Yet again, the Democrats in congress are doing their best to dodge an issue. What a bloody shock. This time, the issue is Senator Russell Feingold's recent motion to censure the president for operating an illegal wiretapping program.
The Republicans, secure in their knowledge that their majority is sufficient (at the moment) to defeat any such motion, called for an immediate vote on the motion. The Democratic Leadership, proving yet again that they are incapable of demonstrating the leadership or moral courage needed to do light a match in a dark cave without first conducting extensive polling on the issue, are acting to postpone any vote for the moment. Essentially, they're filabustering Feingold's motion. The excuse for this inaction, as provided by Harry Reid, is that the motion deserves more thought and consideration.
Yeah, right. There are lots of things out there that deserve more thought and consideration. This really isn't one of them. What the president did is somewhat, but not entirely, known. Congress has attempted, somewhat pathetically, to extract more information. The administration semi-politely told them where they could stick their request. No further action has been taken, and no further action appears to be forthcoming.
Legal scholars have weighed in all over the place on the president's justification ("I'm a wartime leader.") for the program. Either you buy his argument or you don't. If you do, you don't think he did anything illegal. If you don't, you think he did soemthing illegal. If he did something illegal, he should be censured. If he didn't, he shouldn't. If you haven't figured out where you stand on this one by now, you haven't been paying attention.
What the Democratic delay tactics are all about is not taking a stand. They don't want to risk pissing off their base by going on record against censure, and they don't want to risk pissing anyone else off by (heaven forbid) going on record for censure. So, yet again, we find the Democratic leadership standing around trying to figure out which way the train's going - presumably so that they can jump in front and get run over again.
For crying out loud, why can't they take a stand. At this point, I'd settle for almost any kind of stand. OK, it's nice that they aren't the Republicans, but it would be even nicer if they were something more than the "not-Republican Party". The country is in deaparate need for leadership, and right now it doesn't look like anyone's willing to step up.
14 March 2006
10 March 2006
Yes, I'm slacking off on blogging again.
There's nothing like two or three nights of checking the base calls from the sequencer by eye for sucking the will to live (and all other motivation) clean out of your system. I'll be done in another day or two - for these two loci.
In the mean time, I'd like to wish a belated happy birthday to PZ. (Your dried squid is in the mail.)
If you're looking for something else to read right now, go take a look at a nice rant over on Evil Monkey's blog - it does a fantastic job at capturing modern science.
In the mean time, I'd like to wish a belated happy birthday to PZ. (Your dried squid is in the mail.)
If you're looking for something else to read right now, go take a look at a nice rant over on Evil Monkey's blog - it does a fantastic job at capturing modern science.
06 March 2006
Applications of Evolution - More on the gall wasp
A while back I put up a couple of posts about an invasive gall wasp that's threatening a species of tree unique to Hawaii.
In the first of those posts, I made a few predictions, based on my understanding of ecology and evolution, on how researchers might be able to control the gall wasp infestation:
They found it in Tanzania.
An update in today's Honolulu Advertiser reports that a state entomologist spent two months in Tanzania earlier this year, and discovered a species of wasp that feeds on the larvae of the species of wasp that's killing the trees. He went to Tanzania, it appears, because he was a good bit more careful with his preliminary research than I was when I wrote the initial article:
The wasp has been tested against the invasive, and appears to be effective. They are now testing it for side effects (they want to make sure it won't kill things that it shouldn't). Those tests will probably take at least a year, but it looks like there may still be some hope for the Wiliwili.
In the first of those posts, I made a few predictions, based on my understanding of ecology and evolution, on how researchers might be able to control the gall wasp infestation:
Ultimately, however, it may be impossible to save the Wiliwili without some sort of biological control. So let's assume that a decision is made to look for one. Normally, we would look to the species' native habitat to find a parasite or predator. Unfortunately, we don't actually know what the native range of this species actually is. It was only described for the first time last year, and it seems to be an invasive in all of the places that it has been found. The world is a really big place, and we have a limited amount of time until the Wiliwili follows countless other Hawaiian species into extinction. So where do we start to look?I'm a big believer in scientific integrity, and I believe that scientific integrity includes reporting negative results and incorrect or falsified hypotheses. With that in mind, I find that I must take this opportunity to admit that part of my hypothesis was not, in fact, entirely accurate. Researchers have not found a parisite or predator that targets these wasps in South Africa.
Africa. Since this species hasn't been described from there at all yet, what makes us think that we should look there?
Evolution.
There are a number of related species of gall wasp in South Africa, including some that utilize Erythrina trees. There are also Erythrina trees that are native to this area. As I understand it from conversations with other grad students here, these trees do not appear to be experiencing the same sort of massive infestation that is being seen here in Hawaii. This indicates that one of two things is happening there. Either the South African Erythrina have an innate defence mechanism protecting them from the gall wasps (this is unlikely, as the gall wasps can and do breed using these trees) or there is something else, most likely a predator or parasite, keeping their population in check. This is the type of more stable ecological relationship that we expect to see in areas where the species evolved.
I don't know whether or not sufficient funding will be found to do this, but I predict that a thorough study of the gall wasps in South Africa will turn up a predator and/or parasite capable of controlling the gall wasp population. (Or that the Erythrina trees have a defence mechanism protecting them from gall wasps.) I also predict that, again pending sufficient funding, that molecular studies will show that the wasps invading Hawaii are relatively closely related to species from South Africa.
They found it in Tanzania.
An update in today's Honolulu Advertiser reports that a state entomologist spent two months in Tanzania earlier this year, and discovered a species of wasp that feeds on the larvae of the species of wasp that's killing the trees. He went to Tanzania, it appears, because he was a good bit more careful with his preliminary research than I was when I wrote the initial article:
Ramadan, a 54-year-old native of Egypt who has been working for the state agriculture department since 1997, studied the situation and recommended searching for a natural enemy in Tanzania because the country, which borders the Indian Ocean, has more than 15 Erythrina species.Aside from that, the reasoning behind the approach was essentially what I outlined above. He went to look for wasps in an area where the wasps and trees were believed to co-exist. What he found was encouraging. He brought back a species of wasp that seems to successfully eliminate about 95% of the larvae of the tree-killing wasps.
The wasp has been tested against the invasive, and appears to be effective. They are now testing it for side effects (they want to make sure it won't kill things that it shouldn't). Those tests will probably take at least a year, but it looks like there may still be some hope for the Wiliwili.
01 March 2006
Blonde Equilibrium
I was originally planning to hold off on starting a series of posts on the genetics of evolution until next week, but John Wilkins recently found a myth that's just too good to ignore.
According to this legend, a World Health Organization study conducted a few years ago revealed that the natural blonde is scheduled to become extinct by the year 2202. The reason given for the imminent demise of the unperoxided flaxen haired is that blonde hair is caused by a recessive gene, and too few people now carry that gene. Since two people who carry the gene must meet (and do certain other things) in order to produce a blonde, the number of blondes is decreasing.
The myth is in fact just that - a myth. It was a wildly successful hoax carried out by someone pretending to be on the WHO staff. They were able to get a large number of media outlets to bite, and the story received international attention when it was first released. Despite a World Health Organization 'clarification', it would appear that some media outlets still haven't quite figured out what's going on.
Still...
The looming extinction of the natural blonde is a legend that's probably going to stick around for a while, for a couple of reasons. For starters, there's a certain ironic appeal to having the blonde meet the fate of the dodo. More importantly, though, the scenario sounds plausible enough. There do seem to be more dark haired people around than there used to, and if natural blonde's aren't meeting and mating as much as they used to, then why shouldn't we expect the blonde to go extinct?
That's a classic population genetics question if there ever was one, and it's one that I'll be looking at in this post (and, hopefully, in a few follow-ups). There are a few different ways to look at the question. We'll start with the easiest, but there is a little bit of vocabulary to get out of the way first.
It's just two terms, but they are important words in genetics. The first is "locus" (plural: "loci"). You can think of a locus as a single gene. (To be a little more specific, a locus is a specific location at a chromosome.) The second is "allele". An allele is one possible version of a gene. Since humans have two copies of each chromosome (one from each parent), we can have either two identical alleles or two different alleles at any locus.
Now back to the blondes.
The question of whether or not the blonde hair allele will disappear from the human species can actually be treated as the simplest situation in all of genetics: it's called a one-locus, two-allele model. This means that the trait (in this case, hair color) is controlled by a single gene, and there are only two variations of the gene in the population. In the case of human hair color, it's not really that simple, but because blonde hair is a recessive trait, we can get away with pretending that it is. We'll just call the dominant allele "not blonde" (and we'll represent it with 'B') and the recessive allele "blonde" ('b'). It's simpler to do it that way, and the math comes out the same.
Let's assume that 1% of humans are natural blondes. That means that they carry two copies of the 'b' allele. If we assume that people don't choose who they marry based on natural hair color, we can use this to figure out how common the 'b' allele is in the population. The equation for that is easy. If 'b' is the probability of picking a random allele from the populaiton and finding that it is a 'b', then the percentage of people with two 'b' alleles will equal b*b. We know that b*b = .01 (or 1%), so b must equal 0.1.
To put it another way, if one percent of the people are blonde, then ten percent of the alleles are the blonde allele. (Which means that 90%, or 0.9) of the alleles are the 'B' allele.
That's the case in the first generation, but what happens in the next one? That's the key question. If the next generation has a smaller percentage of blonde alleles, then blondes may be on the way out. So how do we find out what's going to happen next?
It turns out that there is a famous genetic principle that provides the answer to that pressing question. It's called Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, and it says that, given certain assumptions (which we will discuss later), then the allele frequencies won't change. 10% of the alleles in the next generation will still be 'b' alleles. There's a famous equation that goes with that, but it's got exponents and other annoying mathy things, so I'll skip it for now. If you don't want to trust me, you can always google it.
The assumptions are where things get a little tricky. For Hardy-Weinberg to work, a number of conditions must be met. The population must be very large, there can't be migration into or out of the population, there can't be mutation, and there can't be any form of selection going on. It's clear that there will be few cases where this is true, but there are lots of cases where it comes close.
The blonde gene, if we consider the entire human race, is one of them. The mutation rate for the gene is going to be so low we can ignore it, the population is very large, and if we are talking about the whole planet, there's not a lot of migration to worry about. Selection is a possibility, of course, but peroxide's taken that one out of the equation.
Since the Hardy-Weinberg conditions are met on a global level, we can safely say that the frequency of the "blonde allele" isn't going to change in the species as a whole. That means that blondes won't ever go entirely extinct.
That takes care of the gene that causes blondeness. But what about the number of blondes? Will that change? Actually, it might - in fact, it's likely to drop. That's becuase of ethnic differences and our increasingly international society, and it's what I'll talk about when I write the next post in the series.
According to this legend, a World Health Organization study conducted a few years ago revealed that the natural blonde is scheduled to become extinct by the year 2202. The reason given for the imminent demise of the unperoxided flaxen haired is that blonde hair is caused by a recessive gene, and too few people now carry that gene. Since two people who carry the gene must meet (and do certain other things) in order to produce a blonde, the number of blondes is decreasing.
The myth is in fact just that - a myth. It was a wildly successful hoax carried out by someone pretending to be on the WHO staff. They were able to get a large number of media outlets to bite, and the story received international attention when it was first released. Despite a World Health Organization 'clarification', it would appear that some media outlets still haven't quite figured out what's going on.
Still...
The looming extinction of the natural blonde is a legend that's probably going to stick around for a while, for a couple of reasons. For starters, there's a certain ironic appeal to having the blonde meet the fate of the dodo. More importantly, though, the scenario sounds plausible enough. There do seem to be more dark haired people around than there used to, and if natural blonde's aren't meeting and mating as much as they used to, then why shouldn't we expect the blonde to go extinct?
That's a classic population genetics question if there ever was one, and it's one that I'll be looking at in this post (and, hopefully, in a few follow-ups). There are a few different ways to look at the question. We'll start with the easiest, but there is a little bit of vocabulary to get out of the way first.
It's just two terms, but they are important words in genetics. The first is "locus" (plural: "loci"). You can think of a locus as a single gene. (To be a little more specific, a locus is a specific location at a chromosome.) The second is "allele". An allele is one possible version of a gene. Since humans have two copies of each chromosome (one from each parent), we can have either two identical alleles or two different alleles at any locus.
Now back to the blondes.
The question of whether or not the blonde hair allele will disappear from the human species can actually be treated as the simplest situation in all of genetics: it's called a one-locus, two-allele model. This means that the trait (in this case, hair color) is controlled by a single gene, and there are only two variations of the gene in the population. In the case of human hair color, it's not really that simple, but because blonde hair is a recessive trait, we can get away with pretending that it is. We'll just call the dominant allele "not blonde" (and we'll represent it with 'B') and the recessive allele "blonde" ('b'). It's simpler to do it that way, and the math comes out the same.
Let's assume that 1% of humans are natural blondes. That means that they carry two copies of the 'b' allele. If we assume that people don't choose who they marry based on natural hair color, we can use this to figure out how common the 'b' allele is in the population. The equation for that is easy. If 'b' is the probability of picking a random allele from the populaiton and finding that it is a 'b', then the percentage of people with two 'b' alleles will equal b*b. We know that b*b = .01 (or 1%), so b must equal 0.1.
To put it another way, if one percent of the people are blonde, then ten percent of the alleles are the blonde allele. (Which means that 90%, or 0.9) of the alleles are the 'B' allele.
That's the case in the first generation, but what happens in the next one? That's the key question. If the next generation has a smaller percentage of blonde alleles, then blondes may be on the way out. So how do we find out what's going to happen next?
It turns out that there is a famous genetic principle that provides the answer to that pressing question. It's called Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, and it says that, given certain assumptions (which we will discuss later), then the allele frequencies won't change. 10% of the alleles in the next generation will still be 'b' alleles. There's a famous equation that goes with that, but it's got exponents and other annoying mathy things, so I'll skip it for now. If you don't want to trust me, you can always google it.
The assumptions are where things get a little tricky. For Hardy-Weinberg to work, a number of conditions must be met. The population must be very large, there can't be migration into or out of the population, there can't be mutation, and there can't be any form of selection going on. It's clear that there will be few cases where this is true, but there are lots of cases where it comes close.
The blonde gene, if we consider the entire human race, is one of them. The mutation rate for the gene is going to be so low we can ignore it, the population is very large, and if we are talking about the whole planet, there's not a lot of migration to worry about. Selection is a possibility, of course, but peroxide's taken that one out of the equation.
Since the Hardy-Weinberg conditions are met on a global level, we can safely say that the frequency of the "blonde allele" isn't going to change in the species as a whole. That means that blondes won't ever go entirely extinct.
That takes care of the gene that causes blondeness. But what about the number of blondes? Will that change? Actually, it might - in fact, it's likely to drop. That's becuase of ethnic differences and our increasingly international society, and it's what I'll talk about when I write the next post in the series.
28 February 2006
Grading papers
"Don't worry, they're going into medicine."
-Grad student in my lab, looking at the lab reports I was grading.
I just finished grading this week's batch of lab reports for the 400-level animal physiology class I'm TAing. I'd like to share a few of the better little oopsies committed by the students this time:
"the heart recovery rat"
"has been use din the past"
"as needed overtime"
"The student with the least amount of excercise a week was tide with"
"two data were collected during this experiment"
"fitness is an important indicator of mortality"
"Fourteen individuals (six males, nine females)"
27 February 2006
Evolutionary Genetics - Introduction
[A] curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it.
-Jacques Monod
I enjoy my job. I love getting out into the field to do research. I love studying populations of organisms. I think that the questions that I look at are interesting, and that a lot of the answers are pretty cool.
The problem is that it's hard to explain to people exactly what it is that I do. In part, that's because evolution is really a lot more complicated a field than most people realize. The popular view of evolution is more or less that Darwin figured out that species evolve through natural selection, and that's that. People with more background than average in evolution understand that there are other things that come into play, too, like genetic drift.
It is accurate to say that evolution and drift cause species to diverge. In the same sense, it's accurate to say that World War I started because some lunatic Serb blew an Archduke away. In both cases, the explanation only just begins to touch on what is really going on.
I'm still just getting started as far as blogging is concerned, and I'm just getting started in my career as a scientist. I'm probably going to want to talk about my work a lot over the coming years. To make things easier to follow, I'm going to start a series of posts that will outline in as simple terms as I can manage the basics of evolutionary genetics. I'm hoping to make those posts a weekly feature on this blog. The first real post in the series will appear next Monday.
I've got some ideas for topics, but I'm also willing to take suggestions. Feel free to add them to the comments of this post.
24 February 2006
Not a lot this weekend
I've been handed a heavy schedule of spring cleaning for this weekend, so I probably won't have a lot of time available to update this between now and Monday. On Monday, I'll be kicking off a new series of posts on how scientists study evolution.
22 February 2006
Informed Dissent
As many of you have already heard, the Discovery Institute has released its list of scientists who "Dissent from Darwinism." The New York Times decided to look a bit beyond the DI press release, and actually took a look at some of the signers and their motives. Other bloggers, including PZ Myers and Josh Rosenau, have already looked at the NYT article and the list itself. I'm not going to attempt to redo their work. Instead, I'm going to take a look at the DI's response to the New York Times piece.
Predictably, the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division is a bit upset about the tone of the article. They tried to make sure that the author of the Times piece received the proper spin before the article came out, but despite their best efforts the article still took a fair look at their list.
One of the things that upset the DI was the article's focus on the signers' disciplines. The Times article pointed out that biologists and biochemists make up a minority of the names on the list (30%, according to the Discovery Institute). The Discovery Institute doesn't think that this is worth considering. From the preemptive strike:
In this case, it comes down to the basis for the opinion. A scientist who is relatively unfamiliar with evolution but who supports it anyway is basically expressing his or her confidence in the scientific process and the scientific community. In the same way, I know little about relativity, but I recognize that the theory of relativity is considered by physicists to be well-supported. I understand the scientific process, and I trust physicists to do their jobs correctly. I do not presume to understand physics better than they do. In cases such as this, the background of the scientists is not all that relevant. What matters is the scientist's understanding of the nature of science and the role of the scientific community, because that is the foundation for the opinion.
A scientists who is dissenting from something in another field is making an entirely different - and much more radical - statement. What that scientist is saying is that he or she does not trust the scientists in the other discipline. Instead, that scientist is directly judging the work done in another field, based on some factor other than trust in the scientific process.
In those cases, the background of the "dissenting scientist" becomes much, much more relevant. We need to know something about the scientist's background in order to figure out how seriously to take that dissent. In particular, we need to know if their position is an informed dissent. We need to know if that scientist has the background needed to be able to independently, fairly, and above all competently assess the science involved.
Predictably, the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division is a bit upset about the tone of the article. They tried to make sure that the author of the Times piece received the proper spin before the article came out, but despite their best efforts the article still took a fair look at their list.
One of the things that upset the DI was the article's focus on the signers' disciplines. The Times article pointed out that biologists and biochemists make up a minority of the names on the list (30%, according to the Discovery Institute). The Discovery Institute doesn't think that this is worth considering. From the preemptive strike:
Of course, the list also includes many scientists specializing in chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics/statistics, and related disciplines. But since Darwinists continually assert that their theory has implications for many other scientific fields, why shouldn't scientists from these other fields have the right to speak out? Moreover, it's remarkably cheeky for Darwinists to claim that only biologists have the right to express views about evolution when many of Darwinism's leading public defenders in America aren't biologists. For example, Lawrence Krauss of Ohio (who the New York Times deems qualified to defend evolution on its op-ed page) is a physicist, not a biologist. And Eugenie Scott, the director of the National Center for Science Education, has a degree in anthropology, not biology. If Chang raises this bogus argument in his article, I hope he also quotes my response.At first glance, that seems to be a reasonable point. Why should it matter if scientists who "dissent" have experience in a relevant field, especially if the discipline of a scientist supporting evolution is irrelevant?
In this case, it comes down to the basis for the opinion. A scientist who is relatively unfamiliar with evolution but who supports it anyway is basically expressing his or her confidence in the scientific process and the scientific community. In the same way, I know little about relativity, but I recognize that the theory of relativity is considered by physicists to be well-supported. I understand the scientific process, and I trust physicists to do their jobs correctly. I do not presume to understand physics better than they do. In cases such as this, the background of the scientists is not all that relevant. What matters is the scientist's understanding of the nature of science and the role of the scientific community, because that is the foundation for the opinion.
A scientists who is dissenting from something in another field is making an entirely different - and much more radical - statement. What that scientist is saying is that he or she does not trust the scientists in the other discipline. Instead, that scientist is directly judging the work done in another field, based on some factor other than trust in the scientific process.
In those cases, the background of the "dissenting scientist" becomes much, much more relevant. We need to know something about the scientist's background in order to figure out how seriously to take that dissent. In particular, we need to know if their position is an informed dissent. We need to know if that scientist has the background needed to be able to independently, fairly, and above all competently assess the science involved.
Long time again
It's been a long weekend for me, and I haven't had much of a chance to blog - as both the people who look at this regularly know. Things have calmed down a bit now, so I should be getting back into the swing of things real soon now.
17 February 2006
Rejoicing in Ignorance
PZ Myers already trashed this incredibly, painfully, dangerously, arrogantly stupid op-ed that appeared in the usually intelligent WaPo. PZ, as always, does a good job of informing this idiot that he is a stinky brown object floating around in the gene pool. Ordinarily, I wouldn't waste much time trying to add to what Myers wrote, but in this case I think there's something that he missed - and Cohen is just too damn stupid for me to resist commenting.
Richard Cohen wrote his article in response to an LA Times report about children dropping out of high school after repeatedly failing algebra. That is a legitimate problem, and it is one that we desparately, desparately need to address as a nation. We need to educate our children. All of them. Not just the ones who can afford to go to a private school, or the ones who are lucky enough to live in a good school district. Schools may be a local responsibility, but this has become a national problem, a national crisis, and it really is in need of a national solution.
Cohen, in his article, proposes a solution that is the intellectual equivalent of fixing an ingrown toenail by amputating the foot. His idea: if people can't pass algebra, don't make them take it.
Arithmatic - the part of math that Cohen claims to be competant at - teaches you how to answer a problem. Algebra teaches you how to set the problem up. It does, Cohen's pathetic assertions notwithstanding, teach you how to reason. In fact, it teaches you how to reason in ways that you really do use in everyday life.
Word problems suck, but you rarely run into anything else in the real world. Some people may be lucky enough that it doesn't matter too much if they miss the answer by a little bit. Cohen may have enough money to pay the landscapers no matter how many are working. Others aren't so lucky. Gabriella may need to figure out how far she can stretch that last 15 bucks.
In fact, the educational disparities in this country make it much more likely that Gabriella will find herself in just that situation. I grew up in the Bronx. We weren't as poor as others in the neighborhood, but we weren't exactly rich - we sat right on that border between working-class and middle-class. When you are coming from that kind of inner-city background, there aren't a lot of ways to do better. A fortunate few might have the athletic or musical skills that can lead to fame and fortune. The military is an option for some, but you need to get through high school before they'll take you - especially if you want training in something high-tech. You might win a lottery jackpot. Or you can get educated.
For most people, education is the only way out of poverty. Education is the only way to get a job that will pay something more than minimum wages. Education is the only viable path to a better life.
That's simple reasoning, but it apparently escapes Cohen. Of course, that's not much of a surprise. After all, he has this to say about reasoning:
I'm not trying to argue that the humanities and social sciences are unimportant, or even that they are less important than math and science. They're all important. They're all part of a good education. They're all things that you need to know if you are going to succeed in our modern society.
Especially if you're not lucky enough to start out ahead.
Richard Cohen wrote his article in response to an LA Times report about children dropping out of high school after repeatedly failing algebra. That is a legitimate problem, and it is one that we desparately, desparately need to address as a nation. We need to educate our children. All of them. Not just the ones who can afford to go to a private school, or the ones who are lucky enough to live in a good school district. Schools may be a local responsibility, but this has become a national problem, a national crisis, and it really is in need of a national solution.
Cohen, in his article, proposes a solution that is the intellectual equivalent of fixing an ingrown toenail by amputating the foot. His idea: if people can't pass algebra, don't make them take it.
Arithmatic - the part of math that Cohen claims to be competant at - teaches you how to answer a problem. Algebra teaches you how to set the problem up. It does, Cohen's pathetic assertions notwithstanding, teach you how to reason. In fact, it teaches you how to reason in ways that you really do use in everyday life.
Here's the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. You will never need to know -- never mind want to know -- how many boys it will take to mow a lawn if one of them quits halfway and two more show up later -- or something like that.That's a word problem, and it is the kind of thing that algebra teaches you to solve. Here's another example: You're at the gas station on your way home from work. You don't have a credit card, it's three days until payday, and you know that you are going to need to put five gallons into the tank to keep the car running until then. Gas is at 2.50, and you have 15 dollars left. You also need milk. If you buy a gallon of milk, will you have enough money left for the gas you need?
Word problems suck, but you rarely run into anything else in the real world. Some people may be lucky enough that it doesn't matter too much if they miss the answer by a little bit. Cohen may have enough money to pay the landscapers no matter how many are working. Others aren't so lucky. Gabriella may need to figure out how far she can stretch that last 15 bucks.
In fact, the educational disparities in this country make it much more likely that Gabriella will find herself in just that situation. I grew up in the Bronx. We weren't as poor as others in the neighborhood, but we weren't exactly rich - we sat right on that border between working-class and middle-class. When you are coming from that kind of inner-city background, there aren't a lot of ways to do better. A fortunate few might have the athletic or musical skills that can lead to fame and fortune. The military is an option for some, but you need to get through high school before they'll take you - especially if you want training in something high-tech. You might win a lottery jackpot. Or you can get educated.
For most people, education is the only way out of poverty. Education is the only way to get a job that will pay something more than minimum wages. Education is the only viable path to a better life.
That's simple reasoning, but it apparently escapes Cohen. Of course, that's not much of a surprise. After all, he has this to say about reasoning:
Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not. The proof of this, Gabriela, is all the people in my high school who were whizzes at math but did not know a thing about history and could not write a readable English sentence. I can cite Shelly, whose last name will not be mentioned, who aced algebra but when called to the board in geography class, located the Sahara Desert right where the Gobi usually is. She was off by a whole continent.Let me see if I've got that right: Writing teaches reasoning better than math. We know this because people who are good at math are bad at writing. An example of this is someone who is good at math, but doesn't know where the Sahara is. Yeah, writing has definitely taught this guy how to reason.
I'm not trying to argue that the humanities and social sciences are unimportant, or even that they are less important than math and science. They're all important. They're all part of a good education. They're all things that you need to know if you are going to succeed in our modern society.
Especially if you're not lucky enough to start out ahead.
15 February 2006
Molecules and Evolution.
I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about evolution, and about Intelligent Design, and about why one is bad and the other good. This time, I'm going to try to do something a little different, and discuss one of the many lines of evidence for evolution: the similarities that we see when we compare DNA sequences from different animals.
The example that I'm going to use is hemoglobin from humans and chimps. Hemoglobin is a protein that is found in red blood cells. The hemoglobin picks up oxygen in the lungs and carries it to the different tissues. Hemoglobin is not a single molecule. It is a complex protein that is made of several smaller proteins. Each of those proteins is produced by a gene. We're going to look at one of those genes: alpha-globin.
The National Institutes of Health maintains a database known as GenBank. GenBank's basically Google for hard-core biology geeks. It's an international database where scientists store DNA and protein sequences. I rummaged around there, and came up with a alpha-globin DNA sequences from a human and a chimp. I'll put these sequences in pairs of lines, with the human sequence on top and the chimp sequence on the bottom.
I've shown you that humans and chimps have very similar alpha-globin gene sequences, but so far that's all I've shown you. I haven't explained why I think that this similarity indicates evolution instead of something else. After all, it might just be that the gene does the same things, and that explains the similarity.
The gene does, in fact, do exactly the same thing in chimps that it does in humans. The gene makes a protein that is part of hemoglobin in both species. In fact, even though the genes are slightly different, the portion of the gene that I showed the sequence for makes exactly the same protein in both species. There is a difference in the DNA sequence, but not in the protein sequence.
Our proteins are strings of amino acids joined together in a line. There are twenty amino acids that we use in our proteins. The "genetic code" that tells our body the order that the amino acids should go in uses three letter DNA "words" to indicate each amino acid. There are four DNA letters, so there are 64 possible words. That's a lot more words than we need, so most of the amino acids have more than one "word" assigned in the code.
This means that there are literally hundreds of possible DNA sequences that could make exactly the same protein sequence that we see in human and chimp alpha-globin. The sequences that humans and chimps use are almost identical. They aren't exactly the same, but they are really close. The sequence for an orang-utan is a bit more different.
These slight differences, more than the similarities, are what makes us view this as evidence for evolution.
The example that I'm going to use is hemoglobin from humans and chimps. Hemoglobin is a protein that is found in red blood cells. The hemoglobin picks up oxygen in the lungs and carries it to the different tissues. Hemoglobin is not a single molecule. It is a complex protein that is made of several smaller proteins. Each of those proteins is produced by a gene. We're going to look at one of those genes: alpha-globin.
The National Institutes of Health maintains a database known as GenBank. GenBank's basically Google for hard-core biology geeks. It's an international database where scientists store DNA and protein sequences. I rummaged around there, and came up with a alpha-globin DNA sequences from a human and a chimp. I'll put these sequences in pairs of lines, with the human sequence on top and the chimp sequence on the bottom.
Human: ACT CTT CTG GTC CCC ACA GAC TCA GAg AGAThat's only part of the sequence, but it's pretty representative. I showed the first 150 "letters" of the DNA sequence. There's one difference in these 150 bases, and the full sequence shows 99% similarity.
Chimp: ACT CTT CTG GTC CCC ACA GAC TCA GAa AGA
Human: ACC CAC CAT GGT GCT GTC TCC TGC CGA CAA
Chimp: ACC CAC CAT GGT GCT GTC TCC TGC CGA CAA
Human: GAC CAA CGT AAG GCC GCC TGG GGT AAG GTC
Chimp: GAC CAA CGT AAG GCC GCC TGG GGT AAG GTC
Human: GGC GCG CAC GCT GGC GAG TAT GGT GCG GAG
Chimp: GGC GCG CAC GCT GGC GAG TAT GGT GCG GAG
Human: GCC CTG GAG AGG ATG TTC CTG TCC TTC CCC
Chimp: GCC CTG GAG AGG ATG TTC CTG TCC TTC CCC
I've shown you that humans and chimps have very similar alpha-globin gene sequences, but so far that's all I've shown you. I haven't explained why I think that this similarity indicates evolution instead of something else. After all, it might just be that the gene does the same things, and that explains the similarity.
The gene does, in fact, do exactly the same thing in chimps that it does in humans. The gene makes a protein that is part of hemoglobin in both species. In fact, even though the genes are slightly different, the portion of the gene that I showed the sequence for makes exactly the same protein in both species. There is a difference in the DNA sequence, but not in the protein sequence.
Our proteins are strings of amino acids joined together in a line. There are twenty amino acids that we use in our proteins. The "genetic code" that tells our body the order that the amino acids should go in uses three letter DNA "words" to indicate each amino acid. There are four DNA letters, so there are 64 possible words. That's a lot more words than we need, so most of the amino acids have more than one "word" assigned in the code.
This means that there are literally hundreds of possible DNA sequences that could make exactly the same protein sequence that we see in human and chimp alpha-globin. The sequences that humans and chimps use are almost identical. They aren't exactly the same, but they are really close. The sequence for an orang-utan is a bit more different.
These slight differences, more than the similarities, are what makes us view this as evidence for evolution.
13 February 2006
Bloody stupid media
It looks like the media got a bit pissed at Scott McClellan during the press briefing today. Why? Because they weren't promptly informed that the Vice President accidentally shot his hunting partner.
Useless whining schmucks.
They have been routinely mushroomed by this administration over the past five years on a virtually limitless range of subjects. They have very rarely demonstrated anger about any of this. (Of course, it's possible that they still haven't noticed.) They could have gotten angry about being lied to on a policy story - it's not like that hasn't happened - but, no. Instead, they pitch a fit because they weren't told about a story that looks to be more fodder for the Daily Show than serious news.
Useless whining schmucks.
They have been routinely mushroomed by this administration over the past five years on a virtually limitless range of subjects. They have very rarely demonstrated anger about any of this. (Of course, it's possible that they still haven't noticed.) They could have gotten angry about being lied to on a policy story - it's not like that hasn't happened - but, no. Instead, they pitch a fit because they weren't told about a story that looks to be more fodder for the Daily Show than serious news.
12 February 2006
Darwin Day
Today is the 197th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. In honor of this, I've tried to pull together a mini-blog carnival of posts related to Darwin and evolution.
The Darwin Day website has a list of events from around the world that were (or are being) held today in celebration of Darwin's birthday. Scanning the list, it looks like most of these are scientific lectures about evolution and evolutionary biology.
Scientists aren't the only ones who are giving talks and making presentations today. Today is being marked as Evolution Sunday in hundreds of churches across the United States. This event was put together by a the same person who started the Clergy Letter Project, which has collected over 10,000 signatures of clergy who support teaching real science in the science classroom. For those interested, their website has a list of links to some of the sermons.
Darwin's birthday and evolution have gotten some attention from bloggers recently, too. PZ has a picture and an excerpt from a biography of Darwin. Actually, pictures seem to be a real theme for today. There are a couple of other photographs on blogs, Olduvai George has a nice portrait of a young Darwin, and Jennifer Forman Orth gives us an iconic image of Darwin in an unlikely place.
There are also several blog posts that have gone up in recent days that fit this occasion well. Tara Smith, over at Aetiology, was kind enough to write a post about how evolution relates to her own research. 10,000 Birds wrote a post earlier this week that presents a nice discussion of evolution and birds. Over at Daily Kos, there's a brief history of the evolution of humans since the big bang. Alun touches on the evolution of religion in a post, and there's an article on evolution written by Niles Eldredge over at The Virginia Quarterly Review. Finally, I wrote a small piece about how we get new species the other day that seems to fit the occasion.
Happy Birthday, Charles.
The Darwin Day website has a list of events from around the world that were (or are being) held today in celebration of Darwin's birthday. Scanning the list, it looks like most of these are scientific lectures about evolution and evolutionary biology.
Scientists aren't the only ones who are giving talks and making presentations today. Today is being marked as Evolution Sunday in hundreds of churches across the United States. This event was put together by a the same person who started the Clergy Letter Project, which has collected over 10,000 signatures of clergy who support teaching real science in the science classroom. For those interested, their website has a list of links to some of the sermons.
Darwin's birthday and evolution have gotten some attention from bloggers recently, too. PZ has a picture and an excerpt from a biography of Darwin. Actually, pictures seem to be a real theme for today. There are a couple of other photographs on blogs, Olduvai George has a nice portrait of a young Darwin, and Jennifer Forman Orth gives us an iconic image of Darwin in an unlikely place.
There are also several blog posts that have gone up in recent days that fit this occasion well. Tara Smith, over at Aetiology, was kind enough to write a post about how evolution relates to her own research. 10,000 Birds wrote a post earlier this week that presents a nice discussion of evolution and birds. Over at Daily Kos, there's a brief history of the evolution of humans since the big bang. Alun touches on the evolution of religion in a post, and there's an article on evolution written by Niles Eldredge over at The Virginia Quarterly Review. Finally, I wrote a small piece about how we get new species the other day that seems to fit the occasion.
Happy Birthday, Charles.
09 February 2006
A reality-impaired perspective on current events
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, NASA finally got around to firing the two-bit political hack that had been trying to make sure that their scientists published only those results that fit his restricted worldview. Today, the New York Times has his side of the story.
It's an interesting read. Apparently, he left because he was tired of being smeared by the media. The whole didn't actually graduate thing had nothing to do with it. Really. Trust him.
It's an interesting read. Apparently, he left because he was tired of being smeared by the media. The whole didn't actually graduate thing had nothing to do with it. Really. Trust him.
08 February 2006
Going Different Directions in the Same Space
As many of you know, I'm a graduate student in a zoology department. When I tell kids that, most of them think I'm studying to become a zookeeper. They also usually think that's something pretty cool. When I explain that I'm really studying to be a scientist who studies how animals change, it usually turns out to be a letdown. For some reason, kids are usually happier thinking that I might get eaten by the lion or stepped on by an elephant.
Anyway, what I actually study is speciation mechanisms. What that means is that I'm trying to look at the DNA of closely related species in order to figure out why they wound up as different species. There are a lot of questions left to answer, and lots of scientists are working in this area.
I'm guessing that right about now at least some of you are thinking something along the lines of, "Hey, wait a minute! Haven't you guys been telling us that Darwin figured that out way back when?"
What Darwin and that Wallace fellow that keeps getting left out of the story both managed to figure out is that new species are made by changing old species. They also figured out that natural selection was one way to make this happen - if some organisms are different from most of the rest of their species in a way that makes them more likely to survive and reproduce, and if the differences get passed to their offspring, then in time the bulk of the population will wind up with that trait. If this happens to only one population of a species, the changes can make that population so different that they won't be able to mate with the other populations. When that happens, you have two species where you used to have one.
That view is a little simplified, and we don't think that it is the only process that leads to the formation of new species, but it's more or less accurate. The reason that scientists are still gainfully employed working on the question of how you get new species is that the view is also a little bit corse-grained. It's like looking at a picture on a really old, low-resolution monitor. You can see things well enough to see what it is a picture of, but you don't see a lot of the details - and details can be very important.
Another way to look at this might be to use the way we grow up as an example. We know that there are children, we know that there are adults, and we know that adults happen when children grow up. You can look at a ten year old and a forty year old and know that one is a kid and one is an adult. Figuring out exactly when the change from child to adult took place is a lot harder, and so is figuring out what "growing up" actually means.
Those of us who study speciation spend a lot of time looking at geography. In part, we do this because looking at the geography can mean that you get to go lots of cool places to do your research. Mostly, though, we look at the geography because figuring out where the two populations were living in relation to each other when they split into different species can give us some good clues about how it might have happened.
There are basically three ways that you can arrange two populations in space relative to each other. Both populations can be living in the same place (we call this "sympatric"), the two populations can be living in different places ("allopatric"), or the two populations could be arranged so that they are mostly living in different places, but with an area of overlap between them ("parapatric"). That's a bit of a simplification, and there are some fairly obscure variations that can turn out to be important when you actually start to study things, but it's good enough for our purposes.
In theory, populations can split into different species in any of those three categories. There are some scientists who have developed mathematical models of the process of speciation, and those models all seem to indicate that it doesn't matter if the populations are allopatric, parapatric, or sympatric - given the right set of circumstances they can wind up as two different species.
That's the theory. When we take the theory to the field, what we find is that it's pretty easy to find examples of allopatric and parapatric speciation, but it's really hard to find clear cut cases where two populations living in the same place have split into different species. There are two resons for this. One is that it is a little easier for populations to split when they don't live in the same place. The other is that the way these things are defined makes it very hard to prove that the species were living in the same place when they split.
The exact definition of "sympatric" has actually been a little hard to pin down. For a long time, it basically meant that the populations weren't living in different places. For a long time this was good enough, but when people actually started to look at what happens to the individuals involved, it got a bit harder to pin down. For example, if one population of insects lives in the branches of the trees on a small island, while another population lives in the low bushes, are they really living in the same place? That might sound like it's just nit-picking, but when you go to look at the population genetics you find that seemingly trivial distinctions like that can make a really big difference in how likely it is that the populations will completely separate.
One of the researchers who models speciation recently came up with a more precise definition. He said that two populations can be considered to be truly sympatric when mating is random with respect to birthplace. Now that's pretty obviously an ideal that isn't often going to be achieved, but there can be situations that at least come close. You'd think that solved the problem, right? Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.
There are a fair number of scientists who really don't like the idea of sympatric speciation. For a long time, Ernst Mayr, who was an extremely influential evolutionary biologist, argued that populations could only separate into two species if they were separated from each other by some sort of barrier. He made a relatively persuasive case for that positio and argued his case with passion for decades, so it's no surprise that there are some scientists who are skeptical of the possibility of sympatric speciation. In the past, when scientists have presented cases where it looks like two species split while living in the same place, the skeptics have demanded proof that the species were never geographically isolated from each other during their divergence. Proving a negative like that is kind of tough, so the controversy over whether or not two species can actually split while living in the same place has continued.
In this week's issue of the journal Nature, two different papers are presented that offer pretty convincing proof that species have diverged in sympatry. In both cases, two species that are clearly more closely related to each other than to any other species are found living in places that make it extrordinarily unlikely that the populations were ever geographically isolated from one another.
In one case, two species of cichlid fish are found living in a small, isolated lake in Nicaragua. The habitat within the lake is relatively uniform, and the authors demonstrated that the two species are not reproducing with each other and are physically, ecologically, and genetically different. In technical terms, that's called a "grand slam." For this to be anything other than sympatric speciation, a founding population of fish would have had to arrived not once but twice. That's unlikely enough to begin with, before you start to take into account the similarities that these two species share with each other but not with any of their relatives in other nearby lakes. When you take that into account, it becomes extrordinarily improbable that they didn't split in that lake.
The second case involves two species of palm on Lord Howe Island off Australia. Here, again, the species seem to be reproductively, physically, and genetically distinct. They also flower at different times, and the genetic work showed evidence that selection was operating to increase the divergence between these species. This is another really solid case for sympatric speciation.
These discoveries should convince all but the most unreasonably skeptical that sympatric speciation almost certainly has happened. That means that we know that species can diverge in all three of the different geographic relationships, and that they probably have done so. That, in turn, tells us that speciation almost certainly doesn't always happen through the same mechanisms.
By this point, I've probably lost half the people who started to read this, and most of the rest of you are probably wondering why I thought something this confusing and boring is actually exciting enough to be worth blogging. In part, of course, it's because I am, as my brothers will cheerfully confirm, a hopeless science geek. But if you've read this far you're probably one too (or you're my mother), so that can't be all of it. Part of it is because this is hot research in my own field, but that's not all of it either - I don't write about every cool article I read.
The reason I thought this was worth writing about - the take-home message of this post - is actually pretty simple. Evolutionary biology is a very active field, and we continue to learn new and exciting things almost every day. It is a field populated by people who are eager and driven to learn new things about the way evolution works. It is not a cult of personality centered around one man who wrote one book almost 150 years ago, as some would have you believe.
Anyway, what I actually study is speciation mechanisms. What that means is that I'm trying to look at the DNA of closely related species in order to figure out why they wound up as different species. There are a lot of questions left to answer, and lots of scientists are working in this area.
I'm guessing that right about now at least some of you are thinking something along the lines of, "Hey, wait a minute! Haven't you guys been telling us that Darwin figured that out way back when?"
What Darwin and that Wallace fellow that keeps getting left out of the story both managed to figure out is that new species are made by changing old species. They also figured out that natural selection was one way to make this happen - if some organisms are different from most of the rest of their species in a way that makes them more likely to survive and reproduce, and if the differences get passed to their offspring, then in time the bulk of the population will wind up with that trait. If this happens to only one population of a species, the changes can make that population so different that they won't be able to mate with the other populations. When that happens, you have two species where you used to have one.
That view is a little simplified, and we don't think that it is the only process that leads to the formation of new species, but it's more or less accurate. The reason that scientists are still gainfully employed working on the question of how you get new species is that the view is also a little bit corse-grained. It's like looking at a picture on a really old, low-resolution monitor. You can see things well enough to see what it is a picture of, but you don't see a lot of the details - and details can be very important.
Another way to look at this might be to use the way we grow up as an example. We know that there are children, we know that there are adults, and we know that adults happen when children grow up. You can look at a ten year old and a forty year old and know that one is a kid and one is an adult. Figuring out exactly when the change from child to adult took place is a lot harder, and so is figuring out what "growing up" actually means.
Those of us who study speciation spend a lot of time looking at geography. In part, we do this because looking at the geography can mean that you get to go lots of cool places to do your research. Mostly, though, we look at the geography because figuring out where the two populations were living in relation to each other when they split into different species can give us some good clues about how it might have happened.
There are basically three ways that you can arrange two populations in space relative to each other. Both populations can be living in the same place (we call this "sympatric"), the two populations can be living in different places ("allopatric"), or the two populations could be arranged so that they are mostly living in different places, but with an area of overlap between them ("parapatric"). That's a bit of a simplification, and there are some fairly obscure variations that can turn out to be important when you actually start to study things, but it's good enough for our purposes.
In theory, populations can split into different species in any of those three categories. There are some scientists who have developed mathematical models of the process of speciation, and those models all seem to indicate that it doesn't matter if the populations are allopatric, parapatric, or sympatric - given the right set of circumstances they can wind up as two different species.
That's the theory. When we take the theory to the field, what we find is that it's pretty easy to find examples of allopatric and parapatric speciation, but it's really hard to find clear cut cases where two populations living in the same place have split into different species. There are two resons for this. One is that it is a little easier for populations to split when they don't live in the same place. The other is that the way these things are defined makes it very hard to prove that the species were living in the same place when they split.
The exact definition of "sympatric" has actually been a little hard to pin down. For a long time, it basically meant that the populations weren't living in different places. For a long time this was good enough, but when people actually started to look at what happens to the individuals involved, it got a bit harder to pin down. For example, if one population of insects lives in the branches of the trees on a small island, while another population lives in the low bushes, are they really living in the same place? That might sound like it's just nit-picking, but when you go to look at the population genetics you find that seemingly trivial distinctions like that can make a really big difference in how likely it is that the populations will completely separate.
One of the researchers who models speciation recently came up with a more precise definition. He said that two populations can be considered to be truly sympatric when mating is random with respect to birthplace. Now that's pretty obviously an ideal that isn't often going to be achieved, but there can be situations that at least come close. You'd think that solved the problem, right? Unfortunately, you'd be wrong.
There are a fair number of scientists who really don't like the idea of sympatric speciation. For a long time, Ernst Mayr, who was an extremely influential evolutionary biologist, argued that populations could only separate into two species if they were separated from each other by some sort of barrier. He made a relatively persuasive case for that positio and argued his case with passion for decades, so it's no surprise that there are some scientists who are skeptical of the possibility of sympatric speciation. In the past, when scientists have presented cases where it looks like two species split while living in the same place, the skeptics have demanded proof that the species were never geographically isolated from each other during their divergence. Proving a negative like that is kind of tough, so the controversy over whether or not two species can actually split while living in the same place has continued.
In this week's issue of the journal Nature, two different papers are presented that offer pretty convincing proof that species have diverged in sympatry. In both cases, two species that are clearly more closely related to each other than to any other species are found living in places that make it extrordinarily unlikely that the populations were ever geographically isolated from one another.
In one case, two species of cichlid fish are found living in a small, isolated lake in Nicaragua. The habitat within the lake is relatively uniform, and the authors demonstrated that the two species are not reproducing with each other and are physically, ecologically, and genetically different. In technical terms, that's called a "grand slam." For this to be anything other than sympatric speciation, a founding population of fish would have had to arrived not once but twice. That's unlikely enough to begin with, before you start to take into account the similarities that these two species share with each other but not with any of their relatives in other nearby lakes. When you take that into account, it becomes extrordinarily improbable that they didn't split in that lake.
The second case involves two species of palm on Lord Howe Island off Australia. Here, again, the species seem to be reproductively, physically, and genetically distinct. They also flower at different times, and the genetic work showed evidence that selection was operating to increase the divergence between these species. This is another really solid case for sympatric speciation.
These discoveries should convince all but the most unreasonably skeptical that sympatric speciation almost certainly has happened. That means that we know that species can diverge in all three of the different geographic relationships, and that they probably have done so. That, in turn, tells us that speciation almost certainly doesn't always happen through the same mechanisms.
By this point, I've probably lost half the people who started to read this, and most of the rest of you are probably wondering why I thought something this confusing and boring is actually exciting enough to be worth blogging. In part, of course, it's because I am, as my brothers will cheerfully confirm, a hopeless science geek. But if you've read this far you're probably one too (or you're my mother), so that can't be all of it. Part of it is because this is hot research in my own field, but that's not all of it either - I don't write about every cool article I read.
The reason I thought this was worth writing about - the take-home message of this post - is actually pretty simple. Evolutionary biology is a very active field, and we continue to learn new and exciting things almost every day. It is a field populated by people who are eager and driven to learn new things about the way evolution works. It is not a cult of personality centered around one man who wrote one book almost 150 years ago, as some would have you believe.
07 February 2006
Nasa PR
A large number of bloggers this week have been all over the situation at NASA public affairs, where at least one presidential appointee has been attempting to silence any scientist that wants to report on things - like global warming - that don't fit well with the president's unreality-based worldview. (See my post earlier this week for links to some of the commentary.)
Blogger Nick Anthis reported yesterday that 24-year old Bush appointee and would-be scientific censor George Deutsch, who has been at the center of the scandal, did not actually graduate from college as his resume claimed. Today, the New York Times confirmed Mr. Deutsch's lack of degree. The Times also reports that Deutsch responded to this revelation by falling on his sword and resigning. One down, and an unknown number of unqualified political hacks to go.
Of course, this whole thing with Deutsch is just an amusing sideshow when viewed in light of the overall pattern of distorting science. It does, however, raise an important question: how did he get hired in the first place? Aside from his White House connections, Deutsch's only remotely relevant qualification was his alledged journalism degree. He has no background in science. His non-college experience is working on the Bush re-election campaign. The journalism degree seems to be it. Apparently, being an administration bootlicker is such a great qualification that nobody bothered to verify anything else.
Patronage - Gotta love it.
Blogger Nick Anthis reported yesterday that 24-year old Bush appointee and would-be scientific censor George Deutsch, who has been at the center of the scandal, did not actually graduate from college as his resume claimed. Today, the New York Times confirmed Mr. Deutsch's lack of degree. The Times also reports that Deutsch responded to this revelation by falling on his sword and resigning. One down, and an unknown number of unqualified political hacks to go.
Of course, this whole thing with Deutsch is just an amusing sideshow when viewed in light of the overall pattern of distorting science. It does, however, raise an important question: how did he get hired in the first place? Aside from his White House connections, Deutsch's only remotely relevant qualification was his alledged journalism degree. He has no background in science. His non-college experience is working on the Bush re-election campaign. The journalism degree seems to be it. Apparently, being an administration bootlicker is such a great qualification that nobody bothered to verify anything else.
Patronage - Gotta love it.
Educational Disparities
I had more fun than usual today - instead of doing labwork and going to class, I cut school and volunteered as a judge for the Hawaii Association of Independent Schools annual science fair. For those of you not familiar with our school system out here, HAIS covers the private schools on the island. Most are religious, but there are also a couple of private schools that don't seem to be religiously affiliated.
It was interesting, and it definitely wasn't what I was expecting. There were something like 45 entries in the category that I was judging (grade 9-12 research), and I got to talk to about 24 of the entrants. Along the way, I saw a couple of the worst research projects I'd ever seen, but I also saw some that totally blew me out of the water. There were several entries that could just as easily have been up at a scientific conference.
In some cases, the difference in quality was clearly related to the motivation and aptitude of the student. There were a couple of projects that were pure pseudoscience, and a few more that lacked any understanding of scientific method. There were also a couple of students who pretty obviously didn't know anything about what they were talking about. Other students knew more about their particular area of interest within their field than I did, and I wound up learning from them.
Unfortunately, a great deal of the disparity was also related to where the students went to school. This is great for the students that go to the schools that have extrordinary facilities. It's not so good for some of the others.
Some of the schools have science facilities available to their students that are better equipped than the lab I work in. One student, from Kamehameha Schools, did a project attempting to look at the structure of a particular enzyme across a range of taxa. Some of the work presented involved taking RNA, using an enzyme to convert it back to DNA, making a large number of copies of the DNA, and then sequencing the DNA. I asked the student where the work was done, thinking that it was a project done with a University of Hawaii researcher. The answer: "I did it at school." I said, "No, I meant where did you have the sequencing done." The answer: "Yeah, uh, we have our own sequencer." Their high school has a DNA sequencer. My lab doesn't have a sequencer.
Other students did not have access to anywhere near the same level of facilities. Where some students were doing their lab work in state of the art labs, and growing bacteria in temperature controlled incubators, others were doing their lab work on the kitchen counter and putting their bacteria out in the sun to incubate. Students at some schools had access to university researchers. Others did not. Some students participated in an intensive summer program that taught research methods. Others were being taught from the textbook, with the goal of being able to pass standardized tests.
Talking to the students was great. Some were clearly there because they had to be, and didn't really care about what they were doing. Others were highly motivated and extrordinarily enthusiastic - the type of student that you hope like hell goes on to a career in science.
Ranking their projects wasn't so great. I started from the bottom, and had no problems until I got up to the top half. That was when things started to suck. There were a few students there who were clearly motivated, intelligent, and creative, but who hadn't had access to anything near the level of resources that others did. Their projects, unsurprisingly, simply weren't as good as those with access to more people and equipment. Unfortunately, the student's potential isn't really something that I could give them a lot of points for - it was a science fair, it was about doing and presenting research, and the research just wasn't as good. And, if I did give them points for working with fewer resources, I'd be punishing others for having access to good resources. I just love problems that have no fair solutions, don't you?
I don't resent schools, like Kamehameha, that have lots of really, really good equipment, superb faculty, and special intensive science courses for interested students. I just wish everyone had access to that caliber of education. It would be expensive as hell, but we could do it. We could make teaching a high-paid, prestigious career. We could build the best education program in the world. It would even be the American thing to do, since it would give everyone a more level playing field for their career.
We won't, of course, because people don't like paying taxes, and the idiot with the Pennsylvania Avenue address isn't about to make the actual commitment to education that it would require.
But we should, damn it. We should.
It was interesting, and it definitely wasn't what I was expecting. There were something like 45 entries in the category that I was judging (grade 9-12 research), and I got to talk to about 24 of the entrants. Along the way, I saw a couple of the worst research projects I'd ever seen, but I also saw some that totally blew me out of the water. There were several entries that could just as easily have been up at a scientific conference.
In some cases, the difference in quality was clearly related to the motivation and aptitude of the student. There were a couple of projects that were pure pseudoscience, and a few more that lacked any understanding of scientific method. There were also a couple of students who pretty obviously didn't know anything about what they were talking about. Other students knew more about their particular area of interest within their field than I did, and I wound up learning from them.
Unfortunately, a great deal of the disparity was also related to where the students went to school. This is great for the students that go to the schools that have extrordinary facilities. It's not so good for some of the others.
Some of the schools have science facilities available to their students that are better equipped than the lab I work in. One student, from Kamehameha Schools, did a project attempting to look at the structure of a particular enzyme across a range of taxa. Some of the work presented involved taking RNA, using an enzyme to convert it back to DNA, making a large number of copies of the DNA, and then sequencing the DNA. I asked the student where the work was done, thinking that it was a project done with a University of Hawaii researcher. The answer: "I did it at school." I said, "No, I meant where did you have the sequencing done." The answer: "Yeah, uh, we have our own sequencer." Their high school has a DNA sequencer. My lab doesn't have a sequencer.
Other students did not have access to anywhere near the same level of facilities. Where some students were doing their lab work in state of the art labs, and growing bacteria in temperature controlled incubators, others were doing their lab work on the kitchen counter and putting their bacteria out in the sun to incubate. Students at some schools had access to university researchers. Others did not. Some students participated in an intensive summer program that taught research methods. Others were being taught from the textbook, with the goal of being able to pass standardized tests.
Talking to the students was great. Some were clearly there because they had to be, and didn't really care about what they were doing. Others were highly motivated and extrordinarily enthusiastic - the type of student that you hope like hell goes on to a career in science.
Ranking their projects wasn't so great. I started from the bottom, and had no problems until I got up to the top half. That was when things started to suck. There were a few students there who were clearly motivated, intelligent, and creative, but who hadn't had access to anything near the level of resources that others did. Their projects, unsurprisingly, simply weren't as good as those with access to more people and equipment. Unfortunately, the student's potential isn't really something that I could give them a lot of points for - it was a science fair, it was about doing and presenting research, and the research just wasn't as good. And, if I did give them points for working with fewer resources, I'd be punishing others for having access to good resources. I just love problems that have no fair solutions, don't you?
I don't resent schools, like Kamehameha, that have lots of really, really good equipment, superb faculty, and special intensive science courses for interested students. I just wish everyone had access to that caliber of education. It would be expensive as hell, but we could do it. We could make teaching a high-paid, prestigious career. We could build the best education program in the world. It would even be the American thing to do, since it would give everyone a more level playing field for their career.
We won't, of course, because people don't like paying taxes, and the idiot with the Pennsylvania Avenue address isn't about to make the actual commitment to education that it would require.
But we should, damn it. We should.
06 February 2006
Support, my ass.
The White House has released the President's 2007 budget request, and there's not a lot of surprises there. Lots of projects are on the chopping block, defense and homeland security spending are up, the deficit is huge, the moron still wants to make his tax cuts permanent, and he wants the bill for that to mostly come out of programs that benefit the poor. Shocker, huh.
I'll probably blog some more on some of the science-related areas of the budget later on. Right now, there's one area that I want to look at first: the military pay raise. I know, it's not the most obvious place to start off, but that's where the vast bulk of our family income comes from these days, and it's always nice to see how the next year is looking. I also like to take a look and see if Bush is putting the government's wallet where his "support the troops" rhetoric comes from.
It will probably come as a shock to most of you (yes, that is sarcasm) to find that Bush talks a real good game, but when it comes time to go and actually do something, he's nowhere to be found. The proposed annual pay raise for the military next year is 2.2 percent. The economic assumptions that the budget is based on predict an inflation rate of 2.4 percent.
That's right. The same White House that tries to brand anyone who disagrees with their war as "unsupportive" of the troops has decided to show their support by suggesting a military pay raise that doesn't even match their own inflation prediction.
For some reason, that's not a level of support that impresses me.
I'll probably blog some more on some of the science-related areas of the budget later on. Right now, there's one area that I want to look at first: the military pay raise. I know, it's not the most obvious place to start off, but that's where the vast bulk of our family income comes from these days, and it's always nice to see how the next year is looking. I also like to take a look and see if Bush is putting the government's wallet where his "support the troops" rhetoric comes from.
It will probably come as a shock to most of you (yes, that is sarcasm) to find that Bush talks a real good game, but when it comes time to go and actually do something, he's nowhere to be found. The proposed annual pay raise for the military next year is 2.2 percent. The economic assumptions that the budget is based on predict an inflation rate of 2.4 percent.
That's right. The same White House that tries to brand anyone who disagrees with their war as "unsupportive" of the troops has decided to show their support by suggesting a military pay raise that doesn't even match their own inflation prediction.
For some reason, that's not a level of support that impresses me.
05 February 2006
Clash of Values
I've read a few posts over the last few days, written by bloggers I usually enjoy reading, on the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad issue. Wilkins comes closest to my own views, but none of the posts really manages to capture what I think is the essence of the issue.
This is both a simple issue and a complex one, all at the same time.
PZ is right about some of the complexities involved. There are some parallels between this situation and various ugly forms of discrimination and prejudice. There are also issues of perception and of national and ethnic identity. It is entirely possible, if not likely, that some of the anger these cartoons have inspired stems from the glaring economic disparity between the parts of the world doing the mocking and the parts being mocked. I think that those are real problems, but I think that the simpler issue is also the more important - at least at the moment.
That issue is freedom, and whether cultures based on the freedoms that provide the stable core for liberal democracies can coexist peacefully in the same world with cultures that demand that their values be given special treatment.
This case may have been started by a low-circulation Danish newspaper trying to piss off a religious group that is a distinct minority in their country, but it has rapidly turned into an international dispute involving the whole world. It has also brought to light an extremely alarming school of thought on freedom of expression.
The armed takeover or burning of embassies is bad, as are death threats. They're also nothing new in the stormy world of modern politics, particularly when we're talking about the Mideast. To put it another way, the violence is appalling but hardly surprising.
What's more alarming, at least in my opinion, are some of the views that various nations have expressed about what freedom of expression should mean. Newspaper editorials from Nepal and Bangadesh, demand that the freedom of expression be limited to exclude criticism of religion. Pakistan issued a statement declaring that freedom of expression does not extend to the freedom to insult someones religion, and the president of Afghanistan said that the publication of those comics was an act that, "must never be allowed to be repeated." Other Islamic nations have made similar statements.
The Muslim world wasn't the only place where governments have objected to the publication of the cartoons. A South African court has issued a ruling barring the publication of those images there. Our own State Department has been at best lukewarm in their support for press freedom in this case. And the Vatican informs us that, "the right to freedom of thought and expression...cannot imply the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
Of course, it should not come as a surprise that the Vatican is not in favor of the right to blaspheme. However, the right to blaspheme is absolutely critical in a secular society - and while people may bash secularism, the secular society has proven to be the single best way of creating an environment where everyone is free to worship (or not) as they see fit.
Without the freedom to blaspheme, there can be no true freedom of speech and there can be no true freedom of religion. These civil liberties are at the core of western democracy, and cannot be set aside just because religious people have had their feelings hurt.
The Commissar suggests that a good way to show support for the freedom of expression in this case is to reprint the cartoons in question. I am not going to do that. I fully support his right, and the rights of others, to piss off whoever they want. Personally, I think that the cartoons represent a gratuitous insult to Muslims, and I decline to personally participate in spreading them. Similarly, I fully support the right of the KKK to peacefully march through a community, but I refuse to put on a sheet and march with them.
The situation with these cartoons looks more and more like a clash of values with every day. I, for one, am not willing to have my freedom of religion and expression restricted to satisfy anyone's sensibilities. Many Muslims, on the other hand, appear unwilling to tolerate a society that allows people to insult Mohammad. I am optimistic enough to hope that we will be able to find a way to resolve this cultural divide to everyone's satisfaction, but I am realistic enough to realize that the hope appears faint.
This is both a simple issue and a complex one, all at the same time.
PZ is right about some of the complexities involved. There are some parallels between this situation and various ugly forms of discrimination and prejudice. There are also issues of perception and of national and ethnic identity. It is entirely possible, if not likely, that some of the anger these cartoons have inspired stems from the glaring economic disparity between the parts of the world doing the mocking and the parts being mocked. I think that those are real problems, but I think that the simpler issue is also the more important - at least at the moment.
That issue is freedom, and whether cultures based on the freedoms that provide the stable core for liberal democracies can coexist peacefully in the same world with cultures that demand that their values be given special treatment.
This case may have been started by a low-circulation Danish newspaper trying to piss off a religious group that is a distinct minority in their country, but it has rapidly turned into an international dispute involving the whole world. It has also brought to light an extremely alarming school of thought on freedom of expression.
The armed takeover or burning of embassies is bad, as are death threats. They're also nothing new in the stormy world of modern politics, particularly when we're talking about the Mideast. To put it another way, the violence is appalling but hardly surprising.
What's more alarming, at least in my opinion, are some of the views that various nations have expressed about what freedom of expression should mean. Newspaper editorials from Nepal and Bangadesh, demand that the freedom of expression be limited to exclude criticism of religion. Pakistan issued a statement declaring that freedom of expression does not extend to the freedom to insult someones religion, and the president of Afghanistan said that the publication of those comics was an act that, "must never be allowed to be repeated." Other Islamic nations have made similar statements.
The Muslim world wasn't the only place where governments have objected to the publication of the cartoons. A South African court has issued a ruling barring the publication of those images there. Our own State Department has been at best lukewarm in their support for press freedom in this case. And the Vatican informs us that, "the right to freedom of thought and expression...cannot imply the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers."
Of course, it should not come as a surprise that the Vatican is not in favor of the right to blaspheme. However, the right to blaspheme is absolutely critical in a secular society - and while people may bash secularism, the secular society has proven to be the single best way of creating an environment where everyone is free to worship (or not) as they see fit.
Without the freedom to blaspheme, there can be no true freedom of speech and there can be no true freedom of religion. These civil liberties are at the core of western democracy, and cannot be set aside just because religious people have had their feelings hurt.
The Commissar suggests that a good way to show support for the freedom of expression in this case is to reprint the cartoons in question. I am not going to do that. I fully support his right, and the rights of others, to piss off whoever they want. Personally, I think that the cartoons represent a gratuitous insult to Muslims, and I decline to personally participate in spreading them. Similarly, I fully support the right of the KKK to peacefully march through a community, but I refuse to put on a sheet and march with them.
The situation with these cartoons looks more and more like a clash of values with every day. I, for one, am not willing to have my freedom of religion and expression restricted to satisfy anyone's sensibilities. Many Muslims, on the other hand, appear unwilling to tolerate a society that allows people to insult Mohammad. I am optimistic enough to hope that we will be able to find a way to resolve this cultural divide to everyone's satisfaction, but I am realistic enough to realize that the hope appears faint.
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