Freedom in the Classroom (2007): Indoctrination

 
The American Association of University Professors has just published a document called Freedom in the Classroom (2007) [Freedom in the Classroom (2007]. The report was written by a subcommittee on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

This report addresses some very important issues that relate to the role of university Professors in general but it is especially relevant in the context of the evolution/creationism controversy. Michael Bérubé has written a very nice article about freedom in the classroom for the latest issue of Inside Higher Education [Freedom to Teach]. It's worth reading. One of my favorite philosophers, Janet Stemwedel has posted a really comprehensive and thoughtful article on her blog Adventures in Ethics and Science [Freedom in the classroom]. This is such an important issue that I'd like to add my two cents. It's an issue that comes up frequently in my own classes and in lunchtime discussions with colleagues.

The report covers four "charges" against Professors.

Critics charge that the professoriate is abusing the classroom in four particular ways: (1) instructors "indoctrinate" rather than educate; (2) instructors fail fairly to present conflicting views on contentious subjects, thereby depriving students of educationally essential "diversity" or "balance"; (3) instructors are intolerant of students' religious, political, or socioeconomic views, thereby creating a hostile atmosphere inimical to learning; and (4) instructors persistently interject material, especially of a political or ideological character, irrelevant to the subject of instruction. We address each of these charges in turn.

I'll discuss each of these charges in separate postings.

Indoctrination

Professors are often accused of indoctrinating students rather than educating them. This charge arises when a particular group, such as religious fundamentalists, perceive that their views on the literal truth of the Bible are not getting proper attention in the university.

It is not indoctrination for professors to expect students to comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that is accepted as true within a relevant discipline. For example, it is not indoctrination for professors of biology to require students to understand principles of evolution; indeed, it would be a dereliction of professional responsibility to fail to do so. Students must remain free to question generally accepted beliefs if they can do so, in the words of the 1915 Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, using "a scholar's method and . . . in a scholar's spirit." But professors of logic may insist that students accept the logical validity of the syllogism, and professors of astronomy may insist that students accept the proposition that the earth orbits around the sun, unless in either case students have good logical or astronomical grounds to differ.

This is an important point. Professors are not obliged to present ideas that are in conflict with the established "truth" in a discipline. They are, however, obligated to permit dissent from this established truth provided students can present a scholarly argument. However, students need to understand that although they have the freedom to challenge the "accepted beliefs" they must be prepared to defend their challenge. Professors are under no obligation to simply permit speeches in the classroom without making any comment.

We all understand that some positions are so overwhelmingly correct that it makes no sense to try accommodate an opposing view. But not all positions fall into this category. Sometimes a Professor will argue a certain point of view that may not be universally accepted within the discipline. Is this indoctrination?

It is not indoctrination when, as a result of their research and study, instructors assert to their students that in their view particular propositions are true, even if these propositions are controversial within a discipline. It is not indoctrination for an economist to say to his students that in his view the creation of markets is the most effective means for promoting growth in underdeveloped nations, or for a biologist to assert her belief that evolution occurs through punctuated equilibriums rather than through continuous processes.

Indoctrination occurs only when instructors dogmatically insist on the truth of such propositions by refusing to accord their students the opportunity to contest them. Vigorously to assert a proposition or a viewpoint, however controversial, is to engage in argumentation and discussion-an engagement that lies at the core of academic freedom. Such engagement is essential if students are to acquire skills of critical independence. The essence of higher education does not lie in the passive transmission of knowledge but in the inculcation of a mature independence of mind.

What this means is that Professors cannot refuse to allow debate in the classroom. In my experience this rarely happens. If there's a lack of debate and argumentation it stems more from self-censorship among the students than from censorship by the teacher. Most of us would dearly love to hear more from our students—especially if they disagree with us. It seems that no matter how provocatively I present an opinion I can never get a rise out of my students.

Nobel Laureates Max Delbrück, Alfred D. Hershey, Salvador E. Luria

 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1969.

"for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses"

Max Delbrück (1906-1981), Alfred D. Hershey (1908-1997), and Salvador E. Luria (1912-1991) received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for founding the phage group and stimulating hundreds of scientists to study molecular biology. That's not exactly what the citation says but nobody is fooled. This is an unusual Nobel Prize. While the work that these three men did is impressive there's no real breakthrough or discovery that links all three. In a sense, they are getting the Nobel Prize for being teachers and mentors. That is entirely fitting and proper.

Their influence was enormous. Delbrück especially was the man behind the curtain throughout most of the 50's and 60's. His name comes up repeatedly in biographies and memoirs. Recall that the book Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology was dedicated to him [Waiting for the Paradox].

The photograph on Monday's Molecule #42 shows a bacteriophage particle that has burst and spilled its DNA onto the electron microscope grid. It's a fitting symbol of the phage group that Delbrück, Luria, and Hershey founded.

The Presentation Speech was given by Professor Sven Gad of the Royal Caroline Institute.

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Man, animals, plants, microorganisms, they are all preyed upon by viruses. Even bacteria have their own viruses, somewhat misleadingly called bacteriophages - "bacteria eaters". These were discovered at the time of the first world war but the subsequent 25 years of research did not contribute much to our knowledge of their true nature. However, about 1940 Max Delbrück became interested in bacteriophages and soon thereafter so did Salvador Luria and Alfred Hershey. Their aim was to study the most fundamental of all vital processes - replication. They expected to find in the bacteriophages a model, sufficiently primitive to permit an attack on this problem with hopes for success.

The constellation was promising: one physicist, Delbrück, one physician, Luria, and one biochemist, Hershey. With their different backgrounds and approaches they were able to launch truly concentric attacks on the fundamental problems. They worked independently but in close contact. Early on they formed their own school and the stimulating intellectual climate they created attracted talented scientists from many different fields and with many different attitudes. Under their direction the development proceeded with explosive speed.

The honour in the first place goes to Delbrück who transformed bacteriophage research from vague empiricism to an exact science. He analyzed and defined the conditions for precise measurement of the biological effects. Together with Luria he elaborated the quantitative methods and established the statistical criteria for evaluation which made the subsequent penetrating studies possible. Delbrück's and Luria's forte is perhaps mainly theoretical analysis, whereas Hershey above all is an eminently skillful experimenter. The three of them supplement each other well also in these respects.

The research proceeded along the lines Delbrück had set for a little more than ten years. During this period the bacteriophage life cycle was mapped out in detail. The various phases of the replication process were dissected and studied separately. The final picture of the sequence of events was briefly as follows.

A bacteriophage particle consists of a core containing nucleic acid, enveloped in a protein shell. The shell contains an enzyme that reacts specifically with a substance in the cell wall and which produces an erosion in the cell surface through which the bacteriophage core enters. The protein shell remains outside and does not further participate in the process of infection. With the entrance of the bacteriophage core the activity of the cell is radically changed. Its chemical tools remain intact but its regulating center is switched off. Instead the bacteriophage core takes command and directs the chemical activity exclusively towards production of new bacteriophage particles. The various components of the virus, nucleic acid and several proteins, are produced separately and only in the terminal phase are they put together to form "mature" particles. When this stage is reached the cell wall is dissolved and the newly formed virus is released. This process proceeds with almost inconceivable speed. One virus particle may in 10 to 15 minutes give rise to more than a thousand new particles.

New nucleic acid is formed in principle through repeated duplications. On rare occasions a synthetic error may occur, resulting in the appearance of a unit with a structure that at some point differs from that of the others. If the error is not sufficiently serious to make the new unit non-functional, it will be repeated at subsequent duplications and the final harvest of bacteriophages will contain a number of particles with properties that differ from those of the parental type. Through a "mutation" a new variant has appeared.

One and the same cell can be simultaneously infected by two or more related virus particles. If so, an exchange of parts may take place between two units in a so-called recombination process. In this fashion new variants are formed with the characteristics of the original types in various combinations. An analysis of the properties of the recombinants may give information on the genetic structure of the virus. The rapid multiplication of the bacteriophages has made it possible in a short time to collect numerous mutants and to perform systematic crossing experiments. By this means their genetic structure has been established in ever finer detail.

Such was the situation at the beginning of the 1950's. The biological phenomena had been sorted out and placed in correct relations. The picture of the nature and mode of action of the virus which was thus obtained differed essentially from previous concepts. Most important perhaps are the evidence of an interaction between the virus and the host cell and the fact that the regulation of the cellular activity can be affected by the introduction of foreign, genetically active structures.

These discoveries have decisively influenced the development within many fields of biological research. The charting of the fundamental processes in the life cycle of the bacteriophages was a necessary condition for attempts to define them in chemical terms, on the molecular level. At first the scientific community in general had struck a reserved attitude to bacteriophage research. It was considered to be of interest as a curiosity but of little importance to biology in general. Gradually this attitude has changed. It is now clearly evident that in principle the same mechanisms regulate the activities of bacteriophages, micro-organisms and more complex cellular systems. Therefore, Delbrück, Hershey and Luria must in fact be regarded as the original founders of the modern science of molecular biology.

Their discoveries have also had great importance for the geneticists. It is mainly through studies of bacteriophages that the mechanisms of the genetic regulation of the vital processes have been revealed.

Last but not least, bacteriophage research has given us the better insight in the nature of viruses which is necessary for the understanding and combat of virus diseases of higher beings. A long time has passed since the discoveries were made. However, their general biological and medical importance was only gradually recognized and only in later years has the wide range of their applicability become fully evident.

Max Delbrück, Alfred Hershey, Salvador Luria.

Thirty years ago you embarked upon a research project which to most members of the scientific community must have appeared as overambitious. You set out to solve the most fundamental of all biological problems, that of self-replication. By making the lowly bacteriophage your subject you probably also raised many eyebrows. However, by your sense for the importance of strict scientific methodology, your brilliant experimental skill and above all your imaginative approach you succeeded in making the impossible feasible. The realization that bacteriophage after all is a respectable representative of all living matter was slow in coming. Today, however, the general applicability of the principles you established is beyond doubt and the full impact of your achievements is finally felt. You have been awarded this year's Nobel prize in physiology and medicine for your discoveries concerning virus replication and genetics and we hereby acknowledge the importance of your contributions to the biological and medical sciences. On behalf of Karolinska Institutet I beg you to accept our heartfelt felicitations.

I now ask you to receive your prize from the hands of His Majesty the King.

Tangled Bank #88

 

The latest version of the Tangled Bank has been posted on Behaviorial Eology Blog [Tangled Bank #88].

The Good People of Halifax

 
On this sixth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 Mike Dunford has posted excerpts from a Stephen Jay Gould essay Apple Brown Betty [9-11].

I hope you'll forgive my Canadian chauvinism on this occasion as I post parts of another Stephen Jay Gould essay [The Good People of Halifax].

My latest visit among you, however, was entirely involuntary and maximally stressful. I live in lower Manhattan, just one mile from the burial ground of the Twin Towers. As they fell victim to evil and insanity on Tuesday, September 11, during the morning after my 60th birthday, my wife and I, en route from Milan to New York, flew over the Titanic’s resting place and then followed the route of her recovered dead to Halifax. We sat on the tarmac for 8 hours, and eventually proceeded to the cots of Dartmouth’s sports complex, then upgraded to the adjacent Holiday Inn. On Friday, at 3 o’clock in the morning, Alitalia brought us back to the airport, only to inform us that their plane would return to Milan. We rented one of the last two cars available and drove, with an intense mixture of grief and relief, back home.

.......

I know that the people of Halifax have, by long tradition and practice, shown heroism and self-sacrifice at moments of disaster -- occasional situations that all people of seafaring ancestry must face. I know that you received and buried the drowned victims of the Titanic in 1912, lost one in ten of your own people in the Halifax Explosion of 1917, and gathered in the remains of the recent Swissair disaster.

But, in a sense that may seem paradoxical at first, you outdid yourselves this time because you responded immediately, unanimously, unstintingly, and with all conceivable goodness, when no real danger, but merely fear and substantial inconvenience, dogged your refugees for a few days. Our lives did not depend upon you, but you gave us everything nonetheless. We, 9000 strong, are forever in your debt, and all humanity glows in the light of your unselfish goodness.

And so my wife and I drove back home, past the Magnetic Hill of Moncton (now a theme park in this different age), past the reversing rapids of Saint John, visible from the highway, through the border crossing at Calais (yes, I know, as in Alice, not as in ballet), and down to a cloud of dust and smoke enveloping a mountain of rubble, once a building and now a tomb for 5000 people. But you have given me hope that the ties of our common humanity will bind even these wounds. And so Canada, although you are not my home or native land, we will always share this bond of your unstinting hospitality to people who descended upon you as frightened strangers from the skies, and received nothing but solace and solidarity in your embrace of goodness. So Canada, because we beat as one heart, from Evangeline in Louisiana to the intrepid Mr. Sukanen of Moose Jaw, I will stand on guard for thee.

Harper Says Canada Should Stay in Afghanistan

 
I'm really annoyed at all you Australians. We sent you our Prime Minister on the understanding that you would keep a muzzle on him and give us a bit of a break. Instead, you allowed him to hob-nob with John Howard. Now look what you've done. Our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has caught the war bug from yours. According to Reuters Canada this is what Harper said in your parliament [Harper vows continued support for Afghanistan].

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper, under fire at home for a troop commitment to Afghanistan that has cost 70 lives, said on Tuesday he would not abandon the country.

"This cause is global and necessary," Harper said in a speech to Australia's parliament on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

"Because as 9-11 showed, if we abandon our fellow human beings to lives of poverty, brutality and ignorance, in today's global village, their misery will eventually and inevitably become our own," said Harper.

9-11 showed no such thing. Don't you remember? They didn't attack America because they were poor, miserable, and stupid, they attacked because they hate freedom and democracy. If we stay in Afghanistan and force them to be free and democratic then they'll hate us even more,

Hmmm ... there seems to be something wrong with that argument ....

Okay, let's try this. If we stay in Afghanistan we'll have just as much success as the British did before World War II and the Russians did in the 1980's.

Nope .... that one doesn't work either.

The heck with it. Let's just get out as fast as we can and allow the people of Afghanistan to deal with their own problems.

By the way, you Australians can keep him. We don't want him back.

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[Photo Credit: REUTERS/Tim Wimborne]

Are You as Smart as a Third Year University Student? Q3

Question 1
Question 2PDB's (Protein Data Bank) molecule of the month for September is citrate synthase, one of the enzymes of the citric acid cycle. Read the PDB website to find out more about this interesting enzyme. [Hat Tip: Philip J at Biocurious]

Citrate synthase catalyzes the following reaction,


One of the most interesting things about this reaction is that the standard Gibbs free energy change of the reaction (ΔG^°′) is −31.5 kJ mol^-1. Here's a question that I ask of my second year students.

---

Like most reactions in vivo, the actual Gibbs free energy change for this reaction is zero. Normally you might expect that such a large negative standard Gibbs free energy change would indicate that the forward reaction is coupled to the synthesis of ATP. Indeed, the hydrolysis of the similar thioester bond in succinyl CoA (Step 5 of the citric acid cycle) is coupled to the synthesis of GTP (or ATP). However, in the case of the citrate synthase reaction, the available energy is used for a different purpose. What is this purpose?

Are You as Smart as a Third Year University Student? Q2

 
Question 1
I thought it might be fun to post some multiple choice questions from old exams to see if Sandwalk readers are as smart as my old third year molecular biology students. Here's a question from 1998.

---

The sequence of the coding region of an E. coli ribosomal protein mRNA consists of 21% G's and 23% C's. What do you predict would be the composition of the part of the gene (double-stranded DNA) from which this mRNA coding region is derived?

            a) 56% T's
            b) 44% T's
            c) 28% T's
            d) 23% T's
            e) impossible to answer correctly

Framing a Press Release

 
There's been an ongoing debate about framing in the blogosphere. You can see the latest manifestation on Pharngula [When did ‘framing’ become a synonym for religiosity?]. The idea behind framing is to present your science in a way that appeals to and engages the public. The opposition to framing comes from those—I am one—who fear that framing is another word for spin and that in attempting to appeal to the public you often distort or misrepresent the science.

Let's look at how press release writers use framing. This press release is from Ohio State Medical Center. It reports on a paper by Calin et al. (2007) that has just been published in Cancer Cell. The paper looks at the expression of RNA's from highly conserved sequences that do not encode proteins. These are similar to the conserved noncoding elements that we discussed before [Adaptive Evolution of Conserved Noncoding Elements in Mammals] except that they are transcribed.

The first two lines of the press release say,

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Research here shows that an obscure form of RNA, part of the protein-making machinery in all cells, might play an important role in human cancer.

These ultraconserved non-coding RNAs (UCRs) have been considered “junk” by some researchers, but a new report in the September issue of the journal Cancer Cell indicates that this may not be the case.

This is quite ridiculous. I don't know of any researcher who would declare that ultraconserved sequences are junk. This just seems like a distortion of the paper in order to frame the work in a way that's more appealing to the public. The idea is to make it look like this paper overturns the current dogma about junk DNA.

But maybe that's unfair. Maybe the authors themselves make such a claim in their paper and the press release isn't engaging in spin.

Here's part of a paragraph from the introduction to the paper.

A large portion of transcription products of the noncoding functional genomic regions have significant RNA secondary structures and are components of clusters containing other sequences with functional noncoding significance (Bejerano et al., 2004a). The UCRs represent a small fraction of the human genome that are likely to be functional but not encoding proteins and have been called the “dark matter” of the human genome (Bejerano et al., 2004a). Because of the high degree of conservation, the UCRs may have fundamental functional importance for the ontogeny and phylogeny of mammals and other vertebrates.

Oops! The authors themselves admit that these sequences are thought to be functional. There's nothing in the paper about junk DNA and there's certainly nothing about researchers who think these sequences might be junk.

The more I see examples of framing the more I dislike it. It's bad enough that the practice exists but the attempts by Mooney and Nisbet [Framing Framing] to justify it are not going to help us clean up science writing. If Mooney and Nisbet would take on the worst abusers of framing then I would have a lot more respect for their position.

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Calin, G.A. et al. (2007) Ultraconserved Regions Encoding ncRNAs Are Altered in Human Leukemias and Carcinomas. Cancer Cell 12:215-229. [Summary][PDF]

Quick, Get the Popcorn

 
Yesterday Jeffrey Shallit dissected the arguments of one, Tom Bethell, who tried to argue that Intelligent Design Creationism and Creationism were different things. It was fun to read even though we've heard the same nonsense from the IDiots several dozen times. (Bethall even used the Colin Patterson quote, for God's sake!)

I thought that would be the end of it but, oh no, the IDiots have come back for more. Michael Egnor has posted a challenge to Jeffrey Shallit on the Discovery Institute blog Evolution News & Views [Jeff Shallit, Blueprints, and the Genetic Code]. After whining about how mean Jeffrey was to poor old Tom, Ednor gets to the heart of the issue. Apparently the IDiots are really taken with the fictional movie Contact. They think that because Jodie Foster can detect intelligent aliens by deciphering a signal from Vega, this means that Intelligent Design Creationism is real science.

Egnor demands that Jeffrey answer the following question ...

If the scientific discovery of a ‘blueprint’ would justify the design inference, then why is it unreasonable to infer that the genetic code was designed?

Pull up your chairs and get out the popcorn. This is going to be fun.

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[Photo Credit: The photograph is from the official website of the movie Contact]

Learning to Love Bacteria

 
We live now in the "Age of Bacteria." Our planet has always been in the "Age of Bacteria," ever since the first fossils—bacteria, of course—were entombed in rocks more than 3 billion years ago.

On any possible, reasonable or fair criterion, bacteria are—and always have been—the dominant forms of life on Earth.
Stephen J. Gould (1996)Bacteria don't get much respect in spite of the fact that many scientists have written about their importance [see Planet of the Bacteria by Stephen Jay Gould (1996)]. Over at Deep Sea News they're trying, once again, to rectify this unfortunate situation. This will be an entire week devoted to microbes [Intro to Microbial Week by Christina Kellogg].

Here are some important facts from the first posting to keep in mind whenever you're inclined to dismiss bacteria.

"The number of prokaryotes [i.e., bacteria + archaea] and the total amount of their cellular carbon on earth are estimated to be 4-6 ×: 10³⁰ cells and 350-550 Pg of C (1 Pg = 10¹⁵ g), respectively. Thus the total amount of prokaryotic carbon is 60-100% of the estimated total carbon in plants, and inclusion of prokaryotic carbon in global models will almost double estimates of the amount of carbon stored in living organisms." (Whitman et al. 1998)

and

Numerically dominant--there are approximately 1 million bacteria and 10 million viruses in a milliliter of seawater. There are approximately 0.00000000000000000002 sperm whales per milliliter of seawater.

The point about learning to love bacteria is that it's crucial to a full understanding of our place in the world of living things. This is going to come up discussions about complexity. We need to understand that our perspective is heavily biased. As Gould (1996) writes,

Our failure to grasp this most evident of biological facts arises in part from the blindness of our arrogance but also, in large measure, as an effect of scale. We are so accustomed to viewing phenomena of our scale—sizes measured in feet and ages in decades—as typical of nature.

Individual bacteria lie beneath our vision and may live no longer than the time I take to eat lunch or my grandfather spent with his evening cigar. But then, who knows? To a bacterium, human bodies might appear as widely dispersed, effectively eternal (or at least geological), massive mountains, fit for all forms of exploitation and fraught with little danger unless a bolus of imported penicillin strikes at some of the nasty brethren.

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[Hat Tip: Christopher Taylor at Catalogue of Organisms]

Gould, S.J. (1996) Planet of the Bacteria. Washington Post Horizon 119:(344). An essay adapted from Full House New York: Harmony Books, 1996, pp. 175-192.

Stupidist Blogging Tory of the week

 
Canadian Cynic has started a new award called the "Blogging Tory inanity of the week" [ Blogging Tory inanity of the week: Sep 2-8, 2007]. Now you may think that this would be a hard choice since there are so many examples to choose from. Not so. There's one hands-down winner this week and it's a Blogging Tory who tells us that "supernatural phenomena are tangible and observable." Normally I would quote the winning post but it's far better to read it on Canadian Cynic.

Mendel's Garden #18

 

The 18th version of Mendel's Garden has just been posted on Balancing Life [Mendel’s Garden at Balancing Life]. Can you guess which one of my recent postings is included?

Monday's Molecule #42

 
Today's molecule is a very big molecule. You have to describe what you are seeing in the photograph and then relate it to this Wednesday's Nobel Laureate(s). Extra points if you can relate it to a recent posting. [Hint: The Nobel Prize is the most innovative, creative, and daring prize that the Nobel Committee has ever awarded.]

There will be no free lunch this week because the contest is too easy. You can win bragging rights by sending your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the photo and the Nobel Laureate(s). Correct responses will be posted tomorrow along with the time that the message was received on my server. This way I may select multiple winners if several people get it right.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours. Comments are now open.

Parole Officer Can't Make You Attend Alcoholics Anonymous (because It's Religious)

 
A few months ago I posted a message about Alcoholics Anonymous. It was news to me that the program was very religious and required belief in God.

Friendly Atheist reports on a recent court decision in the United States [Forced Attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous is Unconstitutional, Says Court]. You should read the entire story as he reports it. A Buddhist was released on parole on condition that he attend a Salvation Army treatment program that included Narcotics Anonymous. The Buddhist went to some meetings but refused to participate and was sent back to jail.

The court ruled that,

… requiring a parolee to attend religion-based treatment programs violates the First Amendment… While we in no way denigrate the fine work of (Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous), attendance in their programs may not be coerced by the state.

The Centre for Inquiry (Toronto) sponsors the Secular Organizations for Sobriety Group of Toronto (SOSGT), a non-religious organization for alcoholics [SOSGT].

SOSGT credits the individual for achieving and
maintaining his or her own sobriety and is ideal for those
uncomfortable with the spiritual content of 12-step programs.
The group is secular and religiously neutral.

Atheist Win Another One by Huge Majority

 
The results of a new Pew Research Center poll are just out. People were asked if they would be less likely to vote for someone with a variety of characteristics, including not believing in God. FriendlyAtheist has summarized the results as shown in the table on the left [I Would Be Less Likely to Vote for a(n) _____ as President].

Atheists win again! That makes it several hundred years in a row that Americans hate us more than anyone else—although those pesky Muslims are gaining.

You know, this is all because of Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris. It's all their fault. Nisbet and Mooney warned us this would happen.

Neville Chamberlain Would Love this one!

 
Most of you probably don't realize that Richard Dawkins has a new book called The Fascism Delusion. Those people who criticized his earlier book (The God Delusion) have been quick to jump all over this one. Check out this devastating review at the Valve [More on Dawkins]

[Hat Tip: PZ Myers at Pharyngula (Dawkins demolished]

As It Turns Out, Not all Conservatives Are Smart ....

 
In an earlier posting I commented on how pleased I was that some of John Tory's supporters realized that teaching creationism is wrong [see John Tory Tries to Clarify]. I'm still pleased with the majority of conservative commentators but, naturally, there are some who still don't get it.

One of them is Matthew at ThePolitic.com, a widely read Canadian political blog. Mathew reveals that some Canadians are IDiots [Warren Kinsella’s Documentary Sequel]. Matthew really crams his foot in his mouth all the way up to his kneecap but I won't bore you with all the details. Instead, let me just mention one or two of the most obvious examples of stupidity.

5) Creation science is a real scientific theory — if you want to challenge it, please don’t insult us by just offering a fancy and long-winded “nuh-huh”. I find it funny that Wikipedia attempts this too, but I’ve seen this movie before; it’s called the Consensus on Climate Change (and we all know how that one will end!).

Where do these IDiots come up with stuff like this? Creation science is not a real scientific theory by any stretch of the imagination. If Matthew is talking about Biblical Creationism then that fairytale has been disproved by science. If he's talking about any other version of "Creation science" than it's either; (a) also disproved, or (b) vacuous.

The fact that Matthew is so confused about this means that it's extremely important that we teach evolution in school. It's pretty clear that Matthew skipped all the science classes when he was in school. Probably because they required more than 6th grade mathematics.

6) Someone still has to address for me how teaching an alternative view on the origin of species will forever ruin students’ lives and deny them jobs, houses and weekends up at the cottage. They’re not your kids so what do you care what they learn if it doesn’t affect you?

Look at it this way Matthew. We have basically two choices in the classroom. We can teach children things that are correct or we can teach them lies. Call me old-fashioned, but I think it's better to teach the truth. It makes for better citizens in the long run.

I actually think we should address Creationism in school. Traditionally we use astrology as the example of something that masquerades as science. It's a way of teaching what science really is and it provides a good lesson on how to think. Creationism would be another good example. We should make sure that all children learn why Creationism is not science.

9) Ala the Flintstones comment, blindly believing in evolution is like believing Star Trek is a documentary about the future. Reality is though that we’re not eliminating all wars, humanity isn’t evolving past its character flaws and evil tendencies and no matter how much some in our society might like it, we’re not going to grow beyond religious faith. Even the television series outlived this optimistic faith in the human will by DS9. Evolution might be wonderful science fiction with things spontaneously mutating everywhere, but we shouldn’t be confusing it with a scientific principle. Maybe we should also be keeping it in it’s proper place too — media class!

No comment, other than to point out there's a reason why we call them IDiots.

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[Photo Credit: The photograph shows a typical Boston Red Sox fan celebrating something that got them all excited (Red Sox Connection). (I think their team just lost another game against Toronto.)]

[Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic]

Gene Genie #15

 

The 15th edition of Gene Genie has just been published on Cancer Genetics [Gene Genie #15].

As you might expect, there's a lot of stuff about Craig Venter's genome. You won't read anything about it here so if you're really interested in Craig then your kicks from the carnival postings.

Play Creationist Bingo!

 
The rules are on Skeptico [ID Creationist Bingo].


[Hat Tip: FriendlyAtheist]

Theories Don't Become Laws

 
I'm pleased by the almost universal condemnation of John Tory's remarks about creationism in schools [John Tory Promotes Creationism]. Letters to the newspapers are running overwhelmingly against the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. However, there's still lots of misunderstanding out there even though their hearts are in the right place.

In today's Toronto Star there's a letter from a reader in Barrie, Ont. The title is Misunderstanding of the word `theory'. I'll quote most of the letter ...

John Tory's statement appearing to equate Darwin's theory of evolution with "other theories that people have out there" comes from a common misunderstanding the general public has about the scientific meaning of the word "theory."

When a scientist has an idea he or she wishes to test through observation or experimentation, this is termed a hypothesis.

Once a body of scientific data has been accumulated in support of the hypothesis, it is elevated to the status of theory.

After a time, certain theories receive considerable support from various scientists and no contradictory evidence turns up. Then, the theory may be elevated to the status of law.

There is now so much evidence from many branches of science supporting Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, that it may be time to give it the status of a law.

This is not right. Theories are explanations of natural phenomena and laws are simple descriptions of phenomena. Boyle's Law, for example, simply states that "For a fixed amount of gas kept at a fixed temperature, P and V are inversely proportional." It does not explain why this is so. That's what the theory of the behavior of gases would do.

Evolutionary Theory is a complex subject that attempts to explain how species evolved. It incorporates Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and other things like random genetic drift and mechanisms of speciation. Evolutionary Theory will never become a law. Theory is as good as it gets in science.

Waiting for the Paradox

 
John Dennehy's citation classic for this week is Gunther Stent's Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses [This Week's Citation Classic]. This reminds me of the time when I was an undergraduate in 1966 and I first read about the Phage Group in Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology (1966). The book was a collection of articles by workers who had been influenced by Max Delbrück, on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

A few years later I got to meet most of them at the annual phage meetings in Cold Spring Harbor. It was an exciting time. I remember Stent as one of those people who is so smart it's scary. Little did I know at the time that I was witnessing the end of an era.

Stent's contribution to Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology was an essay with the cryptic title "Waiting for the Paradox." He describes some of the early history of the phage group and Delbrück's attempts to define the gene in 1940. This influenced the physicist Erwin Shrödinger who wrote a famous little book called What is Life?. It stimulated many physicists to enter biology—including Francis Crick.

The key passage from Shrödinger's book is described by Stent. Schrödinger defines an important credo (quoted by Stent) ...

In fact, this credo was probably the most important psychological incentive for physicists to turn to biology in the first place: "From Delbrück's general picture of the hereditary substance it emerges that living matter, while not eluding the 'laws of physics' as established up to date, is likely to involve 'other laws of physics' hitherto unknown which, however, once they have been revealed will form just as integral part of this science as the former." Thus it was the romantic idea that 'other laws of physics' might be discovered by studying the gene that really fascinated the physicists. This search for the physical paradox, this quixotic hope that genetics would prove incomprehensible within the framework of conventional physical knowledge, remained an important element of the psychological infrastructure of the creators of molecular biology. [my emphasis - LAM]

By 1966 it was clear that no new laws were going to be discovered although there was still the hope that something mysterious was going on inside the brain. Some people were still waiting for the paradox.

Today we teach our students that the most remarkable thing about biology is that life obeys the laws of physics and chemistry.

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[Photo Credit: The book cover shows the 1992 expanded edition of Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology. A new Centennial Edition is due out next month.]

John Tory's Self-Immolation

 
This is from the National Post. They're supposed to be on the same side as the Progressive Conservatives. It's too cute to pass up [Colby Cosh: Tory's tumble].

EDMONTON -Where were you when John Tory lost the Ontario election? I was at my usual post in far-off Alberta, but even here Tory's Wednesday self-immolation cast a glow that you could almost warm your hands by.

As I hear it told, a radio reporter looking for a new angle asked the Conservative leader whether the fully funded religious schools he wants to pay for as premier would be permitted to teach creationism.

There's no word on whether Tory actually expressed gratitude for the layer of gasoline he had just been super-soaked with: he just went ahead and whipped out the Zippo. Creationism? Sounds great! Why, it's just one more of the menu items our $400-million will buy us! Say, why's my tie melting?

Genomics Is Dead! Long Live Systems Biology!

 
When you're an old fuddy-duddy like me you've lived through several revolutions in biology. I still remember when recombinant DNA technology was going to change the world. Then it was developmental biology and evo-devo. Along the way were told with a straight face that sequencing the human genome would cure cancer and everything else.

After a while it all got very boring. We put up with the hype on the grounds that it was good spin framing for the general public. If it brought in lots of money then what's the harm? Well it turns out there was some harm done. We scientists are losing our credibility.

I've gone way beyond being bored by this kind of nonsense. Now I'm angry—especially when it seems that those who are ignorant of history are doomed to misrepresent it. Here's the opening paragraph of a press release on Systems Biology [Systems Biology poised to revolutionize the understanding of cell function and disease]. It summarizes the contents of a report to the European Science Foundation.

Systems Biology is transforming the way scientists think about biology and disease. This novel approach to research could prompt a shake up in medical science and it might ultimately allow clinicians to predict and treat complex diseases such as diabetes, heart failure, cancer, and metabolic syndrome for which there are currently no cures.

I wonder if they just reuse the reports from years past substituting "systems biology" for "genomics," or whatever the last cure for cancer was supposed to be? This kind of stupid motherhood hyperbole would be laughable if it wasn't for the fact that these people are deadly serious. That makes it pathetic.

Look what one of authors of the report has to say ...

Until recently, researchers tended to focus on identifying individual genes and proteins and pinpointing their role in the cell or the human body. But molecules almost never act alone. According to Lilia Alberghina from the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy: “There is a growing awareness in medical science that biological entities are ‘systems’ – collections of interacting parts."

I suppose this depends on what you mean by "recently." If it's 40 years then maybe the statement might make some sense but even then it's a gross misrepresentation of the truth. Of course we isolated genes and proteins one-at-a-time but the goal was always to put them back together to make molecular machines. Does Lilia Alberghina really think that older scientists were completely unaware of the fact that biological entities are "systems"? I wonder if Alberghina is aware of metabolic pathways that were worked out half a century ago, or ribosomes, or DNA replication complexes, or muscle, or the complement system, or Drosophila embryogenesis, or any number of other systems that haven't just sprung into existence in the last few years.

Most scientist are already tired of these fads masquerading as revolution. I wonder how long it will be before the public and the politicians catch on?

How Logical Are You?

 

You Are Incredibly Logical

Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic You think rationally, clearly, and quickly. A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

How Logical Are You?

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[Hat Tip: GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life (How Logical Are You?]

Don't Trust All DNA Sequences

 
I've been interested in sequence errors and cloning artifacts for many years. I have a thick file of papers that have uncovered numerous examples of DNA sequences that are just plain wrong. It's one of the reasons for being at least a little bit skeptical of any unusual discoveries in DNA sequences.

Now, I'm not saying that you should take this skepticism to extremes; I'm saying that you should keep your mind open to the possibility that the data might not be real. Just because it's published in the peer-reviewed literature doesn't mean it's right.

Sandra Porter has an interesting example over on Discovering Biology in a Digital World [Digital Biology Friday: What sequences do you believe?]. She describes the process she went through when she first heard about the discovery of a β-lactamase gene [Penicillin Resistance] that was supposedly from Streptococcus pneumoniae. I'm not going to spoil the punchline by revealing it here. You'll have to read about it on Sandra's blog.

Keep this lesson in mind. It's what good science is all about.

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Figure Credit: The image of the common (but old) cloning vector pBr322 is from Horton et al. 4th ed. (2006). The amp^R gene encodes β-lactamase.]

Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting

 
Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting is a fledgling organization that's going to try and impose some standards on the reporting of peer-reviewed papers by bloggers. Here's their mission statement at [BPR3.org].

Bloggers for Peer-Reviewed Research Reporting strives to identify serious academic blog posts about peer-reviewed research by developing an icon and an aggregation site where others can look to find the best academic blogging on the Net.

The idea is to list all blog posts about peer-reviewed scientific literature on one site (with an RSS feed) and to identify all such blogs with a copyrighted icon.

What's the point of that, you might ask? Well, it's because BPR3 wants to impose some sort of standards on the blogging community. Here's how Dave Munger describes it on the BPR3.org website.

Here’s how I imagine we might handle this issue:

• Credentialling of blog authors is probably a bad idea — some expert bloggers have good reasons for being anonymous, and there are many blogs run by graduate students, journalists, and others without PhDs that offer thoughtful commentary on peer-reviewed literature


• Instead, we could have bloggers register their blogs here. Then we will (eventually) have an aggregation system which will allow links to those blogs’ posts about peer-reviewed research to appear on this site.


• If a blog appears to be abusing the system, either by not meeting our definition of peer review, or not commenting thoughtfully on the article, then readers could alert us and we could remove them from the list of registered blogs. How exactly would that process work? We’re open for suggestions.


• A secondary process could be used to combat abuse of the icon itself (whether or not the blog is actually aggregated here). This would require BPR3 to maintain copyright of the icon, so that we could deny permission to use the icon to those who abuse it. Again, we’d love to hear suggestions about how that might work.

Any other ideas/suggestions? Let us know in the comments.

I write a lot of articles about peer-reviewed research so this is right up my alley. I've got to say right up front that I'm not very enthusiastic about the proposal. Any attempt to impose order on the blogging community is doomed from the start, in my opinion. Furthermore, I don't see any advantage for most bloggers. What's in it for them?

We already have a sort of system that mimics this "peer review" of blog articles. It's the various carnivals that are published every week (see my list in the sidebar). The idea is that the carnival moderator will pick the best of the blog articles that have appeared recently and collect them on a single site. You can judge for yourself whether this has been a remarkable success over the years. From my perspective the quality of the articles in most carnivals varies enormously and I've no reason to suspect that the same won't happen on the BPR3 site.

What does everyone here think? Is this an idea that's going to work?

Adaptive Evolution of Conserved Noncoding Elements in Mammals

 
"Adaptive Evolution of Conserved Noncoding Elements in Mammals" is the title of a paper that's just been published in PLoS Genetics [Kim and Pritchard (2007)].

With a title like that you'd think the paper would be really interesting because conserved noncoding elements are a hot topic. Recall that these are short sequences in the genomes of diverse mammals that are highly similar. They were thought to be examples of regulatory sequences but deleting them from the mouse genome seems to have no effect [The Role of Ultraconserved Non-Coding Elements in Mammalian Genomes]. It's a little puzzling to see "adaptive evolution" in the title since the very fact that these short sequences are conserved implies adaptation.

I took a look at the paper. Here's the abstract.

Conserved noncoding elements (CNCs) are an abundant feature of vertebrate genomes. Some CNCs have been shown to act as cis-regulatory modules, but the function of most CNCs remains unclear. To study the evolution of CNCs, we have developed a statistical method called the “shared rates test” to identify CNCs that show significant variation in substitution rates across branches of a phylogenetic tree. We report an application of this method to alignments of 98,910 CNCs from the human, chimpanzee, dog, mouse, and rat genomes. We find that ∼68% of CNCs evolve according to a null model where, for each CNC, a single parameter models the level of constraint acting throughout the phylogeny linking these five species. The remaining ∼32% of CNCs show departures from the basic model including speed-ups and slow-downs on particular branches and occasionally multiple rate changes on different branches. We find that a subset of the significant CNCs have evolved significantly faster than the local neutral rate on a particular branch, providing strong evidence for adaptive evolution in these CNCs. The distribution of these signals on the phylogeny suggests that adaptive evolution of CNCs occurs in occasional short bursts of evolution. Our analyses suggest a large set of promising targets for future functional studies of adaptation.

Okay. It's confusing but what they seem to be saying is that the sequences of these conserved noncoding elements change in various lineages. A lot of them seem to be evolving at a "neutral rate"—which raises the question of why they are "conserved" in the first place. Does it mean that the ancestor to all mammals had a functional sequence but that function has been lost? Some of these conserved elements evolve at a very rapid rate in some lineages and this is taken to be evidence of adaptive evolution in that lineage.

I read the entire paper. It's pretty much Greek to me. If anyone else can figure it out please feel free to post an explanation in the comments.

John Tory Tries To Clarify

 
According to CityNews ,John Tory is trying to put his goof behind him. He's asking people to stop focusing on this one issue. Just because he doesn't understand what science is all about is no reason to not vote for him, is what he's saying [John Tory Tries To Clarify "Creationism Vs. Evolution" Controversy]. One nice thing about this controversy is that nobody is listening to him, even his so-called supporters. Another nice thing is that the Premier, Dalton McGuinty, makes it pretty clear where he stands.

Don't make this a one-issue election.

That was the plea from Conservative leader John Tory Thursday as the PC boss found himself awash again in a sea in controversy over his faith-based school funding platform. The plan was already contentious enough, when Tory openly mused on Wednesday about the possibility of creationism being taught alongside evolution in religious schools.

Since then, he's been assailed by those who oppose his idea and those who support it. "In the course of an election campaign, you have to have an open, honest discussion about these kinds of issues and you always have to choose your language with precision," Tory admits about his statement. "I understand that this issue is controversial ... But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't discuss it or try to sweep it under the carpet."

He attempted to bridge the gap by clarifying that the creation theory would only be allowed to be taught during a true religious lesson and not in a science class. But it's clear what pundits believe will be the most controversial part of the election has left the Conservative leader between two different worlds that don't seem likely to ever meet.

Dalton McGuinty is taking a different road on the issue. "Creationism is not a science," he reminds. "Evolution is a science. When we're teaching science in our public schools, we should be teaching evolution."

One School System Network Sponsors a Debate

 
The One School System Network (OSSN) is sponsoring a debate on Friday, September 21st from 7-10 pm in MacLeod Auditorium.

Catholic Public Schools: Constitutional Right or Archaic Privilege? Featuring Jan Johnstone, Progressive trustees network and trustee for the Bluewater District School Board.

The One School System Network includes the University of Toronto Secular Alliance and a variety of civil rights, faith-based and secular humanist advocacy organizations. The OSSN is lobbying the government to merge our two school boards into one secular school system.

University of Toronto Secular Alliance

 
Well, it's that time of year again. The Meds students have already begun classes and the undergraduates start next Monday. It's time to start putting those important events on your calendar.

The University of Toronto Secular Alliance is hosting a BBQ at the Centre for Inquiry on Thursday Sept. 13 from 5 to 7pm. If you haven't joined yet then sign up on the website.

The Centre for Inquiry is located at 216 Beverly St. just south of College St. Following the BBQ you can stay for the Flying Spaghetti Monster Dinner and Movie Night.

Don't Say We Didn't Warn You

 
The editor of the Lebanon Daily News has made a prediction. It's so important that it deserves a posting on Uncommon Descent [Matter of time for intelligent design].

Now I don't know where Lebanon is—other than it's in Pennsylvania, USA—but this editor must be one of the big guns of Intelligent Design Creationism. Here's the bad news ...

The public needs enlightenment on the truth of intelligent design as increasing numbers of the world’s greatest scientists are yielding to the compelling and mounting evidence of this burgeoning movement. In recent years the erroneous teaching of Darwinism and life by random chance is becoming unraveled and exposing itself for what it really is: a bankrupt philosophy masquerading as a science with the aid of fake fossil mills loose in the world.

I’m confident that in the not-to-distant future the information-revolution will sound the death knell for Darwinism. The hard evidence of technology will shake the pillars of evolutionary theory and toss them into the dustbin of history. When America restores true Bible science and accountability to our Creator God into our political and educational institutions, we’ll have taken a giant step toward healthier national character and the prevention of crime, life without purpose and the consequences of our condom culture.

You've all been warned. Your days of crime and condoms are almost over.

"IDiot" doesn't even begin to describe this nonsense.

Intelligent Design Creationism: Frontloading

 
You're not going to believe this.

A few days ago I reviewed some work from Edward Rubin's lab at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California (USA) [The Role of Ultraconserved Non-Coding Elements in Mammalian Genomes]. What they did was identify short stretches of DNA that are identical in the mouse, rat, and human genomes. Most of these pieces of DNA are 200-300 bp in length but some are larger. Rubin's group deleted four of these "ultra-conserved" non-coding elements in mice and discovered that the resulting strains seemed perfectly normal. This raises questions about the role of these short sequences that appear to have been highly conserved.

The IDiots have an explanation. DaveScot describes it on Uncommon Descent [Ultra-conserved DNA with no evident immediate purpose].

Edward Rubin again finds hard evidence supporting a front loaded evolution. Front loading is a design engineering term generally used to describe design elements inserted for possible use in the future (contingency) as opposed to immediate use. The mechanism of random mutation and natural selection is incapable of contingency planning. RM+NS can build based on experience but can’t build based on an abstract future. It is reactive not proactive. The front loading hypothesis in essence says the complex specified information necessary to construct the more complex machinery of life has been around since life appeared on the earth but much of it was preserved for expression in the far distant future.

According to Intelligent Design Creationism this DNA is for future use by the Creator. Apparently the Intelligent Designer can't just make up some new DNA whenever (s)he needs to evolve some new function. Instead, (s)he has to stick the DNA in the genome of all organisms then take steps to protect it from mutation. In a few years the Intelligent Designer will activate these little bits of DNA and viola!—rats will get smarter (or something).

The other good news is that there's not much of this ultra-conserved DNA in our genomes. The Intelligent Designer must have just about finished with us. I don't know about you but I think it's time to get ready for the Rapture. Life is going to be so much better without the Christians.

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[Note: Viola is English for voilà]

Defining Life

 
The August issue of SEED has a wonderful article by Carl Zimmer, the best science writer on the planet. The article, The Meaning of Life, has just appeared on the SEED website so you can all read it [THE MEANING OF LIFE]. You should read it.

Zimmer asks an important question,

We create life, we search for it, we manipulate and revere it. Is it possible that we haven't yet defined the term?

What do you think of the definition(s) in the article?

Denyse O'Leary's University Course on Intelligent Design

 
One of my friends alerted me to a course taught by Denyse O'Leary at the University of St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto. This is a continuing education course under Religion, Scripture, Spirituality. Here's the complete description.

RSS7-F By Design or By Chance? An
Introduction to the Intelligent Design Controversy

The intelligent design controversy is best understood as a conflict between materialist and non-materialist views of the origin and nature of the universe. Reputable scientists can be found on both sides. Because the two sides proceed from different assumptions, they do not agree, as Thomas Kuhn would say, on what would constitute a falsification of their premises. The controversy continues to grow because, while the materialism is prevalent in academia and the media, it is widely discredited in the population at large, including the professional classes.

INSTRUCTOR: *Denyse O’Leary is a Toronto-based journalist, author, and blogger, who is the author of Faith@Science, By Design or By Chance? and co-author of The Spiritual Brain with Neuroscientist Mario Beauregard.

Date: 6 Tuesdays, Oct. 23 – Nov. 27 2007
Time: 7 – 9pm
Fee: $130.00
Blue Card: Free
Partner School: $20

Now that sounds really interesting. The good part is that she will focus on materialist vs non-materialist views of the nature of the universe. This is, indeed, the core of the problem. The bad part is that she identifies Thomas Kuhn with the idea of falsification—that doesn't bode well for the accuracy of her lectures.

It might be fun to learn what the "professional classes" think about Intelligent Design Creationism. Is the entertainment worth $130?

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[Photo Credit: The photograph is from the University of St. Michael's College website. Marshall McLuhan was a Professor a St. Mike's and the photograph shows him walking to his office on Queen's Park Cresent.]

Creationism: Even the Blogging Tories Have Their Limits.

 
Canadian Cynic has an amusing posting about the John Tory creationism disaster [Creationism: Even the Blogging Tories have their limits]. As you may or may not know, Canadian Cynic is no fan of conservatives and has exposed their stupidity on many occasions.

You know, I've always wondered whether there was a right-wing position so indefensible, so appalling, so absolutely batshit crazy that even the Blogging Tories would finally pull up short, saying, "No, I don't think so. That's too stupid, even for us." And I believe we've finally found it.

God help us, even the usual suspects have finally had enough.

Read the list of Blogging Tories who have turned on John Tory for promoting creationism. I never thought I'd be proud of right-wing conservatives. Canadian Cynic is also impressed,

You know, with these signs of intelligent life over there, maybe -- just maybe -- I'll stop saying such snarky things about them.

Don't hold your breath.

New York Times "Forgets" to Mention Their Blogger Source

 
Effect Measure carries a story about a New York Times article that used a blogger (Dr. David Michaels at The Pump Handle) as their primary source [New York Times uses story, neglects to mention blogger is the source]. Their excuse is that the reference was cut out of the article by an editor. Shame on you, New York Times.

PZ Myers is also angry [Time for another blogger ethics review panel].

Ontarians Want Public, Catholic Schools to Merge

 
According to this CBC poll a majority of the citizens of Ontario want to end discrimination in our school systems by abolishing the Catholic school board [Ontarians want public, Catholic schools to merge: poll].

This is, of course, exactly the opposite of what the Progressive Conservative Party is proposing. They want to extend funding to all religious schools. We have just discovered that their leader, John Tory, has doubts about evolution and favors creationism [ John Tory Promotes Creationism].

With a bit of luck this will blow up in their faces and we'll be able to get rid of the parallel public and Catholic school boards. Maybe it's just the stimulus we needed. Thanks, John Tory, for being an IDiot.

[Hat Tip: Jeffrey Shallit at Recursivity (Stupid Tory Tricks: Religious Schools In Ontario Could Teach Creationism, Get Public Funds)]

John Tory Promotes Creationism

 
This man is John Tory. He's the leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party. Right now he's the leader of the Opposition but he's hoping to become Premier after the election on October 10, 2007.

If elected, Tory promises to extend public funding to all religious schools in Ontario. Right now we fund the Roman Catholic Schools as a result of a deal struck at the time of Confederation. I favor abolishing this funding and restricting government funding to the public school system [One School System Network [OSSN]].

Today John Tory stuck his foot firmly in his mouth when he revealed his ignorance of evolution. John Cowan of The National Post—a conservative newspaper—reported it like this [John Tory on creationism, the theory of evolution and why ducks have wings].

It should be said that Ontario Progressive Conservative leader John Tory is usually a thoughtful, articulate guy. But this week, the man has had nothing but a mouthful of foot. First, he referred to the University of Ottawa as the “University of Zero.” Another stumble came today, during an event to promote Mr. Tory’s promise to extend public funding to faith-based schools. A radio reporter asked whether schools would be allowed to teach creationism. Mr. Tory responded: “The Christian-based school would have to teach the Ontario curriculum, which of course has a different explanation. It’s still called the theory of evolution, but they teach evolution in the Ontario curriculum, but they could also mention to children the fact that there are other theories out there that are part of some Christian beliefs.”

Hmmm ... where have we heard that before? Do you know anyone who emphasizes that it's only a theory who isn't a creationist? Tory is in big trouble. He might get away with this in another country but here in Ontario he's going to look like a real fool.

Fortunately for him, his handlers got on the job real quick.

What Mr. Tory did not say was whether evolution would be taught as part of science class or religious studies -- which is, we submit, a pretty important distinction. So important that late this afternoon, the Conservative campaign issued the following press release:

JOHN TORY 2007 CAMPAIGN
STATEMENT OF CLARIFICATION

(Toronto, ON) – In an interview with reporters earlier today, John Tory was asked whether ‘creationism’ could be taught in faith-based schools, if they wished to receive funding under his proposed policy.

POINTS OF CLARIFICATION:
1.) The Ontario curriculum does not allow for creationism (or any other religious theory) to be taught in science classes in Ontario’s public schools.
2.) Mr. Tory clearly stated that any school to be included in the proposal must teach the Ontario curriculum.
3.) Mr. Tory’s proposal would allow creationism to be discussed only as part of religious studies programming, as is now the practice in Ontario’s publicly-funded Catholic schools.

Nobody's going to buy that. Tory clearly questioned whether evolution is true by mentioning that it is a "theory" and other "theories" should be taught.

Tory is running against the current Education Minister Kathleen Wynne (Liberal) in the riding of Don Valley West (Toronto). According to this article in the Canadian Press [ On eve of Ontario election, Conservative leader muses about creationism in schools] she nailed him on the issue.

Education Minister Kathleen Wynne - who is running against Tory for her Toronto seat - said his comments prove his policy hasn't been properly thought out. Creationism is currently not part of the provincial science curriculum and isn't given the same weight as evolution, she said.

Catholic schools may talk about creationism, Wynne said, but only in the context of a broader religious discussion.

"It's useful for students to have the opportunity to know the ideas that are out there and are part of our history," Wynne said.

"What we teach as the truth is the question. The scientific truths are the ones that are included in the Ontario curriculum. That's the curriculum that we support."

The Canadian press is all over this: See this article from the Globe & Mail [Creationism raised as Ont. election issue], and this from Canada.com [John Tory grilled on faith-based schools proposal], and this from The Toronto Star [Tory ignites debate over creationism in schools].

It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow.

What is the latest theory of why humans lost their body hair?

 
This is the question asked in this month's issue of Scientific American. Mark Pagel, head of the evolutionary biology group at the University of Reading in England and editor of The Encyclopedia of Evolution gives three adaptationist explanations.

Now, here's the question of the day for all you adaptationists. Why didn't he mention neoteny? Do you think it's because he has carefully reviewed all the evidence and reaches the conclusion that there's more data to support running on the savannah?