Tag Archives: Biology

Dawkins on Darwin

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Richard Dawkins is presenting a short Channel 4 series on Darwin. It’s mostly pretty damn good. It’s clear and enthusiastic and really enjoyable. I was really pleased to see that Dawkins opposes the faux-evolutionary nonsense that is used to justify predatory capitalism.

However, I’ve got to put in a couple of gripes, just to stop this blog being suspected of mere sycophancy:

Why does he keep referring to Darwinism? There is no Darwinism. Dawkins must be getting too many trolls and, absent-mindedly, paying attention to them.

There is also some justice in Libby Purves’ argument that Dawkins has set up too simple a choice between believing in evolution and believing in god(s). In the first programme, he addressed a collection of school students who had been led to believe that accepting evolution ran counter to the religions they were brought up in. So, they didn’t believe in it. He showed them some clear evidence and some of them felt obliged to question their faith. Libby Purves argued that this was a bit of a false example, as there are huge numbers of god-believers who accept the evidence for evolution.

Dawkins’s response seems a bit lame to me.

She goes on to say, “OK, he is provoked, as we all are, by nutters. But most believers are not creationists.” I expect it’s true that the few believers Libby Purves meets over canapés are not creationists. But “most believers”? Most believers in Bradford? The Scottish Highlands? Pakistan? Indonesia? The Arab world? South America? Indeed, North America? Polls suggest that more than 40 per cent of the British population are creationists. For the subset who call themselves believers, the figure must be considerably more than 50 per cent. Please don’t say “most people”, when what you really mean is Islington and Hampstead Garden Suburb.

Well, stop there Dawkins. “Polls suggest..” What polls? Please don’t say “polls suggest” when what you are really presenting sounds like made up numbers.

Most people know bugger all about evolution, let alone have views on it.

But, assuming that Libby Purves is talking about the UK, most people that I know who have any views on evolution take it for granted. In fact, I have never knowingly come across an outspoken creationist. And I certainly don’t live in Islington or Hampstead. Nor would I recognise a canape if it leaped off a silver salver and bit me on the nose. In fact, as a non-Islington-resident prole, I sort of resent the implication that proles are stupider than the rich.

Anglicans and Catholics don’t have any problem with the theory of evolution, for a start. So the mainstream UK religions aren’t encouraging people to doubt it. South America? Big place. Mostly Catholic, so I assume that evolution is generally accepted there.

What’s left? Basically North America and Islam. I don’t know enough about the many shades of Islam to judge on this one, although I am pretty confident that most muslims are as unknowing and uninterested in evlutionary theory as most other people. I do think I know that North America is bursting with people who don’t understand accept evolution.

I have to agree with Libby Purves when she said “OK, he is provoked, as we all are, by nutters.” I completely agree with Dawkins that there more than enough of these idiots and that they have to be opposed. But, I don’t think it’s always wise to help them talk up their anti-science madness by presenting a false dichotomy between accepting science and believing in deities. It’s accepting the terms of reference of the creationists, their idea that there is a “debate” between ID and evolution.

This “debate” can only benefit the nutters. Scientists don’t have to accommodate the creation myths of the vikings or the yoruba by constantly “debating” whether evolution or the mixture of fire and ice or the formation of dry land from water is true. (In fact, these myths seem far more logical and metaphorically “true” than the middle eastern creation myths.) Why waste too much time and effort challenging the myths that come from the middle east?

Still, whines over. Bloody good tv overall, to be honest.

The Rise of Creationism

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Oddly, until a few years ago I had never even heard of Intelligent Design or Creationism. I put this down to having gone to a good, high quality, school and having as my main circle of friends intelligent and educated people.

I can honestly say that prior to discovering the American madness, I was blissfully unaware that anyone really thought there was any grounds for this to be thought of as sensible, let alone a legitimate scientific topic. I think my first encounters with the madness idea called ID came around the turn of the millennium. How things have changed in the last seven years.

The idea that, in 1999, there was a mainstream awareness of ID / Creationism in the UK is laughable. It was certainly never even alluded to while I was at school – it might have been hinted at in Religious Education classes, but even then it was done with an understanding it wasn’t “real.”I have friends who have gone on to be teachers and university types – who all studied around the end of the 1990s, and they support my recollections that ID/Creationism was virtually unheard of in the UK at that time.

Now, however, things are different.

Reading the BBC Education news draws a frightening picture, with an article titled “Teachers Fear Evolution Lessons.” The BBC piece is well worth reading, and begins:

The teaching of evolution is becoming increasingly difficult in UK schools because of the rise of creationism, a leading scientist is warning.

Head of science at London’s Institute of Education Professor Michael Reiss says some teachers, fearful of entering the debate, avoid the subject totally.

This generates two reactions in me. Sadly for teachers (and my closest friend is a biology teacher), neither cast teachers in a good light.

First off, since when have teachers been “fearful” of entering a debate with their students? What crazy world is this we live in. If a teacher is incapable, or unwilling, to debate with a student who disagrees with what they are saying then they are not teachers. Do teachers want to simply teach robotic children who soak up every single thing they are taught without question or challenge? I honestly hope not.

Secondly, why are teachers allowing these ideas to spread in the first place? It seems teacher-spokespersons (often self appointed I presume) will regularly come up with some news worthy diatribe about how teachers are being prevented from teaching because parents are allowing their kids to be unruly, eat the wrong food, watch too much TV etc. Surely this is really not something the teachers can blame others for. If teachers were doing their job properly, then people would understand how creationism is nonsense and could get on with the task of learning science.

Anyway, going back to my original point, when did creationism become such a big thing in the UK. We were once (as social “scientist” Heather will keep reminding me) a more secular nation than Communist Russia where religion was outlawed. This is now, obviously, consigned to the dust bin of history, but I am curious as to when / why this change took place. Did the internet and Americanisation of our culture cause it? Does the vast amount of Polish immigrants cause it? Does any one know? Read the article and let me know what you think.

[tags]Education, Teachers, Biology, Evolution, Creationism, Intelligent Design, ID, Darwin, Dawkins, Science, Religion, Belief, Madness, Society, Culture, Secular, Christian, UK, Michael Reiss, London’s Institute of Education, Teaching, Educational Standards, Nutcases[/tags]

Best friends forever

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What is it about dogs? The evidence suggests that the human race is bent on getting revenge on the dog species for our traditional fear of wolves.

A true horror story involving a 5-year-old girl and an abused dog that killed her has made chunks of the news unwatchable since New Year’s Eve. This story has come to an end with the acquittal of her grandmother for negligent manslaughter but “killer dogs” still remain an issue.

Dog fighting is an underground activity for which dogs are specifically bred and “trained” Banned dogs sometimes get seized, whenever there is spurt of public concern. The dogs usually get killed, unsurprisingly, given that they have been turned into blameless homicide machines. In that particular story, it is claimed that:

Two dogs, described as dangerous by the USPCA, training equipment and manuals were seized in the Village area.
The raids followed information received after a recent Spotlight/Panorama programme.
The 17-month investigation uncovered 15 illegal dog fighting gangs in Northern Ireland.

15? In Northern Ireland? Population? According to Wikipedia, it has the population of reasonable-sized city, 1,710,300.

I suppose dog-fighting is a minor misdemeanour in a place where murder and kneecapping are everyday experiences. Still, 15 dog-fighting gangs seems a high number for what you would hope was very much a minority interest, given that they would also need a pretty sizeable supporting population of willing attenders at dog-fights.

I am not suggesting the Northern Irish are any more psychopathic than the general population of the UK, here. Where I live, the number of dogs that exist solely to look brutal when snarling at the leashes of would-be “gangstas” almost defies belief.

I don’t want to go down the route of rightly-discredited Freudian bullshit here but I will anyway. The way that people use dogs speaks too loudly about their own feelings about being male or female. Or, more precisely, their fear of not being “masculine” or “feminine” enough to fit the current stereotypes.

The cupiditous-moron-model female carries about an offensively “cute” mini-child dog, with a bow on its head. She’s saying “Look at me. I’m so cute and cuddly and loving. And I’m so appealingly childlike that I carry round a living teddy.”

The would-be-tough-brute-model male drags around a creature that looks as if it’s been dragged up from the Hammer-horror pits of hell. He’s saying “Look at me. I’m so macho and tough that only I can handle this rabid cur. I’m basically an animal myself.”

Yes, it’s tragically pathetic, but I also suspect that it shows why getting ever greater control over human reproduction is potentially very dangerous. We are basically not a very rational species.

If dogs had the level of rationality that we (often mistakenly) imagine that humans have, they would be cursing those ancestral wolves who traded life with their own packs for the easy pickings they could get from allying themselves to our species.

Does anyone else feel unnerved seeing our species gaining more and more control over what our descendants become, when they see what a dog’s breakfast we’ve made of the humble dog? In this context, there was a very short Sunday Herald article by Dawkins that I really have to take issue with. He was makinga point that the association of Hitler with eugenics shouldn’t in itself stop us contemplating it. He said that

But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as “these are not one-dimensional abilities” apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice.

There are two points here. Firstly, humans generally do breed selectively and always have. We just use criteria of appearance and similarity of interests, etc., to make those “choices.” These choices are already often bad enough. But at least, nature mixes up our DNA to throw up unexpected results. It’s evolution in action.

But, as a more specific argument against even greater deliberate human control over reproduction, I am suggesting that the evidence of the dog, in itself (bred now for its bizarre appearance or its assumed willingness to fight, rather than its herding skills) answers this question well enough.

We are humans. Even the brightest and most well-meaning of us have only the vaguest idea about the long-term consequences of our actions. Our own species is quite disturbed enough already.

Bible Hijacks Brains of Respected Scientists

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Oh bugger. How easy it is to become the enemy….

This post on the Scientific Activist: Animal Rights Activists Hijack the Brains of Three Respected Scientists, the subject of which is a paper in Bioessays that suggests that cell cultures and computer modelling should replace more animal experiments.

It’s fair to say that this Scientific Activist blog post isn’t exactly supportive of the view point but it’s a reasonably argued post. It ends with this point.

As scientists, we should constantly be thinking about ways to reduce our dependence on animal research, and this paper does attempt to advance this cause. However, this should not be done at the expense of the science (and at the expense of human lives), and grossly oversimplifying the issue, as this paper seems to, does a service to no one.

Not so Pharyngula’s take on it.

Once we’ve defeated the creationists (hah!), we’re going to have to manage the next problem: well-meaning but ill-informed animal rights activists. Nick describes a recent article that tries to claim we can reduce animal use in labs — and it even has a couple of respectable scientists signing on to that nonsense.

Hmm. Well it rather looks, from the bit I quoted above, as if Nick (assuming that refers to Scientific Activist) did accept that reducing animal use was a goal to aim for, rather than “nonsense”, but Toutatis forbid that Pharyngula blogged on something without reading the whole article. (I mean WhyDontYou blog would never dream of doing anything like that. Well, not very often… )

I’m not a biologist. In fact, my schoolgirl aversion to biology was based precisely on the fact that it involved cutting up dead creatures. So, I don’t know how far slicing up animal’s bodies – or genetically manipulating them so they exist only to exhibit diseases similar to the ones humans have and so on – are necessary for the furtherance of knowledge.

But, it better had be bloody necessary before it’s OK with me.

If that makes me an enemy of reason, that’s tough. “Respected scientists” must have had their “brains hijacked” because they suggest other more animal-sparing alternatives? Those of us who think they have a point are the enemies of science, almost as if we are the wimpier wing of the creationists?

Surely biology shows us that we are animals? Mammals? That we share most of our genes with other sentient beings? But we can just ignore this whenever it suits us and act as if we have a right to do whatever we like with other species.

This form of “atheism” is basically indistinguishable from the Judeao-Christian world view that everything else in the universe is just our plaything, just without the Jahweh figure directing the show. Yada Yada… He gave man “dominion over all the beasts of the field” and so on, to do whatever we damn well please with?

How come that bit of the Bible is still gospel to a lot of atheist scientists?

Pope turns out to be Catholic

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Chernobyl not a wildlife haven is one of the most bizarre headlines you could come across.

Were people really suggesting that massive irradiation was an ecological plus?

It does appear so. Apparently, a paper in American Scientist had suggested that

“the benefits for wildlife from the lack of human activity outweighed the risks of low-level radiation….. It can be said that the world’s worst nuclear power plant disaster is not as destructive to wildlife populations as are normal human activities.”

(Well, the BBC said this research was in American Scientist but I couldn’t find it, although the researcher, Robert Baker reports his findings on his website.)

Well, that suggests that nature can repair even the most extreme damage if we just butt out and leave it to it. (Although, sterilising large swathes of farmland may not be to everyone’s taste as sensible use of land.) Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case, according to the research by A.P. Møller and T.A. Mousseau.

In fact their study, published today in the Royal Society’s Biology Letters suggests that the reverse is the case and that the ecological effects are actually even more damaging than expected.

The paper’s abstract says

Recent conclusions from the UN Chernobyl forum and reports in the popular media concerning the effects of radiation from Chernobyl on animals have left the impression that the Chernobyl exclusion zone is a thriving ecosystem, filled with an increasing number of rare species…. We conducted standardized point counts of breeding birds at forest sites around Chernobyl differing in level of background radiation by over three orders of magnitude. Species richness, abundance and population density of breeding birds decreased with increasing level of radiation, even after controlling statistically for the effects of potentially confounding factors such as soil type, habitat and height of the vegetation. ……These results imply that the ecological effects of Chernobyl on animals are considerably greater than previously assumed.

Given that there is an increasing push to present nuclear power as the carbon-friendlier alternative to fossil fuels, it’s salutary to be reminded that nuclear radiation is not a healthy and natural boost to species diversity. The fallout (lame pun intended) from any accident will be poisoning the land for many generations.

This result was pretty predictable from what has long been known about radiation. So why is it a surprise? Will this research be as widely reported as the “good news”?

Scientific Vigilante

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In the course of commenting on each post I read, I have come across a problem very early on. I don’t have, and don’t want, a blogger account which makes it impossible for me to comment on some blogs hosted by blogspot / blogger (see how many times you can engineer the word blog into a sentence…). To work around this, I am going to have to make my comments here instead.

On the plus side, this has the added advantage of giving the recipient blog a technorati backlink if they are interested in that sort of thing.

Anyway, the Biologists Helping Bookstores blog is hilarious. It is a shame I never came across it before. Basically, this person goes round bookstores and re-categorises the woo-books into more appropriate places, mainly moving non-science back into religion where it belongs.

My favourite post though is La Jolla Bookstar, 7/20/2007 one. Not only did it generate the comment which inspired the title for this post, but it includes the blog author moving Behe’s book to the New Age section:

Six copies of Behe’s new non-science book are relocated to their rightful place next to Everyday Magic, The Love Spell, and Grimoire for the Green Witch (what is “grimoire” anyway?).

Perfect! It is accompanied by photos as well… What more could you ask for? Although I have never done this myself, it seems lots of people have – well done to them all.

[tags]Blog, Comment Week, Biology, Behe, Evolution, Non-Science, New Age,grimoire, technorati, religion, science, society[/tags]

ID advocates never sleep

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According to Matthew Taylor in today’s Guardian:

State schools could teach the theory of intelligent design in science lessons, the Church of England’s new head of education has suggested.

Well, where do you start on this?

In my limited understanding of Intelligent Design, it is not “science”. It cannot be considered a science using any definition that I can recognise. “That’s really complex, so someone must have planned it” doesn’t seem wildly scientific to me.

There was brilliant post on Pharyngula that pointed out that astrology is much more scientific than ID. At least you can falsify astrological predictions. (It always gladdens my heart when “real” scientists show knowledge of epistemology.)

Continue reading →

DNA and Race

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PLoS ONE, an open source way of publishing science and medicine studies and research, has an interesting article about the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of people on the Melanesian Islands.

It may not be all that good news for Young Earth Creationists though, as this study looks at the islands which were settled 40,000 years ago – more than thirty thousand years before God created the Earth. Also, it may help to undermine the concept of significant racial differences between people from different continents. It appears this group of people are among the most genetically diverse in the world, with variations being based on the size of their home island and the language they speak. This is from the abstract:

Melanesian populations are known for their diversity, but it has been hard to grasp the pattern of the variation or its underlying dynamic. Using 1,223 mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from hypervariable regions 1 and 2 (HVR1 and HVR2) from 32 populations, we found the among-group variation is structured by island, island size, and also by language affiliation. The more isolated inland Papuan-speaking groups on the largest islands have the greatest distinctions, while shore dwelling populations are considerably less diverse (at the same time, within-group haplotype diversity is less in the most isolated groups). (Friedlaender JS et al. (2007) Melanesian mtDNA Complexity. PLoS ONE 2(2): e248. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000248)

As the differences from one island to the next are quite large here, it seems somewhat trivial to try and identify differences between one continent and the next as being significant. Eat that Jade Goody.

Prove or Disprove

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Short one as not much to rant about today, however some general web surfing has made me think about a few issues in science related to Evolution / Creationism.

The scientific method is well established and is certainly the “generally accepted” way of defining what is scientific and what isn’t. This method, not some half baked 2000 year old text which has been re-written more times than I can count, provides the yardstick against which all science is measured – be it Evolution, Relativity, Electromagnetism, anything. Without it, well, it’s back to the dark ages.

The crux of the method is the ability to make testable predictions and carry out proper experiments which can falsify the theory. You dont actually have to prove the theory wrong for it to be scientific (although this is a common misconception of the term) but you need to be able to construct an experiment which could prove the theory wrong. This is important so make a note of it.

Now, on to the wonders of creationism. Most, if not all, creationist propaganda carries the sole message that “Evolution is Wrong.” If you do a YouTube, Google or (especially) a MySpace search you come across all manner of idiocy and madness about the topic. People saying “evolution is wrong because … [insert nonsense].” Things range from the “missing link” oddity to crazy arguments like irreducible complexity. The main thing they all have in common is the nonsense and bad science which tends to back them.

The important thing, in the context of this post anyway, is the issue about disproving evolution.

First off, the fact that the lunatics (ID, YEC et al) are capable of coming up with a possible experimental circumstance which could disprove evolution reinforces the fact that evolution is scientific. Scientific does not mean true or correct. Newtonian Gravity was a scientific theory which turned out to be incorrect. This is part of the way science works. A scientific fact has more caveats than the average person would ever think of applying to something “factual.”

Secondly, and possibly more importantly, even if the lunatics did manage to disprove the theory of evolution, that does not mean Creationism takes a default win. That is not how science works. A flaw in general relativity (eg, interactions on the quantum scale) does not mean Newtonian Gravity is correct – or to be a more accurate analogy, a flaw in GR does not mean gravity is caused by bananas. Finding something in a theory which is wrong is the “Holy Grail” (all puns intended) of science. It means people get to advocate new Scientific theories (sorry, creationists, you dont count). People get Nobel prizes. People get huge amounts of funding. (and so on).

Intelligent Design / Creationism / whatever, is not scientific. It really isn’t. Saying “God Did It” is not science – even changing God to something you think will slip under the radar still does not make it science. If anything it is the end of science. It blocks further investigation because if anything is unknown or fails to meet the predictions you can just say “the creator wanted it that way and who are we to second guess the all-mighty one?”

Falsifying evolution would be a good thing, but it certainly would not mean creationism was the correct science. The theory of evolution is scientific. It almost certainly is not the endstate for our understanding of life and it makes no predictions about how life started, but it is a valid, solid, theory. Just like gravity. I am not going to even think of getting worked up about the “it’s just a theory” crap…

More on McKeith

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It seems I am not alone in getting some satisfaction out of seeing McKeith have to admit she is not a doctor.
“Back off, man; I’m a scientist.” also picks up the topic with its “Bless” post.

The post picks up on McKeith saying how she feels “bullied” and she claims ” I’m entitled to use ‘Dr’ because I have a PhD in Holistic Nutrition, which I studied for four years to get.” Now that is funny. Obviously she is joking…

Anyway, the Back off, man; I’m a scientist makes the reasonable comments:

This is a woman who goes on TV and makes “an obese woman cry, in her own back garden, by showing her a tombstone with her own name on it, made out of chocolate”, who said to another “‘Do you want to see your daughter get married and have babies? Because the way things are going you’ll have a heart attack at 40″.

She’s made a career out of making fat people cry, so just let the satisfaction flow.

Well Said that man!