Science Process and Scientific Literacy

A common theme on this blog is irritation with the scientific illiteracy of much of the public.  This is, it needs to be noted, different from a lack of educational achievement.  While it is popular to divide the world into uneducated cretins and enlightened college graduates, this is complete bullshit.  While certain forms of anti-scientific thinking are popular among those without degrees, things such as vaccine denial, hysteria over GMOs, and belief in bogus "energy healing" are extremely common among people with degrees. 

In fact, my own experience is that those with degrees tend to be far more intractable in their false beliefs in large part because they have degrees.  I have lost count of the number of times that I have had a conversation with someone who was spouting pseudo-scientific nonsense and had them respond finally with "well, I earned a degree from Stanford [or another major university], so clearly I'm smart enough to understand this!"

A degree from Stanford, or anywhere else, in literature or history does not make one knowledgeable about biology, medicine, or physics.  Certainly, someone with such a degree can become knowledgeable about these subjects, but to rely on the fact that you have a degree and not on training on the subject in question is a sign of sloppy thinking.

Most of the time, people are simply accepting whatever is convenient for their social and political views, and ignoring any disconfirming data.  So, people on the political right are perfectly willing to accept marginal and poorly done studies that conclude that there is doubt about climate change contrary to the general scientific consensus, but people on the political left are willing to accept equally dubious studies that allege harm from GMO crops; people on the social right are willing to buy all manner of nonsense about the alleged harms that homosexuals do to their families, but people on the social left are only too ready to accept dubious studies concerning the role of self esteem in crime. 

Part of the problem is, I think, that there is a tendency to equate scientific literacy with acceptance of certain conclusions, a scientifically literate person is one who accepts that evolution occurred, to use one example.  In truth, scientific literacy is about having a knowledge of the methods of science.  Importantly, it is about knowing the parameters under which scientific knowledge is generated.

Let's take the example of the study by Andrew Wakefield that is used to make claims about a link between vaccines and autism.  Many people either accepted it because it gelled with their social and political views (medicine bad, big pharma evil) or rejected it because it clashed with their views (vaccines are part of the progress of mankind!).  Very few people who hold a strong view on it have actually read it.

I did read it.  When I read it, I, like everyone else, was unaware that Wakefield had falsified data or tweaked his results.  But I was struck by two things: 1) the causal mechanism that he suggested, wherein the thimerisol in the vaccine caused inflamation int he digestive tract that allowed infection leading to autism, didn't sound plausible.  However, I am not a medical doctor and am aware that there may be something to this that I simply didn't understand (this recognizing of one's own limits in knowledge is an important part of scientific literacy).  2) The sample size was small, totaling 12 children.  A small sample size is useful in trying to prove the plausibility of a basic concept, but is insufficient for actually proving anything medical because of the high odds of random chance interfering with a sample size that small.

So, after reading it, I went away thinking that it sounded implausible, but that I didn't know enough about the subject to judge that too strongly, and that the sample size was small and larger scale studies would be needed to find a link between vaccines and autism with any confidence.  In other words, my own scientific literacy pointed to the problems with the study, but prevented me from ignoring it outright until such time as further data was generated.  I continued to get vaccinations myself, and encouraged people with children to get them, as the general scientific consensus was still in favor of them, but I was open to the possibility that this might be wrong.

In time, large scale studies were performed, and they showed that there is no link between vaccines and autism, and Wakefield has since been revealed as an outright fraud.  However, by that time, numerous people had jumped on the bandwagon of a hypothesis supported by a dubious small-scale study, leading to the resurgence of numerous nearly eradicated (and in some cases deadly) illnesses.  A greater degree of scientific literacy would have cautioned people early on, and they would have considered the possibility of the study being accurate alongside the need for further study to test the hypothesis.  Considering that children have been injured and killed because of vaccine denial, this is a case where a lack of scientific literacy resulted in very serious consequences.

Recently, studies have been published arguing that organic farming leads to healthier soil and that acupuncture is effective in dealing with pain.  In both cases, people either jumped on board or rejected the claims based on their pre-existing beliefs, without ever actually looking into the contents of the studies themselves.  The acupuncture study was riddled with problems (for a summary of it and similar studies, look here) that effectively eliminate it from consideration, while the organic farm studies are interesting and seem plausible, but tend to have small sample sizes and some methodological problems that decrease their ability to elucidate the issue.  However, you would only know these things if you read the papers themselves and read the scientific discussions and criticisms of the papers, which most people don't.  Most people go to Fox News or the Huffington Post and accept the summary from whichever source aligns with their social and political views without ever questioning the actual science itself.  And, importantly, this is extremely common amongst educated people with degrees from well-respected universities.

Acceptance and rejection of many scientific claims often falls along political lines.  Left-leaning individuals are more likely to accept that acupuncture is great, that organic farming improves soil, and that vaccines cause autism, all without seriously considering problems with and criticisms of the research; right-leaning individuals are more likely to embrace climate change denial and notions like intelligent design.  Those with college degrees are most likely to be able to convince themselves that they are too smart to have been fooled and to be able to rationalize their conclusions, no matter whether they are debatable but possible (organic farming improves soil) or flat-out false (intelligent design).  All are scientifically illiterate, and yet all think that they alone understand the world.

In sum: scientific literacy isn't about having the right knowledge, it's about having an understanding of how science works, which means knowing that one study doesn't "prove" anything, that multiple studies are necessary, the larger the scale the better, and that the criticisms of the studies are important - having certain base knowledge (the Earth orbits the sun, DNA codes many of our traits, etc.) is necessary and important but is no literacy in of itself.  It's about knowing that you are not knowledgeable about any but a narrow range of topics, and that you have to accept that you may be wrong and that people ideologically opposed to you may be right on any given topic.  It's about knowing that your educational background prepares you to evaluate information and ideas within the field that you studied, and does not make you more likely to be able to evaluate information outside of that field.  And, importantly, being scientifically literate means understanding that the things that you wish to be true or that align with your beliefs may be false, and that you have to listen to criticism of ideas that you hold dear, for those criticisms might be correct.

More Useless Advice Regarding Pregnancy and Childbirth

I was prepared for some of this, and I know that Kaylia is getting it worse than I am, but I am growing increasingly tired of the sheer volume of pregnancy and baby-related mystical nonsense and dubious and dangerous pseudo-science being pushed our way.  It began as a bit of a trickle, but the waters are rising, and I suspect it will be a full-on deluge before all is said and done.

As I say, it started small, but early, when Kaylia wrote on Facebook that she had eaten a few Chicken McNuggets early in the pregnancy for the wacky reason that they were about the only thing that her body wasn't making her vomit up. This received a huge amount of criticism, accusing Kaylia of "poisoning your baby!" as the people commenting on it demonstrated a complete and utter lack of comprehension of reality by confusing their culturally-conditioned notions of what is "gross" with more objective standards regarding what is actually dangerous.

Since then, we have received routine advice from well-meaning but ill-informed people about the value of such quackery as homeopathy and power-balance bracelets in dealing with pregnancy related problems.  As the people offering the advice usually have the best of intentions (and in the case of homeopathy, have typically been misled by the way that that particular quackery is marketed, and aren't aware that it is literally just water or sugar pills), we sometimes argue the point and sometimes just let it go, but have so far not followed any of it. 

As we have moved farther along in the pregnancy, we have been further drawn in to the absurdity that I call the Breast Milk Wars.  Now, to start, I should state the following:  I am well aware that the data supports breast feeding as an excellent way to ensure that the child is well-nourished and healthy, and may also provide psychological benefits for both the mother and child.  Moreover, I am not bothered by women breast-feeding in public.  So, people who find breast feeding repugnant, frankly, do seem to be pushing away a healthy practice, and people who get bent out of shape about children being fed in public places strike me as remarkably silly, often bordering on misogynistic.

However, breast milk is not magical.  While it may be the healthier choice, it is not an alchemical elixir that will solve all ills, and I have become more than slightly tired of smug, arrogant (and, it should be noted, generally privileged white people) attempting to stretch the actual data beyond all recognition in order to vilify or otherwise look down upon mothers who are unable or unwilling to engage in breast feeding.  Moreover, not every mother is capable of breast feeding as often as they would want, or their child would need.  In addition, we live in a world in which physical reality trumps all, and if the mother is away when the child needs to be fed, someone other than the mother is going to have to do it. Some of the logistical problems can be dealt with via a breast pump, but if the mother is unable to produce enough milk, even the pump isn't going to help.  Nonetheless, I have seen and heard more than a few rants lately in which the speaker (who while typically female is, interestingly from a social standpoint, also often male) rants about the evils of forumla, breats pumps, and any other thing that doesn't involve the child directly drinking from the mother, and about how anyone who would use such materials or devices is clearly either deluded or evil.  These rants are usually followed with "but I would never think to judge the decision of a woman who does differently than I."

In fact, for almost every one of these types of things that we have encountered, at least one person delivering a rant, pitch, or insane ramble is followed by them stating that they are not judging parents who do not act as they did.  Sorry, folks, but when you have just made your judgmental nature clear, you don't get out of it by claiming that you are not being judgmental anymore than a KKK member gets out of being racist by announcing that they aren't racist.

And the list goes on.  Recently, we were informed that choosing to have our child in a hospital (you know, those institutions with trained medical staff, each of whom has years or decades of experience in dealing with the myriad of potential complications involved in childbirth, on hand to deal with emergencies - AKA the institutions that mad the phrase "died in childbirth" something of an anachronism) is "sad."  No, it's not sad to want to have our child in a place and with people who can make sure that both our child and Kaylia are well taken care of.  The notion that we have committed some grievous wrong or are otherwise doing something bad in choosing to make a wise and prudent choice for the health of Kaylia and our child is what is sad.  No, actually, it's not sad, it's disturbing.

Oh, and, of course, there's the lunacy of people who think that vaccines are some big corporate conspiracy.  Vaccines.  You know, the things that made measles, polio, and rubella largely things of the past - though they are coming back due to the foolishness of the fore-mentioned privileged people who have never had to actually see the effects that these diseases have on children and communities.  Let me tell you this:  I have seen, first-hand, the long-term effects of some of these illnesses, and those who are choosing to avoid vaccines because they belief in the insane propaganda pushed by ideologues and fools are irresponsible and should be deeply ashamed of themselves.  But, of course, they won't be, instead they'll continue to put their communities and their own children at risk in the name of their bizarre and paranoid ideologies.

And all of that is the stuff that gets aimed primarily at Kaylia.  Let's talk briefly about the bizarreness that is aimed at fathers.

It came as little surprise to me that the majority of popular books on pregnancy and childbirth subscribe to the antiquated "dad, the idiot" model.  While the information in these books for fathers is useful, it is typically written in the most astoundingly condescending manner possible, and often verges into the realm of the mind-numbingly obvious.  For example, I have been informed that my partner may not be interested in sex when in the throes of morning sickness (if a man doesn't recognize this fact, then he has some issues that pre-date the pregnancy and likely render him unfit as a human, much less a father), that my partner may need emotional support while going through the pregnancy (what?  She might need emotional support while going through massive physical changes and alterations due to hormonal changes?  If you didn't already know this, how did you convince a woman let you get close enough to get her pregnant?).  Likewise, while these books do provide useful information on infant care for both mothers and fathers, they again adopt the attitude that childcare should be left to the (female) adults, and that the children (anyone with a Y chromosome, regardless of age) should just run along to their workplace to play and not worry their pretty little heads with the responsibilities of a caregiver.

Interestingly, one of the few books I have so far seen that accepts a significant role might be played by the father after fertilization is the "Husband Coached Childbirth" (AKA the Bradley Method) approach which, as far as I can tell, is not specifically religious in nature, but has earned a degree of popularity amongst the various religious-right sorts that I have met.  While it does have some really good ideas about how to reduce medical interventions during labor and delivery, it was written largely as a response to now-discarded practices from the 1940s and 1950s, and as such, its creators' anti-intervention stance should be more critically examined than it seems to be.  The culture of the Bradley Method is also so thoroughly steeped in pseudo-science and anti-medical rhetoric that, while it may have some useful ideas for the role of fathers, I have to admit that I have had to hold my nose when thumbing through the book.

So, the more "traditional" books seem to regard the father as an expendable amateur.  Surely the progressives will recognize the importance of both parents and encourage the father as a nurturer both to his partner and to their child, right?

Well, sort of, some of the time.  When it doesn't interfere with mystical thinking.

Many (though, it should be noted, thankfully not all) of the self-described "progressive parents" with whom I associate seem to have developed very clearly defined and inviolable roles for men and women in their minds, and these roles seem to typically play very much into the standard gender stereotypes with which Pat Robertson et al. would be very comfortable:  The father goes to work, brings home the money, and has only a limited role in childcare; the mother does all (and I mean all, no exception) feeding, most (if not all) basic care (bathing, changing, comforting, etc.) of the child, and is responsible for early childhood education.  Kaylia has been informed that she should not allow me to feed our child (even if I am using stored breast milk), and I have been often informed that, as I lack a uterus, I am incapable of reaching any sort of informed decision regarding childcare.

The difference between the religious right version and the progressive version of this seems to be centered around the idea of whether men or women are more valuable.  The religious right holds that the man is the head of the household, and all within it must submit to him.  The progressives hold that women are magical (though they will usually use terms such as "natural caregivers and nurturers" rather than "magical", but the use of the term "natural" might as well be substituted with the word "magical" for all of the actual meaning that it has), and fathers are doofuses who shouldn't be entrusted with the well-being of the child.  Us men are either dominators or dorks, and either way, we don't have what it takes to be anything other than either the breadwinner or the disciplinarian. 

Both sides will, of course, insist that they aren't claiming either gender is superior, they just have different roles.  Both sides are, of course, actually claiming that one gender is, in fact superior, and the other worthwhile only within a particular confined role.

Anyway, I have no more to say at the moment.  I'm just irritated and annoyed. 

On the upside, I will be a daddy soon, and I am looking forward to pissing off all ideologues by taking an active role in every aspect of my child's life.

Yogurt, Science, and Lies

I was just listening to an episode of WNYC's Radiolab which focused on the digestive tract.  One of the issues that is discussed in the episode is research into the role that intestinal bacteria play in altering brain chemistry, and therefore, mood.  As goofy as this may sound, it makes a certain degree of sense when you look at the map of nerves within the body and the roles of the brain and the gut in making sure that we are nourished and surviving. 

One researcher being interviewed claims that the results that he has gotten from altering the gut bacteria via diet is comparable to many anti-depressant drugs.  These results have been published int he Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.  Specifically, the researcher used different types of yogurt.  Now, this is one researcher, and there is still a long, long way to go in figuring out if and how these findings could be adapted into meaningful treatments.  But, the research is interesting, and on-going, and does seem to show some promise.

I write about this not because it is interesting in and of itself, though it certainly is, but because this is precisely the sort of research that most people who subscribe to naturopathy claim isn't occurring, or claim is being suppressed by "big pharma" - and yet, here it is, occurring, being published in major journals, and being discussed in a national radio show.  In other words, people who claim that non-pharmaceutical interventions are never examined or considered by doctors, because they are in the thrall of their "big pharma" overlords, you can point to this and call the claimant on their bullshit. 

And this is hardly an isolated incident.  Research into the role of diet in preventing/causing disease, and of general preventative medicine (including diet, but also exercise, emotional well-being, etc.) is done constantly in  major labs around the world, and published in major journals.  In fact, it is a rare occasion that someone will tell me that some non-pharmaceutical or surgical intervention is "not being studied because of big pharma" and that I can not immediately go to PubMed and pull up studies proving that the person making the claim is wholly ignorant of what is actually being done.

There are legitimate concerns with private industry funding research (though, it should be said, there are also benefits to it - it's not all bad or all good), and these issues do get discussed and are actually routinely brought up in the very professional journals that the naturopaths falsely claim won't publish findings critical of industry.  However, there is a good deal of medical research funded via a number of different avenues with both public and private funds, and the research covers a wide range of subjects.  Whenever someone claims that a particular subject is not researched because "big pharma doesn't want it researched" or because "there's no money in it" or because "scientists are afraid it will overturn what they want you to believe", you are dealing with someone who is wholly and completely ignorant of science, of medicine, and who is likely to hypocritically accuse others of "being sheep" while uncritically swallowing nonsense themselves.

So, there you go, regular old yogurt studied by legitimate scientists as a stress and depression control therapy.  It's in it's early stages, but the research is on-going, and it's existence proves many of the popular claims regarding medical research oh so very wrong.  Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to make you believe that some miracle cure isn't being studied because of some massive corporate conspiracy.

GMO Musings

I am absolutely indifferent towards the labeling of genetically modified plants sold as food or as an ingredient in food.  I have done a whole butt-load of reading, and I have come away with the conclusion that the claims that consuming these foods that is going to endanger my health are generally baseless, and that most of the worrisome health claims are no less biased or misleading than the worst of Monsanto's paid advertising.  And while I don't necessarily care for the business practices of the companies that produce these foods, neither do I particularly care for the business practices of the companies that produce "organic" foods, or non-genetically modified standard crops.  So, if these were labelled as genetically modified, it would do very little to my own buying habits.

And yet, despite my indifference to the concept, I get annoyed whenever I hear people shout about their desire to have these things labelled.  Why?

Well, as little as I care about whether or not these products are labelled, I loathe sloppy thinking and sloganeering, and the anti-GMO movement is rife with, in fact arguably based on, sloppy thinking and sloganeering.

Some of the claims made by GMO opponents, specifically those questioning the potential for unforeseen legal complications arising from the ability to patent a self-replicating organism, may have a good deal of merit.  Even here, many of the horror stories have been exaggerated, but there are nonetheless very real concerns regarding the ownership of genetic stock and the application of patent laws to organisms that could, conceivably, get free of their approved fields. 

Parallel to the legal issues, there are ethical concerns over the ability of a company to patent genetic material.  While I don't necessarily find many of the objections convincing myself, they are nonetheless present and are worthy of consideration.

And, of course, there are more mundane but nonetheless real market concerns regarding the production and ownership of seeds from GMO crops - does the presence of GMO crops that have particularly desirable traits have the potential to warp markets in such a way that more affordable (and likely necessary to avoid a monoculture) seeds will eventually become difficult to obtain, especially for farmers in marginal environments?  There are economists who will argue either way, but we won't really know until the market becomes saturated with these products, which is rapidly occuring.

But rather than focus on these types of issues, most of the active anti-GMO demonstrators go for shock value, exploiting the "ick factor", getting people to shout slogans and stop thinking, and appealing to emotions.  On Facebook recently, I saw two overblown emotional appeals regarding GMOs.  One was a link to a petition to call for the labeling of GMOs - again, a cause to which I am entirely indifferent and to which I really have no objection even if I have no particular desire for it either - where the link bore the photograph of a little girl holding a cardboard sign with the words "I am not a science experiment" emblazoned upon it.

No, kid, you are not a science experiment, and your parents should have been ashamed for making you hold that sign.  What you are is a human, and humans have to eat, and we have a wide variety of foods available to us.  That your parents want to feed you foods that have not been altered using recently developed technology (even if they demonstrate through their protest that the do not actually understand the technology in question) is their own business, and not a big deal as far as I am concerned.  That they decided to use their child as a billboard for a misleading statement regarding their misconceptions about the way that this technology is used in order to short-cut past peoples critical faculties is disgusting.

In the other case, someone I know stated that they would not buy from a particular store because that distributor carried some food and other products in which one of the ingredients was derived from crops that had been created by Monsanto, and they did not want to "give money to a company that is trying to poison us!" I, of course, responded, pointing out that while there are legitimate issues regarding the development of any new technology, including genetic engineering, the fact of the matter is that there is no reason to assume that Monsanto is poisoning anybody, and that, again, this sort of argument is an appeal to emotion, engineered to get us to repeat it without thinking about it. 

Likewise, much of the anti-GMO rhetoric exploits the "ick factor" - the desire to get people to not like something based not on it's actual traits, but based instead on deep-seated prejudices that all of us harbor.  The labeling of genetically-modified plants as "frankenfoods" and the focus on dubious claims regarding the placement of animal (and, I have even heard it claimed, human) genetic material in plants are both examples of this - the reason why the use of such genetic material (assuming the case that someone tells you of is even happening - most of the popular examples you are likely to hear turn out to be false if you do a little research) is bad is never really articulated, it's just icky...much like the comparison to a 19th century gothic horror novel makes little sense but pushes a lot of culturally-rooted buttons.  The appeal to the "ick factor" exploits the same traits that inform both legitimate avoidance of disease, but also inter-personal prejudices and bigotry, and is one that really never results in good when we use it in place of critical thinking.

Then there's the tendency for people to be far more critical of genetic engineering than of technologies that they favor.  For example, in the Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan (a man for whom I have less and less use every passing day) discusses potatoes as a crop.  He spends a good deal of time examining the claims made by Monsanto for one of their particular potato crops - and it should be said that his criticisms and questions are both reasonable and well-explained.  However, he then looks to one "organic" potato farmer and accepts every damn thing that this potato farmer says, what is quite literally the farmer's sales pitch, at face value without any meaningful critical examination, and when discussing crop yields he even "fails" (I suspect intentionally, based on the rest of the book) to ask such basic questions as whether or not the yields the farmer describes are seasonal or yearly yields - this point is, in fact, left very vague in the text.  So, while he is rightfully critical of one technology, he is fawningly obseqious to the user of another, even though there are many legitimate technical and ethical concerns with organic farming methods.  He concludes the chapter by describing how he planted some Monsanto potatoes, and then threw them away without eating them...but he never actually provides a coherent, well-articulated reason for not eating them, he just sort of implies that they are somehow evil and dangerous without explicitly saying so or providing any justification.

And, so, I find myself woefully unimpressed by the majority of anti-GMO claims.  There are legitimate issues with any technology, genetic engineering included, and these issue need to be discussed.  However, making false, misleading statements and relying on emotional appeal does nothing but muddy the waters and distract from real concerns.  If people stated that they wanted the labeling done because they are concerned about the potential legal issue, or ethical concerns, or even because they just don't like big corporations (in which case, why are they buying food from a place large enough to support labeling to begin with?), then I might actually support it rather than being indifferent to it.  But given that it is part of an on-going tendency towards sloppy thinking, frequent conspiracy-mongering, and constant dishonesty, I find that I can't support it - not because I find the notion of labeling unreasonable, but because I distrust the motivation behind it.



P.S.  I was at a party some years back, when a fairly typical 30-something white affluent urbanite from San Francisco (where the party was held) asked me if I had heard about Michael Pollan.  I explained that I had, and that when I actually went and researched many of the claims ubiquitous in his writing, I routinely found him to be misleading and dishonest, more a propagandist than an educator.  She then went on about how, while he might make mistakes (umm, lady, when it's consistent even after he has been corrected by legitimate authorities, it ain't mistakes, it's intentional lies and distortion), he was a net good.  She then went about trying to explain crop rotation to me - and given as how I am A) educated, B) know a fair bit about how humans dealt with sustenance in the past, and B) grew up and spent my formative years in an agricultural community and not (like her) San Francisco, I found myself having to routinely correct her.  While she accepted the corrections, she nonetheless condescendingly kept going on about how she understood so much more about agriculture than I did while simultaneously proving that she knew next to nothing about the subject.  I had to resist the urge to clobber her with the loaf of tofu that, no joke, was sitting on the counter next to my elbow.

Ancient Aliens - the Test!

The History Channel needs its ass kicked

So, you may have heard of the show Ancient Aliens.  It is on the History Channel and is basically the latest iteration of the old bullshit that alleges that the various ancient achievements of humanity couldn't have possibly been accomplished by, well, humans, and therefore it must have been aliens!

You can probably guess my reaction to this proposition.

However, like so much of the rot that's on allegedly educational television, I just sort of ignored it.

Until about a year ago.

I don't know what the hell happened, but around December 2010/January 2011, a frighteningly large number of the people that I know and encounter began to watch this damn show.  Not just watch it, but began to take it at least slightly seriously, as evidenced by the fact that I now have to routinely explain to people why producer/on-screen personality Giorgio Tsoukalos is, perhaps, not the best source for information regarding Earth's past.

On a fairly regular basis, both family members and friends contact me, by phone, or email, or just walk up and start talking to me, wanting to know about the claim that the ancient King Hamburgular of southern Podunkistan was actually a reptoid alien based on the artistic representations of him as a snake found on friezes in his palace.  I then have to explain that the friezes in question actually show King Hamburgalar's zoo, and the reason why the images look like snakes is because they are, rather clearly, images of snakes.  If the person is at my home or visiting my office, I then pull out a book on southern Podunkistan archaeology in order to prove my point.  The person with whom I am speaking will then assert that they never really believed it, but thought it was a fun idea, and wanted to ask.  But, of course, they began the conversation insinuating that they find the claim plausible, even if they didn't completely buy it.

A week later, someone, often the same person (there's a rotating cast of around seven of them) will come to me with the latest lame-brained claim from Giorgio Tsoukalos and the Ancient Aliens swarm.  And the process repeats.



             Giorgio Tsoukalos.  Gaze into the hair of madness!


I can not, for the life of me, figure out why otherwise intelligent people think that this guy has any credibility.  Leaving aside the fact that he has a surname that sounds like a Yiddish slang word for one's posterior, and that he looks like he failed to learn Don King's hair gel secrets, there's the fact that Mr. Tsoukalos never met a specious claim or false "fact" that he didn't like.  This guy has been a fixture on pseudo-science and pseudo-history shows on Discovery and the History Channel for years, and he's never made a damn lick of sense.  He always goes for whatever outrageous claim is made, no matter how clearly stupid it is, and will insist that "anyone who is open-minded" has to accept his claims, while managing to show himself to be so closed-minded that he is ready to ignore the mountains of evidence showing himself to be full of bovine feces.  On my list of trustworthy people, Tsoukalis ranks just above Biblical creationists and just below used car salesmen in plaid jackets. 

Nonetheless, I have enough interactions with people who don't know how to identify someone who's pre-frontal cortex is clearly being devoured by his own hair that I have developed something of a formula for talking to people about this show.  In fact, I think that I can convert that formula into a simple questionnaire, available for anyone to use:


1.  Is the culture depicted as influenced by aliens non-European?* 

2.  At what point in the episode did someone insist that "establishment" archaeologists are "hiding the truth" or "too cowardly to face the evidence?"  How many times was this assertion repeated after the initial statement? 

3.  Did the person making the statement also make statements indicating their ignorance of the fact that an "establishment" archaeologist can get more grant money and positive attention actually for proving a radical theory than by trying to crush it?

3.  Are the aliens said to be humanoid or reptilian?  Are they extremely tall, or quite squat? 

4.  What best describes the shape of the alien spaceship: A) Dinner Plate; B) Cigar; C) Arrowhead; D) Hamburger?

5.  How often did the presenter or "experts" on the show make unverifiable claims?  A) Once per ten minutes; B) Two-to-four times per ten minutes; C) Five or more times per ten minutes; D) No actually verifiable claim was made during the episode - or, all claims made were unverifiable.

6.  Please circle each of the following items that it is claimed in this episode was part of the ancient knowledge that is being covered up by archaeologists: 
   
    Super Technology   

    Not-so-super technology that nonetheless was too advanced
    for these primitive savages to have had without alien
    intervention
   
    Magic   
   
    The Existence of the Soul   
   
    The "True extraterrestrial" origins of humanity   
   
    Astronomical knowledge only recently re-learned by NASA   
   
    Astronomical knowledge still unknown to NASA  

    Why people ever thought that Jim Carrey was funny

    Super healing (which nonetheless somehow did not raise the average life expectancy
    above the age of 35)


7a.  How many times during the course of the episode did the "experts" compare themselves to (or compare their claims to the theories of) either Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, or Galileo?

7b.  If they compared themselves to Isaac Newton, did they also compare themselves to Isaac Hayes?  If not, why not?

8a.  How many times per episode did somebody state that they would easily give up their "ancient alien" claim if only there were another explanation available?     

8b.  How much video was then given over to that individual going to a library, or even doing a Wikipedia search, to look up other possible, non-alien, explanations?

9.  Did anyone in the episode insist that "establishment" archaeologists refuse to take their claims seriously, and then appear later in the episode stating that they were unwilling to look at the work of the "establishment" archaeologists?**

10. Was quantum physics at any point mentioned as an explanation for anything in the episode?

Now, fill out this questionairre for each episode watched.  Keep the questionairres, and once you have seen ten episodes, begin looking for patterns.  If that doesn't convince you of the level of bullshit that the Ancient Aliens crew likes to produce, you may want to consider upping your medication dosages.




*This is important, as it is typically not white people who are accused of being incapable of developing civilization/technology/non-stick pan coating.  If the alien-influenced culture is European, the claim is still delusional, but at least it's not racist.

**Just pointing this out - if you insist that everyone else look at your work and take it seriously, but you refuse to look at the work of the professional and trained people who have dedicated their lives to this, then you are a tool and a hypotcrite.

Truths, Damn Truths, and Statistics!

It happened again this week.  While arguing about the safety of a medication, I pointed to statistical data regarding the medicine in question's effecacioussness and rates of pronounced side-effects.  The person with whom I was arguing looked at me and said: "you, Mr. Armstrong, need to remember that each of those numbers you're quoting represents a person!  A fact that you seem too ready to forget!"

No, I don't forget that each of those numbers represents a person.  In fact, if I thought of them as just numbers and not people, I wouldn't be bothering to argue.  I am very well aware that each set of numbers represents real, living people.  People living complex lives in a world full of confounding circumstances that influence their behaviors, their beliefs, and their actions.  Each number or set of numbers represents an individual, unique an irreplaceable in numerous ways, and describes in some way their experience with a medication, controlled substance, interaction with a government agency, etc. etc. etc.

I am aware that these numbers represent people.  I am fully, sometimes painfully, aware of this fact.  It is the people who accuse me of forgetting it who don't seem to grasp this fact.

How do I know this?  Simple: the people who accuse me, and others in my position, of forgetting that the statistics represent people are all too ready to throw those numbers, each of which represents the experiences of an individual, away when they are inconvenient.  When the numbers agree with what a person wants to believe, they are usually only too ready to accept and quote them.  When the numbers disagree, well, they are to be forgotten, or better yet, disparaged.  In effect, the experiences of individuals, of real people, that don't conform to the preferred outcome are ignored, insulted, or hand-waved away.  Invariably, the statement isn't rooted in a desire to see individual cases as having value, but in the desire for the beliefs of the person making the accusation to take precedence over hard facts.

Of course, there are issues that aren't answered with numbers.  There are questions that are not empirical in nature.  And certainly, there are those who ignore this and try to apply empiricism where it doesn't belong.  But these people are few in number, and invariably on the fringe.  Likewise, there are those who will mis-use statistical tools to create false equivalences or show dubious correlations, or simply drown their opponent in a sea of data regardless of how relevant the data actually is (but, of course, these people can be stopped by the correct application of math, not the dismissal of it).  Far more common are those who want to pretend that empirical questions are not empirical, who want to pretend that their personal assumptions trump physical realities.  And you will find these people both advocating and opposing various positions.  You will find them on the political right and the political left.  You will find them in every issue, not matter how well settled the data actually is.

It doesn't matter what issue is being discussed: the safety or effectiveness of medicines, the effectiveness of crime-reduction techniques and measures, the effects of one sex-ed program vs.another as regards rates of STDs and pregnancies, the effects of various substances on pregnancy and on young children, the influence (or lack thereof) of religious belief on lawful behavior, the influence of concealed firearms on violent crime, and so on and so forth.  If it's a question that is best answered with quantitative data based on the experiences of a large number of people, you will find people who readily dismiss the statistics, unequivocally the best way to gather such information and see the patterns.  And those who want to dismiss the statistics will almost always say something to the effect of "you, Mr. Empirical-Data, are forgetting that these statistics represent people!"

But, of course, it's the person who wants the data dismissed or downplayed who truly is forgetting that the data represents people.  It's the person who wants to engage in warm-fuzzy talk about how "we are all individuals, not numbers" who is ready to throw away the experiences of huge numbers of real individuals in order to win an argument.  It's the person that tries to claim that statistics are somehow de-humanizing who is only too ready to dismiss the experiences of their fellow humans in order to avoid losing the argument or ceding the point. 

No, I don't forget that the numbers represent people.  But if you go about proclaiming that those with whom you disagree are ignoring the individual in favor of the numbers, then likely it is you who is ignoring that the numbers represent people.

Santorum, Anti-Reality, and Prenatal Testing

So, you may have heard that Rick Santorum recently said on the show Face the Nation that "The bottom line is that a lot of prenatal tests are done to identify deformities in utero and the customary procedure is to encourage abortions," and "One of the things that you don’t know about ObamaCare in one of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing,… Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society. That too is part of ObamaCare — another hidden message as to what president Obama thinks of those who are less able than the elites who want to govern our country."

Huh?

Now, it should be said that he was referring to a sub-set of prenatal tests, not all prenatal tests.  And it should also be said that there does appear to be a higher rate of abortion amongst those who discover early on that the embryo or fetus has genetic problems likely to result in serious disabilities or death of the fetus before it comes to term (in which case the opposition to abortion seems, frankly, absurd).  You can argue about the right-or-wrong of abortion based on this information, but I'm not here to do that.

The thing is, plenty of expectant parents want information that comes from all forms of pre-natal testing in order to understand what they are getting into.  As an expectant parent myself, my fiance and I are discussing which tests we want and which we do not, and those that we do end up getting we will get for the purpose of being able to understand and plan for any special or unusual challenges we may end up facing as parents.  If our child will have a severe disability, isn't it better not just for us, but for those surrounding us (including the other rate-payers on our insurance plans) that we know what we are getting into and therefore plan for raising the child in such a way as to minimize the impacts that our child's needs will make on those around us?  If my child will need special care, and I have lead time to arrange it and possibly minimize the cost of such special care, then everyone, including the child, comes out ahead.  However, Mr. Santorum would prefer to prevent my insurance company from providing such tests because he's afraid that we will abort the fetus if we get bad news.  Certainly, he doesn't talk of outlawing the tests, just making them more difficult to obtain by removing requirements that they be covered, which will impact the families who could most use the information in preparing for caring for their children.

What's more, by detecting potentially serious health problems, such tests can actually save the lives of both children and mothers.  When a serious issue, such as spina bifida, is detected, steps can be taken to protect the developing child.  Checking RH status is the same.  Far from aborting a child, these procedures can save a child who would likely die without them. 

He talks about the "elites who want to govern our country", has often spoken about the left's opposition to families, and yet he wants to reduce the ability of the average person to get information directly relevant to their ability to raise and support their family and control their own lives.  And his supporters seem to have intentionally blinded themselves to the fact that this is completely self-contradictory.  We are at war with Eurasia, we have always been at war with Eurasia...

To make matters more annoying, Santorum's statements are clearly structured in such a way to appeal to a fear of Nazi-era eugenics, completely with baseless claim that those evil lefties are out to "cull the ranks" by getting rid of the disabled.  This is curious, as Mr. Santorum, as well as his political adherents, have a long history of trying to do away with social programs aimed at helping the disabled.  Again, you can argue back-and-forth about whether these programs should or shouldn't exist, but it remains the fact that Mr. Santorum and his party are hardly models for compassion towards the disabled and it is nothing but stark hypocrisy to make statements about the alleged lack of compassion on the other side of the aisle.  As blogger Harold Pollack puts it:

"There is no evidence whatsoever that liberals–let alone President Obama–are less solicitious or caring about the disabled than other Americans. I’ve never heard any liberal health policy wonk promote genetic technologies to “cull the ranks of the disabled” or as part of any cost-cutting plan. That ugly meme is completely made up. By any reasonable measure, the proliferation of genetic diagnostic technologies coincides with great progress in public acceptance and support for people with disabilities."

This is, of course, just another sign of the intellectual dishonesty and inconsistency typical of both major political parties and, truth be told, the vast majority of the minor political parties as well.  While Santorum's family history (his daughter has a genetic disorder) may give him some credibility in the eyes of his supporters when he talks about these issues, the reality is that he is either woefully uninformed and foolish as regards these issues, or else sees yet another place where he can try to get a claw in the social/political psyche of potential voters, consequences be damned.  He is either a fool or a reckless cynic - take your pick.

There is a further problem, though.  Right now, Santorum is talking about only some prenatal tests.  However, as someone who has observed the way that science is processed by the general public for years, I can tell you that it is only a matter of time before all prenatal tests are viewed with suspicion by at least some portion of the public.  The U.S. population, both on the right and the left, is not very good at comprehending complexity in medicine and science.  No matter what issue you look at: global warming, vaccine safety, the use of X-Rays, concerns over endangered species, etc. etc. - all get turned into weird cartoons while the true and complex nature of the issue gets stomped underfoot of political rhetoric.  Now that Santorum has added prenatal testing to the list of technologies about which the Religious Right should be suspicious, I fully expect to see this become, over the next few years, an opposition to a wide range of technologies geared towards helping parents and children.  Normally, I would dismiss this sort of thinking as a fallacious "slippery slope" argument, but I have seen it play out too many times over the last twenty years to not think this is exactly what will happen.

The good news is this: the farther along Santorum gets, the more alien fromt he general public the Republican Party becomes, and the more the Republican Party is likely to really examine itself.  There are many smart, honest Republicans.  There are many good ideas within the Republican Party.  We, as a nation, benefit when these people and ideas are able to be active participants in political debate.  However, over the past few decades, they have been drowned out by an increasingly over-reaching, anti-reality group within the GOP, which has distorted the discussion of politics within the nation.  While the Democrats have done their share of damage and contributed some truly galling rhetoric to the mess, it is the Republicans who have been increasingly pulling away from reality since the 90s.  Already we see discomfort amongst that party with Santorum, and a dawning realization on many of their parts that this man being a significant contender means that something has gone horribly awry.  With luck, this will help catalyze the party to get back to a serious discussion of economics and social policy, and begin to jettison the lunatics who are no longer just the fringe.

You can tell I'm in a good mood this afternoon, because I think this is possible.  Tomorrow morning, before coffee, I'll think we're all doomed.

Pregnancy, Children, and Pseudo-Knowledge

I promise that I will not be one of those bloggers who, upon finding out about impending parenthood, turns their site over entirely to baby stuff.  However, this ties in with themes that I have often addressed in the past, so it seems appropriate.

I have long been aware of the ubiquitous presence of sloppy thinking that exists as regards pregnancy and child-raising.  It ranges from holier-than-thou attitudes about "eating only organic food from the pygmies of Northern India in order to make it easier to give birth to a clairvoyant baby in a redwood Hot Tub on an ancient Native American holy site" to poorly-thought-out folk wisdom along the lines of "my granny used to dope her babies up on morphine to get them to go to sleep, so it's just fine for babies, good for 'em even, and you can keep your eggheaded book-learnin' science away from me!"  What all of this has in common is just good (or, actually, bad) old-fashioned sloppy thinking and a heaping dollop of credulousness and gullibility. 

Okay, let's start with the "my granny says that cocaine is fine for a collicky baby!" crowd first.  Every now and again, I meet someone who informs me that all manner of things that are frowned upon by the medical community are fine for pregnant women and infants, because some relative (usually, though not always, the parent or grandparent of the person telling me this) continued to smoke/drink/shoot heroine/etc. when they were pregnant or nursing, and that person's kids turned out fine.  When you point out to the person that a range of long-term, well-controlled and documented studies show that, actually, these things result in significantly higher odds of problems for the child and/or mother, they quickly respond by referring back to said relative who did this thing and their kid who allegedly turned out "just fine."

The basic problem here is a lack of grasp of statistics.  An anecdote, assuming that the person even grasped the example upon which their anecdote is based, is a single data point.  There are always anomalous data points.  It doesn't matter what data set you are looking at.  And when you deal with biological entities, such as humans, where there are a number of weird confounding variables, you should expect the number of anomalous data points to increase.  That does not, in any way, change the fact that there will be clear trends within a larger data pool that will point to underlying causal relationships.

So, I don't care that your grandmother had a beer every day while pregnant with your dad and he came out okay.  Your dad's one data point.  When you look at a larger picture and take into account a large number of pregnancies, the fact still remains that consuming alcohol while pregnant increases the odds of problems.  Note the way that I phrased it there:  it doesn't guarantee that something will go wrong, but the chances of something going wrong are much higher.  Given our growing understand of fetal and early childhood development, this makes perfect sense.

To make matters more confounding, the emerging understanding of the biology of a developing human is demonstrating that problems related to consumption of substances such as alcohol and tobacco during pregnancy or early childhood (which largely comes from parents using doses of alcohol to get their young children to go to sleep) may be subtle and may not be apparent until the child is older.  Problems with coordination, brain development, behavior (related to brain development), etc. may become apparent long enough after the use of the alcohol that nobody without an advanced knowledge of developmental neurology is likely to link the two.  Nonetheless, such problems have begun to become apparent in the scientific data, which gives further reason to question much of the folk wisdom regarding the use of various substances while pregnant or nursing, or during early childhood.

Now, flip that around to the "my womb is a temple to my child's purity" group, and you see the flipside of this misapprehension of basic mathematical and scientific concepts.  Recently, Kaylia was having a hard time eating.  She suddenly had a craving for chicken McNuggets, and she indulged.  She has, by and large, been eating well (plenty of fruits and vegetables, good protein sources, etc.), but this one day she had a single thing from a fast food place (which she supplemented with a green salad and some milk).  When she mentioned this on Facebook, she received a bizarrely negative reaction from a couple of people who insisted that she was somehow "poisoning her baby!" by eating the deep-fried chicken gloop.  Every mother or expectant mother that I know has had a similar experience.

Part of this comes from people who fail to grasp reality just as badly as the people who think that drinking while pregnant is a fine idea.  There are studies that show problems resulting from poor nutrition during pregnancy.  However, what people who think that "Chicken McNuggets are poison!" fail to grasp is that it isn't some magical substance in the food that causes the problem (well, not usually*), but rather the problems result from chronic malnutrition resulting in women relying heavily on fast food or other nutrient-poor diets through a substantial portion of their pregnancy.  Having Chicken McNuggets every now and again is not going to do you or your fetus any harm.  In fact, much of the alarmist thinking regarding these sorts of things seems to derive from some of our deep-rooted mechanisms for avoiding contagion and pollution (the same mechanisms that, weirdly, also likely form at least part of our tendency towards bigotries), where we have a notion of "one drop pollution" built into our brains (and conversely, the real issue of dose size corresponding to response is counter-intuitive and therefore often ignored, even though it is actually true), which gets applied even when it is plainly, obviously wrong. 

Another part of this seems to comes from the fact that people have a difficult time separating what seems gross to them from what is actually bad for them.  This is probably related to our weird, and wrong, built-in cognition regarding pollution, but it seems to go wider.  If you know the process by which Chicken McNuggets are made, it sounds pretty disgusting.  However, the process does not result in anything that is dangerous (provided it is eaten in moderation).  Indeed, during the Facebook thread, the majority of the comments attempting to take Kay to task focused not on any actual data regarding the content of the food, but instead on the perceived "grossness" of how it was made.  The fact that these people were having such problems distinguishing food safety reality from their culturally-inculcated ideas regarding disgust made their holier-than-thou attitude about the matter even more annoying than they otherwise would have been.

One of the obnoxious issues that we have encountered is that it is very common for people in one of these two groups to not grasp that you are not from the opposing lunatic group when you disagree with them.  Suggesting that someone might want to reconsider using whiskey to put their child to sleep (yes, I know people who have done this) is not the same as saying that you should only be feeding your child shaman-blessed dehydrated organic carrots from the Mongolian Plain.  Likewise, being willing to feed your kid formula on occasion rather than a diet of all breast milk all of the time** doesn't mean that you are an unfit parent who would willingly let their kid shoot up heroine by the age of one. 

Ultimately, we have made it as a species as long as we have because we are resilient, and we do alright in the long run.  We don't need to have a moral panic over whether or not a pregnant woman has a hamburger.  However, we now have tools, thanks to science, that allow us to find flaws in the folk knowledge that we have long relied upon, and to do better as a result, and those who choose to ignore them for the sake of tradition are being foolish.






*There are, of course, foods that pregnant women should avoid, and an even wider range that pregnant women should only have in moderation.  These are well known, though you should check with a real doctor (the kind you'll find at a real hospital) and not the local naturopath, herb seller, etc.  The research backing pregnancy diets is fairly good, but most people outside of medicine rely overly-much of "folk wisdom" that should more accurately be referred to as "folk misinformation." 

**Oh, and the weird nations that people have about the magical nature of breast milk are pretty obnoxious, too.  Yes, I grasp that the data does support the claim that breast feeding is best for an infant.  That doesn't mean that breast feeding is the only, or even the primary, factor influencing success in life, and if you want to rant at me otherwise, then save us both the trouble and go stick your head in a pig.

Ahhh, Libel Claims...

So, a high school student by the name of Rhys Morgan has written some blog posts about a Doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski who offers cancer treatments that appear to be poorly researched, and therefore of dubious value.  Mr. Morgan has since been contacted by a man named Marc Stevens who represents the doctor (though Burzynski's own website indicates that Stephens is a PR guy and does not work for the doctor as an attorney), and his description of the matter can be found here.

The issue in short: Morgan wrote a blog entry in which he was extremely critical of Dr. Burzynski's methods, citing articles written by cancer researchers (such as this one) and court documents (such as this one) which argue that Burzynski's methods are not simply unproven, but disproven, and therefore questioning the ethics of a practitioner who continues to use them. A man by the name of Marc Stephens contacted Morgan demanding that the blog entry be pulled down and threatening legal action against the libel that this blog entry allegedly represented. 

Now, I am not an expert in the law, obviously, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to think that a high school kid writing a blog entry that cites published research to criticize the work of a controversial doctor meets the legal criteria for Libel, especially as the kid, while certainly making his feelings known, didn't really make any material claims that were not present in the journal article or legal decision. 

And it turns out that Morgan isn't the only one getting this.  Andy Lewis of the Quackometer blog has also received threats of legal action from Mr. Stephens.  And Stephens has, in his emails, demanded not only that these two bloggers remove their content regarding Burzynski, but that they also "pass the word" on to the other "skeptics" who would dare question the alleged brilliance of Dr. Burzynski.  So, it sounds like this is more of an attempt to scare people into not stating their opinions of Burzynski and his treatments than anything else.  Unfortunately, to many people the law is this strange, arcane thing, and they see a mass o' legal sounding jargon such as Stephens sends out and feel like he can do bad things to them if they don't comply.

Also, while I really don't know if Stephens is licensed to practice law, this seems like a bit of an odd qualification for a PR guy, so I suspect he does not*.

So, Marc Stephens, if you happen to be reading this** be advised that I have both attorneys and a judge in my family and my circle of friends.  Should you decide to send me threatening emails, I will seek their counsel, and if I am advised to do so by them, will hire an attorney and respond with legal action against you and your employer.  I grew up around lawyers, I am well aware of what they can and they cannot do, and mere mention of a lawsuit isn't going to intimidate me and send me cowering to the corner.

Oh, and stop picking on high school kids.  Don't you have an actual job to do?  You know, like PR work?





*On the off-chance that he sees this, the way I constructed that sentence doesn't constitute libel.  You see, I made it clear what part was my opinion and what part was based on actual information.  But it will probably piss him off anyway.

**Normally I wouldn't have the ego to assume that any particular person is reading anything I write.  However, as this guy seems to be going to blogs with the intention of sending emails to their writers, it is possible that I will hear from this guy.

Don't Need That After High School?

About once a week I come across it.  Someone may be referring to a historical fact, or to a mathematical concept, or to famous scientific experiment, or to a...well, you get the point.  Someone will be referring to something that they had been required to learn in school, laugh derisively, and say "well, I don't need that now that I am out of high school!" with the sub-text pretty much always being that learning the information, process, or concept in question was a waste of time and not applicable to "the real world."

Bullshit.

The "I don't need that now that I'm out of high school" line is nothing more than a proud proclamation of intentional ignorance.  If you want to know why out country is in a shambles, stop looking for conservative or liberal boogeymen, stop looking at religious or sexual minorities.  Start looking at the fact that we are a nation full of people proud of the fact that we don't retain basic information once we have a diploma in hand.

Once I have heard someone say that they don't need some skill or information or ability post-school, I have a very hard time taking anything else they say about any subject seriously.

Leaving aside the very real fact that, now that we don't live in a society where young men automatically go to work at dad's factory and young women are usually married and pregnant at 19, learning all of these "useless" facts and skills opens up the possibility that a young person can actually find a career path; leaving aside the fact that there is a pleasure in learning this information for those who go with it rather than resist it because to do so is somehow perversely considered cool; leaving aside the fact that simply having been exposed to this sort of information can provide one with an appreciation for the work lives of others who are not in one's own occupation, and therefore make it easier ot live with other people; leaving all of those very valid reasons why it is a good thing to have learned and been exposed to a wide range of academic disciplines, the claim that what one learned in high school (or junior high, or college) was a waste of time best left to nerds and egg-heads and not applicable to the so-called "real world" remains complete and utter bullshit. 

Let's take a common high school math class: algebra. 

Algebra, on it's surface, seems to have very limited application to the non-academic world.  If you are a construction contractor or involved in some types of business, you may have some use for very basic algebra in order to solve day-to-day problems.  But, all of those quadratic equations and discussions of arithmetic properties, what good is that?  Well, it is true that you can get by, day-to-day in most jobs without having to make use of those skills and knowledge sets.  In that sense, you don't need it.  But that doesn't mean that it isn't useful.  Go here to see some places where quadratic equations come up in your everyday life, even if you don't do the math, knowing that it's there can help you make sense out of what's going on.  Even if you don't need ot solve for them, you can find uses that will allow you to improve your life, and likely improve your workplace, by retaining this knowledge.  You may not need it, in the same way that you don't need a cell phone - it's still useful to have one, and the more you use it, the more likely you will be to find further uses.

How about another math class: statistics.

This one tends to be even more poorly understood, and in my experience even more likely to be scoffed at by the proud ignorance brigade.  You can probably go on with life quite well without being able to perform a chi-square test, or calculate standard deviation on the fly.  However, if you have learned to do these things at some point, and retained a decent part of the conceptual knowledge, you are far, far, far less likely to be conned or scammed than everyone else around you.  Simply remembering that there are ways to determine whether or not a correlation is due to random chance or due to causal factors allows you to ask some important questions when a politician pushes a policy, or when a scam treatment is presented to you, or when someone wants you to buy something to increase your fuel mileage, or when a self-help guru is trying to peddle idiocy packaged as wisdom (I'm going to go out an a limb here and guess that The Secret didn't sell well amongst mathematicians).  In other words, having just a basic-level knowledge of statistics, the sort that someone could acquire from high school and retain through adult life, will make you a smarter consumer, voter, and citizen.  Again, can you get by in life without this?  Yes, you can live day-to-day without basic mathematical knowledge, but much of the poor policy passed by politicians and the idiocy marketed to consumers relies on the fact that most people will relegate statistics to the dust pile of their personal histories and not use it to defend themselves as adults.

Let's look at something that is not as clearly related to day-to-day life and yet very important: history and civics classes.

I live in California, and like many states in the U.S., we have a referendum system that allows voters to put legislation onto the ballots and vote for it, bypassing the state legislature.  On the surface this sounds great - direct power from the people, for the people, right?  In practice, it means that many pieces of legislation get passed because they sound good to the public but make very little sense, are unenforceable or would require a wide range of inoffensive activities to become crimes, laws get passed that drain the public treasury for very little gain, or laws get passed that are struck down immediately (often in costly legal battles) because they clearly violate the federal or state constitution and therefore should never have been passed (and initiatives favored by both the political right and left do these things with what appears to be equal resolve and gusto, so don't go blaming the other side, your side is also at fault).  Likewise, everytime I see someone who is swayed by cries of "activist judges" I know that I am looking at someone who doesn't remember high school history/civics and who therefore is being taken advantage of by political opportunists.

Here's the thing - if voters were generally more aware of what the constitution actually says (and right now I know that both Occupy people and Tea Party people are nodding their heads while dellusionaly believing that their take on the constitution is the only valid one...and both are wrong), then laws violating it (and wasting resources as a result) wouldn't get passed.  If voters had a better idea of history, then they would know where to look in trying to figure out whether a proposed piece of legislation was likely to do what it said (after all, most of these measures have been, in some form or another, tried somewhere before).  In short, knowing some basic civics lessons and retaining at least a broad outline of history (allowing for a small bit of research when necessary) would make us better voters.

The same sorts of things can be drawn from high-school level biology, physics, chemistry, even classes such as literature, art, and music.  There is information and skills that can be gleaned from these classes which will help you to avoid getting ripped off, which will help you to avoid making stupid choices in the voting booth, which will help you to deal with many day-to-day matters.  But, here's the catch, you have to come to the realization that "I don't need that after high school" is the battle cry of the imbecile.  It's justification for laziness, not a show of wisdom or worldliness.

Dodgin' Codgers

Several years back, when I was an intern in an Air Force base's environmental office, one of my tasks was to travel around the base to check up on various sites that were threatened by erosion and document their condition.  These sites were usually in spots that were far from buildings and structures, but in areas that the folks who would come onto the base to go fishing would frequent*.  So, it was no surprise when, one spring day, I encountered an elderly fisherman standing next to one of the sites.

He saw me coming, and decided that he wanted to see who I was and what I was doing there - amusing in that I was there performing a base-required work task and he was there because the base allowed him to be there - and I explained that I was one of the archaeologists on base, checking up on various locations.  He looked at me with what I assume was supposed to be contempt, but instead came across as cartoonish grumpiness, and said "well, you people shouldn't be bothering over here!  I've seen stuff that came out of Honda Canyon** and you have plenty to study from there and you don't need to be looking anywhere else!"

I went on to try to explain that we don't just study large quantities of artifacts, but that the locations of sites was also of importance, and under federal law we were required to at least make a good-faith effort to know what was going on with sites on base, regardless of whether or not we did anything to or with said sites.

He simply nodded his head and said "I don't know who you think you're talking to, but I'm a veteran, and I was an electrical engineer!  Don't think that you can pull one over on me!"

This seemed astoundingly strange.  That he was in the military and an electrical engineer had, of course, no bearing whatsoever on archaeology.  I responded, int he calmest voice I could muster, "I don't doubt that, but I'm an archaeologist, and I understand my field, and what I have told you is accurate."

"No it isn't!  If you believe that then you don't know what you're talking about."

The hell?  Now, I am accustomed to people with no experience thinking that they know more about archaeology than I do, it's a common enough delusion, but they didn't usually throw out irrelevancies about their past career as would-be evidence of their allegedly superior knowledge.  This guy, though, just seemed to want to be right, and int he face of someone who was clearly more knowledgeable on a particular subject, he decided simply to push his weird-ass notions anyway.

"You're as bad as the wildlife biologist" he then said to me.

"Heh?"  I wittily responded.

"Yeah, that wildlife bioldogist, Nancy whatshername, the one who says that the snowy plovers are endangered even though they aren't!"

Ahh, the snowy plovers.  These are a type of beach bird the status of which is a bit controversial.  The Fish and Wildlife service holds that they are endangered and that the base's beaches were among the few pristine habitats left.  The local public, and a few biologists not involved with the base, claimed that they were not endangered.  The base biologists were caught in the middle, required to enforce the Fish and Wildlife Service's ruling, even though they were not sure if they agreed with it.

So, I explained to the fellow that the biologist didn't make that ruling, and that it had come from the outside.

"No, it didn't!"  He insisted, "she's the one who claims that they're endangered!"

I explained again that the biologist didn't make that ruling, I didn't even know if she agreed with that ruling, and that I had a bit more knowledge of the matter than he did because I worked with her and he, by his own admission, had never met her nor read anything that she had put out on the subject.

"Well, I know the Colonel," the Colonel being the man in charge of the base, "and he says that she made the decision, so I know that you are lying to me!"

One of the issues that we encounter in environmental work is that very often the people with whom we work think that we are the ones who are dictating what they can or can not do, when, in fact, we are usually just the messengers for messages from outside authorities.  So, it is possible that this Colonel, no long since retired, honestly believed that the biologist was the one making these decisions, and not the FWS.  However, as the facility head, he had the responsibility for knowing, at least at a basic level, how the various laws impacting the base functioned.  I had been present when this particular issue had been explained to him, and I was told that it had been explained to him on a regular basis, and he simply chose not to listen.  So, it wasn't me that was lying to the fisherman, but his buddy the Colonel who was little enough concerned with reality that he was willing to badmouth his subordinates to score points with his buddies***.  I am, however, pleased to say that, from what I have seen and heard, this was unusual among commanding officers, and when this colonel left, his replacement was much more on-the-ball.

Anyway, I looked at the man and said, sternly but calmly, "I am not lying to you.  DO NOT accuse me of lying to you.  I know this subject, I know what's going on, I work with it every day, and I am telling you the truth."

"No you're not.  Damn liberal."  And with that he walked away.

In retrospect, I realize what sort of personality I was dealing with.  I have a very disagreeable elderly relative who was similar to this man in that he "knows what's going on" when his alleged knowledge is nothing more than delusion based on a need not only to be right, but for everyone else to be wrong.  This relative is okay with those who generally agree with him being right, but as soon as someone disagrees, no matter how much more demonstrably knowledgeable they may be on the subject on which they disagree, they are not only wrong, but somehow immoral and corrupt.

And that seemed to be what I was seeing here.  What I told the man disagreed with his "me vs. the evil liberal environmentalists" notions, and so I was clearly not only wrong, but somehow corrupt.  I don't have a problem necessarily with people disliking what I do on philisophical or even pragmatic grounds, but if you're going to dislike it, at least dislike it for reasons based in reality, not delusional supposition.  No doubt he left there thinking he'd given me what for, when he had, in fact, only exposed his tremendous ignorance of the subjects discussed.  So it goes.





*One of the reasons why prehistoric peoples had lived in these locations is because they relied on the fish, so it's no surprise that we would frequently find fishermen still frequenting these locations.

**One of the many canyons on the base, has nothing to do with cars.

***What an asshole.

Racial Realism?

I was recently introduced to a new, and rather disturbing, term - "Race Realists" The concept of human race was once considered something of a fixed and real biological thing - with three major divisions (representing peoples from Europe, Asia, and Africa), and then many sub-divisions among these.

Now, most scientists hold that it is more of a cultural construction - that is, the way that people are grouped into races (based on skin color, hair type, facial morphology, etc.) is due to flukes of history rather than significant or meaningful biological differences, and the way in which we divide people up into racial groups is based more on cultural norms and ideals than on any actual biological information or model. The traits used to divide people into racial categories are often essentially arbitrary and based on what were the common traits in a given region as of a few centuries ago. Those who argue that there is a real biological phenomenon at work still tend to point out that the variation between races tends to be A) a result of historic geography (and therefore fluid and changing) and B) have as an end-result a tendency to create what could be called statistical "clumps" of traits - traits are more common in some groups than in others, but can be expressed in groups not generally associated with those traits.

The "Race Realists" (I refuse to use that term without scare quotes, as there is nothing realistic about these people), by contrast, believe that race is both a real biological phenomenon (that is, they tend to deny that there is social construction at work here) and that it is a reliable predictor of various traits (though they tend to focus on intelligence). The information that the "Race Realists" tend to cite is a handful of studies that show IQ differences between different ethnic groups, and a mish-mash of biological and anthropological studies on racial differences as well as polls showing the attitudes of anthropologists and biologists regarding the concept of race as a biological reality. Oh, and it's not uncommon for them to simply lie and claim that the studies and polls reach conclusions that they don't actually reach (for a good description of the problems with one particular "Race Realists" views, go here...and as the keeper of that blog, a fellow anthropologist, points out, the technical term for what the "Race Realists" are doing is biological reductionism).

There are a number of problems with the concept of race as a biological fact, and most of these are addressed at the blog linked to above, but I want to talk about a few specific problems here, as well as the apparent reason why people adopt the "racial realist" stance. The basic problem with the "Race Realist" stance is that ethnicity is, by its very nature, fluid. To explain why, though, requires a bit of basic biological background.

When a group of people splinters off from a larger population and leaves to occupy a new area, they carry with them a sub-set of the genes of the larger population, and (assuming that they are relatively isolated from the larger population) their descendants will resemble the members of the splinter population more than the larger population that spawned the splinter group. This is the Founder's Effect. So, if a group of colonists from the Red-Headed League leaves Ghoofiland, then the descendants of these colonists will have a larger number of redheads amongst them than the population of Ghoofiland did - the descendants of the original colonists will not be entirely redheads, as they will have carried the genes for other hair colors as well, but there sure will be a butt-load more redheads among the colonists' descendants than among the people of Ghoofiland.

Another matter that comes into play is genetic drift. This is the tendency for certain traits to become more or less common within a population due to random sampling. So, let's say that brown eyes start to become more common among the colonists, after a few generations there is a colony that has a larger number of brown-eyed redheads than one would expect in Ghoofiland.

Then, of course, there's selection. Perhaps the colonists have occupied a location that is rife with insects that carry a particular disease, let's call it Rubenitis, and say that it results in a chronic condition that involves lethargy and speech impairments. Some of the colonists carry a gene that gives them some resistance to Rubenitis, allowing them to go about their daily business while some of their fellows are having to routinely lay in bed while having a hard time conveying information to those around them. The ones who don't have the chronic condition will have more time and luck finding mates, and therefore their genes will be spread at a faster rate than those without the resistance. So, even elements that aren't directly linked to disease resistance (say, skin tone - many of those with the resistance have a slightly bluish tinge to their skin) will increase in frequency.

After several generations, the colonists begin to look a bit different from the people of Ghoofiland. Given a long enough amount of time, they will look and behave (remember, culture is also changing in both populations) differently enough that they will be considered (and likely come to consider themselves) a completely different ethnicity, or "race" to use the term in the way that the "Race Realists" tend to. Are there biological differences between the groups? Yes, there are cosmetic differences such as frequencies in hair color, eye color, and skin tone, as well as functional differences such as frequencies in resistance to disease...but these are differences in the frequency of genes and in phenotypes (the observable expressions of those genes - two organisms with the same set of genes may have different behaviors or traits if the environment forces different gene expression), each population still has most of the same genetic material (allowing that some new genes may have occurred due to mutations in either population), just in different frequencies, and each lives in different environments resulting in the shared genes potentially being expressed in different ways.

So, we now have two different races of people. What happens when they meet, say because technological change allows rapid transportation between their different homelands? Well, if history is any guide, they may or may not come into conflict, but they will definitely interbreed. In interbreeding, they will change the gene frequencies (and hence appearance) of both populations. The interbreeding may be slow, but over time it will change both populations significantly. If there are social taboos against interbreeding, this will slow it further, but if history is any guide, it will not stop it.

When we look at the modern world, we see several populations that sprang from the same stock population in Africa, and eventually went on to populate the rest of the continents (okay, Antarctica excepted). Some of these populations are more closely related to each other than others, but we ultimately have the same basic process as described above, just played out ona grand scale of both geography and time. However, all human populations are still so similar to each other that we can, and do, have viable children with each other, and we are, slowly but surely, changing the gene frequencies in every part of the world. Racial categories that once made perfect sense due to the relative isolation of populations are now thought of as nationalities, because the populations are no longer isolated and are intermixed. While there are still likely to be definite phenological differences between someone plucked out of the middle of Europe and someone plucked out of the middle of Africa, the populations are converging at a slow but definite rate. That's not to say that there will, someday, be only one ethnicity, likely something will occur that will restore isolation (wars, societal collapse, etc.), but the populations that are isolated this time will be different than those from the last time, with different biological and cultural traits. In other words, even if they call themselves the same things, there will be different races from the standpoint of genetic and phenotypic variation.

And this is nothing new, one need only read some of the old Roman or Greek histories to see that there were once distinct populations throughout the Mediterannean that have since merged with other populations, creating new ethnicities. Race/ethnicity have always been fluid. Okay, so, even if there are biological races (which is debatable, as there is no clear way that one would decide when a person was a member of one race and not another, as we are talking about gene frequencies not markers of certainty - the very concept of "biological race" is murky at best), that doesn't mean that these represent any sort of distribution of traits such as intelligence.

That being said, is it possible that variations in genetic and phenotypic frequencies may also result in variations in intelligence? Maybe, but there are problems with that assertion. The definition of intelligence is a slippery term. We typically use it to mean the ability to aggregate data and engage in abstract thought in order to plan, process, and interact with the world. Seems straightforward, right? Humans are clearly more intelligent than hamsters. Humans are clearly more intelligent than dogs. But when we start comparing humans to each other, it gets muddy. Is a master chess player - clearly someone possessing a skill set requiring great intelligence as applied to mastering a rule-set and thinking ahead - more intelligent than a well-connected socialite - someone who has had to master a skill set requiring planning and thinking ahead in interacting with other people? To answer that question, we would have to decide that one set of skills requires a greater degree or type of intelligence than the other, which may not be the case. The chess player is likely better at dealing with systems and rules, but the socialite has to be able to engage in situations which are much less predictable and prone to sudden change. Both are displaying a high degree of intelligence, but applied in different ways, and possibly even different types of intelligence. So, is one more intelligent than the other? Hard to say, and the question might actually be completely meaningless when applied in this way. What's more, there is evidence that intelligence, in this sense, is somewhat malleable, and that someone can actually improve it by their actions and education. Also, there is strong evidence that intelligence is tied to issues such as nutrition, conditions during pregnancy, and early childhood, all of which are highly dependent on things not tied in to genes but to physical and social environment. So, your ethnicity may have much less to do with your intellectual capacities than do your parents level of affluence or poverty.

Most of the "Race Realists" like to cite studies showing IQ differences amongst ethnic groups. On the surface, the use of IQ seems ideal, as it measures a few specific skills and provides an overall quotient for the person taking the test. There are a few very serious problems, however. The first is that the simple act of taking a test - while most of us who attended schools in the U.S. and Europe don't think of it as such, test taking itself is a skill, and people can be trained to perform better on tests without actually knowing more about the subject of the test. So, if you compare a group of people who have attended affluent suburban schools with regular testing to people who have attended poorer inner-city schools with less regular or rigorous testing, you should expect the people from the suburbs to perform better not because they are necessarily more intelligent, but because they are more accustomed to (and trained for) taking tests.

Another problem is that the tasks and the questions within an IQ test are not devoid of their own cultural context - they reflect, from the actual tasks or questions chosen to the way that they are worded, the background of the people making the test (despite the best efforts of these individuals to eliminate this), and that means that the closer you are in social class and culture to the makers of the test, the less time and energy you are likely to spend trying to decipher what a question means are how a task should be performed. And when you start looking into studies of IQ across ethnicities, these types of issues tend to show up time and again, meaning that the results of the studies, while interesting and potentially of value, should not necessarily be taken to reflect a biological rather than social reality.

So, the case for biological race is a shaky one, and the claims that there are distinct intelligence difference between races even more so. So, why are the "Race Realists" even making these claims?

Well, many (probably most) of them are, of course, just good old-fashioned racists. They have heard that there is a new set of arguments that they can use to try to justify their existing bigotries, so they are jumping on them. But it's just a post-hoc rationalization for their old prejudices.

Others, though, are a bit more complicated. For basic historical reasons, there are a disproportionate number of people of African and Native American descent within the U.S. and Europe who are impoverished. There are many, admittedly often expensive, social programs aimed at trying to change this. If an argument can be made that the poor can not be helped, then that undercuts the programs and provides a rationalization for removing them altogether. Now, it should be said that the majority of people who oppose social programs do not engage in this sort of racist thinking - their oppositions are on philosophical or political grounds, and the ethnic make-up of the people affected by these programs doesn't enter into the matter for them (or if it does, it does so in a much more complex way than is often portrayed). However, there is a sub-set of people who are opposed to social programs who see using a notion of biological racial differences as a way of arguing against the usefulness of social programs, and therefore for eliminating the program - whether or not the impulse for grasping the argument is racist, the outcome most certainly is.

Now, many "Race Realists" would respond to what is written here by saying that, because of historical rather than scientific reasons, legitimate research into racial differences tends to be stifled and little reported. They might have a point, but their response is to exaggerate, misrepresent, and often lie about both the outcomes and the quality of the research that is available. You don't fill a gap in knowledge with ignorance and expect it to be respected.