Science

The Kansas Board of Education has approved new standards that mandate the teaching of “Intelligent Design” (which I’ve always thought should be called Paleyontology) in science classrooms. According to CNN, in addition to mandating that students be told that some basic Darwinian ideas “have been challenged in recent years by fossil evidence and molecular biology,” the board also decided to help themselves to a bit more, too:

bq. In addition, the board rewrote the definition of science, so that it is no longer limited to the search for natural explanations of phenomena.

Priceless. Unfortunately they didn’t adopt my suggestion that science be further redefined to include sitting at home drinking a beer and watching the game on TV. This would have greatly enhanced my weekend contributions to science.

On a couple of long plane flights this week, I read Janet Browne’s Charles Darwin: The Power of Place, the second volume of her biography of Darwin. (I haven’t read Volume One.) I strongly recommend it. Three things stood out for me.

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This is a very fun NYT Science Times article about one Norman I. Platnick, who has “discovered more than 1,200 new spider species, several dozen new genuses and a couple of new families.” In addition, he has been a major contributor to cladistics, “a method of sorting organisms based on the evolutionary features they share, all derived from their closest common ancestor.” I have to say that spiders freak me out; my nightmares often feature the banded-legged garden spiders of my South Carolina youth, totally harmless but swiftly enlarging through the summer to the size of my small spanned hands. Needless to say, equatorial rain forests have got some damn big spiders as well. I can recall an early morning hike through the small remaining section of primary rainforest in the Singapore Botancial Gardens, during which I saw the two biggest spiders of my life in high webs. Like, really big. Much bigger than tarantulas in the Carribbean, say. I spent the rest of the walk with my hand outstretched in front of my face; what if I were the first one along this path? Still, I have always been willing to catch even big wolf spiders under a glass, then slide a piece of paper beneath it, and throw them outside. I hope the arachnidae appreciate that. And hey, at least I don’t live in Australia! (This reminds me of the Terry Pratchett novel The Last Continent. Death and his butler attempt to retrieve information about the poisonous creatures of “Four Ecks” and are nearly crushed under an avalanche of books. Once they have decided to ask about the non-lethal animals a single sheet comes fluttering down from a high shelf, bearing the legend: “some of the sheep”.)

I caught the Guinness evolution ad (QuickTime movie) when I went to see the (rather excellent) Sommersturm last night. (I doubt that cinemas in Kansas will be showing the ad any time soon — or the movie for that matter!)

[Aaargh! It turns out that this is the _third time_ we’ve linked to the Guinness ad on CT (sorry Eszter and Kieran ) — we really must start reading one another’s posts!]

Wow, sign me up.

A leading architect of the intelligent-design movement defended his ideas in a federal courtroom on Tuesday and acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design….

Listening from the front row of the courtroom, a school board member said he found Professor Behe’s testimony reaffirming. “Doesn’t it sound like he knows what he’s talking about?” said the Rev. Ed Rowand, a board member and church pastor.

Yeah, dude. It totally sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. Also, did I ever tell you about the time I made a gravity bong? I cut off the bottom of a 2-liter bottle, and put it in the pool, and then….

Damn you, liberal elites!!

Wait, did you know that you can use a fish tank compressor and a gas mask to make an electric bong? Seriously dude, you have to listen to this. OMG, and did I ever tell you about this amazing juice fast I went on? You just use Grade B maple syrup and lemon juice… No, you have to promise me you’ll try this juice fast!

Robert Winston writing in the Guardian :

bq. While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the brain. Dopamine is one neurotransmitter which we know plays a powerful role in our feelings of well-being; it may also be involved in the sense of peace that humans feel during some spiritual experiences. One particular gene involved in dopamine action – incidentally, by no means the only one that has been studied in this way – is the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4). In some people, because of slight changes in spelling of the DNA sequences (a so-called polymorphism) making up this gene, the gene may be more biologically active, and this could be partly responsible for a religious bent.

Well I’m quite open to the idea that those specially drawn to religion have a chemical imbalance in their brains, but this thesis surely has to contend with the startling temporal fluctuations in religiosity that different societies undergo. The Irish and Italians, two name but two, don’t seem especially religious at the moment, but go back a generation or three …. I doubt very much that their genetic stock has changed that much.

The DARPA grand challenge is a 175-mile race for autonomous vehicles — cars or trucks that drive themselves. It’s currently underway out in the Mojave desert in Nevada. The teams in charge of the vehicles were told the route early this morning, and the vehicles set off a few hours later. The course is tough, with obstacles and sections (like tunnels) where it’s impossible to use GPS devices. Last year, the challenge was a bit of a disaster, with no team managing more than a few miles, and many vehicles failing completely. This year only a few have dropped out and three have already covered almost 100 miles of the course. The DARPA Challenge Homepage has live updates of all the vehicles. There are three main contenders: H1ghlander (a Hummer H1, you see) and Sandstorm are both run by Red Team Racing, based at Carnegie Mellon and sponsored in part by some big defense contractors like Boeing and Harris. The other challenger (currently running H1ghlander a close second) is Stanley, a modified Volkswagen Touareg run by a team from Stanford. Confirming an observation Dave Barry makes somewhere (about how men are able to sit down in front of a TV showing a tennis match between two anonymous Eastern Europeans from the 1980s and instantly begin supporting one of them), it took about 30 seconds for me to become a strong Stanleyite.

Of course, DARPA is kind of a hit-and-miss agency: sometimes it helps invent the Internet, sometimes suitcase nukes or microwave-based riot-control/torture devices. So the Grand Challenge can be seen either as the precursor of safe autopilot for cars or the embryo form of one of these. The technology behind the vehicles is pretty cool. It reminds me (as the film _Apollo 13_ reminded me) of an old _Punch_ cartoon of two hairy, flea-bitten cavemen standing in front of the gorgeous cave paintings of Lascaux. “Art, art, art,” says one to the other. “When are we going to get some engineers?”

Congratulations to Barry Marshall and Robin Warren, winners of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery that stomach ulcers are caused, not by stress as was formerly believed, but by a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori. This is a classic Nobel-type discovery beginning with Warren’s acute observation, and continuing with Marshall’s work in culturing and identifying the bacterium.

It’s a striking observation that, thirty years ago, nearly everybody “knew” two things about stress: it was the primary cause of ulcers and it was particularly common among people men in executive jobs. Although widely held, these beliefs had never been properly tested by research and both turned out to be false. Surprising as it may seem, it’s more stressful to be ordered about than to order other people about. More precisely, the prevalence of stress-related diseases increases as you go down hierarchies of authority, status and so on.

The Nobel Prize for Economics[1] must be coming up soon. I have some ideas as to who should win, but as I’m very peripherally involved in the selection process, I’ll keep them to myself.

fn1. Strictly speaking, the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

The New York Times has an article by Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia about Einstein’s famous equation E=mc². In it he says:

The standard illustrations of Einstein’s equation – bombs and power stations – have perpetuated a belief that E = mc² has a special association with nuclear reactions and is thus removed from ordinary activity.

This isn’t true. When you drive your car, E = mc² is at work. As the engine burns gasoline to produce energy in the form of motion, it does so by converting some of the gasoline’s mass into energy, in accord with Einstein’s formula. When you use your MP3 player, E = mc² is at work. As the player drains the battery to produce energy in the form of sound waves, it does so by converting some of the battery’s mass into energy, as dictated by Einstein’s formula. As you read this text, E = mc² is at work. The processes in the eye and brain, underlying perception and thought, rely on chemical reactions that interchange mass and energy, once again in accord with Einstein’s formula.

I only did high school science, but I’m sure I remember learning the exact opposite of this claim, that chemical reactions like combustion leave mass and energy unchanged, only converting some of the chemical energy in the fuel into kinetic energy, and some into heat, with a net increase in entropy. Only nuclear reactions, I was taught, converted mass to energy. Wikipedia seems to back this up, though it isn’t absolutely unambiguous.

Can anyone set me (or, less plausibly, Greene) straight here?

fn1. As an aside, I also remember reading that a more correct version would be E=M. The term in c² just reflects an arbitrary choice of units in the metric system. But maybe that’s wrong too.

I’ve been engaged in some correspondence which began around the question of whether or not Mark Steyn rejects Darwin , but which has switched into a discussion of the views of philosopher and metaphysician, Peter van Inwagen . Specifically, the following passage from Van Inwagen’s essay “Quam Dilecta”:

bq. I remember reading a very amusing response made by David Berlinski to Stephen Jay Gould’s statement that modern science was rapidly removing every excuse that anyone had ever had for thinking that we were much different from our closest primate relatives. Berlinski pointed out that you can always make two things sound similar (or “different only in degree”) if you describe them abstractly enough: “What Canada geese do when they migrate is much like what we do when we jump over a ditch: in each case, an organism’s feet leave the ground, it moves through the air, and it comes down some distance away. The difference between the two accomplishments is only a matter of degree.” I am also put in mind of a cartoon Phillip Johnson once showed me: A hostess is introducing a human being and a chimp at a cocktail party. “You two will have a lot to talk about,” she says, “–you share 99 percent of your DNA.” I’m sorry if I seem to be making a joke of this, but…well, I am making of joke of this. I admit it. Why shouldn’t I? The idea that there isn’t a vast, radical difference, a chasm, between human beings and all other terrestrial species is simply a very funny idea. It’s like the idea that Americans have a fundamental constitutional right to own automatic assault weapons: its consequences apart, it’s simply a very funny idea, and there’s nothing much one can do about it except to make a joke of it. You certainly wouldn’t want to invest much time in an argument with someone who would believe it in the first place.

I’m not a scientist (or a metaphysician for that matter), but I’m not shy to ask the advice of those who are. So comments are open for general observations on the passage. I’d be interested to know, though, whether anything as unvarnished as that can actually be pinned on Gould (van Inwagen provides no reference). I can well imagine him saying that chimpanzees and humans have a great deal in common compared what they share with, say, sharks or spiders (but that’s a different claim). The other thing that occured to me is that it is rather rich for someone to propose a laugh test to rule out counterintuitive scientific generalization when they themselves believe that only human beings and elementary particles exist . My correspondent has corrected me to say that my characterization of van Inwagen’s view is inexact and that he holds that not only human beings by anything else with a “unified consciousness” can exist. So God and the angels are in too. That doesn’t really diminish my sense that when it comes to claims that are, on the face of it, laughable, van Inwagen may be a man throwing stones in a glasshouse.

Matt Cheney voices a common complaint about the MacArthur foundation awards.

bq. I’m glad Lethem was chosen, and certainly am excited for him, but this choice continues the unfortunate trend of the MacArthur award often going to writers who have already found a lot of success. Imagine, for instance, how much it would have changed Lethem’s life to get this award not right now, when his books sell well, but ten (or even five) years ago, when the $500,000 would have done exactly what it is supposed to do: free the recipient from financial considerations that limit their ability to experiment.

And indeed, a cursory glance at the list of awardees tells us that well over half of them are over 40, and/or well established in their career paths. Of course, the MacArthur foundation has excellent institutional reasons for choosing people who already seem to have established themselves – to do otherwise would be to take much bigger risks that MacArthur awardees are going to flake out later or have mediocre careers. But then, would you do better? If you think so, your nominations (more or less serious please) invited in comments for people who _should_ get awards in the future. Less serious speculations as to the most plausible blogger to receive a MacArthur are also invited (my money would be on Cory Doctorow).

In passing the other day, I mentioned the Moondoggle. This is the idea floated early last year that NASA might return to the moon and build a base there, for no particular reason. At the time I thought it was just a failed trial balloon that rose out of Karl Rove’s head. But several commenters said that in fact it was alive and well, and now I see the BBC reports that 2020 has been set as the date NASA will triumphantly return to 1969 — er, I mean, the moon. Nasa Administrator Mike Griffin said the new launch vehicle and lander would be “very Apollo-like, with updated technology. Think of it as Apollo on steroids.” This is an appropriate comparison, because it makes clear that the new project will be bloated, prone to fights, and, when it comes to producing anything of lasting scientific value, probably impotent.

A review of Chris Mooney’s _The Republican War on Science_ available from Powells here, and Amazon (deprecated) here.

Books about the politics of science policy and other complicated policy areas have a hard time doing justice to the politics and the technical aspects both; they usually emphasize one and underplay the other. On the one hand, many journalistic accounts ham up the politics, and underplay the analysis, documenting the atrocities, one after another after another. Raw outrage supported by anecdotes gets partisans’ juices flowing, but it’s not likely to persuade the unpersuaded, or provide any good understanding of how to solve the problem (other than to kick the bums out, which is a start, but only a start). On the other, there are books that do an excellent job of discussing the underlying policy issues, but that lack political zing. Marion Nestle’s _Food Politics_ is a good example; it provides a nuanced (and utterly damning) account of how the technical processes of food regulation have been corrupted by special interests, but it’s written by a policy wonk for policy wonks. There’s lots and lots of technical nitty gritty. The good news is that Chris Mooney’s book pulls off the difficult double act of talking about the politics in a fresh and immediate fashion while paying attention to the underlying issues of institutions and policies, and does it with considerable aplomb. _The Republican War on Science_ is written with an eye for a good story, but it still has a real intellectual punch. There’s an underlying argument as to _why_ the relationship between science and politics is in a parlous state. While I think that there’s an interesting piece missing from this argument (on which more below), it links the very different issues of science politics under the current administration (regulation, intelligent design, global warming, stem cell research) into a more-or-less coherent narrative.
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John McCain and Peter Likins (president of the University of Arizona) write an op-ed for the _Chronicle_ on efforts by Republicans in Congress to intimidate scientists doing research on global warming.

bq. the government cannot craft sound policy unless it can count on scientists to provide accurate data on which to base its actions. (The consequences of spinning or withholding facts can be seen in the lives lost to disease because tobacco companies withheld evidence from Congress and the Food and Drug Administration.) When members of Congress recently began pressuring scientists who have offered evidence of global warming, they broke that crucial covenant. The chairman and another member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, in an apparent effort to discredit the findings reported by three distinguished scientists from respected universities, demanded that the scientists send Congress all of the scientific data they have gathered in their entire careers, even data on studies unrelated to their publications on global warming. … The message sent by the Congressional committee to the three scientists was not subtle: Publish politically unpalatable scientific results and brace yourself for political retribution, which might include denial of the opportunity to compete for federal funds. Statements that such requests are routine ring hollow: Asking for scientific information may be routine, but asking for all of the data produced in a scientist’s career is highly irregular. It represents a kind of intimidation, which threatens the relationship between science and public policy. That behavior must not be tolerated.

I know that McCain has disappointed on a variety of fronts, but I’m still very happy to see him issuing a vigorous and unambiguous denunciation of his colleagues in the House. I’ll have more to say about these issues in my review of Chris Mooney’s book.