Ben Goldacre
Saturday January 28, 2006
The Guardian
I spend a lot of my time wondering: why are people so afraid of science, when it has given us so much? To my mind there are two answers: firstly, the everyday science that you learned at school is no longer enough to understand the world around you. Fifty years ago, a fairly well educated person could easily have a full understanding of how the technology they interacted with actually worked: you could explain a car, a wind-up record player, a fridge, or the old analogue telephone exchange network, for example, on the back of an envelope, or with the help of a science teacher, pretty quickly.
But that’s not true any more. Look around you. Do you really, fully understand your mobile phone? The braking system on your car? Where your breakfast came from? Or even the manufacturing process that produced this bit of newspaper? My guess is no. Any sufficiently advanced technology, as they say, is indistinguishable from magic, and these days, with the pace of new developments, that goes even for people who know a lot about science. And that’s spooky. We don’t like that, either intellectually, or in our gut.
But secondly, of course, and more infuriatingly for scientists, the decisions about technology, about how it is used – political decisions – tarnish the popular view of scientists. Genetic modification of organisms is interesting and useful in an uncountably huge number of theoretical or even practical situations. Mass rollout of GM crops, though, makes people nervous, for some good reasons, and it’s issues like this that make science seem sinister and remote. So here is a very unpleasant new example of how new technology throws up new problems. This week, I noticed a glaring flaw in the mobile phone networks that allows you to stalk people, and find their location to within 200 yards, any time you want, without their permission. You don’t have to be Einstein; there are websites all over the internet to do this.
Here is how it works. You register on the site, pay a few quid, type in the phone number of the person you want to track, and then the system sends them a text message. All you need to do is surreptitiously get access to your target’s mobile phone, without their knowledge, for just five minutes: long enough to receive that text message, reply with the word LOCATE, and delete two text messages that arrive immediately, warning them they are being tracked. You can stalk them for a couple of days, find out if they really are where they say they are, work out who they are with, perhaps find out if they’re having an affair, then delete them off the system. They will never be any the wiser.
I asked my girlfriend if I could, in principle, track her for a day, without telling her how: she agreed and I set the service up on her phone, in five minutes, while she was asleep. I have a map of her movements in front of me right now. It feels very wrong. And it required no technical knowledge, or “hacking”, whatsoever. That this is possible, and so easy, to my mind, is extremely sinister. I had a squabble with one of these companies on Radio 4 yesterday, and they seemed astonished at what I was saying. They promised that they would tighten up security, and think about getting better consent for tracking people’s location than one response to a text message. The notion that this technology could be misused in this way had not, apparently, occurred to them. It took me to point it out to them. Who the hell am I? Nobody. Do I work for a phone company? Do I work for the government?
In that moment, I can honestly say, I felt the fear that so many people feel with technology. I don’t fully understand how mobile phones work. But now I know that anybody can use them to track people, without their permission, I share that uneasy sense that everything is, somehow, out of control …
· Please send your bad science to bad.science@guardian.co.uk
You can hear the discussion here:
Ben Goldacre said,
January 30, 2006 at 5:37 pm
done. that felt good.
Andy said,
January 30, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Ben,
The one thing that really surprises me about this mobile phone tracking is that you seem to have not been aware of it previously. While it may not have been mentioned in the mainstream media except as a plot device in some drama it’s not exactly a new technology. This tracking has been around for a while, it has been relatively easily accessible for a couple of years now. Raising it’s profile and making sure that people know that it’s not just fiction is a good thing but hardly counts as news.
As privacy issues go personally I’m far more concerned about the plans to put RFID (Sorry, contactless proximity devices) into our passports and ID cards combined with the reports that a similar system in Dutch passports has already been cracked.
I’ve always known my phone could be tracked. If that’s ever an issue I know I can switch it off or leave it behind. I really wouldn’t want someone to be able to get my name, data of birth, nationality and photo from 10 meters away without me knowing it. This is especially true when I’m overseas and fare more likely to have a passport on me.
amoebic vodka said,
January 30, 2006 at 6:53 pm
Buy a tinfoil hat for your passport (and everything else that’s going to have RFID). Or, on thinking about it, buy shares in foil making companies. Little hats for your clothes labels, fruit, magazines etc…
The Dutch thing:
www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/30/dutch_biometric_passport_crack/
if anyone’s interested.
Andy said,
January 30, 2006 at 7:21 pm
But as the story a couple of weeks pointed out, MIT have shown that tin foil hats don’t work very well.
My solution was far simpler, renew your passport early and hope that in 10 years they have sorted this mess out 😉
Michael Harman said,
January 30, 2006 at 7:32 pm
Andy said “I’ve always known my phone could be tracked. If that’s ever an issue I know I can switch it off …”. As I understand matters, a switched-off mobile phone is still tracked. You have to take the battery out or wrap it in tin-foil to stop that.
Andy said,
January 30, 2006 at 8:03 pm
The phone can’t be tracked when off. The tracking works measuring the signal strength at several base stations and triangulating the position. This works because the phone is sends a signal periodically to the network so that it can easily be located when there is a call.
When off the phone does not send these signals and so can’t be tracked.
amoebic vodka said,
January 31, 2006 at 10:24 am
If someone was tracking us by mobile phone, they’d be disappointed. We keep leaving it at home and forgetting to charge it. In fact, they would thing we’re very lazy and never leave our vodka bottle…er…
Boris (Not logged in because I'm in a bunker) said,
January 31, 2006 at 10:28 am
I completely agree with delster’s comment about people not giving a damn about science. We all encounter it and I, for one, find it quite disheartening to be listening to same people who worry about GM and mobile phone masts telling you that they aren’t intereted when you give them your scientific opinion on these subjects (or what I call “setting the record straight) – people like to believe in scare stories. The media have completely wiped out the respect for the learned and professional opinion of scientists in the public’s eyes so that’s why they couldn’t care less what you say – even courts of law now think they have the right to rule on what is conclusive scientific evidence these days.
Evil Kao Chiu said,
January 31, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Courts of law do have the right to rule on what is conclusive scientific evidence. The whole purpose of tribunals of fact is that they have to decide on any matter which is material to concluding their cases. The good thing is, though, that the Courts are obliged to follow rules which, in conception even if not to the letter, follow scientific method. Because they’re there to do the same thing – make truth judgements. In doing so, the Court will usually take expert evidence from actual scientists. As in the ‘battling parents’ MMR case, where Sumner J was backed up by Thorpe and Sedley LJJ on his weighing of the value of the expert witnesses presented by both sides.
Robert Carnegie said,
January 31, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Science often means that srmeone has invented a new invisible thing that can kill you (for instance electricity). I think it’s understandable that scientists aren’t trusted. There’ve been an awful lot of untrustworthy scientists. The tobacco lobby for a start…
Robert Carnegie said,
January 31, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Oh, in America there’s a statutory requirement, not entirely enforced when I last heard, for really good location of cell phones that make emergency calls – E911 is the catch-tag, I think. It may seem unfair if phone companies don’t have the technology for this function, which is not what their product was designed for; of course it can be done just by bolting a GPS onto every phone but that would put the price up considerably, even now.
AitchJay said,
January 31, 2006 at 1:51 pm
There were Bali bombers caught in Indonesia using this tecnology, to much rejoicing here in Australia, since they had killed 88 Australians..
I still don’t like anyone knowing what I’m up to; apart from me.
Hatter said,
January 31, 2006 at 3:39 pm
What’s sinister about genetic crops is that corporations with a very poor track record of concern for safety are the ones pushing this stuff into the market. Even if they didn’t have that track record, they’d all still have a strong motivation to wipe out ordinary crops in favour of their genetic cash cow.
Kepich said,
January 31, 2006 at 3:56 pm
I understand that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 attacks, was caught in Pakistan in 2003 basically because he kept the same SIM card despite frequently chaging his mobile phone.
Boris (Not logged in because I'm in a bunker) said,
January 31, 2006 at 5:51 pm
‘Courts of law do have the right to rule on what is conclusive scientific evidence. The whole purpose of tribunals of fact is that they have to decide on any matter which is material to concluding their cases. The good thing is, though, that the Courts are obliged to follow rules which, in conception even if not to the letter, follow scientific method. Because they’re there to do the same thing – make truth judgements. In doing so, the Court will usually take expert evidence from actual scientists. As in the ‘battling parents’ MMR case, where Sumner J was backed up by Thorpe and Sedley LJJ on his weighing of the value of the expert witnesses presented by both sides.’
Courts of law have the right to decide whether reasonable doubt exists or not – they have no right to decide whether or not associations exist or not, that is the job of the scientist through research. Courts of law do have to make judgements, I accept that, but those judgements that are based on lack of research are no judgements at all. In many modern cases involving science – the answer is often ‘we don’t know yet because we need to do more research’ in these cases who is a judge to decide whether a scietific association exists or not?
Andy said,
January 31, 2006 at 5:55 pm
The E911 requirements are that mobile phones sold within the US must be locatable to within 100 meters within a fairly tight time constraint (60 seconds?). There is no way that the conventional triangulation based on signal strength is able to meet those requirements in areas with poor coverage.
A common system seems to be to include an A-GPS system in the phone, the A standing for Assisted. A-GPS works by using the mobile phone network to give the phone the exact time, a rough location (within miles is good enough) and details of which GPS satellites should be in view. This assistance combined with the extra time the phone gets to process data (rather than the once per second requirements of most GPS systems) means that a GPS position becomes possible under conditions where a conventional GPS wouldn’t be able to function and at a lower cost than a full GPSR.
There are also some systems using more advanced ways of locating the phone based on the signals received at the base stations but they all require the phone to be within range of at least two base stations.
amoebic vodka said,
January 31, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Ben’s article was more about who has access to such private information. Just because the police can use it to catch criminals and the emergency services for finding casualties, that doesn’t mean your violent ex/the school bully should be able to use it too.
“Even if they didn’t have that track record, they’d all still have a strong motivation to wipe out ordinary crops in favour of their genetic cash cow.”
Um…you do know that the seed from many conventionally bred crops is essentially useless for re-sowing, right?
Frank said,
January 31, 2006 at 11:09 pm
I know it’s off topic, but:
if anyone was wondering how exactly £30 was jusifiable for a kettle lead, check out what happened when I asked about a £500 crocodile clip.
Bear in mind though, it is capable of quantum particle streams.
(just click on my name if the link is dead)
pv said,
February 1, 2006 at 12:30 am
Hatter, the most sinister and upsetting thing is that public fear is stirred up by certain interested parties for what appear to be prejudicial reasons. See my post (no 25) in this thread regarding anarticle in the Economist about wheat. As far as I can tell, all modern crops (ordinary crops as you describe them) are genetically modified in one way or another. If they weren’t we wouldn’t be able to feed ourselves, assuming we were actually alive in the first place. I’d like to know if anyone has died as a direct result of eating GM food.
Evil Kao Chiu said,
February 1, 2006 at 11:26 am
“Courts of law have the right to decide whether reasonable doubt exists or not.”
I think you’re confusing Courts generically with Criminal Courts specifically. Even then, in any criminal case, a finding of certainty (“reasonable doubt” now being diapproved-of as a formultaion) involves many precedent judgments having to be made (some of which are ‘on the balance of probabilities’).
Those precedent judgements on evidence presented, whether factual (witness X saw defendant Y commit act Z) or scientific (vaccine X is effective at preventing condition Y) have to be made for the Court to come to a determination. It cannot be right to say, “[Courts] have no right to decide whether or not associations exist or not” becuase no subject can be without the Courts’s purview – if it is material to the case, it needs to be decided. What is important to remember is that merely because a Judge is satisfied of something to a certain standard of proof does not make it so. It is that the evidence before him or her satisfies whatever evidential test is required.
The Courts agree that “judgements that are based on lack of research are no judgements at all”, which is why they call expert scientific witnesses. If such witnesses state “we don’t know yet because we need to do more research” then the Court must either say that it is not possible to decide that issue on the evidence or, if the evidence is that it is more probable that X is the case than Y but we need to do more research to “know” then the Court will look to see if this meets the required standard of proof, whether ‘certainty’ (probably not) or merely ‘on the balance of probabilities’ (probably does).
Sorry to go on – given that a constant complaint on the site is of humanities graduates trespassing in science, I thought I should defend the corner of the lawyer watching scientists trespass on the laws of evidence and judicial system…
Evil Kao Chiu said,
February 6, 2006 at 10:20 am
Gosh. That killed discussion stone dead, didn’t it?
Talk about the chilling effect of the law on free speech.
Delster said,
February 6, 2006 at 2:13 pm
well to try and kick start things….
“watching scientists trespass on the laws of evidence and judicial system”
Scientific theory, and note the word theory, is based on observation of evidence and construction of a theory to fit that evidence, or sometimes, construction of a theory based upon other theories and then a search for evidence of the “truth” of the new theory.
Once that has been done the results are offered up for others to try and 1.replicate the results and 2. pick great gapping holes in the theory. Provided that 1 is done and 2 is not then it is accepted as a valid theory and added to the body of knowledge….. but and this is important… it is still normally referred to as a theory. The reason for this is that at some point somebody may come up with evidence to disprove it and or replace it with a variation or improvement on the theory.
There are very few things that a good scientist will point too and say that is a solid fact because we all know that we don’t know everything.
As for the Court having the right or not to decide if an association exists or not i would way that provided the court consists of scientists with a knowledge of the field the association is within then yes they do. If how ever it is comprised of lawyers and judges with no grounding in the matter then no they don’t.
To ask a judge to make a ruling on a scientific matter they have no knowledge of is like asking a chemist to preside over a murder trial!
If the courts are supposed to pass judgement on medical / scientific matters and rule on effectiveness and association then please can we press charges against the homeopaths please??? pretty please with a cherry on top???
On the subject of homeopaths. The was an article in the irish independant the other day concerning one who convinced a man with a cancerous (malignant) tumor in his neck to give up all other treatments and rely on her’s.
Needless to say the guy then proceeded to snuff it.
A court hearing was held to review the case and the Homeopath in question did not show up at the court hearing. So they fined her… how much i hear you cry? a whole 6 euro’s! so about £4
how it goes from here remains to be seens…..
Evil Kao Chiu said,
February 8, 2006 at 11:11 am
“please can we press charges against the homeopaths please??? pretty please with a cherry on top???”
Bloody hell: I wish. The problem would lie (say, on an indictment for obtaining money by deception) in establishing dishonesty because the stupid buggers are so utterly deluded that they honestly think homeopathy works. Or at least it would be difficult to prove they thought otherwise to the required standard. Otherwise, I’d be the first person ringing the Met and saying “I’d like to report a crime…’ Sometimes ignorance can be a defence.
Treating Courts as experimental science is probably not a great idea. I can see the proceedings now… “our best theory is that Mr Jones killed the victim with this here knife so we’re going to let him loose with an identical one and see if he confirms our suspicions by following the same pattern.”
Chemists do preside over trials, I suspect, as Magistrates. Interestingly, in the Roskill Report way back in 1987ish, it was suggested that expert assessors join judges on complex fraud trials (e.g. accountants). The suggestion was never taken up, sadly. Still, Judges and juries are generally there to decide stuff based on the evidence presented. They don’t just wake up one morning and decide to rule arbitrarily on the efficacy of the MMR vaccine. Indeed, they can’t and if they do they get appealed and overturned.
Evil Kao Chiu said,
February 17, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Bugger. Killed it dead again.
I’m never posting again due to the fact that I am evidently extremely boring.
detly said,
February 19, 2006 at 10:44 am
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
~ George Benford
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws
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