15 April 4, 2013 | year 55
Biweekly magazine of the Eindhoven University of Technology For news: www.cursor.tue.nl and follow tuecursor on andmm
4 | Looking for a better future 2 Lightheaded
3 A rare, successful geek
5 The reliability of science
2 | For Starters
April 4, 2013
Positive earmarking
Colophon Editor in chief Han Konings
Executive editor Brigit Span
Editorial staff Judith van Gaal Tom Jeltes | Science Frits van Otterdijk Norbine Schalij Monique van de Ven Berry Zwets (trainee)
Staff Nicole Testerink Gerard Verhoogt
Photography Rien Meulman Bart van Overbeeke
Cover Sandor Paulus
We don’t seem to be making a lot of headway in our attempts at increasing the number of female scientists at TU/e. At the University Council meeting last Tuesday, the issue surfaced once again. Compared to 2011, the percentage of female assistant professors (UDs) dropped from twenty to sixteen in 2012. Last year, TU/e hired twenty-one new UDs, only two of which were female. Not at all what the Executive Board had in mind for the years to come. By 2015, the Board wants at least twenty-five percent of UDs to be women, so the last thing they need is a drop. Down at the Hoofdgebouw they decided it was time for drastic measures. Departments that fail to meet their quota of female assistant professors in 2012 and 2013 will have to correct that in the following year. A sure-fire controversial affirmative action, if you ask me.
Clmn Why is spring late this year?
Han Koning s, editor in
chief Curs
or
Still, what if we look at it from a different angle? Would a woman even want to start working at TU/e as an assistant professor in 2014? Won’t that taint the rest of her scientific career? She’ll run the risk of being dubbed ‘the 2014 UD generation’ - a bunch of women that couldn’t quite make it on their own. On the other hand: there doesn’t seem to be another way to break the male circle of appointment at the moment. Let’s hope ‘Generation 2014’ will come to be a proud nickname.
Translation Annemarie van Limpt (pages 2,3,5) Benjamin Ruijsenaars (page 4)
Rewwwind www.cursor.tue.nl
Layout Natasha Franc
Our Rewwwind feature provides you with snippets of last week’s news. What happened online after the previous Cursor magazine was published?
Editorial board prof.dr. Cees Midden prof.dr. Hans Niemantsverdriet Angela Stevens- van Gennip Thomas Reijnaerts Arold Roestenburg Anneliese Vermeulen-Adolfs
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Rector: women first 3 April 2013 - If it’s up to the Executive Board, several departments could be hiring female assistant professors (UDs) exclusively next year. Rector prof.dr.ir. Hans van Duijn announced the measure at yesterday’s University Council meeting. The Executive Board
decided that in 2012 and 2013 half of all new UDs must be women. Should departments fail to meet the Board’s requirements, the Executive Board considers only approving of the appointment of female assistant professors at those departments from 2014 onwards.
Former national coach to train Thêta 22 March - On April 1, the Eindhoven student rowing association Thêta and Vidar from Tilburg University started training with former national coach Diederik de Boorder. De Boorder used
to train the Dutch women’s and children’s teams. Both universities want their student rowers to represent the Netherlands at the 2016 Olympics.
As you might have noticed, these past weeks we have been experiencing a very unheard of and unfair extension of winter. Just one stroll outside confirms that the temperatures are at least 10 degrees below what we have come to expect. Heck, I remember last year around this time I went to a beer festival wearing a T-shirt and a hat. But today we still wake up to temperatures below zero, we still get flurries of snow, and the sun doesn’t seem to warm us the least bit. What happened? Are we being punished? Although most people are only complaining about the cold, no-one seems to know why this particular predicament is upon us. Thus, I decided to investigate. May I present to you: the culprit - several, in fact. There’s talk all over the Internet about this being a ‘La Niña’ year. This is a phenomenon in which the sea surface temperature across the Pacific Ocean is between 3 and 5 degrees lower than usual, which has worldwide repercussions as higher pressure fronts force arctic currents to spin clockwise and so funnel cold air from the arctic into mainland Europe, Asia and America. This is where it gets really complicated.
Other, more hilarious accounts are told by the paranoid and suspicious of the Internet, who talk of global cooling attributed to the sun dying prematurely. There are fantastic claims (and unfortunately, they’re not presented as jokes) that the meteor that almost hit Russia this past February 15 was actually, and I couldn’t come up with something this ridiculous if I tried, a chunk of the sun. Whatever the reason, be it scientific or straight out of a bad summer blockbuster, we should be expecting at least another two weeks of sad weather before things start to improve. It’ll come to pass… I hope.
Emili student Au o Maldonado, tomotive from MexicTechnology o
Student Sports Center to start new swimming course 2 April - The Student Sports Center will start a new swimming program this month. The course program was set up partly because of an increase of foreign swimmers, due to which the swimming pool was brimming with people every now and then. The sports center will
start working with smaller groups, for example. The new courses, on Monday and Wednesday night, will begin on April 22. On Mondays the focus will be on the front crawl, while swimmers training on Wednesdays will learn how to perfect their backstroke and
Brainmatters Psychology is becoming ever more important at TU/e. Technical systems and artifacts, be they games, cars, robots, lighting systems or buildings, are all meant for human end users eventually. It’s essential to know how these users perceive, think, feel, and act. The new human-oriented program Psychology & Technology examines every technical design from a psychological perspective. From now on, Cursor will be taking a closer psychological look at students, teachers, labs, technical artifacts, the workplace, the scientific business, campus, education, and websites.
Lightheaded The irony: my previous column sung an ode to spring and immediately winter kicked in again. But I desperately need spring; especially I need its light. Although the light in Dutch paintings is famous, it is only rarely valued to its full extent in daily life. And yet it is light that made life on this planet possible and it is light that imprinted its 24-hour rhythm on all living organisms. This rhythm is programmed in our DNA and now we cannot do without. Better yet, its dosage and timing still substantially impact our cognitive and emotional functioning and our health. With spring’s increasing amounts of light we cast off our seasonal depression. But light does so much more than this. It makes us happy, alert and healthy, it even saves lives. Perhaps the most convincing demonstration for this is a Canadian study by Beauchemin and Hays from 1998. For four years they tracked patients’ recovery in cardiac intensive care units and consistently reported lower mortality rates in rooms on the sunny side of the building compared to those on the dull side. Female patients appeared particularly sensitive to their room’s orientation. The exact cause
Yvonne de Kort, asso ciate profes Technology sor enviro Interaction, nmental ps departmen ychology at t IE & IS. Ph Human oto | Bart va n Overbee ke
of this effect is still subject to debate. Synchronization of the biological clock and sleep quality are likely candidates, but the underlying mechanism may have also been more affective in nature. But the numbers speak for themselves: away with any mechanistic perspective on health care. Healing is not the simple sum of surgery plus medication; it involves body and mind, and a healthy environment. Light is most certainly a crucial feature of such a healing environment. But one does not need to stare death in the face to enjoy light’s healing potential. Karin Smolders, researcher at HTI and the Intelligent Lighting Institute (ILI), had young, healthy students and employees wear a light sensor at the eye for three consecutive days, while they also reported their mood and alertness on an hourly basis. Again the results were convincing: the more light each had been exposed to the previous hour, the more vital they felt. And this is only one of the wonderful workings of light: just stop by ILI and see.
For Starters | 3
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Prof.dr. Paul de Bra, professor of Information Systems, Department of Mathematics & Computer Science
How rare is the young, successful geek? The seventeen-year-old Brit Nick D’Aloisio made the deal of a lifetime last week. In his spare time he created Summly, a news app that summarizes news items so they fit exactly onto an iPhone screen. Internet tycoon Yahoo, catching up in the field of apps, bought the business for thirty million dollars. Because of his age, the new multimillionaire generated much publicity. Is it common for an app developer to make a deal with a major company? And is it a stroke of luck, or does success only come to the knowledgeable?
“This is fairly extraordinary”, says Paul de Bra, professor of Information Systems at the Department of Mathe matics & Computer Science and initiator of the bachelor program Web Science. “You have to realize this kid isn’t a computer science graduate, and that he has single-handedly built this app. I’m not saying there aren’t more of these whiz kids out there; after all, it’s a coincidence he was discovered.” “Take the world-famous Vienna Philharmonic. Only top musicians are accepted, but each one of them remains nameless. They’re not even mentioned in the credits of the New Year’s concert, but the conductor is. Like those musicians, there are lots of talented, young programmers, but the chances of one of them creating something a major company is willing to pay thirty million dollars for, are slim. Luck is a major factor.” “People without a relevant degree who have built an app and become rich off it mostly make money because their product is downloaded a lot. That’s more common. This example is of an altogether different nature, though. Summly is free; this kid didn’t make any money with it. Apparently, Yahoo didn’t like the app being out there and decided to buy it for a large sum of money.
The first thing they did after their purchase was take down the app. It’s quite sad, really, because now the boy has been bought off and will sink into oblivion. He’s lucky he’s good looking; we’ll probably see him in ad campaign soon. After that, he can spend the rest of his life pondering how to multiply those thirty million dollars. And since he’s already this successful, he’ll probably feel he doesn’t need an education anymore. All in all, it’s a bad example for responsible academic programs…”
“Young people are better at assessing new ideas”
improve the online world. Those are the tricky customers. Since they’ve figured out many things on their own already, they tend to get bored and it can be hard to keep them focused when explaining the underlying principles. Those are extremely important, because we want to teach students what makes apps successful, what functionalities to introduce, and how to think systematically. That way, there’s a greater chance of success and you won’t have to hope for a stroke of luck. After having made a successful app, you should be able to produce another successful product. Businesses like that idea, which is why our students are very popular. We’ve opted for long-term quality rather than a nine day’s wonder.” (NT)
“The young man’s concept isn’t that special. The technology he used isn’t his either, but was invented at Stanford University. He did make his product look good, working according to the basic principle ‘keep it simple’. Young people often have a more vivid imagination than most adults and are better at assessing new ideas. At our TU/e Bachelor program Web Science -the world’s first and only- you see lots of driven students who want to
Paul De Bra. Archive photo | Bart van Overbeeke
Autism in blue spotlights 2
On Tuesday night, April , TU/e buildings, the Auditorium and Kennispoort, were lit by blue lights. On the roof of Vertigo, Lumo also turned blue. By going blue, TU/e supported World Autism Day. Since , US organization ‘Autism Speaks’ wants to shine a symbolical light on autism and raise awareness for autism. The Eindhoven Evoluon and the Brainport Bridge over the freeway were also floodlighted in blue, as were the Sydney Opera House in Australia and the giant statue of Christ in Brazil.
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For this academic year, first-year TU/e students have indicated they suffer from a mental disability. percent has a form of dyslexia, and percent has a condition that lies in the autism spectrum. (JvG)
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Photo | Bart van Overbeeke
4 | Zoom in
April 4, 2013
Looking for a better future This year sees a significantly larger number of Greeks studying at TU/e than previous years - 49 this academic year, 27 last academic year. Which is anything but a coincidence. They flee their country, looking for a better future. Orfeas Lyras (Bachelor Industrial Design) and Konstantinos Filippidis (Master Business Information Systems) about the situation in their homeland. It is not as if their fellow countrymen are scouring refuse bins looking for food. Still, life in Greece is definitely wretched at present. And they cherish little hope of a good future for their homeland. Orfeas (25) came to TU/e two years ago. He wanted to enjoy sound education first and foremost, and the level of Industrial Design was higher in the Netherlands than in Greece. It was only later that the young Greek became aware that this had been a very good choice indeed with a view to the future. “The chance of finding a job is many times greater here. Going away is by no means easy, for that matter. Friends tell me that they also want to go abroad, but many of them do not get to go at all. You need to be admitted as well. Besides, studying in Greece is free. The level is not always good, though, and your chance of a job is extremely limited”, says Orfeas.
“Going away is by no means easy” Konstantinos Filippidis (24) has studied at TU/e since February of this year. “I couldn’t find a job at my level in Greece and really wanted to continue my studies. The program at TU/e has a good reputation and it’s an advantage that the study is in English. Moreover, I see far better job opportunities in the Netherlands.” Both have personally experienced the consequences of the crisis. And they still do. Orfeas: “Although my mother is supporting me financially, it still remains to be seen whether I can actually complete my studies. She is a businesswoman, yet she often goes to work without being able to do anything all day. The crisis has a practical as well as an emotional impact. You see the grief with everybody in Greece. The suicide rate has risen dramatically.” Orfeas saw the crisis approaching as early as in 2006, he says. “I was studying in Athens at the time, and students are often among the first to notice the financial consequences. They are dependent on the government and on their families.” Konstantinos, who grew up in the village of Drama, worked in the family restaurant for a long time and saw the revenues decrease sharply there. “Fewer and fewer people came in for a meal, and they ordered smaller portions. While you do need a car, you don’t necessarily have to eat out of doors. Also, it’s clear that everything has become more expensive in Greece. A cup of coffee can cost as much as four and a half euros. People just can’t afford that anymore.” Orfeas is hard in his judgment about
the politicians in his native country and their way of dealing with the crisis . “The country is being run by terrorists, who are making a mess of things. The banks are to blame for everything. It’s capitalism pure and simple. The police are corrupt. They come down on immigrants like a ton of bricks, for instance. If anything goes wrong,
they are blamed, and not the Greeks. Would leaving the EU solve things? I don’t think so. Banks will be banks.” Konstantinos is somewhat milder . “My country has not always invested EU funds wisely. There’s no denying that. On the other hand, I do think that the EU is being rather hard on us. Agreements could have been a bit more flexible.” About the government: “Our politicians follow orders, they do as they’re told by others. In that respect politicians in Cyprus are doing things well, there they even dare to say ‘no’ and look for other solutions. In Greece salaries are going down, while tax rates are going up. People are getting poor, and they are very very angry.”
Both students emphatically contest that the Greeks are a lazy people who don’t work hard, as is occasionally suggested in the media. Konstantinos: “No way!
“Greece is being run by terrorists” Of course we do drink a cup of coffee in due time and we like a congenial atmosphere. But there are many people who clock off ten to twelve hours a day.” Orfeas: “If anything, we almost work the longest hours in Europe, relatively speaking.”
Whether they will ever return to their beloved Greece is a question they cannot answer for now. They are first going to do their utmost to find a job in the Netherlands. “I miss Greece very much, my family and friends in particular. However, I do want to be able to create good opportunities for my own future”, says Konstantinos. He still has a glimmer of hope for his native country. “Given today’s wages and tax rates it’s definitely not on, but who knows what the situation will be like ten years from now.”
Interview | Judith van Gaal Illustration | Sandor Paulus
Research | 5
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Defending the reliability of science Study something once and it doesn’t count, study something twice and you’re halfway there, study something thrice and you’ve got yourself actual scientific research (if you’re lucky). It’s the importance of repetition in science, worded by dr. Daniël Lakens. The psychologist of the department of Human-Technology Interaction wants to establish a new make-up of science with more room for replication research.
The adage of today’s research is ‘publish or perish’. Grants and appointments largely depend on the number of articles candidates have published. Without a proper resume including numerous publications it’s hard to get a foot in the door with financers like NWO. And considering scientific journals are interested in publishing innovative studies only, really, researchers think twice about exactly replicating their colleagues’ work. However, they should, because it’s the one way to be able to determine the reliability of psychological and medical research, specifically. One could even argue that reproducibility is one of the defining characteristics of science.
colleagues had published in professional journal De Psycholoog. “We were asked to write a short article for NWO’s own magazine, in which we compared replicated research with ‘Brusselssprouts science’: very healthy for science, but not very tasty. As long as Brussels-sprouts science isn’t encouraged and financed, nobody will give it a go. NWO responded to the article by saying they didn’t mind financing replications, as long as they were innovative! In a fit of annoyance, I sent them an e-mail.” As a quite unexpected result, he was invited to the board.
There’s no way around perverted incentives
The realization that the emphasis on trailblazing research - for financers as well - could be detrimental to the robustness of scientific ideas is hardly an issue outside scientific circles, Daniël Lakens concludes. “Policymakers have this ideal image of scientists who aren’t burdened by their mortgages and are solely driven by scientific motives. That image may apply to a few extraordinary scientists, but the bulk of researchers consider publication their top priority. There’s just no way around the perverted incentives from scientific financers and publishers. Everything should be innovative and published quickly.” And this tendency might very well be at the expense of science.
Lakens explained to the NWO board that with their focus on innovation they are neglecting part of their job. “By law, organizations like NWO have two tasks. Not only are they supposed to promote innovative research, but also to guard the quality of science. And those two tasks are currently hindering each other. I therefore proposed to start awarding smaller grants of up to five thousand euro meant especially for replication research. These studies are really not that expensive most of the time.”
Last February, the TU/e psychologist visited research financer NWO, which had invited him following his plea for replication research he and two
Awaiting NWO’s answer, the psychologist is working on an international alternative. “My US colleague Brian Nosek has founded the Center for Open Science, an NPO for
Daryl Bem and the future Daryl Bem is a renowned psychologist who has taught at Harvard and Stanford, among other institutions. In 2011 he published an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology titled ‘Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect’ in which he claimed to have proven in no less than nine studies it’s possible to foresee the future - participants responded differently before having been exposed to erotic images, than before looking at neutral pictures. This supposed reversal of cause and effect, apparently statistically significant, caused quite a fuss. Assuming the effect doesn’t exist and the researcher acted in good faith, the statistics must have been incorrect. “As a result from that issue, many colleagues decided it was time to improve our statistical methods collectively. That insight has led to a wave of innovation.”
the realization of replication research, among other things. I’m working on a special issue of Social Psychology with Nosek currently, for which researchers are invited to submit a plan for replication research. If it’s approved, they’ll receive financing for their project and a publication guarantee.” The setup for the special edition seems to work. “We’ve already received more submissions than we’ll be able to publish. It proves you don’t have to move mountains to persuade scientists for this type of research. All it takes is a minor restructuring of the scientific process. On top of that it serves as a type of precautionary measure, since researchers will come to realize their possibly shoddy research could be repeated just like that. Some colleagues are seriously opposed to this type of large-scale replication projects. They fear it will only lead to bad publicity.” The Social Psychology special Lakens is working on is part of a larger movement that’s surfaced over the past years. For example, the Center for Open Science is running a major Reproducibility Project within which many more results from psychology are being replicated as accurately as possible. A digital platform dubbed the Open Science Framework has been set up for researchers to share their data, announce plans for experiments, and establish collaborations more easily. The renewed enthusiasm for ‘tedious’ replication can be ascribed to two recent issues in his expertise, according to TU/e’s Lakens. “There’s Diederik Stapel’s fraud, of course. An entirely different issue, concerning Daryl Bem, may have had even more impact, however (see box). The problem with the latter was probably the use of incorrect statistical methods.” In his crusade against perverted incentives in science, Lakens wrote a critical article on the Dutch ‘top-sector’ policy for newspaper NRC Handelsblad. According to the author, due to that policy the industrial partners that scientists are forced to work with are given too much control. Why is the young assistant professor so worried while many of his colleagues just shrug and continue to add to their list of publications? “I’m not the conformist type. And as soon as you’ve realized what’s wrong, there’s no denying it anymore. Like Thomas Kuhn said: once your eyes are opened… Anyway, I’m in a good position to criticize the system. In my area of expertise it’s relatively easy to prove effects with only a limited number of test subjects, so I publish quite a lot.” Because Lakens isn’t as pressured by the need to publish as many of his peers are, he’s less susceptible to claims his criticism stems from self-interest only. “On the other hand I see excellent
Daniël Lakens. Photo | Bart van Overbeeke
colleagues, those who go the extra mile by selecting extra subjects and replicating their own experiments, who have to worry whether or not their contracts will be renewed. Considering I’d like to be working with nice, expert
colleagues for the next thirty years, I guess you could say my attitude may partly be attributed to self-interest.” (TJ) openscienceframework.org centerforopenscience.org
Lies, big lies, and statistics If a certain scientific result - ‘milk is good for your health’, for example - is published in a respected peer-reviewed periodical, it doesn’t mean milk is in fact healthy. There’s always a statistical possibility, which is usually less than five percent (the p-value), that milk isn’t healthy at all and possible even bad for you. Scientists are aware of this. What they’re not as blatantly aware of, says Lakens, is that the statistical ‘power’of the average psychological study is a mere fifty percent. “It means that should there be a significant effect, the chances of proving this effect are the same as correctly guessing heads or tails when flipping a coin.” The majority of the fifty percent that doesn’t yield any relevant results ends up in a desk drawer. “And that’s one of the reasons the ratio between false effects and reliable effects in literature is worse than we’d want it to be.” The above problem doesn’t occur in psychology exclusively. Research indicates that the chances of positive reproduction of medical research are lower still. The possible implications are not hard to imagine.