The fable of the missing log units

Some time ago I published a critique of attempts at “magnetogenetics” – specifically the approach based on coupling a ferritin complex to an ion channel. See my article along with the original authors’ reply here:

I argued that the effects of magnetic fields on ferritin are much too weak to account for the reported observations of neural modulation. The discrepancy is 5 to 10 orders of magnitude. Several people have asked what that means. How much of a problem does this really represent? To illustrate that, here is a short fable…

Earlier this year, a team of engineers announced a discovery that could go a long way to solving the world’s energy problems. Their article, published in Nature Automotive, reports the invention of an electric car that can run for an entire year on a single AA battery. “It took a lot of persistence on the part of my students”, says the senior author. “We literally tried 21 different brands of AA battery before we found one that worked” [1].

Now a paper in eCars casts doubt on the discovery. The author performed some calculations on the amount of work needed to push a car around for a year and the amount of electrical energy stored in a battery. He says there is a discrepancy of 7 orders of magnitude, and that makes the claims very improbable: “If the car really drove around for a year it is unlikely to have anything to do with the AA battery.” The author also faults the reviewers of the original article for not recognizing how improbable the claims are, and thus failing to raise the bar for the empirical evidence accordingly. He concedes it is possible that the claimed discovery opens a window on entirely new physics, but says: “Both batteries and cars have been studied for a long time, and we have a very successful model of how they work”.

The Nature Automotive authors reply that they never proposed a mechanism for the remarkable result. They stand by their data and state that empirical observation must take priority over any theory. Because they are not experts in physics, they should not be expected to explain how the data came about.

The critic points out that Nature Automotive and similar journals have had a rather poor track record: About half of the studies published there cannot be replicated for one reason or another. Not long ago, the journal reported the invention of a car that actually produced fuel while driving, such that the gas tank needed to be emptied at regular intervals [2]. A magician dispatched by the journal subsequently debunked that report, and explained it as a mixture of wishful thinking and self-deception [3]. Nature Automotive and other journals like it profess to be concerned about the profusion of false claims, and want to improve their ability to spot those before publication. The eCars critic suggests that one ought to start with the manuscripts whose claims fly in the face of everything we know about how things work. No word yet from the editor or the referees of the original article.

[1] Vogt, N. (2016). Neuroscience: Manipulating neurons with magnetogenetics. Nature Methods 13, 394.

[2] Davenas, E., Beauvais, F., Amara, J., Oberbaum, M., Robinzon, B., Miadonnai, A., Tedeschi, A., Pomeranz, B., Fortner, P., Belon, P., et al. (1988). Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE. Nature 333, 816.

[3] Maddox, J., Randi, J., and Stewart, W.W. (1988). “High-dilution” experiments a delusion. Nature 334, 287–291.