BBC NEWS | Business | Glaxo has bird flu 'breakthrough'

BBC NEWS | Business | Glaxo has bird flu 'breakthrough': "UK drugs firm GlaxoSmithKline believes it has developed a vaccine for the H5N1 deadly strain of bird flu that may be capable of being mass produced by 2007.

The vaccine has proved effective at two doses of 3.8 micrograms during clinical trials in Belgium"

Globalization and People

In "A Winning Strategy for the Democrats: Barter for Free Trade" in today's Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein makes what I thought to be an important point. He notes that while there is general agreement that globalization has helped the U.S. economy, "it has had some unpleasant side effects: insecurity about job losses, downward pressure on wages, widening inequality, and an unsustainable trade deficit."

There was even a general consensus on what needs to be done to ameliorate those effects. The prescriptions included some old ideas about balancing the federal budget, investing more in education and repealing the Bush tax cuts, and some newer ones such as universal access to health insurance, portable pensions and wage insurance. Protect people, not jobs, was the headline message in the Hamilton Project briefing paper that rejected the protectionist policies of the union left as well as the "you're-on-your-own" economics of the laissez-faire right. (italics added)

Conference on Knowledge for Africa's Development

This conference was sponsored by the World Bank's Knowledge for Development Program, and held May 8-10, 2006, in Johannesburg, South Africa. There are useful resources gathered on the conference website.

The Economist Special Report on Econometric Models

Read the full article in the July 13, 2006 edition of The Economist. (Subscription required.)

The article notes,

Economic models fall into two broad genres. Macroeconomic models, the distant descendants of Phillips's machine, belong mostly in central banks. They capture the economy's ups and downs, providing a compass for the folks with their hands on the monetary tiller. The second species, known as computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, largely ignore the vagaries of the business cycle. They concentrate instead on the underlying structure of production, shedding light on the long-term repercussions of such things as the Doha trade round, a big tax reform or climate change.

It casts some light on the Doha Round (see my last posting):

Two years into the round, as trade ministers gathered for a summit in Mexico, the World Bank was pushing another extravagant simulation. It argued that an ambitious Doha agreement could raise global incomes by $290 billion-520 billion and lift 144m people out of poverty by 2015. Those figures found a ready place in almost every news report about the Doha round that autumn.

Such extravagance did not last. The World Bank has since cut these figures drastically, in part because the ambitions of the Doha negotiators have fallen short of the bank's expectations. One estimate made last year had cut the increase in global incomes to $95 billion and projected 6.2m people might instead move out of poverty. But even as they curb their enthusiasm for Doha, proponents of freer trade argue that CGE models do not show their cause to its best advantage.

Given the apparent failure of the round, I would stress than saving more than six million people from poverty is not a small thing, nor is 95 million dollars a small amount of benefit, especially when more reasonable negotiators might have gotten even more.

I suggest that the key lesson from the article however, comes from these two paragraphs:

In a recent article, Roberta Piermartini and Robert Teh, two economists at the WTO, urge modellers to "?demystify" their creations, making it clear to their audience what makes their models tick. A failure to do this, they argue, "?risks bringing a useful analytical tool into disrepute and may even induce unwarranted cynicism about the economic case for open trade.".......

Shantayanan Devarajan, of the World Bank, and Sherman Robinson, of the International Food Policy Research Institute, point out that policymakers need not grasp exactly how a model works, any more than "?a pilot needs to understand the insides of a flight simulator."? This may be true. But too many policymakers never even "fly" their models. They just want to know where they will land. If they were instead prepared to work through the simulations they might find inconsistencies in their thought, unforeseen implications of their policies, or new reasons for their actions. The big number that sums up a model's story "?$520 billion, 1.5% of world GDP, $4.4 trillion" ?is often the least interesting thing about it.

I suggest large scale mathematical models are most useful in helping us to extrapolate the behavior of very complex systems that are described by large quantities of data. They are especially useful to illuminate unexpected, emergent properties of such systems. However, properties can emerge from the models due not to the behavior of the real system, but from elements of the model that do not accurately represent the real system. I suggest that it is especially important when a model yields unexpected behavior that we go back and understand just where and how that behavior arises from the model. In that way we have a better chance of understanding whether it is a characteristic of the real system, or an artifact of the model.

Unfortunately, in my experience, those who are uncomfortable with quantitative approaches are too likely to accept the predictions of a model without understanding the model itself. Those who best use models, distrust their predictions, and spend time to understand the basis for those predictions. The models themselves are very useful tools in this exploration.

An anecdote:

Many years ago, when computers were young and models were simple, a colleague and I did a computer model to optimize the business of a small company. We walked into the company president's office and began the meeting with the comment,

We have good news. You can increase production by one-third.

The production manager, at the right of the president, jumped to his feet and yelled, "we can't sell that much". Simultaneously, the sales manager leaped to his feet and yelled, "we can't produce that much." The president looked to the right and to the left, and said, "thank you gentlemen, I now understand the problem". That was a successful model!

"Trade Talks Fail After Stalemate Over Farm Issues: Collapse Comes With Finger-Pointing"

Read the full article by Paul Blustein in The Washington Post. (July 25, 2006)

Yesterday, World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General Pascal Lamy declared a "suspension" in the Doha round of trade negotiations. "Trade ministers from the United States, the European Union, Brazil, India, Japan and Australia said they remained hopelessly stalemated on crucial issues of how to lower barriers to commerce, with farm trade by far the most contentious problem." European and Indian spokesmen appeared to blame the failure of the five year old talks on the intransigence of the United States.

"The United States was unwilling to accept, or indeed to acknowledge, the flexibility being shown by others in the room and, as a result, felt unable to show any flexibility on the issue of farm subsidies," said Peter Mandelson, the European trade commissioner. Nath, the Indian minister, agreed, and said: "Everybody put something on the table except one country who said, 'We can't see anything on the table.'"

The wide authority given to the Bush Administration to negotiate trade deals expires in mid-2007, and Congress appears unlikely to extend it.

"We do not expect to be able to use the current [negotiating authority] to enact a Doha round agreement if and when one comes together," Susan C. Schwab, the chief U.S. trade negotiator, said in a conference call with reporters.

This is a sad event for the poor majority of the world's population! There is every reason to believe that allowing poor nations to export more freely into the wealthy markets of Europe and the United States would have increased incomes and improved their lives.

"Fight against world court takes toll in terror war"

Read the full article by Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times via The International Herald Tribune. (July 23, 2006)

Lead: "The Bush administration and Congress have slashed millions of dollars of military aid to African countries in recent years, moves that Pentagon officials and senior military commanders say have undermined U.S. efforts to combat terrorist threats in Africa and to counter expanding Chinese influence there."

I tend to be against building the military in poor nations as a matter of reflex, but in many cases in Africa I feel that the military is needed to protect against even more destructive violence and social breakdown. Moreover, money is fungible. When African nations don't get military aid from rich nations, they may well spend their own resources drawing funds from health, education, and other crucially needed social investments.

Besides, African nations have been not only the sites of terrorist attacks against U.S. targets, but have offered breeding grounds and safe havens for terrorists.

I am not at all sure about this U.S. policy.

Priorities in biotechnology research for international development

The National Academy of Sciences held a workshop in Berkeley Spring, West Virginia, July 26-30, 1982 on this topic at the request of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The proceedings of the workshop were published that same year, and were widely distributed. Following up on the workshop, projects in medical and agricultural biotechnology were initiated by USAID.

Twenty-four years after the workshop, there is a large literature on the topic, and I am beginning social bookmarking of some of the key links on the Internet on the topic.

"Secrets of the Expert Mind"

This article by Phillip Ross is in the August 2006 Scientific American, and will be available free online next month.

Ross summarizes research which suggests that chess experts have huge stores of knowledge of the game, gained by decades of organized and diligent study of the game (rather than by playing a lot). He suggests that experts play better not because they analyze more, but rather primarily because they use this accumulated knowledge to recognize patterns of pieces on the board, and to recognize the most promising moves from such patterns. They can then restrict their analysis to the more promising moves. Non-experts, even when they analyze in depth, waste effort in analyzing scenarios with low likelihood of panning out.

He suggests that modern chess masters are actually better than those of 100 years ago because the modern masters have more accumulated knowledge as a result of the raising of the bar due to more competition, to better and better organized learning materials and tools.

It is interesting that there are very reliable ways of rating and ranking chess players, but the better rated player does not always beat the lower rated player. What is reliable is the portion of games that the better player will win against the lesser player, given the differences between their ratings.

Would that we had a similar rating scheme for our leaders, be they in the political, economic or social sphere. It would be nice to know we have a clue on who to believe, since these guys make so many mistakes.

I am also concerned that we so often ignore the research on decision making. As a result of this research, we should know that there are some ways to get decisions out of groups that work better than others. Unfortunately, those who organize advisory committees seem seldom to use this knowledge, or indeed to be aware of its existance.

So too, as a result of research on decision making and prediction, we should know that there are ways to train people to make better probability estimates and to avoid common errors of judgement. Unfortunately, I don't know of many places where such training is actually applied to improve decision making.

"Senate Passes Stem Cell Bill; Bush Vows Veto"

Read the full story by Charles Babington in the Washington Post. (July 19, 2006)

Like most Americans willing to give their opinions to survey takers, I am in favor of funding embryonic stem cell research. The potential health benefits are significant, and the embryos will be destroyed anyway.

If the majority of my fellow citizens don't want to fund such research, then those who do fund it will probably benefit disproportionately, so I am glad my state (Maryland) has a legislature which has voted such funding.

I hope that the Bush Administration and its supporters find this issue really hurts them in the upcoming elections, since Bush has taken the wrong side.

Third-World Vaccine Development Plan Stalls

Read the full article online: "Third-World Vaccine Development Plan Stalls: Positions of France, U.S. Means Endorsement Unlikely During G-8 Summit" By Michael M. Phillips, The Wall Street Journal via The Washington Post, July 7, 2006.

In February, G-8 finance ministers, including then-U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, endorsed a novel, business-friendly plan to persuade drug companies to develop vaccines for killer diseases in the Third World. Under the plan, the G-8 would guarantee a market for pharmaceuticals companies that create successful vaccines. Despite lobbying from the United States, Italy and Britain, it now seems unlikely that the G-8 will endorse the proposal next weekend in St. Petersburg, Russia, at their annual summit.

According to Phillips' article:

The proposal "is kind of trembling on the cusp," said a senior official with direct knowledge of the G-8 vaccine discussions. "It is now in substantial danger of flopping even though there is an extraordinary level of support among some key stakeholders."

France now has refused to endorse the vaccine proposal unless the United States backs a French proposal for a new international airline-ticket tax to pay for aid to poor countries, and the Bush administration has refused to do so.

Now would be a good time to lobby for passage of the proposal!

The Guild of Natural Science Illustrators

Go to the Guild website.

The Guild is a non-profit organization that sets professional standards for scientific illustrators, provides opportunities for professional and scholarly development, encourages and assists member networking, and promotes itself to potential clients and the general public. While the Guild is primarily active in the United States, some ten percent of its nearly 1000 members are from other countries.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the scientific illustrators provide a huge service to science, to non-scientists simply interested in fields of scientific knowledge, and especially to those interested in development of policies and strategies for sustainable development based on scientific knowledge.

Some related organizations are:

* The American Society of Botanical Artists, Inc.
* The Association of Medical Illustrators
* The BioCommunications Association
* The International Association of Astronomical Artists

Knowledge for Development: CTA Observatory on S&T for Development

This website is intended to support the policy dialogue on S&T for agricultural and rural development in African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. It enables the ACP scientific community - primarily agricultural research and development scientists and technologists, policy makers, farmers and other stakeholders and actors - to share and review results of national and regional efforts and collaborate to harness science and technology for the development of agriculture in their countries. It is supported by CTA, the Technical Center for Agriculture and Rural Cooperation. The portal includes a number of dosiers on topics of science and technology policy, links to other organizations, news and events, and other resources, including a newsletter.

"Building science, technology and innovation policies"

Summary: "National policies for science, technology and innovation can be key to a country's development. But what elements must be in place for such policies to succeed — and also to evolve as the country progresses?" Joachim Ahrens, SciDev.Net, May 2005.

"Science for Society"

The InterAcademy Panel (IAP) on International Issues Conference "Science for Society" and was held in Mexico City in December 2003 in conjunction with the IAP General Assembly. The website includes links to a number of presentations that may be downloaded, as well as information on the conference. The IAP is a global network of 90 science academies designed to help its members develop tools they need to participate in science policy discussions taking place beyond university classrooms and research laboratories.

Women for Science

The low representation of women in science and engineering is a major hindrance to global capacity building in science and technology. This report presents recommendations and action items grouped around three themes:
* Academies advocating and promoting the education and careers of women;
* Academies acting, both individually and jointly, to engage women in global capacity building;
* Academies building inclusive institutional climates and advising governments and other principal players on specific actions toward similar ends. It is published by the InterAcademy Council, and was written by an Advisory Panel created by the Council for the purpose of this report. 2006.

The Global Footprint Network

The Ecological Footprint is a tool which can be used for description and thus management of the ecological impact of human activity. The Network website includes (under free license) downloadable tables of the 2005 footprints for nations, as well as maps and information on global trends. A small staff, with a very distinguished Advisory Council, makes this information available online. The Network is also seeking to develop standards to be used by various groups applying their methodology, in order to help assure comparability in footprints developed by different groups at different times.

Warren Buffett has joined Bill and Melinda Gates to create the world's biggest charitable foundation.

Source: The Economist
I suppose everyone knows about this now, but here is a link to the Economist special report on the event.

"POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY: The Perils of Prognostication"

Read the full book review by John T. Jost online in Science magazine. (cience 30 June 2006: Vol. 312. no. 5782, pp. 1876 - 1877; Subscription necessary.)

From the review of Expert Political Judgment: How Good is It? How Can We Know? by Philip E. Tetlock

Philip Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment will be sobering. The results of his painstaking research are complex, nuanced, and contingent, but the bottom line is clear enough. Tetlock's data "plunk human forecasters into an unflattering spot along the performance continuum, distressingly closer to the chimp than to the formal statistical models." In fact, "it is impossible to find any domain in which humans clearly outperformed crude extrapolation algorithms, less still sophisticated statistical ones" (emphasis in original). Worst of all, those experts with the poorest track records are the most likely to show up on TV screens and blogsites everywhere.

"Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer? A Focusing Illusion"

Read the full article by Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, David Schkade, Norbert Schwarz, and Arthur A. Stone online in Science magazine. (Science 30 June 2006: Vol. 312. no. 5782, pp. 1908 - 1910. Subscription required.)

Abstract: "The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory. People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities. Moreover, the effect of income on life satisfaction seems to be transient. We argue that people exaggerate the contribution of income to happiness because they focus, in part, on conventional achievements when evaluating their life or the lives of others."

The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.
John F. Kennedy

I am a great admirer of Daniel Kahneman and what I guess might be called his school. He has and they have done a lot to clarify our understanding of the way people think. And indeed, this report in Science is interesting and informative. However, I think the report would be easy to misunderstand and to misrepresent. I would suggest, for example that the article confounds "being in a good mood" with "being happy", and indeed "being satisfied with one's life" with "being happy".

Man, if you have to ask what it is, you’ll never know.
Louis Armstrong (about jazz)

I think I attach the concept of "pleasure" to "being happy in in moment-to-moment experience" and to "particularly enjoyable activities", but not necessarily the concept of "happiness". I don't know how the dimension "relaxed versus tense" relates to that of "unhappy versus happy", but I would guess that there is very little correlation; can't one can be happy and tense, or unhappy and relaxed? (The goalie on the leading side of a World Cup football match is probably pretty happy and pretty tense; the players on the losing side after a match may well be relaxed but unhappy.)

I suspect the article is most useful in discussing the difference between subjective and objective measures of well-being. The discussion of the "focusing illusion" is useful for those who would do survey research. It illustrates a more general issue that people's response to a survey question depends on their "set", and the set can be established by the preceeding questions.

Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.
Schkade and Kahneman

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006

Read the full report online (PDF file).

The MDGs Report of the United Nations was released on 3 July 2006. The report presents the latest assessment on how far we have come, and how far we have to go in reaching the goals, in each of the world’s regions.

Reuters AlertNet notes with respect to the report:

"With less than a decade left to meet its development targets, the United Nations said on Monday there were "staggering" obstacles to succeeding and conditions in many poor countries were actually worsening.

"The eight Millennium Development Goals include targets on health, poverty and the environment -- such as halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day and stopping the spread of AIDS and tuberculosis.

"The U.N. progress report on the goals, set in 2000, found that while global incidence of extreme poverty has declined, some 140 million more people have entered that category in sub-Saharan Africa.

"More people are also going hungry in the region, which has seen only modest improvements in child mortality and maternity rates in the past six years, according to the study."