I pointed out that one of the main goals of education is to teach critical thinking and reasonable skepticism. If we are succeeding in that goal, then we should expect our students to ask embarrassing questions, such as what evidence to the elders have to support their myths about evolution and any other "ways of knowing" that conflict with science.
The proposal was dropped.
One of my Facebook friends posted a link to an article on genetic drift on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website [Genetic Drift]. The author is Roberta Millstein and the article is a recent update to an older version that I questioned ten years ago [A philosopher's view of random genetic drift]. I noted on Facebook that this was "Another example of philosophers who don’t understand modern science." By this I meant that the article seemed to ignore the abundant molecular evidence of drift.
That prompted a response from defenders of philosophy and Roberta Millstein joined in. Here's the essence of her defense of philosophy.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is, as the name suggests, about philosophy. Thus, the entry surveys views about drift in philosophy -- starting with the history of drift because some philosophical views about drift, such as my own, take that as their starting point -- which include debates about what drift is and other philosophical topics.
Perhaps if biologists had been crystal clear and consistent about what drift is, there would have been less to write about, but there is good evidence for the claim I make in the entry and elsewhere, that in fact scientists use the term in different ways, some of which I think are unproductive (e.g., describing drift in terms of outcome rather than as causal process).
I'll post a separate article about her views on genetic drift but here I want to address the point that biologists aren't always "crystal clear." It turns out that Millstein doesn't agree with my definition of evolution or my definition of allele so when I try to make the case that fixation of neutral alleles is a clear example of random genetic drift this is challenged by evidence that not all biologists accept my definitions so genetic drift isn't as solidly established as I might think.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! These are my great-grandparents Thomas Keys Foster, born in County Tyrone on September 5, 1852 and Eliza Ann Job, born in Fintona, County Tyrone on August 18, 1852. Thomas came to Canada in 1876 to join his older brother, George, on his farm near London, Ontario, Canada. Eliza came the following year and worked on the same farm. Thomas and Eliza decided to move out west where they got married in 1882 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
The couple obtained a land grant near Salcoats, Saskatchewan, a few miles south of Yorkton, where they built a sod house and survived the first winter. Later on they built a wood frame house that they named "Fairview" after a hill in Ireland overlooking the house where Eliza was born. That's where my grandmother, Ella, was born. Most of this house still exists—we visited it a few years ago.
This is a photo of the house where my great-grandmother, Eliza Ann Job was raised. It was in the small village of Syonee in Tyrone county Ireland. You can see Fairview Hill from there. This photo was taken 40 years ago and I'm told that the house no longer exists.
The Genetics Society has awarded the 2026 Mendel Medal to Joe Felsenstein. Some of you may know Joe because he sometimes posts comments on Sandwalk in order to "clarify" some of my more egregious errors. But I bet you didn't know all of the things he has done over the past few decades. Here's the full press release: [Mendel Medal 2026 – Professor Joe Felsenstein].
Professor Joe Felsenstein was born in 1942, grew up in Philadelphia and studied as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, with James F. Crow as his undergraduate mentor. He got his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago with Richard Lewontin, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh with Alan Robertson. Since 1968 he has been at the University of Washington in the Department of Genetics, and then in the Department of Genome Sciences and also in the Department of Biology. He has worked on the population genetics theory of the effects of recombination, of geographic differentiation, and of speciation. From the late 1970s on, his main focus was on methods for inferring phylogenies.
His accomplishments in that field include showing that with certain shapes of the true evolutionary tree, parsimony methods will be inconsistent, tending to infer the wrong phylogeny. He developed dynamic programming methods for fast evaluation of likelihoods for DNA sequence phylogenies. He adapted the bootstrap method of statistical inference to phylogenies, which enables assessment of the statistical support for different groups. He wrote the central paper introducing phylogenetic comparative methods to investigate whether multiple characters have evolved in a correlated way.
He has also made these and other methods widely available by organising the development and distribution of the PHYLIP package of programs for inferring phylogenies, starting in 1980 and still continuing. In 2004, he published “Inferring Phylogenies”, which reviews and explains the major methods of statistical phylogenetics. He assisted his colleagues Mary Kuhner and Jon Yamato, in applying the likelihood methods for DNA sequence phylogenies to trees of gene copies within populations (coalescent trees), to infer population parameters such as population size, mutation rate, migration rates and recombination rates. They developed the LAMARC program for coalescent inferences.
He has received a number of honors, including membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Weldon Prize and Medal for biometry, and the Darwin-Wallace medal from the Linnean Society. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, and the International Prize for Biology from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Since his retirement in 2017, he has been active in critiquing mathematical arguments by advocates of Intelligent Design and creationism.
They forgot to mention that Joe has also written about sex [What did Joe Felsenstein say about sex?].
I hope he won't mind if I tell you about something else that isn't in the press release ... he likes BeaverTails [BeaverTails].
Part of his argument relies on refuting adaptationism, or the idea that much of the history of life is due to adaptation (natural selection). He describes three different kinds of adaptationism in his book (p. 39) and I think it's useful to know them.
But mastering the techniques in order to investigate problems should not be sufficient, in my opinion. Above all, a Ph.D. candidate needs to demonstrate a deep understanding of the basic science that underlies our current models and theories. That's absolutely necessary if you are going to be capable of challenging those models and theories.
An editorial in a recent issue of Science caught my eye because it proposes to "reimagine" graduate degrees in STEM disciplines. The authors are Ian Banks who is director of Science Policy at the Foundation for American Innovation in San Francisco (California, USA) and Prineha Narang who is a professor in Physical Sciences and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, California, USA). [Reimagining STEM doctoral training].
Here's part of their proposal ...
But if one of the goals of granting an advanced degree is to produce professionals who can drive innovation—applying new ideas, methods, or technologies to create value—then academic programs must be available to support that outcome too.
The solution is not to replace existing PhD programs, but to add a STEM innovation PhD track. The selective program would require deep private-sector engagement in an accelerated 4-year program in which a student immediately joins a structured research project with clear milestones, crafted by a faculty member in consultation with a relevant industry partner. During the second and third years, students would participate in 2- or 3-month internships with companies that are aligned with their research.
I do not agree that one of the goals of a Ph.D. program is to drive technology to create value. It may be a consequence of mastering critical thinking but that's not the same thing. I do not think that the average student who obtains a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology, geomorphology, or astrophysics has to demonstrate that they are "professionals who can drive innovation-applying new ideas."
Furthermore, the idea that Ph.D. programs at major universities would be partially controlled by industrial partners is repugnant. When I was training Ph.D. students there was no way that I would have teamed up with a biotech company or a drug company and allowed them to exploit one of my students for free research.
What do you think? Should Science be publishing such editorials on the prominent first page of the journal?
