Martin Rundkvist is hosting the 96th edition of Tangled Bank at Aardvarchaeology [Tangled Bank 96 - Toadally].Hey everyone, and welcome to the 96th Tangled Bank blog carnival! This is where you can toadally catch up with the best recent blog writing on the life sciences.
Ways of knowing used in society include the following:You're probably wondering whether the Union of Concerned Scientists have a position on the possible conflict between science and religion.
- Authority: Parents, teachers, community leaders, and physicians are all figures of authority. The level of trust we have in them depends on our personal experiences and access to knowledge about them.
- Belief: God or gods, or other external or internal supernatural powers can impart or support beliefs. There are numerous deities and levels and types of belief within any society.
- Logic: Logic includes tests and rules that help to identify what is true and false. It is an important element of scientific inquiry but is limited by its lack of reference to the natural world.
- Scientific Inquiry: Science provides knowledge based on empirical evidence from the natural world. Science is the only way of knowing that provides explanations that are testable and verifiable. Ideas in science accumulate over time and are subject to revision and change.
For many scientists there is no conflict between science and religion (2)—science explores how things work while religion and philosophy ask why. They can coexist as separate areas of inquiry and even lead to enlightening discussions. Indeed, some mainstream religions (3)—such as the Roman Catholic Church—support the theory of evolution as an explanation of how humans and other organisms arose on Earth. Recent attempts to incorporate religion-based alternatives to evolution in the science classroom have elicited strong reactions by many of these groups.This is a bit confusing. Apparently, some religious beliefs conflict with science and threaten the integrity of science but other religious beliefs do not conflict. I guess it depends on which scientists you talk to.
Our policy makers rely on independent scientific information to make informed decisions that protect our health, safety, and the environment. Unfortunately, a growing level of political and ideological interference threatens the integrity of science (4) in public decision making, with wide-ranging repercussions for our social, economic, and environmental future.
A poll of 460 college and university science professors in Ohio found that 84% thought there was no conflict between accepting the theory of evolution and a belief in God. Science is based on what is termed “methodological naturalism,” a rule of science that limits an explanation of natural phenomenon to natural causes. It has no opinion on the role of spirituality, only that it is not part of science. A related but philosophical view called “materialist or philosophical naturalist,” goes beyond methodological naturalism to say that only natural causes exist (i.e. there is no God). This is an important distinction as accusations that scientists and especially evolutionists are by definition materialist naturalists, and therefore atheists, is common in the intelligent design literature and should be countered.This isn't very helpful. It's just another version of The Doctrine of Joint Belief. Just because 84% of professors in Ohio don't see a conflict doesn't mean there is no conflict.
Matt Nisbet asks the following question over on his blog.If race is a biological fiction, what are the reasons for persistent belief in this social myth?He answers the question by linking to the opinion of his colleague, Tim Caulfield, a lawyer at the University of Alberta [Why the Biological Fiction of Race Persists].
What do readers think? Is race a biological fiction? If so, what strategies can we pursue to re-frame the nature of genetic differences in news coverage and public discourse?That's right, Matt. It's just a framing problem to you isn't it? Do you even give a damn about scientific truth?
P.S. Guess whose photo Matt uses to illustrate his point about the biological "fiction" of races?
[Photo Credit: Matthew Nisbet]
Some people have suggested that E.O. Wilson or Neil deGrasse Tyson might be good candidates for the next Presidential science advisor. Matt Nisbet doesn't agree [An Endorsement for Francis Collins as Pres. Science Advisor].Just one problem: Most science popularizers such as Wilson or Tyson don't have the years of government experience to understand the machinations of Federal science policy. Moreover, they have a paper trail of strong opinions on issues that might make appointment politically tough.Just one problem. Francis Collins may be an evangelical Christian and a good framer of science but does he understand science well enough to be a good science advisor? RPM says "no" and I agree with him [Francis Collins Should not be Pres. Science Advisor].
Yet there is one person that scores high on all of these dimensions, plus one other major attribute. And that person is Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Project. Not only does Collins have top government experience but he is also a successful popularizer. And perhaps even more importantly, based on his background and writings, he would make a perfect science ambassador to religious America.
[Photo Credit: Francis Collins discusses “The Language of God”]
The 23rd edition of Gene Genie has been posted at ScienceRoll [Gene Genie #23: Paradise of Genomics].
This is one particular form of a very common molecule. You have to name the specific molecule. The common name is sufficient. There will be bonus points to anyone who finds the correct systematic IUPAC name.
The video below is a short presentation from a website called Listen to the Scientists.We often challenge the credentials of the creationists so we should be very, very careful not to misrepresent the areas of expertise on our side. It wouldn't make any difference if the opening statement in the video referred to "knowledgeable experts in the evolution/creation controversy" instead of "scientists" who are "recognized as experts by the scientific community, in their fields of evolutionary science."
- Francisco Ayala, Professor of Biological Sciences, UC Irvine (an expert in evolutionary biology)
- David Deamer, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, US Santa Cruz (I don't know him)
- Barbara Forrest, Professor of Philosophy, South Eastern Louisiana University (an expect in the evolution/creation controversy)
- James Hofmann, Professor of History & Philosophy of Science, California State University (probably not a recognized expert in evolutionary biology)
- Kenneth Miller, Professor of Cell Biology, Brown University (an expert in the evolution/creation controversy)
- Kevin Padian, Professor of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley (an expert in evolutionary biology)
- James L. Powell, Geologist (I don't know if he's an expert in evolutionary biology)
- Eugenie C. Scott, Director NCSE (an expert in the evolution/creation controversy)
You've seen it on TV and you've heard the impressive testimonials from people like Ramsay Pang of Mississauga, Ontario (Canada) [Q-Ray Bracelet]. Q-Ray is really wonderful and the most interesting thing is you can tell the difference after you wear it. You can feel it. You can actually feel the difference.Now I know, dear readers, that you aren't stupid. You never would have fallen for a scam like the Q-Ray bracelet. (The titanium version shown here costs $265.97 (US).) I bet you wish those fradulent scam artists would get their rear ends sued.
WIRED Magazine recently put the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet on its list of the top ten Snake-Oil Gadgets. See [10 Great Snake-Oil Gadgets].And that's just the opening paragraph!
The Federal Trade Commission has an even less honorable title for the bracelet’s promotional campaign: fraud. In this action under 15 U.S.C. §§ 45(a), 52, 53, a magistrate judge, presiding by the parties’ consent, concluded after a bench trial that the bracelet’s promotion has been thoroughly dishonest. The court enjoined the promotional claims and required defendants to disgorge some $16 million (plus interest) for the FTC to distribute to consumers who have been taken in. 448 F. Supp. 2d 908 (N.D. Ill. 2006), modified in part by 472 F. Supp. 2d 990 (N.D. Ill. 2007).
Here's more gems of wisdom from Chief Judge Easterbrook. The defendants said it was unreasonable to be forced to conduct rigorous scientific tests to verify their claims. The Judge agrees that in some cases such tests aren't necessary because the claims are quite reasonable and based on sound science. He gives the example of claiming that a bandage with iodine will prevent infection.But how could this conclusion assist defendants? In our example the therapeutic claim is based on scientific principles. For the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet, by contrast, all statements about how the product works—Q-Rays, ionization, enhancing the flow of bio-energy, and the like—are blather. Defendants might as well have said: “Beneficent creatures from the 17th Dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief, and whisk them off to their homeworld every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.”Apparently there was one study suggesting that people who wore the bracelet felt better. This is an example of the placebo effect, as the court notes. Is that good enough to overturn the conviction?
Although it is true, as Arthur C. Clarke said, that “[a]ny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” by those who don’t understand its principles (“Profiles of the Future” (1961)), a person who promotes a product that contemporary technology does not understand must establish that this “magic” actually works. Proof is what separates an effect new to science from a swindle. Defendants themselves told customers that the bracelet’s efficacy had been “test-proven”; that statement was misleading unless a reliable test had been used and statistically significant results achieved. A placebocontrolled, double-blind study is the best test; something less may do (for there is no point in spending $1 million to verify a claim worth only $10,000 if true); but defendants have no proof of the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet’s efficacy. The “tests” on which they relied were bunk. (We need not repeat the magistrate judge’s exhaustive evaluation of this subject.) What remain are testimonials, which are not a form of proof because most testimonials represent a logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc. (A person who experiences a reduction in pain after donning the bracelet may have enjoyed the same reduction without it. That’s why the “testimonial” of someone who keeps elephants off the streets of a large city by snapping his fingers is the basis of a joke rather than proof of cause and effect.)
Defendants insist that the placebo effect vindicates their claims, even though they are false—indeed, especially because they are false, as the placebo effect depends on deceit. Tell the patient that the pill contains nothing but sugar, and there is no pain relief; tell him (falsely) that it contains a powerful analgesic, and the perceived level of pain falls. A product that confers this benefit cannot be excluded from the market, defendants insist, just because they told the lies necessary to bring the effect about.Isn't this a clever argument? The placebo effect is beneficial to the patient and in order for the placebo to be effective you have to lie about the benefits of the Q-Ray bracelet. Therefore, this isn't fraud.
We appreciate the possibility that a vague claim—along the lines of “this bracelet will reduce your pain without the side effects of drugs”—could be rendered true by the placebo effect. To this extent we are skeptical about language in FTC v. Pantron I Corp., 33 F.3d 1088 (9th Cir. 1994), suggesting that placebo effects always are worthless to consumers. But our defendants advanced claims beyond those that could be supported by a placebo effect. They made statements about Q-Rays, ionization, and bio-energy that they knew to be poppycock; they stated that the bracelet remembers its first owner and won’t work for anyone else; the list is extensive.We need more judges like this.
One important reason for requiring truth is so that competition in the market will lead to appropriate prices. Selling brass as gold harms consumers independent of any
effect on pain. Since the placebo effect can be obtained from sugar pills, charging $200 for a device that is represented as a miracle cure but works no better than a dummy pill is a form of fraud. That’s not all. A placebo is necessary when scientists are searching for the marginal effect of a new drug or device, but once the study is over a reputable professional will recommend whatever works best.
Medicine aims to do better than the placebo effect, which any medieval physician could achieve by draining off a little of the patient’s blood. If no one knows how to cure or ameliorate a given condition, then a placebo is the best thing going. Far better a placebo that causes no harm (the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet is inert) than the sort of nostrums peddled from the back of a wagon 100 years ago and based on alcohol, opium, and wormwood. But if a condition responds to treatment, then selling a placebo as if it had therapeutic effect directly injures the consumer. See Kraft, Inc. v. FTC, 970 F.2d 311, 314 (7th Cir. 1992) (a statement violates the FTC Act “if it is likely to mislead consumers, acting reasonably under the circumstances, in a material respect”).
Physicians know how to treat pain. Why pay $200 for a Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet when you can get relief from an aspirin tablet that costs 1¢? Some painful conditions do not respond to analgesics (or the stronger drugs in the pharmacopeia) or to surgery, but it does not follow that a placebo at any price is better. Deceit such as the tall tales that defendants told about the Q-Ray Ionized Bracelet will lead some consumers to avoid treatments that cost less and do more; the lies will lead others to pay too much for pain relief or otherwise interfere with the matching of remedies to medical conditions. That’s why the placebo effect cannot justify fraud in promoting a product. Doctor Dulcamara was a charlatan who harmed most of his customers even though Nemorino gets the girl at the end of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.
[Hat Tip: Rebecca at Memoirs of a Skepchick (The Q-Ray gets ionized!)]
The National Academies (Science, Engineering, Medicine) (USA) have just published their latest book on the evolution/creationism controversy. You can download it for free on their website [Science, Evolution and Creationism]. But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.I think it's unfortunate that the New York Times article places so much emphasis on this part of the book but the authors of the book1 must have known what they were doing. Too bad they were misguided.
...
The 70-page book, “Science, Evolution and Creationism,” says, among other things, that “attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.” And it offers statements from several eminent biologists and members of the clergy to support the view.
Acceptance of the evidence for evolutionThere are two fallacies here. The first one is the one I already alluded to (the Doctrine of Joint Belief). Just because you can find scientists and theologians who proclaim that evolution is compatible with religious faith doesn't make it so. You need to examine their understanding of evolution and also what they mean by "religious faith."
can be compatible with religious faith.
Today, many religious denominations accept that biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth’s history. Many have issued statements observing that evolution and the tenets of their faiths are compatible. Scientists and theologians have written eloquently about their awe and wonder at the history of the universe and of life on this planet, explaining that they see no conflict between their faith in God and the evidence for evolution. Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts.
Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.
As you might have guessed, the book trots out quotations from the usual suspects, Francis Collins and Kenneth Miller2. Their words of wisdom appear on a page with the title "Excerpts of Statements by Scientists Who See No Conflict Between Their Faith and Science." The book makes some amends, in my opinion, by including the following statement on that page.Scientists, like people in other professions, hold a wide range of positions about religion and the role of supernatural forces or entities in the universe. Some adhere to a position known as scientism, which holds that the methods of science alone are sufficient for discovering everything there is to know about the universe. Others ascribe to an idea known as deism, which posits that God created all things and set the universe in motion but no longer actively directs physical phenomena. Others are theists, who believe that God actively intervenes in the world. Many scientists who believe in God, either as a prime mover or as an active force in the universe, have written eloquently about their beliefs.The good part about that statement is that it mentions deism, which is a form of religion where the conflict between science and religion really is minimized. The bad parts are that theists who promote interventionist Gods are touted as examples of those who see no conflict between science and religion. (The reason why Theistic Evolutionists don't "see" a conflict is because they choose to look the other way [Theistic Evolution: The Fallacy of the Middle Ground].)
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.The National Academies are violating NOMA unless they specifically refer to belief in Gods that do not perform miracles of any kind. There are very few religions that believe in non-interventionist Gods who never perform miracles. Therefore, it is much more scientifically accurate to say that science conflicts directly with almost all religious beliefs, including those of Ken Miller and Francis Collins.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) pp. 85-85
1. The book was produced by a committee headed by Fancisco Ayala.
2. Who appointed Collins and Miller to be the flame carriers for evolution?
Gould, S.J. (1999) Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the fullness of Life The Ballantine Publishing Group, New York (USA).
A growing number of for-profit companies are selling genetic testing services directly to customers who pay anywhere from $100 t0 $1000 for their personal genetic profile. DTC testing has emerged during a period of rapid growth in the number of genetic tests. Today, there are more than 1,100 genetic tests available clinically, and several hundred more are available in research settings. Although most genetic testing is currently available only through a health care provider, an increasing variety of tests are being offered DTC, often without any health care provider involvement or counseling. The range of tests available DTC is broad, from tests for single-gene disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, to tests for predisposition to complex, multifactorial diseases, such as depression and cardiovascular disease. In addition to providing test results DTC, some companies also make recommendations regarding lifestyle changes on the basis of these results, such as changes in diet or use of nutritional supplements.
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Recommendations
I. Transparency
To promote transparency and to permit providers and consumers to make informed decisions about DTC genetic testing, companies must provide all relevant information about offered tests in a readily accessible and understandable manner.
- Companies offering DTC genetic testing should disclose the sensitivity, specificity, and predictive value of the test, and the populations for which this information is known, in a readily understandable and accessible fashion.
- Companies offering DTC testing should disclose the strength of scientific evidence on which any claims of benefit are based, as well as any limitations to the claimed benefits. For example, if a disease or condition may be caused by many factors, including the presence of a particular genetic variant, the company should disclose that other factors may cause the condition and that absence of the variant does not mean the patient is not at risk for the disease.
- Companies offering DTC testing should clearly disclose all risks associated with testing, including psychological risks and risks to family members.
- Companies offering DTC testing should disclose the CLIA certification status of the laboratory
performing the genetic testing.- Companies offering DTC testing should maintain the privacy of all genetic information and disclose their privacy policies,
including whether they comply with HIPAA.- Companies offering DTC testing and making lifestyle, nutritional, pharmacologic, or other treatment recommendations on the basis of the results of those tests should disclose the clinical evidence for and against the efficacy of such interventions, with respect to those specific recommendations and indications.
II. Provider Education
To ensure that providers are aware that genetic tests are being provided DTC and that some of these tests may lack analytic or clinical validity, professional organizations should educate their members regarding the types of genetic tests offered DTC, so that providers can counsel their patients about the potential value and limitations of DTC testing.
- Professional organizations should disseminate information to their members explaining what DTC testing is, what tests are offered DTC, and the potential benefits and limitations of such testing for patients.
III. Test and Laboratory Quality
To ensure the analytic and clinical validity of genetic tests offered DTC and to ensure that claims made about these tests are truthful and not misleading, the relevant agencies of the federal government should take appropriate and targeted regulatory action.
- CMS should create a genetic testing specialty under CLIA, to ensure the analytic validity of tests and the quality of genetic-testing laboratories.
- CMS should ensure that all DTC genetic-testing laboratories are certified under CLIA and should maintain a publicly accessible list containing the certification status of laboratories.
- The federal government should take steps to ensure the clinical validity of DTC tests that make health-related or health care-affecting claims.
- The FTC should take action against companies that make false or misleading claims about DTC tests.
- The FDA and the FTC should work together to develop guidelines for DTC testing companies to follow, to ensure that their claims are truthful and not misleading and that they adequately convey the scientific limitations for particular tests.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should conduct a study on the impact of DTC testing on consumers, to assess whether and to what extent consumers are experiencing benefit and/or harm from this method of test delivery. The CDC should also conduct a systematic comparison between the claims made in DTC advertising and the scientific evidence available to support these claims.
Hudson, K., Javitt, G., Burke, W., Byers, P., with the ASHG Social Issues Committee (2007) ASHG Statement on Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing in the United States. Obstetricians and Gynecology 110:1392-1395. [PubMed]
Rosie Redfield says [Why biology is harder than physics].Beginning university students in the sciences usually consider biology to be much easier than physics or chemistry. From their experience in high school, physics has math and formulae that must be understood to be applied correctly, but the study of biology relies mainly on memorization. But in reality biology is much more complex than the physical sciences, and understanding it requires more, not less, brain work.Read the rest over at RRTeaching. Rosie makes a point that I've also tried to make, but she does a better job.
I hope someone in the social sciences gets wind of this and belittles biologists. Sociology is obviously more complex than biology, so it clearly requires more brainpower to be a social scientist than a biologist, right?Uh, no Philip. Sociology is the study of the behavior of one particular biological species (Homo sapiens). It's a teeny, tiny subset of biology.
Since we couldn't rely on the literal truth of the Bible, we needed a fallback position to guide our views on religion and science. That position was what I'll call the Doctrine of Joint Belief: "Noted Scientist X has accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. Therefore, religion and science are compatible." (Substitute deity to taste.) You can still see this argument today, where the beliefs of Francis Collins or Freeman Dyson, both accomplished scientists, are held up as evidence of such compatibility.Read the rest of the article to find out why the "Doctrine of Joint Belief" is not based on logic.
Belief in compatibility is different from belief in God. Even after I stopped believing, I thought religious dogma, though incorrect, was not directly incompatible with science (a view sketched out by Stephen Gould as "non-overlapping magisteria".) I've now changed my mind, for the obvious reason: I was wrong. The idea that religious scientists prove that religion and science are compatible is ridiculous, and I'm embarrassed that I ever believed it. Having believed for so long, however, I understand its attraction, and its fatal weaknesses.
Saying that the mental lives of a Francis Collins or a Freeman Dyson prove that religion and science are compatible is like saying that the sex lives of Bill Clinton or Ted Haggard prove that marriage and adultery are compatible. The people we need to watch out for in this part of the debate aren't the fundamentalists, they're the moderates, the ones who think that if religious belief is made metaphorical enough, incompatibility with science can be waved away. It can't be, and we need to say so, especially to the people like me, before I changed my mind.
Said Popper: The criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability.Many people agree with Rebecca Goldstein but I still hear from lots of Popperians. It's very annoying to see my fellow scientists attack Intelligent Design Creationism on the grounds that it doesn't conform to Popper's idea of science—it's not falsifiable. That's true but irrelevant. Much of the best kinds of science also don't conform to Popper's ideas.
For most scientists, this is all they need to know about the philosophy of science. It was bracing to come upon such a clear and precise criterion for identifying scientific theories. And it was gratifying to see how Popper used it to discredit the claims that psychoanalysis and Marxism are scientific theories. It had long seemed to me that the falsifiability test was basically right and enormously useful.
But then I started to read Popper’s work carefully, to teach him in my philosophy of science classes, and to look to scientific practice to see whether his theory survives the test of falsifiability (at least as a description of how successful science gets done). And I’ve changed my mind.
....
...scientists don’t, and shouldn’t, jettison a theory as soon as a disconfirming datum comes in. As Francis Crick once said, “Any theory that can account for all of the facts is wrong, because some of the facts are always wrong.” Scientists rightly question a datum that appears to falsify an elegant and well-supported theory, and they rightly add assumptions and qualifications and complications to a theory as they learn more about the world. As Imre Lakatos, a less-cited (but more subtle) philosopher of science points out, all scientific theories are unfalsifiable. The ones we take seriously are those that lead to “progressive” research programs, where a small change accommodates a large swath of past and future data. And the ones we abandon are those that lead to “degenerate” ones, where the theory gets patched and re-patched at the same rate as new facts come in.
Steven Pinker, a psychologist at Harvard University (USA) used to think that humans had stopped evolving. Now he's changed his mind ... [Have Humans Stopped Evolving?]Ten years ago, I wrote:I'm glad he's changed his mind but it's for the wrong reasons.
For ninety-nine percent of human existence, people lived as foragers in small nomadic bands. Our brains are adapted to that long-vanished way of life, not to brand-new agricultural and industrial civilizations. They are not wired to cope with anonymous crowds, schooling, written language, government, police, courts, armies, modern medicine, formal social institutions, high technology, and other newcomers to the human experience.And:
Are we still evolving? Biologically, probably not much. Evolution has no momentum, so we will not turn into the creepy bloat-heads of science fiction. The modern human condition is not conducive to real evolution either. We infest the whole habitable and not-so-habitable earth, migrate at will, and zigzag from lifestyle to lifestyle. This makes us a nebulous, moving target for natural selection. If the species is evolving at all, it is happening too slowly and unpredictably for us to know the direction. (How the Mind Works)...
New results from the labs of Jonathan Pritchard, Robert Moyzis, Pardis Sabeti, and others have suggested that thousands of genes, perhaps as much as ten percent of the human genome, have been under strong recent selection, and the selection may even have accelerated during the past several thousand years. The numbers are comparable to those for maize, which has been artificially selected beyond recognition during the past few millennia.
If these results hold up, and apply to psychologically relevant brain function (as opposed to disease resistance, skin color, and digestion, which we already know have evolved in recent millennia), then the field of evolutionary psychology might have to reconsider the simplifying assumption that biological evolution was pretty much over and done with 10-000 — 50,000 years ago.
[Photo Credit: CivilBrights]
