Blue Collar Scientist

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. [↩]