Fieldwork 2: Minor Difficulties

This is a plant that is known locally as "Spanish Bayonet."


These are your pants after you fall into some.


Any questions?

Prayer and the Military

Some of our more self-righteous congresscritters have been making to have the president sign an executive order guaranteeing evangelical Christian military chaplains the right to pray in Jesus' name. To their credit, the organization that represents the majority of military chaplains has come out against this move.

Here's the bottom line:
Military chaplains pray in two different types of circumstance. They pray when they are conducting religious services for people who share their beliefs, and they pray in circumstances when people who do not share their beliefs are required to be present. Nobody is questioning the right of chaplains to pray as they wish when they are conducting the services appropriate to their own denomination. However, when praying in a situation when people from other religious traditions are present, it is entirely inappropriate for a chaplain to deliver anything but a non-denominational prayer.

The executive director of an organization that represents some evangelical chaplains and is pushing for the executive order is quoted in the Washington Post article linked above:

But Baugham said evangelical chaplains must represent the church that endorses them for military duty, and "they are not authorized to give nonsectarian prayers."

That position is extrordinarily odd, particularly coming from a group that endorses chaplains for military duty. According to this army website, a chaplain's endorsement from their faith group should certify that the candidate is, among other things, "Sensitive to religious pluralism and able to provide for the free exercise of religion by all military personnel, their family members and civilians who work for the Army."

Any chaplain that cannot be sensitive to the differing beliefs of others in their unit is simply unfit for the needs of the military, and should be discharged.

Fieldwork 1: Packing

Preparation is absolutely essential to doing good fieldwork. Some of the preparation includes obvious tasks like figuring out where you are going to go, why you are going there, and how you are going to spend your time when you get there. Figuring out how you are getting there is usually a good idea, too, as is making sure that you have any and all paperwork that you will need. That's often a bit harder for scientists, becuase there are frequently extra permits and permissions to be obtained. There's also the matter of setting up your schedule once you get on site. Time is precious, and it's common to have to budget time tightly to make sure everything gets done.

Let's put it this way: fieldwork doesn't often happen on a moment's notice. When it does, it's usually because something extrordinary has happened somewhere in the world, creating a research opportunity that might not be available for long. (Most people refer to these as 'natural disasters'.)

It's also important to make sure that the logistics for the trip are lined up ahead of time. Food and shelter come under this category, of course, but I'm mostly talking about gear. You need stuff to do science, and there's nothing worse than finding out that you aren't going to be able to get all the data you need because you forgot to bring something important. That's why you'll find scientists (like me) who would ordinarily pack for a two-week vacation without using a list putting together detailed packing checklists for fieldwork. Putting together the checklist is usually followed by staring at it for a while to make sure you haven't forgotten anything, packing it all, unpacking it to make sure you haven't forgotten something, re-packing it, and wondering what you've forgotten.

Anyone want to take bets on what I'll forget?

Into the field

I've been trapped in the lab for the last few months, but that's about to change. I'm heading out into the field tomorrow morning, on a short trip to the Death Valley, California area.

The fieldwork I'm going to be doing isn't really related to my own research, but I'll take what I can get. Actually, it will be nice, because I'm going to be getting back to my roots. Back when I was first getting into science, I started out intending to be a paleontologist. Evolution interested me, and I was very interested in broad-scale, macroevolutionary events. But somewhere along the way I was seduced by the Dark Side, and was overcome by the lure of molecular techniques.

This week, I get to be a paleontologist again. A group of six grad students and two professors at UH, including myself, are working on a review paper. The topic of the review is the origins of animal life, and we thought it would be a good idea to get to get more familiar with the field. We're heading to Death Valley because it's a site that has some nice places to see the evidence for Precambrian animal life.

We'll be staying just south of the National Park, in a little town with a population of about 80. I've got a hunch that internet access will be a little hard to come by, so I probably won't be able to post too much before I get back on Thursday.

Friday Random Ten

The Friday Random Ten is a blog meme of uncertain origins that's been around for years. I keep meaning to do one, and every week (until now) I forget.

Directions: Fire up the iPod, set to shuffle songs, hit play. List the first ten songs that come up. Don't cheat.

This week, my iPod seems to be a bit more random than usual.

1: Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington
It Don't Mean A Thing if it Ain't Got that Swing
2: The Clash
Should I Stay or Should I Go Now
3: Pearl Jam and Neil Young
Rockin' In the Free World
4: Pete Seeger
The Erie Canal
5: Sean Na'auao
Fish and Poi
6: U2
Pride (In the Name of Love)
7: The Who
Baba O'Riley
8: Black 47
Living in America
9: Buffalo Springfield
For What It's Worth
10: The Muppets
The Muppet Show Theme

Last Night

Somewhere around two this morning, I had to get up to take care of one of a father's most important duties: monster patrol.

I've done it before, but this time was different. For starters, it was both kids who woke me up. Usually it's just one. Second, the monster was hiding somewhere different. Usually, it's under the bed or in one of the bedroom closets. This time, for some strange reason, it seemed to be in the bathroom. That's what I could gather from the kids, anyway. When they're under the blankets, it can be hard to understand everything.

I wasn't really that surprised. We were having a hell of a thunderstorm last night, and I figured that was probably the cause. In the probably futile hope of reclaiming my bed from the kids, I dragged myself out of bed and staggered out to take a look at the bathroom.

Damn near pissed myself when I got there. There was this really freaky sound coming out of the bedroom. It's almost impossible to describe - it was sort of like a whimper, but with this strange echo effect, and something that sounded sort of like heavy breathing going on, too. I wasn't sure what it was, but it probably wasn't the pipes.

After taking a minute to recover, I mustered up my courage, turned on the lights, and lunged into the bathroom. And found the dog.

It turns out that the thunderphobic canine, banished from the master bedroom, had taken refuge, whimpering and panting, in the bathtub.

If we can keep it.

As Ben Franklin left Independence Hall during the final day of deliberations during the Constitutional Convention, a woman is reported to have stopped him and asked:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

Franklin responded:

"A Republic, if you can keep it."

If we can keep it. There's the rub. Somehow, it seems like that just keeps getting harder to do.

The problem here, as in way too many other areas of American life, probably rests with the godawful state of our educational system. Far too many Americans seem to hold the mistaken view that we live in a democracy, and that the majority should be able to impose its will on the minority.

For example:

Who cares if there’s a “sizeable Mormon community”. They don’t have to sing Christmas songs if they don’t want to or they can ask that traditional Mormon pieces be added. This is America and Christmas along with Christmas carols are a longstanding tradition of a vast majority. Christmas is a national holiday and tragic as it is for the loony left it hasn’t been renamed Winter Solstice Celebration yet. Anyone that doesn’t like that is welcome to move to a country where they don’t celebrate Christmas. I’ll help them pack and pay for a one-way ticket on a banana boat out of here.

Here's another example, from a resolution currently on the floor in the Missouri State Legislature:

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-third General Assembly, Second Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, that we stand with the majority of our constituents and exercise the common sense that voluntary prayer in public schools and religious displays on public property are not a coalition of church and state, but rather the justified recognition of the positive role that Christianity has played in this great nation of ours, the United States of America.

Way, way too many people, apparently including some legislators, just don't seem to understand why we have the system of government that we do.

We don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic. We live in a republic because many of the drafters of the Constitution were at least as afraid of democracy as they were of monarchy:

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
James Madison, Federalist #10.

The Constitution was very intelligently designed to set up a system of government that protects the rights of the minority from the tyrany of the majority. That's why changing the Constitution is such a difficult process. It's not supposed to be something that the majority can do anytime they want. If it was otherwise, we would live in a very, very scary place - a place where the rights of the minority could be revoked by the majority at any time, for any reason.

I'm sorry to rant for so long on this, but it's important. The narrow-minded bigots who advocate for those kinds of "Christian Nation" and "if you don't like it, move" positions are attacking our fundamental values. They are trying to remake the country in their own twisted image, and they are trying to remake it as something far different from the Republic that the signers of the Constitution worked so hard and risked so much to establish.

Unfortunately, it really seems like those ignorant, jingoistic fools are becoming more common. At a minimum, they're becoming more vocal, and in our modern media world that can sometimes amount to the same thing. Franklin was right - we have a republic only as long as we can keep it.

We're going to need to work at that, I'm afraid. That's why groups, like the ACLU, that are willing to stand up for the rights of the minority are so critical right now. They provide a voice to people who are willing to fight the majority to protect their rights. Without them, it would be much, much easier for the majority to act like a tyrant.

Last Throws

It would seem that our vice-president's grasp on reality is about as good as his marksmanship. On Sunday, he did Face the Nation. During the interview, the following exchange took place:

SCHIEFFER: Mr. Vice President, all along the government has been very optimistic. You remain optimistic. But I remember when you were saying we'd be greeted as liberators, you played down the insurgency 10 months ago. You said it was in its last throes. Do you believe that these optimistic statements may be one of the reasons that people seem to be more skeptical in this country about whether we ought to be in Iraq?

CHENEY: No. I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad. It's not all the work that went on that day in 15 other provinces in terms of making progress towards rebuilding Iraq

That's right, he really said that his ten-month old claim that the insurgency is in its "last throes", and other similar claims, were "basically accurate and reflect reality".

I caught that on the air when it happened. One of my neighbors was there, too. I think he probably put it best when he said, "if you believe everything they say in Washington, the insurgents have had more last throes than a nymphomaniac in a frat house."

Plantinga, Intelligent Design, and Uninformed Opinions

One of the better posts mentioned in yesterday's Tangled Bank can be found over at Adventures in Science and Ethics. In that article, Janet provides a clear and detailed explanation of the limits of scientific expertise. As she reminds us, scientists are not near-omniscient beings, endowed with some sort of infailable ability to assess ideas across all the fields of scientific research. Scientists are primarily qualified to comment on matters within their own field. If a scientist is not an expert in an area of science, he or she should give the scientists within the other field the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they have a better understanding of their own area. As Janet points out, scientists (and other adademics) should be responsible enough to know their own limitations.

This sense of responsibility seems to be somewhat lacking among some of the more prominant proponents of Intelligent Design. It's shown up in any number of places, including a recent article by well-known philosopher Alvin Plantinga.

Plantinga pontificates at length on Judge Jones' ruling in the recent Kitzmiller v. Dover Intelligent Design lawsuit, but his rant seems to be entirely disconnected from the actual facts of the case - or, for that matter, any real understanding of what the ID proponents actually advocate.

The monumental depth of Plantinga's ignorance becomes clear fairly early on in the paper, when he discusses the Intelligent Design view of evolution:

Consider, for example, the claim that ID is just creation science in drag, as it were. That ruling is relevant in that previous court decisions have gone against creation science. But the kind of creation science those decisions had gone against is characterized by the claim that the world is a mere 6,000 to 100,000 years old, rather than the currently favored age of 4 billion or so years old.

Second, those creationists reject evolution in favor of the idea that the major kinds of plants and animals were created in pretty much their present form. ID, as such, doesn’t involve either of these two things

It is possible that Plantinga is correct here, since it is notoriously difficult to determine what ID, "as such," actually involves for any particular aspect of science. (That's the inevitable side effect of having a "theory" that entails no positively testable hypotheses.)

The problem for Plantinga's argument comes when one moves from the undefined principles of an idealized "Intelligent Design as such" to those of Intelligent Design, as outlined in the various "resources" provided to the Dover High School students. A quick look at the "textbook" at the center of the case is all it takes to see that Plantinga's position does not hold up well when evaluated using reality-based criteria:

"Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings..."
(Of Pandas and People, quoted in Forrest trial testimony)

That may not reflect Plantinga's view of Intelligent Design, but it clearly involves the idea that the major kinds of animal were created in more or less their current forms, and it clearly links that concept with the definition of Intelligent Design. It's also a view that the Discovery Institute doesn't seem to have too much of a problem with - they've called the book that it appears in "an excellent educational resource."

It seems clear to me that Plantinga is talking about some form of Intelligent Design that exists only in the realm of the ideal. Here, on Earth, we are dealing with a different form of Intelligent Design. The form of Intelligent Design that we are coping with doesn't have much to do with working on developing new scientific knowledge in the future. Instead, it is about what some people want to teach in the secondary school classroom right now.

Plantinga might have been able to see this if he had taken the time to look at what ID proponents do, rather than just what they say.

Tangled Bank #49

Tangled Bank #49 is now available over at Living the Scientific Life. Tangled Bank is almost always very good, and this one is better than most. It's laid out better than most, and there are a number of extrordinarily good submissions.

For the love of God, stand up for something

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.

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.

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:

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)"

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.