Blue Collar Scientist

A few weeks ago, when the news that creationist whackjobs were giving tours at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, I thought I might post a little article here excogitating on how two-faced creationists are, and about how the people doing the tours are nothing more than dishonest cult-enforcers, and about how, despite this, the museum pretty much has its hands tied.

I didn’t, because I didn’t think I really had anything to add that hadn’t already been said (you’ll notice that my m.o. on this blog is to cover a newsy topic a day or two late, but with a surplus of dollars - i.e., with more research than the average blog is putting into it). So I gave it a pass.

However, I’ve now found the best blog entry every written about the topic, bar none. The post is by a DMNS volunteer who has dealt with these whackjobs in person.

(Oh, also, the author is fifteen years old. The main thing about blogging that I learn from this is that I’m doing it wrong.)

Cripes, stop reading my stuff, and get over there and read it, already.

Seriously.

Read it all.

The Institute for Creation Research has released an enemies list, apparently as a tribute to the deep paranoia of Nixonian politics they engage in. It contains some interesting tidbits. It is mostly the usual collection of misleading quote-mining lying by misquoting others, but a few points had me laughing.

For example, about Dawkins - their Enemy Number One - they say:

It is no wonder that Dawkins has elsewhere concluded that “life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” If this is what evolution offers, can there be any other result but despair?

Any other result but despair? Let us read from the Bible. Please open the good book to Ecclesiastes 11:8, and read along with me:

Indeed, if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything that is to come will be futility.

Well, I can only speak for myself, but it seems pretty clear to me who is purveying despair, and it isn’t Richard Dawkins.

Under Eugenie Scott’s entry, they trot out the tired old lie that creationists have been retreading since the 1860’s:

[T]here has been no observable scientific evidence for macroevolution.

Of course there have been; at one web page alone, you can learn about no less than 29 observed instances of evolutionary speciation, complete with citations to the scientific literature. One wonders, if they are right in their claim that evolution is false, why they have to lie about the scientific findings on evolution all the time….

But that’s not really my point here. I want to return to the bible again. Please attend to Genesis 1:11:

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit….

Sadly, the ICR doesn’t respect its own sources. If you read that, you surely noted that the bible does not say that god created plants. The text clearly states that plants were to be brought forth by the Earth. This is a clear example of biogenesis, the transition of inorganic material to advanced organic life.

And let us also look at 1 Corinthians 15:45:

So also it is written, “The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.

A strong endorsement of the naturalistic world view that science, and evolutionary theory, represents. Naturalism comes first; without it, the bible says you can’t have spiritualism.

They move on to PZ Myers, and lead with their chin ignorance:

Although many other evolutionists are active “evangelists” in the world today, P. Z. Myers deserves a mention because of his prolific presence in cyberspace, mainly through blogs on his website Pharyngula.

I was under the impression that Myers’ blog, Pharyngula, is at Scienceblogs. Shows you what I know.

They don’t really say anything in the Myers section about their beliefs, so there’s no way to consult the final authority (the Bible) on the truth of their claims. So, disappointed, I will simply have to bring this posting to a close.

It takes three minutes to explain the evolution of the eye.

It only takes an intelligent design creationist three seconds to say “it is still too complex to have evolved.”

Ken Miller has written an op-ed for the Boston Globe that all should read.

The Discovery Institute has written more anti-semitic Holocaust revisionism, this time slandering a recently-passed resolution of the Methodist Church. The DI says:

The quadrennial international convention of the Methodist Church, meeting in Fort Worth, today adopted an historic and detailed resolution deploring the legacy of Darwinian eugenics that saw its 20th century extreme expression in the theories of Adolf Hitler.

So the Discovery Institute says, among other things, that eugenics specifically comes from Charles Darwin.

Contrast this with what the Methodists’ well-researched resolution actually says:

The study of eugenics did not begin with Hitler or his German scientists, but rather was first promoted by Sir Francis Galton, in England.

Darwinian eugenics, huh?

Poor creationists. They can’t tell the difference between the name Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. No surprise, I guess; they seem to be unable to understand considerably simpler biological concepts.

Hat tip to Bay of Fundie, who has a more complete takedown.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed has been out in the theaters now for two weeks, and we can revisit the question: how has it done?

Pretty crappy.

After making 2.9 million on its opening weekend, it has barely made that in the following two weeks, for a total of 5.9 million as of today.

After opening in an unprecedented 1,052 theaters, it has been dropped almost 400 of them; as of today it is in only 656 theaters.

The producers’ claims this would be as big as Fahrenheit 9-11, and indeed even as big as Galileo and Copernicus, continue to be unfulfilled.

This morning, “cls” left a comment on the Expelled Reviews post, which I’d really like to see some discussion of. The comment brings up an issue that has repeatedly dogged me and almost certainly limited my effectiveness as a science educator, and the issue is simply this: I don’t always understand the questions being asked.

Usually, I understand questions asked by someone who is already engaged with the subject and wants to know more about it. Usually, I understand the questions posed by people who don’t know the answers but are engaged in a quest to satisfy their curiosity. But sometimes I run up against a series of questions that I don’t get, and those questions are usually, but not always asked by one of two kinds of people:

1. Anti-science people, denialists, etc.
2. The profoundly ignorant.

Because I am a scientist, and I know that there’s a lot that I don’t know, when I’m confronted by a question I don’t understand, I usually assume the fault is mine. But that’s not a safe bet when dealing with questions from these two populations. And cls’ comment includes several questions that I just don’t get.

for me, i want to know a few things of the process of evolution:

do the most mixed varieties of living things contain the most genetic
diversity?

I don’t get it. What is a “variety of living thing,” and once that is defined, what does “most mixed” mean? If a friend of mine had said “variety of living thing,” I would probably have understood them to mean a pink rose instead of a red one. But I still wouldn’t know what “most mixed” meant, and I kinda doubt cls is asking about botanical varieties here.

do the most specialized varieties of species have the least genetic diversity?

What does “varieties of species” mean? And how is that different from “variety of living things?” See, from my perspective as an astronomer, this could be (a) a well-established biological term that I don’t know, or (b) meaningless¹.

I’m going to guess that the most specialized multi-cellular organisms on the planet are parasites, and that some populations of parasite have greater genetic diversity than some populations of non-parasitic animals. I’d guess that pandas, California condors, and other organisms having very low populations would be less genetically diverse than a healthy population of ticks that are so specialized they need specific hosts to complete their life cycles.

If yes, this means they are usually successful in a specific environment, and then would only survive in that environment?

I kinda get this, and my answer would be that organisms that exploit certain ecological niches would probably have problems if their niche went away, but it doesn’t mean they couldn’t adapt to new conditions. But here I fail to see the connection to genetics or evolutionary biology - this is Ecology 101, stuff that we knew before we knew much of anything about evolution.

does evolution weaken a species when it becomes specialized?

This kind of question just bugs me. To my way of thinking, evolution doesn’t “do” anything. Evolution is just a description of how things happen.

I think maybe the question here is something like “does increasing specialization weaken a species,” and the answer, I think, would be - yes, and no. Some specialized species are on the decline, others are ubiquitously common and obviously very well adapted for their environment. But it kinda depends on how you define your terms - do specialized species go extinct with greater frequency than non-specialized ones? If so, does this mean they are “weak?” Do they speciate with greater frequency? If so, does that mean they are not “weak?” What does weak mean, exactly? From an evolutionary perspective, I would think it would have to do with how long they can keep their genes alive. I’m just not sure the question is meaningful as asked.

does evolution, like inbreeding, pass on weakness?

What?

in specific environments? (sure those too weak die.)

What?

do the mutations in the pesticides and medicines mentioned above do a lot of killing of unwanted living things?

Mutations in pesticides? What? Pesticides aren’t even living things - how can they mutate?

I can almost discern that this question is along these lines: Since organisms can evolve resistance to pesticides/medicines, there must be mutations. Since there were mutations, pesticides/medicines must be mutagenic. Do the mutagenic properties of pesticides/medicines kill organisms?

If this is what that means, the problem is that a substance need not be mutagenic in order for an organism to evolve resistance to it. Mutations happen, period - whether there are mutagens about or not.² Besides that, a quick scan of encyclopedia articles on pesticides and antibiotics will show that most have their effects through toxic (not mutagenic) properties.

These questions are mixed in with some other musings, which I also don’t get:

whales sometimes use these legs in mating, and
belugas come to shore…

Whales have legs? That’s news to me.³

And belugas do come to shore - to eat. They occasionally get stuck, and they are well adapted⁴ to surviving the ordeal until the tide comes back in and allows them to swim back out to sea. I’ve witnessed this process myself, and I’m not sure what the point is here.

there are some distinct differences in the
nature of birds and reptiles that may be unlinkable with survival

Unlinkable? What does that word mean in this context?

Even if it means that some birds/reptiles have phenotypic characteristics that are not good for their survival, the answer is “so what?” To survive, an organism need only be good enough to get by. There’s no requirement for hyper-optimization.

This kind of thing is extremely confusing to me. A lot of these questions, on first hearing, sound like complete nonsense. The questions appear to have no meaning, even if you read the dictionary definitions of the words used and apply the normal rules of grammar. They have no meaning in the mundane use of the language, and no apparent meaning as part of a technical vocabulary either.

I guess this comment has gotten me thinking about the issue of who can be reached. From long experience, I’ve learned that antiscience people can’t be talked to. If I’m going head-to-head with antiscience, I’m doing it for the onlookers, so that they have a chance of escaping the stupidity. But the people who actually believe things like the plasma universe⁵, the Jupiter effect, and other crazy ideas that shouldn’t survive for ten seconds in a reasonably educated and properly functioning mind - these people cannot be reached. At least not by me.

People who ask questions that I don’t get fall into a gray zone to me. Are they unreachable? Or am I just not able to understand the hip new lingo?

1. Until defined by the person using it, of course. [↩]
2. Besides which, not all evolution works on mutation - selection of favored variations also occurs. [↩]
3. I know all about fossil whales with legs, but don’t know how cls would know how they were used sexually. [↩]
4. Compared to other whales I’m familiar with. [↩]
5. Not the same thing as plasma cosmology - not that the latter is necessarily any good either. [↩]

Blackwell Publishing has kicked out a press release with a slightly unfortunate hed:

Cholera Study Provides Exciting New Way Of Looking At Infectious Disease

Now, the study that this press release reports is kind of exciting. (And yes, you can read it for free.) Basically, the investigators are looking at Vibrio cholerae, the pathogen that causes cholera, a disease characterized by massive diarrhea and very rapid death if untreated.

It was long thought that humans were the source of cholera, but in the last several years there’s been quite a bit of evidence that it actually lives in aquatic environments. This study explores how cholera interacts with chitin, the polysaccharide that makes up the exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans. The findings of the researchers, in brief, show that cholera’s interactions with chitin explains a lot about how cholera lives, expands its range, and infects humans.

This is of course a good thing - knowing about this will lead to strategies that will save lives and greatly reduce suffering. And it is also good that the investigators are excited by their work. I’d hate for the evolutionary¹ and molecular biologists who work on human disease to be, you know, apathetic, or worse, bored about what they do.

But that hed…. I just can’t get past the idea that we should be careful about saying we are excited about infectious disease, for the same reason that when a client telescope crashes in a novel way, I avoid calling the event “awesome” or “cool” in front of the client - even though it is pretty cool what you can learn about these complex systems from their failure modes.

But the headline doesn’t really matter - the release is good, the science appears sound, and the utility of the findings is unquestionable. This time, I’ll take what I can get.

1. And guess what - this study did depend upon evolutionary theory and methods to come to its conclusions. Yet another example of the way that evolution helps us all. [↩]

I’ve criticized Chris Mooney, Matt Nisbet, and the framists¹ before (here, here, and here), returning again and again to the point that they have offered no constructive criticism or advice to me and others engaged in science communication.

My favorite blogger, Mike the Mad Biologist, has written an open letter to Mooney, and it’s a damn good one. One highlight:

Here’s the problem: you keep coming to evolutionary biologists with a problem (the perception of evolutionary biology), and you don’t have a solution. Do you think there’s a single evolutionary biologist who is happy with public opinion regarding evolution and creationism? But you’re not giving us concrete solutions.

It is worth reading the whole thing.

1. I’ll be damned if I will call them framers - they’re nothing like as brilliant as the people who composed the Constitution. [↩]

Several times over the years I’ve tried to explain to various friends the concept of pedigree collapse. The idea is simple - as you go back in time, every generation of your ancestors has twice the number as the one before. You are one person; your parents are two people; you have four grandparents; eight great-grandparents, and so on. If you follow this back far enough, you eventually come up with a number of people in an ancestral generation that is greater than the number of people who were alive on the Earth at that time.

Of course, well before then, you will probably find a lot of your ancestors having more than one relationship to you. Imagine for a moment a couple who have two children, Jack and Jill. They get married to their respective spouses, and have children. Their children marry, and have children. This goes on for a dozen generations - which works out to three hundred years - and one of the descendants of Jack marries one of the descendants of Jill. Now you’ve got Jack and Jill at two different places in your ancestry - maybe Jill is both your greatⁿ grandparent on your father’s side, and also on your mother’s. Similar situation for Jack, and for Jack and Jill’s parents.

Now when you explain this to someone who understands math or biology, they say something like “yeah, what’s the big deal?” as though you’ve made an insight of no brilliance whatever and are rehashing something that is self-evident and obvious. They expect you to take it somewhere interesting, because by itself, this is old news and not really worth talking about.

But talk about this to other people, and it can be a weird experience. A very small minority of the educators that I’ve known and worked with have reacted with abhorrence to the concept of pedigree collapse. It’s strange, because these are generally special educators, people who - you would (incorrectly?) think - had been exposed to more population genetics than the average teacher as a result of their advanced degrees that qualify them to work with people having challenging conditions mediated by genetics and environment.

But in some cases at least, this expectation has been wrong, and these people have responded with a visceral abhorrence to pedigree collapse, branding it as “gross” and the person who brought it to their attention (i.e., me) as morbid and strange¹.

It’s a hypocritical reaction, obviously. These people are not going to demand that their fiancee provide 300, or 500, or 1,000 years of their genealogy to prove that they have no ancestors in common in distant genealogical time before getting married. They live their lives by one standard, but when it comes to talking about human issues, they want nothing to do with it.

My friend (and almost-certainly distant relative) Martin Rundkvist wrote a post a couple days ago about the subject of pedigree collapse, looking at it from the bright side - we’re all descended from royalty, and we’re all descended from St. Olof - a prediction you can safely make by the staggering numbers of ancestors we would all have at that time. Martin even offers a brilliant rejoinder to the criticism that human gene flow is limited by cultural structuring - the idea that classes do not sexually mix, and that gene flow between race and even nation-state is hindered:

On the contrary! Nobody knocks up more serving girls than the king’s younger brothers.

It sounds plausible to me. I’ve wanted to - well, not exactly knock up, but do the deed with a few serving girls myself.

1. So much for the supposedly non-judgemental attitudes of people who work with special-ed kids. [↩]