[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('2cher', 'C')arhole, you can argue science with Luddite's, it is like trying to follow an arguement between an atheist, and a theist... pointless

[Carlhole]

Dr. Modha - "vast, global brain"

[Carlhole]

Blue Brain's Dr. Henry Markham says "Simulated Cat Brain Project a ‘Scam’"

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')i]“What IBM reported is a scam — no where near a cat-scale brain simulation,” he writes in an open letter to Bernard Myerson, IBM’s Chief Technology Officer. “I am absolutely shocked at this announcement. Not because it is any kind of technical feat, but because of the mass deception of the public.”

Markham isn’t exactly a disinterested observer, as IEEE Spectrum’s Sally Adee notes. He’s got his own ersatz mind project, called Blue Brain, that’s also affiliated with IBM. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Markham claims Modha has simply put together a “PR stunt here to ride on Blue Brain.”

Still, such public criticism is unusual — especially when you consider that it’s also an indirect indictment of Darpa, one of the leading funders of artificial intelligence research.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Henry Marham, Blue Brain', '[')i]All these kinds of simulations are trivial and have been around for decades — simply called artificial neural network (ANN) simulations. We even stooped to doing these kinds of simulations as benchmark tests four years ago with 10’s of millions of such points…. If we (or anyone else) wanted to we could easily do this for a billion “points,” but we would certainly not call it a cat-scale simulation. It is really no big deal to simulate a billion points interacting if you have a big enough computer. The only step here is that they have at their disposal a big computer. For a grown-up “researcher” to get excited because one can simulate billions of points interacting is ludicrous.

…This is light years away from a cat brain, not even close to an ant’s brain in complexity. It is highly unethical of Mohda to mislead the public in making people believe they have actually simulated a cat’s brain…. That IBM and DARPA would support such deceptive announcements is even more shocking.

[Arthur75]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Henry Marham, Blue Brain', '[')i]All these kinds of simulations are trivial and have been around for decades — simply called artificial neural network (ANN) simulations. We even stooped to doing these kinds of simulations as benchmark tests four years ago with 10’s of millions of such points…. If we (or anyone else) wanted to we could easily do this for a billion “points,” but we would certainly not call it a cat-scale simulation. It is really no big deal to simulate a billion points interacting if you have a big enough computer. The only step here is that they have at their disposal a big computer. For a grown-up “researcher” to get excited because one can simulate billions of points interacting is ludicrous.

…This is light years away from a cat brain, not even close to an ant’s brain in complexity. It is highly unethical of Mohda to mislead the public in making people believe they have actually simulated a cat’s brain…. That IBM and DARPA would support such deceptive announcements is even more shocking.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Arthur75', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Henry Marham, Blue Brain', '[')i]All these kinds of simulations are trivial and have been around for decades — simply called artificial neural network (ANN) simulations. We even stooped to doing these kinds of simulations as benchmark tests four years ago with 10’s of millions of such points…. If we (or anyone else) wanted to we could easily do this for a billion “points,” but we would certainly not call it a cat-scale simulation. It is really no big deal to simulate a billion points interacting if you have a big enough computer. The only step here is that they have at their disposal a big computer. For a grown-up “researcher” to get excited because one can simulate billions of points interacting is ludicrous.

…This is light years away from a cat brain, not even close to an ant’s brain in complexity. It is highly unethical of Mohda to mislead the public in making people believe they have actually simulated a cat’s brain…. That IBM and DARPA would support such deceptive announcements is even more shocking.

[Arthur75]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', ' ')that they are simply demonstrating artificial neural networks on a large, fast machine.

[Isochroma]

Reading the report here: IEEE: Cat Fight Brews Over Cat Brain

http://spectrum.ieee.org/blog/semicondu ... pectrum%29

Selected excerpt:

Dear Bernie,

You told me you would string this guy up by the toes the last time Mohda made his stupid statement about simulating the mouse's brain.

I thought that having gone through Blue Brain so carefully, journalists would be able to recognize that what IBM reported is a scam - no where near a cat-scale brain simulation, but somehow they are totally deceived by these incredible statements.

I am absolutely shocked at this announcement. Not because it is any kind of technical feat, but because of the mass deception of the public.

1. These are point neurons (missing 99.999% of the brain; no branches; no detailed ion channels; the simplest possible equation you can imagine to simulate a neuron, totally trivial synapses; and using the STDP learning rule I discovered in this way is also is a joke).

2. All these kinds of simulations are trivial and have been around for decades - simply called artificial neural network (ANN) simulations. We even stooped to doing these kinds of simulations as bench mark tests 4 years ago with 10's of millions of such points before we bought the Blue Gene/L. If we (or anyone else) wanted to we could easily do this for a billion "points", but we would certainly not call it a cat-scale simulation. It is really no big deal to simulate a billion points interacting if you have a big enough computer. The only step here is that they have at their disposal a big computer. For a grown up "researcher" to get excited because one can simulate billions of points interacting is ludicrous.

3. It is not even an innovation in simulation technology. You don't need any special "C2 simulator", this is just a hoax and a PR stunt. Most neural network simulators for parallel machines can can do this today. Nest, pNeuron, SPIKE, CSIM, etc, etc. all of them can do this! We could do the same simulation immediately, this very second by just loading up some network of points on such a machine, but it would just be a complete waste of time - and again, I would consider it shameful and unethical to call it a cat simulation.

4. This is light years away from a cat brain, not even close to an ants brain in complexity. It is highly unethical of Mohda to mislead the public in making people believe they have actually simulated a cat's brain. Absolutely shocking.

5. There is no qualified neuroscientist on the planet that would agree that this is even close to a cat's brain. I see he did not stop making such stupid statements after they claimed they simulated a mouse's brain.

6. You should also ask Mohda where he got the notion of "reverse engineering" from, when he does not even know what it means - look the the models - this has nothing to do with reverse engineering. And mouse, rat, cat, primate, human - ask him where he took that from? Simply a PR stunt here to ride on Blue Brain.

That IBM and DARPA would support such deceptive announcements is even more shocking.

That the Bell prize would be awarded for such nonsense is beyond belief. I never realized that such trivial and unethical behavior would actually be rewarded. I would have expected an ethics committee to string this guy up by the toes.

I suppose it is up to me to let the "cat out of the bag" about this outright deception of the public.

Competition is great, but this is a disgrace and extremely harmful to the field. Obviously Mohda would like to claim he simulated the Human brain next - I really hope someone does some scientific and ethical checking up on this guy.

All the best,

Henry

Not that I really needed to be vindicated, but his points are my points fleshed out in suitable detail.

[Isochroma]

Now for the real guys, doing the real hard work of real simulation at the atomic scale: The CURE - Modelling Biological Systems

http://www.cure.group.cam.ac.uk/Network ... jects.html

Selected excerpts:

"The Theory of Condensed Matter group (TCM) work on atomistic models of biochemical systems, photoreaction systems, proteing inhibitor complexes and protein-metal ion complexes, (cytochrome P450, cyclin dependant kinases cdk) as well as theoretical studies on the folding of proteins. One major approach in this group is the development of first principle models, (ab initio, quantum mechanical) modelling individual atoms in complex molecules. See the Atomistic Biological Physics Discussion Group website "

"The software developed in TCM such as CASTEP, SIESTA and AMBER. are able to simulate the behaviour of up to several hundred atoms, but the calculations become exponentially more complex with increasing number of variables."

"Mike Payne and others in the TCM group are completing a linear scaling method of atomic simulation (ie gets computationally more complex in linear scale with atomic complexity) ONETEP. This development will make possible the modelling of much larger, more complex systems and so has considerable relevance to research on protein structure. Other simulation programs are able to model more complex systems, but in less detail. The group's longer term aim is to produce a software package that combines both the quantum mechanical and molecular model scales together. For example in modelling a protein system it would simulate the proteins on a molecular scale except in the active site region where more detailed, atomic scale calculations would be made."

Currently the world's most advanced atomic simulator seems to be ONETEP (http://www2.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/onetep/)

"ONETEP (Order-N Electronic Total Energy Package) is a linear-scaling code for quantum-mechanical calculations based on density-functional theory."

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Isochroma', '
')Not that I really needed to be vindicated, but his points are my points fleshed out in suitable detail.

[Isochroma]

Sometimes a lie can be the most interesting doorway into the realm of the true.

May it intake flocks of the innocent like the black hole that it is.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Isochroma', 'S')ometimes a lie can be the most interesting doorway into the realm of the true. May it intake flocks of the innocent like the black hole that it is.

[Isochroma]

I was reading thru the IEEE article and damn! Mr. Markram commented on it!

Here's his words, word-for-word (unsimulated):

"IBM's claim is a HOAX. This is a mega public relations stunt - a clear case of scientific deception of the public. These simulations do not even come close to the complexity of an ant, let alone that of a cat. IBM allows Mohda to mislead the public into believing that they have simulated a brain with the complexity of a cat - sheer nonsense. Here are the scientific reasons why it is a hoax: How complex is their model? They claim to have simulated over a billion neurons interacting. Their so called "neurons" are the tiniest of points you can imagine, a microscopic dot. Over 98% of the volume of a neuron is branches (like a tree). They just cut off all the branches and roots and took a point in the middle of the trunk to represent a entire neuron. In real life, each segment of the branches of a neuron contains dozens of ion channels that powerfully controls the information processing in a neuron. They have none of that. Neurons contain 10's of thousands of proteins that form a network with 10's of millions of interactions. These interactions are incredibly complex and will require solving millions of differential equations. They have none of that. Neurons contain around 20'000 genes that produce products called mRNA, which builds the proteins. The way neurons build proteins and transport them to all the corners of the neuron where they are needed is an even more complex process which also controls what a neuron is, its memories and how it will process information. They have none of that. They use an alpha function (up fast down slow) to simulate a synaptic event. This is a completely inaccurate representation of a synapse. There are at least 6 types of synapses that are highly non-linear in their transmission (i.e. that transform inputs and not only transmit inputs). In fact you would need a 10's of thousands of differential equations to simulate one synapse. Synapses are also extremely complex molecular machines that would themselves require thousands of differential equations to simulate just one. They simulated none of this. There are complex differential equations that must be solved to simulate the ionic flow in the branches, to simulate the ion channels biophysics, the protein-protein interactions, as well as the complete biochemical and genetic machinery as well as the synaptic transmission between neurons. 100's of thousands of more differential equations. They have none of this. These "points" they simulated and the synapses that they use for communication are literally millions of times simpler than a real cat brain. So they have not even simulated a cat's brain at one millionth of its complexity. Is it nonetheless the biggest simulation ever run? No. These people simulated 1.6 billion points interacting. They used a formulation to model the summing up and threshold spiking of the "points" called the Izhikevik Formulation. Prof Eugene Izhikevik himself already in 2005 has run a simulation with 100 billion such points interacting just for the fun of it: (over 60 larger simulations have been run) : http://www.izhikevich.org/human_brain_s ... n%20Models). The simulations ran on a cluster of desktop PCs every graduate student could have built. This is no technical achievement. That model exhibited oscillations, but that always happens so even simulating 100 Billion such points interacting is light years away from a brain. Is the simulator they built a big step? Not even close. There are numerous proprietary and peer-reviewed neurosimulators (e.g., NCS, pNEURON, SPLIT, NEST) out there that can handle very large parallel models that are essentially only bound by the available memory. The bigger the machine you have available, the more neurons you can simulate. All these simulators apply optimizations for the particular platform in order to make optimal use of the available hardware. Without any comparison to existing simulators, their publication is a non-peer reviewed claim. Did they learn anything about the brain? They got very excited because they saw oscillations. Oscillations are an obligatory artifact that one always gets when many points interact. These findings that they claim on the neuroscience side may excite engineers, but not neuroscientists. Why did they get the Gordon Bell Prize? They submitted a non-peer reviewed paper to the Gordon Bell Committee and were awarded the prize almost instantly after they made their press release. They seem to have been very successful in influencing the committee with their claim, which technically is not peer-reviewed by the respective community and is neuroscientifically outrageous. But is there any innovation here? The only innovation here is that IBM has built a large supercomputer - which is irrelevant to the press release. Why did IBM let Mohda make such a deceptive claim to the public? The only possible reason I can think of is that this a publicity stunt promote their supercompter. The supercomputer industry is suffering from the financial crisis and they probably are desperate to boost their sales. It is so disappointing to see this truly great company allow the deception of the public on such a grand scale. But have you not said you can simulate the Human brain in 10 years? I am a biologist and neuroscientist that has studied the brain for 30 years. I know how complex it is. I believe that with the right resources and the right strategy it is possible. We have so far only simulated a small part of the brain at the cellular level of a rodent and I have always been clear about that. Would other neuroscientists agree with you? There is no neuroscientist on earth that would agree that they came even close to simulating the cat's brain - or any brain. But did Mohda not collaborate with neuroscientists? I would be very surprised if any neuroscientists that he may have had in his DARPA consortium realized he was going to make such an outrages claim. I can imaging that it is remotely possible that the San Fransisco neuroscientists knew he was going to make such a stupid claim. But did you not collaborate with IBM? I was collaborating with IBM on the Blue Brain Project at the very beginning because they had the best available technology to faithfully allow us to integrate the diversity and complexity found in brain tissue into a model. This for me is a major endeavor to advance our insights into the brain and drug development. Two years ago, when the same Dharmendra Mhoda claimed the ¿mouse-scale simulations¿, I cut all neuroscience collaboration with IBM because this is an unethical claim and it deceives the public. Aren't you afraid they will sue you for saying that they have deceived the public? We'll there is right and wrong and what they have done is not only wrong, but outrageous. They deceived you and millions of other people. Henry Markram Blue Brain Project."

For the record, here's my take on why such outrageous claims are made: to impress the brass at IBM and, most importantly, at the Funders, ie. the US Military, whose $16.1 million grant must be justified, and appeals for more dough must be backed by something impressively scientific and seemingly relevant. The picture to be painted to those who decide on matters of money must be just real enough to fool but easy enough to achieve with available or near-available equipment. The resolved product of conflict between the need for money and the pretense of relevant science is sometimes trumpeted in lay media, where sharpshooters like myself and MarkRAM can shoot it down like fish in a barrel or red balloons in a darkling sky.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Isochroma', 'I') was reading thru the IEEE article and damn! Mr. Markram commented on it!

Here's his words, word-for-word (unsimulated):

[i]"IBM's claim is a HOAX. This is a mega public relations stunt - a clear case of scientific deception of the public. These simulations do not even come close to the complexity of an ant, let alone that of a cat...

[Isochroma]

I updated my post - read my comment at its bottom: it's the money, the ca$h, moolah, etc. Taxpayer chips for silicon chips and slippery dreams lubricated by a fantasy coded in software.

So long as a duck quacks it can attract mates or even dumb hunters - at least for a while. Feed, then move on.

There's something so emotional, so sadly sentimental about the whole case. It's like a rain of tears on an unknown corpse. The conclusion goes somewhere else. It flows from rivulets into streams and onward to locations unknown, beyond the narrow illumination of explication.

[Carlhole]

BTW, if you really wanted to argue the Blue Brain people, you'd have to read the technical criticisms of other supercomputer scientists. There's a vocal group that don't believe Markham's approach will work. But they'd probably give you a very involved answer. And it hasn't been made public. Maybe it's out therte on the Net somewhere. At any rate. I'm not one of these guys. So I have to wait for news to break about whatever debates are going on in that field. But advanced, detailed computational brain modeling sure doesn't seem like Jules Verne stuff anymore. It's current.

One of the primary goals of Blue Brain is to simply create a highly accurate repository of what is already known about the neurons, cortical columns and other designed-in virtual brain performance. Knowledge can only increase from here as theory builds on theory, neuroscience ideas are won or lost, or lead to something new.

It's a no-brainer that the supercomputing race will lead to something important, probably fundamentally new - and probably accompany any future human evolution in the world. Intelligence is probably the most valuable thing in the Universe (when you really consider the Zen koan of the word "valuable"). So... it's inevitable that big efforts will go into brain modeling and creating levels of machine conceptualization of enormous data flows.

[Isochroma]

"One of the primary goals of Blue Brain is to simply create a highly accurate repository of what is already known about the neurons, cortical columns and other designed-in virtual brain performance."

You're starting to embarrass yourself. I suggest you re-read MarkRAM's statement and his following comments.

There isn't even an attempt to "create a highly accurate repository of what is already known about the neurons, cortical columns".

Instead, there is an attempt to "create a highly accurate-looking portrayal of a simulation that is hoped to - in the short term - suck down more taxpayer dollars - and in the long term - might give the USMIL something better than what they've currently got to run Predators, etc.

What is being done is an attempt to justify the receipt of existing taxpayer dollars and get more by blatantly lying about what is being done. Statements that are outright false, and statements that are downright misleading.

You should understand that the basis for a biosystem is its atomic foundation, and that anything that doesn't start from that foundation is a gross parody, perhaps not even deserving the title of imitation, never mind simulation.

Real simulations of real phenomena are stuck at the scale of folding a single protein molecule, or simulating some hundreds of simpler atoms or molecules.

In comparison, the simpler task of 3D visual simulation is much more advanced. Today's fake3D rendering pipeline (read: sewer pipe) called Direct3D and other acronyms, along with its accompanying power-thirsty rasterizers, is what passes for reality in almost all 3D software applications, like games for example.

In the case of 3D visual rendering, the chasm is between the fake3D of rasterization versus the real3D of raytracing, which actually simulates the photons - either forward or backward - which interact with each other and the scene and finally deposit their cute quanta into the virtual camera, or the virtual light sources - depending on the RT's temporal directionality.

It's a poor comparison between visual 3D methods and brain simulation, but in some respects it highlights the essential difference between an imitation and an attempt at reality; in the case of visual 3D, the two techniques produce much more similar results than anything currently claimed or possible with brains.

It might be guessed that my favor in visual 3D lies in the true simulation approach. It's not that I hate the childish lie that is rasterization, but I have a distaste for imitations no matter how polished. We have an art as human beings of making what we like to see, rather than looking at the hard nastiness underneath.

The very qualities and quantities that make this reality so interesting, so full of infinite possibility - including the unique potential of awareness - are those that are most difficult if not entirely impossible to simulate on current digital hardware. Some are already known to be impossible to simulate - like the origination of random data, which has to be imported from an external source outside the simulation.

True, the gap between our innate and also our exate capacity and the ambitions of the greedy is an unbridgeable chasm at present; however, I don't excuse those who pretend to have climbed mountains while only digging themselves into deep holes.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Isochroma', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Carlhole', 'O')ne of the primary goals of Blue Brain is to simply create a highly accurate repository of what is already known about the neurons, cortical columns and other designed-in virtual brain performance."

[Isochroma]

I'll be reposting until it gets into your thick neocortical columns:

"Dear Bernie,

You told me you would string this guy up by the toes the last time Mohda made his stupid statement about simulating the mouse's brain.

I thought that having gone through Blue Brain so carefully, journalists would be able to recognize that what IBM reported is a scam - no where near a cat-scale brain simulation, but somehow they are totally deceived by these incredible statements.

I am absolutely shocked at this announcement. Not because it is any kind of technical feat, but because of the mass deception of the public.

1. These are point neurons (missing 99.999% of the brain; no branches; no detailed ion channels; the simplest possible equation you can imagine to simulate a neuron, totally trivial synapses; and using the STDP learning rule I discovered in this way is also is a joke).

2. All these kinds of simulations are trivial and have been around for decades - simply called artificial neural network (ANN) simulations. We even stooped to doing these kinds of simulations as bench mark tests 4 years ago with 10's of millions of such points before we bought the Blue Gene/L. If we (or anyone else) wanted to we could easily do this for a billion "points", but we would certainly not call it a cat-scale simulation. It is really no big deal to simulate a billion points interacting if you have a big enough computer. The only step here is that they have at their disposal a big computer. For a grown up "researcher" to get excited because one can simulate billions of points interacting is ludicrous.

3. It is not even an innovation in simulation technology. You don't need any special "C2 simulator", this is just a hoax and a PR stunt. Most neural network simulators for parallel machines can can do this today. Nest, pNeuron, SPIKE, CSIM, etc, etc. all of them can do this! We could do the same simulation immediately, this very second by just loading up some network of points on such a machine, but it would just be a complete waste of time - and again, I would consider it shameful and unethical to call it a cat simulation.

4. This is light years away from a cat brain, not even close to an ants brain in complexity. It is highly unethical of Mohda to mislead the public in making people believe they have actually simulated a cat's brain. Absolutely shocking.

5. There is no qualified neuroscientist on the planet that would agree that this is even close to a cat's brain. I see he did not stop making such stupid statements after they claimed they simulated a mouse's brain.

6. You should also ask Mohda where he got the notion of "reverse engineering" from, when he does not even know what it means - look the the models - this has nothing to do with reverse engineering. And mouse, rat, cat, primate, human - ask him where he took that from? Simply a PR stunt here to ride on Blue Brain.

That IBM and DARPA would support such deceptive announcements is even more shocking.

That the Bell prize would be awarded for such nonsense is beyond belief. I never realized that such trivial and unethical behavior would actually be rewarded. I would have expected an ethics committee to string this guy up by the toes.

I suppose it is up to me to let the "cat out of the bag" about this outright deception of the public.

Competition is great, but this is a disgrace and extremely harmful to the field. Obviously Mohda would like to claim he simulated the Human brain next - I really hope someone does some scientific and ethical checking up on this guy.

All the best,

Henry"

As he states, it is an abstract simulator, and does not model or even attempt to simulate the actual molecules or molecular processes that make up a brain. It uses POINT NEURONS. Reread his statements.

I told you over and over and over again, but aparently your brain is lacking the plasticity to absorb the detail: there is no computer today that can even simulate a single cell of any kind, and it takes networks of them to fold single protein molecules.

There was never even an attempt to simulate an actual brain or its biochemical processes.

Learn. Understand. Or get out of this thread. Your comments are worse than useless because all you do is regurgitate media statements without understanding the basis of simulation, intelligence, or chemistry.

Therefore you've got no basis to even realize that what we're talking about isn't even a simulation of a brain but a simple brainwash.

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Isochroma', 'I')'ll be reposting until it gets into your thick neocortical columns:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dr. Henry Markham', 'D')ear Bernie,

You told me you would string this guy up by the toes the last time Mohda made his stupid statement about simulating the mouse's brain.

I thought that having gone through Blue Brain so carefully, journalists would be able to recognize that what IBM reported is a scam - no where near a cat-scale brain simulation, but somehow they are totally deceived by these incredible statements.

I am absolutely shocked at this announcement. Not because it is any kind of technical feat, but because of the mass deception of the public.

1. These are point neurons (missing 99.999% of the brain; no branches; no detailed ion channels; the simplest possible equation you can imagine to simulate a neuron, totally trivial synapses; and using the STDP learning rule I discovered in this way is also is a joke).

2. All these kinds of simulations are trivial and have been around for decades - simply called artificial neural network (ANN) simulations. We even stooped to doing these kinds of simulations as bench mark tests 4 years ago with 10's of millions of such points before we bought the Blue Gene/L. If we (or anyone else) wanted to we could easily do this for a billion "points", but we would certainly not call it a cat-scale simulation. It is really no big deal to simulate a billion points interacting if you have a big enough computer. The only step here is that they have at their disposal a big computer. For a grown up "researcher" to get excited because one can simulate billions of points interacting is ludicrous...

...

All the best,

Henry".

[Carlhole]

Rival Scientist Calls IBM Cat Brain Simulation a Scam

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Claims by an IBM researcher that he and other scientists were able to simulate a cat's brain using a new algorithm running on an IBM supercomputer are being disputed. Henry Markram, heading up another project called Blue Brain, calls the claims by IBM scientist Dharmendra Modha a scam and a hoax and argues that what Modha's group accomplished only proved that it had access to a massive supercomputer.

In a letter to IBM CTO Bernard Meyerson, Henry Markram, the lead on the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne's Blue Brain project, said the presentation at Supercomputing by Dharmendra Modha, manager of cognitive computing at IBM Research-Almaden, was a mass deception played upon the public, adding that the research did not support Modha's findings.