Student Attitudes: 60s vs 90s

 
Old fogies who grew up in the 1960s are constantly complaining that today's university students are different. Modern students are much more materialistic and much less concerned about the important things in life—or so they (we) think.

I was reading The Happy Planet Index when I came across an interesting chart.

The chart shows the results of a survey of college students in the USA. They were asked to rate the importance of several goals including whether they wanted to become "very well-off financially" or whether they wanted to "develop a meaningful philosophy of life." Students who rated either (or both) of these choices as "very important" or "essential" were plotted by the year of the survey. The chart is shown below.


I can think of several problems with the data. The 60s were a special time, especially on college campuses. Everyone was an idealist and anti-materialism was very much in vogue. There really were students who wanted to spend the rest of their lives on communes in the countryside. Some of my friends are still there.

Those times are long gone and it's not reasonable to expect today's students to have the same attitudes because the culture is very different.

Another difference is that in the 60s most students didn't have to worry too much about money. As a general rule, they came from families who were well-off and when they graduated from college they were almost certain to get a good paying job if they wanted it.

As the participation rate increased and the economy went through ups and downs, more and more students came to college from a less financially secure background. They are rightly more concerned about having the minimum amount of wealth to be secure and happy.

But in one sense it doesn't really matter why today's students are more materialistic. It's a fact that professors have to cope with when teaching and designing courses. When you look at the chart it's not surprising that fewer students are interested in science careers or getting a Ph.D. in philosophy. It's not surprising that most of our biochemistry students want to be physicians, or dentists, or pharmacists.

One question remains. Should the old fogies continue to butt heads against the wall in order to try and change student aspirations? Should we just forget about our own values from the 60s and give up trying to explain why we thought they were worth pursuing back then, and are still worth pursuing today?

The whole point of the Happy Planet Index and the new economics foundation is to change attitudes and expectations. Their goal is to create a more sustainable lifestyle by convincing people to abandon the pursuit of wealth and material items.

In an age of uncertainty, society globally needs a new compass to set it on a path of real progress. The Happy Planet Index (HPI) provides that compass by measuring what truly matters to us - our well-being in terms of long, happy and meaningful lives - and what matters to the planet - our rate of resource consumption. The HPI brings them together in a unique form which captures the ecological efficiency with which we are achieving good lives.

This report presents results from the second global HPI. It shows that we are still far from achieving sustainable well-being, and puts forward a vision of what we need to do to get there.

The current economic and ecological crises have discredited the dogmas of the last 30 years. The unwavering pursuit of economic growth - embodied in the overwhelming focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - has left over a billion people in poverty, and has not notably improved the well-being of those who were already rich, nor even provided us with economic stability. Instead it has brought us straight to the cliff edge of rapidly diminishing natural resources and unpredictable climate change. We need to see this current crisis as an opportunity. Now is the time for societies around the world to speak out for a happier planet, to identify a new vision of progress, and to demand new tools to help us work towards it. The HPI is one of these tools. We also hope that it will inspire people to act.

That sounds like something right out of the 60s. Those of us who were there have to recognize that we didn't succeed in changing society for the better in spite of our idealism. Are today's students going to do any better when they've even lost the idealism?

---

How Many People Have a Tape Worm Named After Them?

 

How many people have a tape worm named after them? Quite a few, as it turns out.

Do you know any of these people? Yes [A Tapeworm To Call My Own].

Ugh!

---

Who Do Canadians Trust?

 
Harris/Decima conducted a poll of almost 1200 English-speaking Canadian adults on behalf of Reader's Digest [The Canadians You Trust. Each respondent was given a list of 100 names and photos of prominent Canadians and they were asked to choose the person they trusted the most.

Here's the top ten. The number one most trusted Canadian is a scientist! The rest of the list is pretty impressive. I would probably have picked some of them myself, especially Rick Hillier and Stephen Lewis. I would not have picked #8.

I had to look up #9—she's the Auditor General of Canada.

1. David Suzuki
2. The Queen, Elizabeth II
3. Gen. Rick Hillier (Ret'd)
4. Stephen Lewis
5. Michael J. Fox
6. Lloyd Robertson
7. Peter Mansbridge
8. Stehpen Harper
9. Sheila Fraser
10. Rick Mercer

---

Francis Collins: Director of NIH

 
Bad news from The White House.

President Obama Announces Intent to Nominate Francis Collins as NIH Director

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate Francis S. Collins as Director of the National Institutes of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services.

President Obama said, "The National Institutes of Health stands as a model when it comes to science and research. My administration is committed to promoting scientific integrity and pioneering scientific research and I am confident that Dr. Francis Collins will lead the NIH to achieve these goals. Dr. Collins is one of the top scientists in the world, and his groundbreaking work has changed the very ways we consider our health and examine disease. I look forward to working with him in the months and years ahead."

Francis S. Collins, Nominee for Director, National Institutes of Health, Health and Human Services
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the Human Genome Project, served as Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health from 1993-2008. With Dr. Collins at the helm, the Human Genome Project consistently met projected milestones ahead of schedule and under budget. This remarkable international project culminated in April 2003 with the completion of a finished sequence of the human DNA instruction book. In addition to his achievements as the NHGRI Director, Dr. Collins’ own research laboratory has discovered a number of important genes, including those responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease, a familial endocrine cancer syndrome, and most recently, genes for adult onset (type 2) diabetes and the gene that causes Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome. Dr. Collins has a longstanding interest in the interface between science and faith, and has written about this in The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (Free Press, 2006), which spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He has just completed a new book on personalized medicine, The Language of Life: DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine (HarperCollins, to be published in early 2010). Collins received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale University, and an M.D. with Honors from the University of North Carolina. Prior to coming to NIH in 1993, he spent nine years on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he was an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He has been elected to the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007.

---

It's Just a Cracker

 
From the Telegraph-Journal in New Brunswick [It's a scandal!].

A senior New Brunswick Roman Catholic priest is demanding the Prime Minister's Office explain what happened to the sacramental communion wafer Stephen Harper was given at Roméo LeBlanc's funeral mass.

During communion at the solemn and dignified service held last Friday in Memramcook for the former governor general, the prime minister slipped the thin wafer that Catholics call "the host" into his jacket pocket.

In Catholic understanding, the host - once consecrated by a priest for the Eucharist - becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is crucial that the small wafer be consumed when it is received.

Monsignor Brian Henneberry, vicar general and chancellor in the Diocese of Saint John, wants to know whether the prime minister consumed the host and, if not, what happened to it.

If Harper accepted the host but did not consume it, "it's worse than a faux pas, it's a scandal from the Catholic point of view," he said.

I am not a fan of Steven Harper but I don't see anything wrong with what he did. I probably would have done the same thing under the circumstances. Friendly Atheist agrees and PZ Myers offers to help Harper dispose of his wafer.

---

Exposing Undergraduates to the Scientific Literature

 
In most biochemistry and molecular biology departments it has become almost an article of faith that part of a good undergraduate education involves exposing senior students to the latest papers in the scientific literature. These departments will mount several advanced undergraduate courses that focus on reading and discussing the latest papers in a field. The idea is to go beyond the textbooks and show students how science really works.

Nobody seems to ask the obvious question. How do experienced scientists go about reading the latest papers and how do they distinguish the wheat from the chaff? Given that much of the current literature is wrong or misleading, what is the value of getting undergraduates to read it without giving them the tools to read critically?

And where are the experts who can teach them how to interpret the literature? Has the average graduate student mastered the task? From my observations, I'd say probably not. Where do we get the idea that typical undergraduates can do it productively?

There's another problem. You need to have a solid foundation in basic concepts in order to appreciate and understand the latest technologies and the latest scientific advances. Often these foundations are sacrificed in order to expose undergraduates to the cutting edge research. This is because students can only take so many courses and in complex disciplines like biochemistry, cell, and molecular biology there are so many fundamental concepts that we barely have enough time to cover them all.

In an ideal world we would cover all the basic concepts and also give students an opportunity to do a research project where they gain experience in reading the latest results in a specific field under the guidance of an experienced mentor.

---

Junk DNA and the Scientific Literature

 
A discussion about junk DNA has broken out in the comments to Monday's Molecule #128: Winners.

Charlie Wagner, an old talk.origins fan, wonders why junk DNA advocates are still around given that there have been several recent papers questioning the idea that most of our genome is junk.

Charlie asks ...

So why are Larry and many others still clinging to the myth of "junk DNA"? Do they not read the literature?

Of course we read the literature, Charlie, but unlike you we read all of the literature. You can't just pick out the papers that support your position and assume that the question has been settled.

The skill in reading the scientific literature is to put things into perspective and maintain a certain degree of skepticism. It's just not true that everything published in scientific journals is correct. An important part of science is challenging the consensus and many scientists try to make their reputation by coming up with interpretations that break new ground. The success of science depends on the few that are correct but let's not forget that most of them turn out to be wrong.

THEME

Genomes & Junk DNA
The trick is to recognize the new ideas that may be on to something and ignore those that aren't. This isn't easy but experienced scientists have a pretty good track record. Inexperienced scientists may not be able to distinguish between legitimate challenges to dogma and ones that are frivolous. The problem is even more severe for non-scientists and journalists. They are much more likely to be sucked in by the claims in the latest paper—especially if it's published in a high profile journal.

Lots of scientists don't like the idea of junk DNA because it doesn't fit into their view of how evolution works. They gleefully announce the demise of junk DNA whenever another little bit of noncoding DNA is discovered to have a function. They also attach undue significance to recent studies showing that a large part of mammalian genomes are transcribed at one time or another in spite of the fact that this phenomenon has been known for decades and is perfectly consistent with what we know about spurious transcription.

I've addressed many of the specific papers in previous postings. You can review my previous postings by clicking on the Theme Box URL. The bottom line is "don't trust everything you read in the recent scientific literature."

Another good rule of thumb is never trust any paper that doesn't give you a fair and accurate summary of the "dogma" they are opposing. When you challenge the concept of junk DNA, for example, it's not good enough to just present a piece of new evidence that may not fit the current "dogma." You also have to deal with all the evidence that was used to create the consensus view in the first place and show how it can be better explained by your new model. A good place to start is The Onion Test.

---

The figure is from Mattick (2007), an excellent example of what I'm talking about. This is a paper attacking the current consensus on junk DNA but in doing so it uses a figure that reveals an astonishing lack of understanding of genomes. This makes everything else in paper suspect. The figure was chosen by Ryan Gregory to be the classic example of a Dog's Ass Plot.

Mattick, J.S. (2004) The hidden genetic program of complex organisms. Sci Am. 291:60-67.

04:05:06 07/08/09

 
Shortly after 4 AM this morning you could write the exact time and date as 04:05:06 07/08/09.

But only in America—and a few other countries [Date and time notation by country].

In Europe you'll have to wait until August 7th and if your country is unlucky enough to have adopted the international standard notation then you've missed the big day by two years.

In Canada we use all three notations and this leads to a great deal of confusion. The good news is that we get to celebrate the sequential date three times. Tonight there will be a huge celebration in downtown Toronto with parades and fireworks and speeches by famous people.

How many more sequential time/dates will we celebrate in Canada this millennium?

---

Monday's Molecule #128: Winners

 
The molecule was progesterone and the official complete IUPAC name is 8S,9S,10R,13S,14S,17S)-17-acetyl-10,13-dimethyl-1,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17-dodecahydro-2H-cyclopenta[a]phenanthren-3(6H)-one. Progesterone is a female sex hormone that controls the maintenance of the endometrial lining during pregnancy.

The Nobel Laureate who worked out the structure of progesterone was Johann Butenandt.

Dara Gilbert of the University of Waterloo was the first person to get the correct answers using the abbreviated IUPAC name. This week there's a special award to Anne Johnson of Ryerson University for supplying the complete IUPAC name as well as the most complete description of the function of progesterone and additional information on the Nobel Laureate.

---

Name this molecule. Include the IUPAC name and a brief description of its function.

One Nobel Laureate got the prize for contributions to organic chemistry, including working out the structure of this molecule.

The first person to identify the molecule and the Nobel Laureate, wins a free lunch. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize.

There are seven ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Òscar Reig of Barcelona, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, Mike Fraser of the University of Toronto, Jaseon Oakley of the University of Toronto, Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska, Ian Clarke of New England Biolabs Canada in Pickering ON, Canada and Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Dima has donated his free lunch to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule(s) and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

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

---

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Strategic Plan

 
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) provides most of the funding for health-related research, including most of the basic research that goes on in Canadian Medical Schools. CIHR has recently issued a draft strategic plan that will guide its priorities in the future. The strategic plan is based on the Government of Canada's Science & Technology Strategy: Mobilizing Science and Technology to Canada's Advantage. This is a plan developed by the current Conservative government. It is based on the premise that research should be directed toward specific goals; namely, the health of Canadian citizens and the profitability of Canadian companies.

Clearly, the governing body of CIHR feels obligated to carry out the wishes of the current government in developing a long-range plan. On the surface it seems logical that a government agency should be doing what the government orders. However, there are two problems with this logic: (1) the strategy goes against the wishes of most Canadian scientists, and (2) governments change but strategic decisions are difficult to reverse.

This is the biggest problem. Government funding agencies should be advising the government, not vice versa. Government funding agencies should have an "arms length" relationship to the government of the day. Scientists should have more input.

My colleague, Tania Watts, is the current President of the Canadian Society for Immunology. She has written a letter to Alain Beaudet. the President of CIHR in which she defends basic research [see CSI Response to CIHR Stategic Plan]. Tania's letter makes a lot of sense.

---

Monday's Molecule #128

 
Name this molecule. Include the IUPAC name and a brief description of its function.

One Nobel Laureate got the prize for contributions to organic chemistry, including working out the structure of this molecule.

The first person to identify the molecule and the Nobel Laureate, wins a free lunch. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize.

There are seven ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Òscar Reig of Barcelona, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, Mike Fraser of the University of Toronto, Jaseon Oakley of the University of Toronto, Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska, Ian Clarke of New England Biolabs Canada in Pickering ON, Canada and Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Dima has donated his free lunch to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule(s) and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours.

---

Are Creationists Rational?

 
I don't think that creationism is a rational choice, especially Young Earth Creationism. John Wilkins isn't so sure [Are Creationists Rational?].

I highly recommend his article. It addresses the reasons why creationists think the way they do. I disagree with John's conclusion that you can't change the minds of most committed creationists and I disagree somewhat with John's definition of science. John seems to imply that science is what scientists do whereas I see science as a way of knowing that permeates all aspects of knowledge discovery. I would even argue that John is using the scientific way of knowing in his philosophy papers.

If you disagree, John, can you identify the other way of knowing that you are using?

I think that science as a way of knowing&mdashbased on evidence and rationality—should not only be taught in science classes. It should also be part of the core concepts in history, geography, English, civics, and social studies.

---

IDiot Contest Question

 
Denyse O'Leary continues to look for ways to give away a few copies of the Expelled DVD. In order to win you have to write a 400 word essay on a particular topic and Denyse will pick the one that best conforms to her personal criteria.

This time Denyse is worried about Rob Day (aka Canadian Cynic) so she asks ... [Uncommon Descent: Contest Question 7: Foul anonymous Darwinist blogger exposed. Why so foul?]

Why do so many of Darwinists spout so much filth, hostility, and aimless detraction?

Realizing that she might get the wrong answers she adds another rule to the contest.

Note: Entries that merely claim it isn’t happening will not be judged. Too many people here know otherwise.

On a completely urelated topic, here are some interesting quotations from Conservapedia ...

Dr. Josef Mengele's evolutionary thinking was in accordance with social Darwinist theories that Adolph Hitler and a number of German academics found appealing.[15] Dr. Joseph Mengele studied under the leading proponents the "unworthy life" branch of evolutionary thought.[16] Dr. Mengele was one of the most notorious individuals associated with Nazi death camps and the Holocaust.[17] Mengele obtained a infamous reputation due to his experiments on twins while at Auschwitz-Birkenau.[18]

Prominent evolutionist and atheist Richard Dawkins stated the following regarding Adolf Hitler in an interview: “What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."[19] The interviewer of Richard Dawkins wrote the following regarding the Richard Dawkins comment about Hitler: "I was stupefied. He had readily conceded that his own philosophical position did not offer a rational basis for moral judgments. His intellectual honesty was refreshing, if somewhat disturbing on this point."[20]

In addition to greatly influencing Hitler's Nazism, evolutionary ideas influenced the thinking of the Communists, including Marx, Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.[21] Marx wrote, "Darwin's book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history."

...

As noted earlier, evolutionary ideas contributed to the scourge of racism. [25][26] Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley contributed greatly to the theory of evolution broadly being accepted in the 1900s. [27] Darwin, Huxley, and the 19th century evolutionists were racist in sentiment and believed the white race was superior.

And here's an interesting posting from Denyse O'Leary herself: If you accept the argument in Descent of Man, you accept a racist argument . Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the creationists are being mean and hostile by accusing evolutionists of racism and genocide. No siree, not me. I'm sure they wouldn't do that.

---

Quacks in the ER

 
Here's what the emergency room would look like if homeopathy and naturopathy became real medicine instead of alternative medicine.

---

[Hat Tip: Pharyngula]

Nobel Laureate: Leopold Ruzicka

 

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1939.

"for his work on polymethylenes and higher terpenes"




Leopold Ruzicka (1887 - 1976) won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his contributions to organic chemistry—especially the structures of polymethylenes and higher terpenes.

One of the structures that Ruzicka solved was that of muscone, the molecule responsible for the smell of musk. The perfume industry required large supplies of this molecule which could only be prepared from the musk gland of musk deer. The preparation of synthetic muscone probably saved the musk deer from extinction.

Ruzika was born in Austria-Hungary but he spent most of his career in Switzerland. Do to political circumstances in 1939, the prize was awarded at a special ceremony in Switzerland in January 1940. Ruzika attended another ceremony in Sweden at the end of the war. He shared the 1939 Nobel Prize with Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt.


The special award presentation describes the work on sex hormones.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates

When studying the natural odorants occurring in musk and civet, muscone and civetone, little known until then, Ruzicka obtained fundamentally new and surprising results during the years 1924-1926. He discovered that the molecule of muscone as well as that of civetone contains one single ring of carbon atoms, the number of which was considerably larger than that in all hitherto known cyclic molecules, larger even than had been considered possible. During his investigations of these odora he synthesized many kindred macrocyclic compounds, and drew attention to the plant-physiologically remarkable fact that these could be prepared from natural fatty acids.

Many interesting relationships exist between the polyterpenes studied by Ruzicka and a series of physiologically and medicinally important groups of compounds, viz. the bile acids, the sterols and the sex hormones. Among the many interesting results obtained by Ruzicka and his collaborators with sex hormones, the preparation of compounds with the same action as male sex hormones is of signal importance. It is his merit that by establishing preparative methods for androsterone and testosterone the technical synthesis of these two hormones has been made possible.

Moreover, the numerous new related compounds prepared by Ruzicka have contributed fundamentally to our knowledge of the physiologically so very important sex hormones, thus creating a sound basis for future investigations.

---

[Photo Credit (bottom): ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv: Creative Commons License]

The images of the Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation (© The Nobel Foundation). They are used here, with permission, for educational purposes only.

Nobel Laureate: Hans Spemann

 

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1935

"for his discovery of the organizer effect in embryonic development"

Hans Spemann (1869 - 1941) won the Noble Prize in 1935 for his contributions to developmental biology. He worked mostly with the eggs of newts and frogs and through careful observation of the developing embryo he was able to work out the fate of many cells in the early embryo.

Spemann reasoned that some cells in the early embryo were able to direct the fate of other cells. By transplanting parts of one embryo to specific locations in another embryo he determined which cells acted as organizing centers, presumably by secreting regulatory molecules [see Monday's Molecule #126 and The Spemann–Mangold organizer experiment in 1924].

Here's an excerpt from the Presentation Speech.
THEME:
Nobel Laureates

Much thought has been given to the nature of the forces and causality regulating this development. It is at this point that Spemann's researches begin. He used eggs of various animal species which differ in colour, and with his simple instruments transplanted small pieces of tissue in different stages of development. By this means he was able to establish that, for example, a cell mass normally destined to become ventral epidermis - Spemann calls it presumptive ventral epidermis -could develop into nerve tissue if it were put in the place where the spinal cord was to develop. Hence, the course of development of these cells was not laid down in advance or it could - if such was the case - be altered by transplantation; so that the transplanted portion adjusted itself to its new environment. When Spemann then transplanted the anterior lip of the blastopore of an embryo into the ventral side of another embryo it grew a new brain and spinal cord. This brain and spinal cord did not arise from the transplanted cell material, but from the presumptive ventral epidermis whose course of development was thus altered by the presence of the blastopore. From this Spemann could ascertain that the blastopore had an organizing influence on its environment. The cell material which was grafted into the ventral epidermis and caused the development of the new spinal cord was actually of the kind that, developing normally, would have given rise to the notochord. Further experiments showed that it is the notochord primordia which organize the development of the primordial spinal cord, while, on the other hand, the mesoderm in the head causes the development of a primordial brain. Near this arise the so-called optic vesicles which are the origin of the retina of the eye. Where these approach the ectoderm of the head they organize the development of the lens of the eye. Or, to take another example: the anterior end of the primordial gut (the oesophagus) organizes the development of a primordial mouth and primordial teeth inside it. Thus, we now see how cell masses originally undifferentiated have the course of their development laid down by the influence of rudiments of organs formed earlier. Thereafter, a cell mass such as this can assume the role of organizer in relation to its environment.

In this way we begin to understand how the laws of development work. We begin to perceive why a primordial head arises at the anterior end of the embryo, why a brain always arises in the head and never anywhere else, or why the mouth always has its place below the primordial brain and never elsewhere.

---

[Image Credit: E. M. De Robertis and Hiroki Kuroda (2004)]

The images of the Nobel Prize medals are registered trademarks of the Nobel Foundation (© The Nobel Foundation). They are used here, with permission, for educational purposes only.

Canadian Cynic Is Coming to Town

 
Don't forget that Canadian Cynic is giving a talk tomorrow night at CFI Toronto [Creationism, ID and the Douchebaggery of Really Bad Arguments: An Evening with the Canadian Cynic].

This is your big chance to meet the man behind the blog.

We'll be getting together for food and beverages before his talk. Email me if you'd like to join us.

---

Monday's Molecule #127: Winner

 
The molecule is muscone or [R]-3-methyl-cyclopenta-decanone. This is one of the main ingredients in the musk odor used in perfumes. The original chemical is the R-enantiomer shown below. It was extracted from the musk glands of musk deer (right). Modern perfumes are made from synthetic muscone, which is a mixture of the R- and S-enantionmers.

The Nobel Laureate is Leopold Ruzicka, who worked out the structure of muscone.

This week's winner is Dima Klenchin of the University of Wisconsin.

---

Today's molecule stinks.¹ You have to identify it by giving me the common name and the IUPAC name.

There's only one Nobel Laureate whose name is linked to this molecule. The Laureate was responsible for determining its structure.

The first person to identify the molecule and the Nobel Laureate, wins a free lunch. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize.

There are seven ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Michael Clarkson of Waltham MA (USA), Òscar Reig of Barcelona, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, Mike Fraser of the University of Toronto, Jaseon Oakley of the University of Toronto, Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska and Ian Clarke of New England Biolabs Canada in Pickering ON, Canada.

Bill Chaney has donated his free lunch to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule(s) and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

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

---

1. Opinions may vary.

Genes, Phylogeny, and Orangutans: A Correction

 
In a recent posting I described how New Scientist devoted several pages to the idea that orangutans could be our closest relatives [Genes, Phylogeny, and Orangutans. Here are my exact words,

It's a lesson that New Scientist should have learned. They devote several pages to the Grahan and Schwartz paper thereby giving it much more publicity than it deserves [Could the orang-utan be our closest relative?]. The article is written by Graham Lawton who you might remember from the "Tree of Life" episode [see: Explaining the New Scientist Cover]. The editors of New Scientist knew full well that their decision would be controversial so they took a proactive position by writing a short editorial [In praise of scientific heresy ]. [my emphasis - LAM]

I've received an email message from Graham Lawton, Deputy editor of New Scientist and the author of the article. He points out correctly that the article was exactly two pages long and the editorial was 400 words. He thinks that this is significantly less than "several pages" and asks me to correct my "mistake."

So, for those who think that two pages and a short editorial don't qualify as "several pages," I apologize for my "mistake." I only wanted to make it clear that the coverage was not just a few lines in their weekly survey of press releases.

---

Does Teaching Science Lead to Atheism?

 
Does science lead to atheism? My short answer is "no" just like the answer given by John Wilkins and Matt Young. Their emphasis is on whether scientists are always atheists and whether those who are atheists became atheists because of science or whether they picked science as a profession because they were nonbelievers. Not all scientists are atheists, therefore science doesn't inevitably lead to atheism. That's their position.

Let's ask a different question. Would good science education in the public schools convert religious students to atheism? No, it is not true that exposing students to good science teaching will inevitably make them abandon their religion.

Is that all there is? No, the question can't be answered in such a simple manner. I think that a good science education will threaten most religious beliefs and in some cases will cause students to abandon those beliefs.

Let's imagine what a good science education would look like. The teachers would explain how science works. They would teach that scientific explanations require evidence and logic and that everyone should learn to be skeptical of all claims. Teachers would use examples like evolution, plate tectonics and cosmology to describe good science and how new ideas are incorporated into our understanding of the way things work. They would use astrology, homeopathy, and the deluge as examples of how some explanations do not conform to the expectations of science. The goal is to stimulate students to think and teach them how to do it in a scientific manner.

Imagine that there are religious students in the class. There seem to be three possible ways they could incorporate their knowledge about science into their religious worldview.

1. It will have no effect on their beliefs.
2. It will cause them to question and possibly abandon some of their beliefs.
3. It will reinforce and strengthen their beliefs.

I strongly suspect that more students will start questioning their beliefs when they are exposed to good science education but I admit I have no data to support that suspicion. Does anyone think that the net effect would be to strengthen beliefs or leave them unaffected?

---

Genes, Phylogeny, and Orangutans

Jeffrey H. Schwartz is well known to talk.origins veterans because we discussed his book (Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species) back in 1999. Schwartz tried to make the case for a "groundbreaking and radical new theory of evolution." This "theory" was based on the idea that new species spring into existence very quickly when a mutation in a homeobox (HOZ) gene arises in a population. It's a "theory" of saltation but it's based on such a flawed understanding of genetics that you really have to read to book to see just how bad it is. Sudden Origins is a leading candidate for the worst science book ever published.

In case you want to see a shorter version, the basic idea is explained in Schwartz (1999).

Over the years, Schwartz has published many other ideas that are controversial. Lately he has been pushing the concept that molecular phylogenies are unreliable. In part this is because he is opposed to gradual change as documented in the record of the genes. He thinks that real evolution takes place when alterations of regulatory genes result in major new phenotypes. Thus, the best way to discover the history of life is to examine anatomical homologies and differences.

But part of the problem lies in Jeffrey Schwartz's idiosyncratic understanding of genetics and molecular biology. When you put these together, this is what you get in Schwartz (2009).

This having been said, systematics and evolutionary biology need not remain estranged. Developmental biology increasingly makes clear that organismal change (and by extension, evolution), is not how it was imagined when the synthesis emerged (see reviews in Schwartz 1999, 2009b; Maresca and Schwartz 2006). Further, because of the interrelation between, e.g., the physical properties of cells, signaling pathways, epigenetic effects and development and consequently the origination of form, the false dichotomy of ‘‘molecules versus morphology’’ that resulted in the 1980s from the dethroning of morphology by the hegemony of molecular analyses is no longer tenable (Schwartz 2009a). Indeed, the undeniable hierarchical continuum from the molecular through the morphological, firmly centralizes morphology (as understood via development) in systematic endeavors (Schwartz 2009a).

Grahan and Schwartz (2009) have just published a paper in which they claim that orangutans are more closely related to humans that are chimpanzees. According to them, the molecular data is not reliable. They claim that detailed morphological comparisons show that orangutans are our closest ancestor.

John Hawks asks the question "Are orangutans our closest living relatives?" and he comes up with the best possible answer to scientists with a well-known history of promoting "unusual" positions on evolution.

It's a lesson that New Scientist should have learned. They devote several pages to the Grahan and Schwartz paper thereby giving it much more publicity than it deserves [Could the orang-utan be our closest relative?].¹ The article is written by Graham Lawton who you might remember from the "Tree of Life" episode [see: Explaining the New Scientist Cover]. The editors of New Scientist knew full well that their decision would be controversial so they took a proactive position by writing a short editorial [In praise of scientific heresy ].

If its claims are so outlandish, should the research even have been published? Some scientists would clearly have preferred it if the paper had never seen the light of day, and question the judgement of the journal.

That is territory we should tread with care. Ideas that mainstream opinion "knows" to be wrong occasionally turn out to be right. The insights of Galileo, Stan Prusiner - who discovered prions - and many others were once denounced as heresy. And even those that are wrong can be valuable.

Science proceeds by questioning its own assumptions and regarding every "fact" as provisional, so alternative hypotheses should be given an airing, if only to reaffirm the strength of the orthodoxy. Science that pulls up the drawbridge on new ideas risks becoming sterile. The journal recognised that and should be applauded for its decision to disseminate this challenging paper.

There's some truth here, but only some. You can't use Stanley Prusiner as an excuse to publish every crazy idea that comes along. Some ideas really are crazy—they are not revolutions in disguise. The plain fact is that Jeffrey H. Schwartz has already had his chance to make his case and he has not been successful. How many chances does he get before we draw the obvious conclusion?

---

1. The article was two pages long and the editorial was much less than one page. This may not qualify as "several" pages by some definitions.

[Photo Credit: Daily Mail]

Grehan, J.R. and Schwartz, J.H. (2009) Evolution of the second orangutan: phylogeny and biogeography of hominid origins. Journal of Biogeography, published online June 22. 2009. [doi:10.1111/j.1365-2699.2009.02141.x]

Schwartz, J.H. (1999) Homeobox genes, fossils, and the origin of species. Anat Rec. 15:15-31. [PubMed]

Schwartz, J.H. (2009) Reflections on Systematics and Phylogenetic
Reconstruction. Acta Biotheor 57:295–305 [doi: 10.1007/s10441-009-9078-9]

What Can Scientists Do to Help Science Journalism?

 
This week's issue of Nature has a number of articles devoted to science journalism. Their publication coincides with the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists in London, UK.

One of the articles is an editorial, Cheerleader or watchdog?, about what scientists can do to help science journalism.

Scientists can do little to stem this bloodletting. But whatever they can do to engage with those caught up in it, and ensure that questioning and informed science journalism persists, will be worthwhile. If there is to be a transition to new — perhaps philanthropic — business models for in-depth reporting or new types of analytical media, science journalism will integrate into them all the better if scientists are taking an active interest in its health. And if the future of the media truly is a dire landscape of top-100 lists, shouting heads and minimal attention span, then such efforts might at least defer the grim end.

Even amid the turmoil, however, scientists can help ensure that reporting about science continues to be both informed and accurate.

I agree that scientists should work on trying to make science reporting more accurate. So far, we haven't been too successful.

But there's another important contribution we can make. We can help clean up our own act so that less bad science is published. This will not only make science better, it will have the spin-off effect of making life easier for science journalists. At the very least, we should make sure that press releases coming from our institutions are accurate. Every scientists should have to stand behind and endorse the press releases from their supporting institution. Let's take responsibility.

Also, wouldn't it be nice if most of the papers published in the scientific literature were careful to put their work in the proper perspective? Wouldn't it be nice if scientists themselves stopped exaggerating their contributions and stopped making outrageous claims? Science journalists have not done a good job of sifting the wheat from the chaff, in spite of what they think. They are far from blameless but scientists carry a bigger share of the blame for the sorry state of science literacy.

---

Campus Excitement

 
There's usually something exciting happening on the University of Toronto campus during the summer.

It's a popular location for shooting movies and TV shows and you never know what you'll find on any given day. This is the scene that greeted me today when I emerged from the subway station. It took a few seconds to realize that I wasn't in the middle of a real emergency.

Last week the front campus was the scene of a bank truck robbery in Germany, just in front of a sidewalk café. I wish they'd left the outdoor tables and umbrellas and kept serving the wine and food.

---

Monday's Molecule #127

 

Today's molecule stinks.¹ You have to identify it by giving me the common name and the IUPAC name.

There's only one Nobel Laureate whose name is linked to this molecule. The Laureate was responsible for determining its structure.

The first person to identify the molecule and the Nobel Laureate, wins a free lunch. Previous winners are ineligible for six weeks from the time they first won the prize.

There are seven ineligible candidates for this week's reward: Michael Clarkson of Waltham MA (USA), Òscar Reig of Barcelona, Maria Altshuler of the University of Toronto, Mike Fraser of the University of Toronto, Jaseon Oakley of the University of Toronto, Bill Chaney of the University of Nebraska and Ian Clarke of New England Biolabs Canada in Pickering ON, Canada.

Bill Chaney has donated his free lunch to a deserving undergraduate so I'm going to continue to award an additional free lunch to the first undergraduate student who can accept it. Please indicate in your email message whether you are an undergraduate and whether you can make it for lunch.

THEME:

Nobel Laureates
Send your guess to Sandwalk (sandwalk (at) bioinfo.med.utoronto.ca) and I'll pick the first email message that correctly identifies the molecule(s) and names the Nobel Laureate(s). Note that I'm not going to repeat Nobel Prizes so you might want to check the list of previous Sandwalk postings by clicking on the link in the theme box.

Correct responses will be posted tomorrow.

Comments will be blocked for 24 hours.

---

1. Opinions may vary.

Grandpa Burger

 
When I was (much) younger I used to order the Teen Burger when we went to the A&W. Even after I stopped being a teenager I still got the Teen Burger 'cause I wasn't really eligible for any of the others.

While we were living in Europe there were no A&W's in our part of the world so I didn't have a problem choosing what to order. By the time we returned to Canada, Jane had been born and I could order the Papa Burger without feeling guilty.¹

Here I am at the the A&W yesterday, trying out the Grandpa Burger. Technically, I won't be officially eligible for the Grandpa Burger until next January. Coincidentally, that's when my daughter Jane and her husband Michael will be able to buy the Mama and Papa Burgers.

---

1. I sometimes cheated and ordered the teenburger anyway.

[Hat Tip: A&W Grandpa Burger commercial.]

Everything You Wanted to Know About Canada but Were Afraid to Ask

 
The Canadian system of government can be a little difficult to understand and recent political events in Canada don't make it any easier. Here's a brief and dumbed-down lesson on Canadian politics. It's intended mostly for Canadians but foreigners might also find it helpful.

---

Thanks to Greg Laden most readers on his blog are now much more knowledgeable about Canada than most Canadians.

The Great, Profound, and Valuable Works of Evolutionary Psychology

A few weeks ago I was having an email discussion about evolutionary psychology with Gad Saad. Readers may recall an earlier posting about Gad's work on the correlation between the length of one's fingers and the kinds of things one likes to buy in a store [Psychology and Finger Length].

One of my criticisms of evolutionary psychology is that its proponents don't usually seem to have a good handle on modern evolutionary biology. Gad argues that, while this may be true for some evolutionary psychologists, it's not a widespread problem. He, for example, considers himself to be very knowledgeable about evolution. His undergraduate degree is in Mathematics and Computer Science. He then went on to obtain an MBA, an MS in Management, and finally a PhD in Marketing [Gad Saad].

He is currently an Associate Professor in the Marketing Department at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. But over the years he has learned a great deal about evolution and in 2008 he was appointed to the "Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption." Gad explained to me that this appointment was recommended by several experienced evolutionary biologists.

We weren't making much progress in our email discussions. It seemed that we had been reading different accounts of evolutionary theory because we couldn't agree on some basic concepts. Nevertheless, Gad advanced a number of vigorous defenses of evolutionary psychology including the following point that I reproduce from our email exchange with his permission. (Actually, he gave me permission to post his list of "great, profound, and valuable works" but not the actual paragraph where he made the claim. I posted the actual claim because it differs from what Gad said in the comment to my earlier posting.)

You are indeed correct that evolutionary psychology has at times succumbed to the allure of just-so storytelling. That said, it is unfair (and frankly dishonest of you) to place all evolutionary behavioral scientists under the negative umbrella that you repeatedly do. Evolutionary psychologists produce great, profound, and valuable works, and at times can produce weaker works with tenuous conclusions. This holds true of biochemists as well. Physicists disagree as to whether String Theory is valid or not. Should we equally view physicists as providers of shoddy and controversial work?

I was intrigued by the claim that evolutionary psychologists have produced "great, profound, and valuable works" and I asked for examples. He supplied them but around that time I got distracted by real life and didn't follow up on our email exchanges.

Now Gad has posted his list in the comments to yesterday's posting on Why Evolutionary Psychology Is False.

I think it deserves wider coverage so here, without comment, is Gad Saad's list of the great, profound, and valuable works of evolutionary psychology. This is the best of the best by one of the leading experts in the field. I think we can get a good sense of the overall quality of the discipline by examining the list.

1. Women alter their preferences for the facial features of men as a function of where they are in their menstrual cycles. When maximally fertile, they prefer men possessing markers of high testosterone.
2. Babies display an immediate instinctual preference for symmetric faces (at an age that precedes the capacity for socialization).
3. Children who suffer from congenital adrenal hyperplasia display a reversal in their toy preferences. Furthermore, using inter-species comparisons, vervet monkeys display the same sex-specific patterns of play/toy preferences as human infants. This suggests that contrary to the argument made by social constructivists, play has an evolved biological basis.
4. Individuals who score high on an empathy scale are more likely to succumb to the contagion effects of yawning. This is indicative that this particular contagion might be linked to mimicry and/or Theory of Mind.
5. How provocatively a woman dresses is highly correlated to her menstrual cycle (a form of sexual signaling found across countless Mammalian species).
6. Culinary traditions are adaptations to local niches. For example, the extent to which a culture utilizes meat versus vegetables, spices, or salt is a cultural adaptation (this is what behavioral ecologists study).
7. Maternal grandmothers and paternal grandfathers invest the most and the least respectively in their grandchildren. Whereas all four grandparents have a genetic relatedness coefficient of 0.25 with their grandchildren, they do not all carry the same level of "parental uncertainty." In the case of maternal grandmothers, there is no uncertainty whereas in the case of the paternal grandfather, there are two sources of uncertainty. This last fact drives the differential pattern of investment in the grandchildren.
8. Good male dancers are symmetric (paper published in Nature). One would expect that some behavioral traits might correlate with phenotypic quality as honest signals of an individual's desirability on the mating market.
9. Self-preference for perfumes is linked to one's immunogenetic profile (Major Histocompatibility Complex).
10. When a baby is born, most family members (especially those of the mother) are likely to state that the baby looks like the father. This phenomenon is found in countless cultures despite the fact that it is objectively impossible to make such a claim of resemblance. The reason for this universally found cultural tradition lies in the need to assuage the fears of paternity uncertainty.
11. Environmental stressors (e.g., father absence) and the onset of menarche (first menses) have been shown to be highly linked. In numerous species, the likelihood of a female becoming reproductively viable is affected by environmental contingencies.
12. Women are less receptive to mandatory hospital DNA paternity testing (for obvious reasons). In other words, their willingness to adopt a new product/service is fully driven by an evolutionary-based calculus.
13. Women can smell the most symmetric men. In other words, women have the capacity to identify men who possess the best phenotypic quality simply via their nose. This is what I have referred to as sensorial convergence.
14. Using fMRI, the exposure to ecologically-relevant stimuli (e.g., beautiful faces) yields distinct neural activation patterns in men and women.
15. In choosing a mate, humans tend to prefer the smell of others that are maximally dissimilar to them along the MHC. This ensures that offspring possess a greater "defensive coverage" in terms of their immunological system.

---

Swine Flu Is Caused by French Fries

 
According the a report from Russia, the current swine flue pandemic is caused by genetically modified potatoes that are sold as French Fries in many Western industrialized nations [Russian Scientists Warn Of Genetically Modified Fast Food Link To Pandemic Flu].

Scientists from Russia’s Ministry of Health are warning in a secret report to Prime Minister Putin that they have discovered a ‘critical link’ between the H1N1 influenza (Swine Flu) virus and genetically modified amylopectin potatoes that are consumed in massive quantities nearly exclusively by Westerners and sold in fast food restaurants as French Fries.

According to these reports, the protease enzyme genetically modified in the potatoes being sold through Western fast food restaurants as French Fries to protect against Potato virus X causes an “explosive” replication of the H1N1 influenza virus by increasing the acidic conditions of the endosome and causing the hemagglutinin protein to rapidly fuse the viral envelope with the vacuole's membrane, then causing the M2 ion channel to allow protons to move through the viral envelope and acidify the core of the virus, which causes the core to dissemble and release the H1N1’s RNA and core proteins into the hosts cells.

Evidence confirming these dire findings by top Russian scientists is also supported by the World Health Organization who in their reporting on the current Influenza Pandemic, clearly shows that the H1N1 virus is nearly totally confined to those Western Nations allowing their citizens to consume these genetically modified potatoes, and which include: The United States with over 17,000 cases being reported with 45 deaths; Canada with 2,978 cases; the United Kingdom with 1,226 cases; and Australia with 1,823 cases.

This is very troubling. I'd like to be an accommodationist and pretend that the Russian kooks scientists are every bit as good as real scientists in other countries. On the other hand, my scientific instincts lead me to postulate that the claim is not very scientific and should be assigned to the urban legend category.

I'm in a quandary over whether I should believe this or not. We need the Russians as allies but we also need the French. Seems like one of them is going to be offended.

---

The Glory for Christ Football League

 
Normally I don't like piling on and I don't like making fun of spelling errors (because I make so many myself). But here's a photograph from the New York Times that every blogger is reproducing and I just can't help myself.

The New York Times ran an article on football teams for home schooled children and this photo appears on their website under the caption ...

The Glory for Christ Football League in Georgia grew out of a desire to provide an option for young men who are home-schooled but cannot play in local football leagues.

It's pretty obvious that "acedemics" and "atheletics" are not the top priorities of these homeschoolers but who knew they were so far down the list?

---

Why Evolutionary Psychology Is False

 
I haven't got time to review the recent publications on evolutionary psychology. The good news is that the popular press is finally waking up to the fact that the entire field is suspect. It sure took them long enough.

Read a summary on Why Evolution Is True: Genetic determinism? Not so fast.

---

Lawrence Krauss on Science vs Religion

 
Lawrence Krauss was recently asked to participate in a debate about science and religion. Ken Miller and another Roman Catholic scientist were there. Miller argued the case for compatibility and Krauss defended the atheist position. Here's how Krauss describes some of the debate in an article entitled God and Science Don't Mix.

Faced with the remarkable success of science to explain the workings of the physical world, many, indeed probably most, scientists understandably react as Haldane did. Namely, they extrapolate the atheism of science to a more general atheism.

While such a leap may not be unimpeachable it is certainly rational, as Mr. McGinn pointed out at the World Science Festival. Though the scientific process may be compatible with the vague idea of some relaxed deity who merely established the universe and let it proceed from there, it is in fact rationally incompatible with the detailed tenets of most of the world's organized religions. As Sam Harris recently wrote in a letter responding to the Nature editorial that called him an "atheist absolutist," a "reconciliation between science and Christianity would mean squaring physics, chemistry, biology, and a basic understanding of probabilistic reasoning with a raft of patently ridiculous, Iron Age convictions."

When I confronted my two Catholic colleagues on the panel with the apparent miracle of the virgin birth and asked how they could reconcile this with basic biology, I was ultimately told that perhaps this biblical claim merely meant to emphasize what an important event the birth was. Neither came to the explicit defense of what is undeniably one of the central tenets of Catholic theology.

This is the problem. Whenever you encounter a religious person who claims that there's no conflict between their religious beliefs and science, you have every right to engage in a discussion about the specific beliefs that they hold.

Do they believe in miracles? In my experience, religious scientists tend to avoid answering such direct questions just like they avoid answering questions about the efficacy of prayer, the existence of a soul, and life after death. I wonder why they won't answer these questions?

---

John Wilkins Is an Asportist

 
Some questions are really very simple in spite of the fact that people want to make them complicated. When I ask you, "Do you believe in God?" it really doesn't require a lot of thought for most people. True, there might be a few people who want more clarification about the meaning of God but those people are the exceptions. Usually you can get a response by asking, "Are you a theist?"

There are only two possible answers to the second question. If the answer is "yes" then you are a theist. If the answer is "no" then you are not a theist. Most of the world can be conveniently divided into two groups: theists and non-theists. The others, those who answer "I don't know," aren't worth the bother.

We have a word for those who are non-theists. They are called atheists by my definition of the word. I use the word "atheist" in the same sense as any other word that begins with "a" and means "not." As Antony Flew puts it, the word atheist has the same connotation as "amoral," "atypical," and "asymmetrical." It means that you are not a theist. I'm also an athoothfairyist and an asantaclausian.

John Wilkins disagrees. He thinks the word atheist should be reserved for the strong belief that gods do not exist. When used in that sense, he would argue that he is not a theist and he does not actively deny the existence of gods. He is an agnostic. John divides the world into two camps—those who have a position on the existence or non-existence of god and those who don't. The latter group is the agnostics and he is one.

That's fine by me as long as John makes his definitions clear and he doesn't try to impose his definition of atheist on the rest of us. It would be wrong of John to call me an atheist using his definition so he better be careful. He would have to include me among the agnostics if he is being consistent. He'd also have to include Richard Dawkins. As a matter of fact, John might find it difficult to find anyone who is a true atheist by his definition.

I will try and respect John's wishes and refer to him as an agnostic who doesn't believe in god but doesn't advocate the nonexistence of gods as a philosophical position. However, I don't think I can go along with him in all cases ...

So, to summarise, when an atheist says to me I am an atheist because I lack a view, I am minded to reply, “I am also an asportist” for failing to have a team in any sport that I support. It makes about as much sense.

I'm sorry, John. I'll respect your (strange) opinion and not call you an atheist, but you really are an asportist!

---

Religion and the Templeton Foundation

 
From Jesus and Mo.

---

Blogging about Scientific Meetings

 
The question is whether it is legitimate for bloggers to report on what goes on at scientific conferences and meetings. I've done it several times and I never thought there was a problem.

Well, apparently some people disagree. Read about it in the latest issue of Nature: Science journalism: Breaking the convention?.

Blogs and Twitter are opening up meetings to those not actually there. Does that mean too much access to science in the raw, asks Geoff Brumfiel.

Next month I'm going to a meeting on "The Tree of Life." I intend to let you all know what goes on at that meeting but it shouldn't be a problem since the participants know what I'm doing and I won't be the only blogger.

There was a time, forty years ago, when some scientific meetings were very closed affairs and scientists could talk openly and frankly about what they were doing without fearing that it would be widely disseminated to non-insiders. There are still a few meetings like that but the vast majority are not.

---

Scientists Are no Different from Anyone Else

 
I admire Stephen Jay Gould for many reasons but his honesty ranks right up there near the top of the list.

Gould never pretended that individual scientists could be completely objective. He always said that they are no different than other people who have biases and prejudices. The special attributes of a scientist are that they recognize their biases and struggle to not let them influence their science.

He wrote a review of "Not in Our Genes: Biology, Idealogy and Human Nature" - a book by Richard Lewnotin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, The review was later published in "An Urchin in the Storm."

In that review he acknowledged that he shared many of the opinions of the authors. He also wrote ...

... we scientists are no different from anyone else. We are passionate human beings, enmeshed in a web of personal and social circumstances. Our field does recognize canons of procedure designed to give nature the long shot of asserting herself in the face of such biases, but unless scientists understand their hopes and engage in vigorous self-scrutiny, they will not be able to sort out unacknowledged preference from nature's weak and imperfect message.

The problem in scientific discourse is not the background of the scientist but the strength and logic of the scientific arguments. It may be useful to see *why* certain scientists adopt certain positions at a particular point in time but that explains the history of an idea and not its correctness.

Leftist scientists are more likely to combat biological determinism just as rightests tend to favor this quintessential justification of the statu quo as intractable biology; the correlations are not accidental. But let us not be so disrespectful of thought that we dismiss the logic of arguments as nothing but an inevitable reflection of biases—a confusion of context of discovery whith context of justification.

Gould often laid his cards on the table when he confessed to his background. Whether it was baseball, a love of history, or a preference for New York, these were part of his personality and sometimes they crept into his science.

But honesty is not always the best policy. If you are honest enough to admit to prejudices and biases—even while you fight to suppress them—you aren't necessarily going to be admired. Especially if your opponents don't reveal their biases and pretend to be completely objective.

By drawing attention to the fact that scientists are no different than anyone else, Gould handed his enemies a weapon that could be used against him. How many of you have heard the charge that Gould is a Marxist, or (gasp!) a Liberal, and that's why he advocated Punctuated Equilibria? This is usually meant to discredit Gould because he revealed his background. Other scientists, who aren't so open, are given a free pass.

This is why you see a book about Gould and his politics but not a book about the politics of some of his opponents.

---

The Voyage That Shook the World

 
Watch the trailers and visit the website. Is this a film that promotes evolution?

No, it isn't [Creationists defend Darwin film].

Phil Bell, CEO of Creation Ministries UK, acknoweged that his organisation established a "front company" called Fathom Media, because they were concerned that experts such as Peter Bowler would not agree to take part in the film if they realised it was an "overtly Creationist" production. "At the end of the day," he said, "[when] people see 'Creationist', instantly the shutters go up and that would have shut us off from talking to the sort of experts, such as Professor Bowler, that we wanted to get to."

---

Grey hair may be protecting us from cancer

 
Another article from New Scientist documenting the slow decline of that journal into a typical supermarket rag [Grey hair may be protecting us from cancer ].

GREY hair may be unwelcome, but the processes that produce it are now better understood and could be protecting us from cancer.

First off, I want to make it clear that many of us with grey hair do not find it "unwelcome" in spite of societal pressures to make us feel embarrassed.

Second, here's the actual paper and abstract [doi:10.1016/j.cell.2009.03.037].

Inomata, K., Aoto, T., Binh, N.T., Okamoto, N., Tanimura, S., Wakayama, T., Iseki, S., Hara, E., Masunaga, T., Shimizu, H., and Nishimura, E.K. (2009) Genotoxic Stress Abrogates Renewal of Melanocyte Stem Cells by Triggering Their Differentiation. Cell 137: 1088-1099.

Somatic stem cell depletion due to the accumulation of DNA damage has been implicated in the appearance of aging-related phenotypes. Hair graying, a typical sign of aging in mammals, is caused by the incomplete maintenance of melanocyte stem cells (MSCs) with age. Here, we report that irreparable DNA damage, as caused by ionizing radiation, abrogates renewal of MSCs in mice. Surprisingly, the DNA-damage response triggers MSC differentiation into mature melanocytes in the niche, rather than inducing their apoptosis or senescence. The resulting MSC depletion leads to irreversible hair graying. Furthermore, deficiency of Ataxia-telangiectasia mutated (ATM), a central transducer kinase of the DNA-damage response, sensitizes MSCs to ectopic differentiation, demonstrating that the kinase protects MSCs from their premature differentiation by functioning as a “stemness checkpoint” to maintain the stem cell quality and quantity.

The idea is that DNA damage causes stem cells to differentiate into melanocytes that eventually die. Since there are fewer stem cells there will be fewer melanocytes produced over time and hair becomes grey. The fact that damaged stem cells undergo terminal differentiation instead of remaining as stem cells means that they are probably less likely to serve as the progenitors of a cancerous cell line.

Whether this has any real effect on protecting us from cancer is an open question. I doubt it very much but it's an easy hypothesis to test. Is it true that people with grey hair develop fewer cancers than people of the same age with darker hair?

---