...?
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 27, 2011 7:27 AM
That depends -
Deist Ceiling Cat sez: I haz creatid cawsmas, but nao I haz loost interest.
Theist Ceiling Cat sez: I haz creatid cawsmas, so giv me moar cheezburger or I sends u sevin playgs.
Also, watch out, he might need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.
Posted by: annika.barber
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April 27, 2011 7:43 AM
Seriously, what is up with some of these commenters? Plenty of biologists know physics! And math! And modeling! As part of my thesis work toward a cell bio PhD at a biomedical university I do molecular dynamics simulation and Markov modeling of ion channel gating to complement my electrophysiological data. I am not an anomaly.
Go meet some real biologists.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 27, 2011 7:57 AM
@annika.barber
You see, no true biologist knows maths :)
Posted by: david.utidjian
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April 27, 2011 10:00 AM
What I want to know is... how did Davies get the Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny bit so wrong? Where did he learn it? Was his, however limited, instruction in Biology that wrong?
My guess is he took high school level Biology in the early 1960s. If he had any advanced courses in college... mid 1960s onwards.
That said...
My job title is Engineering Physics Lab Director (fancy name for technician). I keep all the machines that go "ping" pinging.
I have a researcher in one of my labs that is developing a method for determining how long a certain drug takes to get somewhere in the body and how long it stays there once it gets there. Not basic biological research so much as developing a technique that will be very useful to biology in general and medical researchers in particular.
Another of our physicists specializes in medical imaging technology.
There is a whole sub-field of "Biophysics".
Yet I don't think I have ever encountered the level dumb that physicists like Paul Davies and Michio Kaku seem to come up with when talking about biology.
Another thing that is quite strange... Most Physics majors are not required to take any Biology or Chemistry... yet ALL Biology majors have to take both Chemistry and Physics. At least a year of each at the undergraduate level.
Posted by: atolley
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April 27, 2011 10:00 AM
There is a strain of turf battle showing here. Davies may well have gone off half cock on his theory, but that doesn't mean that biologists/physicians have been doing well either. We've be officially "fighting cancer" for over 40 years now and success is very slow and limited. The main treatments still remain fundamentally the same, and arguably extremely primitive.
Some new insights from anywhere, would be welcome.
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 27, 2011 10:16 AM
@david.utidjian
Don't get me wrong I'm a physicist and very much interested in biology, but the fact that the courses are designed this way makes total sense. Basically every biologist will encounter physical processes in biology, and will not understand how stuff works if she has no idea about physics. Take electric potentials in cells for example. Now, the reverse is not true. You simply don't need to know biology to understand solid state physics or particles, or what have you. It's completely irrelevant. Biology simply is a more difficult subject ;)
@atolley
You might start reading here or here and browse what they have said about cancer research and treatments in the past.
Posted by: KG
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April 27, 2011 10:16 AM
No, there isn't. Davies' ignorant burblings are not a "theory", and the fact that a problem is hard does not mean that people who know nothing about it have anything to contribute.
Posted by: Blattafrax
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April 27, 2011 10:42 AM
#151
This: http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/survival/latestrates/
tells me that you're wrong.
And your assertion that the treatments have remained the same over the last 40 years just tell us the limits of your knowledge - which don't even extend as far as Google and Wikipedia.
But you are right that new insights would be welcome - let us know when you have any. Paul Davies certainly doesn't.
Posted by: drbunsen
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April 27, 2011 1:14 PM
Lol, Paul Davies. That is all.
Posted by: Kemist
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April 27, 2011 2:31 PM
This former cancer researcher tells you to respectfully go fuck yourself.
Incidentally, I left the field because the pay and conditions are best described as "abyssmal" for post docs and research assistants, but hearing that same fucking trope every few fucking weeks for a couple years also played no small role.
Seriously, no change in treatment. No advances. Just in the research center where I used to work :
- The PSA test was developped
- Lupron was developped
Just these two made prostate cancer deaths decrease considerably. My own uncle owes his life to the PSA test - his tumor was a rectal-touch undetectable tiny little thing... with a Gleason score of 8. After a dual hormonal / radiation approach, he is now cancer-free. And he did not have to undergo either surgical castration or radical prostatectomy, these being the standard of treatment before the advent of hormone therapy.
Contrast this with one of my grandma's brother, who died from the same disease 25 years ago, in horrible suffering and incontinent from radical prostatectomy.
Posted by: ryneches
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April 27, 2011 2:32 PM
PZ --
You think you're annoyed; imagine the chagrin of physicists who've made the switch to biology. Such as myself.
Unlike Davies, though, I decided I ought to, you know... learn some biology. By getting a Ph.D. in it. Fair enough?
Posted by: Alex, adv. diab.
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April 27, 2011 3:06 PM
ryneches,
well duh, anyone can contribute to biology if they know a lot about it. The real challenge is to use your high school knowledge from the 60s and still get away with it.
Posted by: Ant
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April 27, 2011 4:49 PM
Now playing! Paul Davies in Karyon Cosmologist! Or Physicist Goes Nuts In Biology
Posted by: Timberwoof
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April 27, 2011 5:54 PM
Clearly something is going on in the biosphere now, with all the increases in floods, droughts, fires, and whatnot. Whether you attribute it to global warming or the Coming of the Horsemen*, surely Yahoo would be preparing the flora and fauna for the coming calamity. Do any biologists, real or imagined (meaning Biblical), report any such anticipatory increases in species diversity? Anyone? Anyone?
The sound of crickets is so soothing.
* Why does that sound like the title of a porno film?
Posted by: Wit's End
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April 28, 2011 8:45 AM
For a non-scientist this glimpse into the rivalry between physicists and biologists is hilarious! Believe it or not, outside the fields this is not well known. In fact I suspected it and asked a number of people if it existed, because once, when I was pestering a rather well-known physicist about the potential for greenhouse gases to be harmful to trees, he wrote back in exasperation: "Get a bioligist!" I had the distinct impression then that the misspelling was meant to be derogatory.
The other thing I would like to add as the mother of a young lady who had a rather ghastly case of cancer, which she mercifully survived is, that there is more emphasis on "curing" cancer (of course - because there are huge profits to be made by pharmaceutical companies and medical facilities - and professional glory to be had) and FAR, FAR TOO LITTLE research for finding out what toxic brew of chemical pollution is causing much of it.
In fact when I asked my daughter's incredibly arrogant oncologist what he thought might have caused her to contract mediastinal large B-cell diffuse lymphoma, he looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "What difference does it make? I'm going to treat it the same way."
Posted by: Kemist
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April 28, 2011 12:35 PM
;)
Oncologists often seem cold and arrogant when you first meet them I guess. My friend, who is a cancer researcher and is battling ovarian cancer, had the same comment about hers.
The thing with them is that necessarily meet a lot of people who are going to die, and I think they try to keep a distance so it affects them less. And, you know, when you got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. His job is treating it, not finding out what causes it.
Lymphoma, the non-Hodgkin types, are one instance where a genuine increase in cases has been observed in relatively young people. There is research being done on this, but like the research on cigarette and lung cancer, it is done by epidemiologists and takes a long time before it yields results.
As for phamaceutical research on cancer treatment being lucrative - not so much. Cancer treatment is normally rather toxic, generally not long term (except for stuff like Gleevec or hormone therapy) - you either go in remission or die. Dead patients are not a good way to make money. It's not been a good investment for major pharmas for quite some time compared with asthma, type II diabetes, coronary disease, obesity and other chronic illnesses with very large markets.
Consequently, big pharmas do very little research on new approaches for cancer, since it represents a very high risk for rather modest revenues (developping a new drug takes on average 10 years and 5 billion $). Most cancer research, especially on new pathways, is done in government institutes.