Harvard update

I thought I’d give you guys a quick update about my trip to Harvard. First of all, my flight was…eventful. We were supposed to land in Boston at 4:20, but their airport was closed because of the snow. Instead we had to land in Providence, RI. It took over an hour to deplane since everyone was landing there and they were understaffed. I smartly grabbed a quick dinner, and then we reboarded at 7:20. …We didn’t take off until 10:20 because a plane was stalled on Boston’s runway and no one could land. Yep, I got to sit on a plane for three hours. Fun stuff. Everyone was getting so cranky that they started giving us free alcohol, but at that point I just kind of went to sleep.

Other than that, Harvard was wonderful. The campus was absolutely beautiful. All of the winding old streets were a bit insane – how did it take so long for people to build cities on grids? The department was housed in the same building as the natural history museum, which was equally amazing from the short peak I got. Exhibits on global warming and evolution, shiny rocks and skeletons and every taxidermy animal you can think of!

More importantly, the people were great. I met with faculty and current grad students from 10 until 6. Everyone was intelligent (obviously) and super nice – they totally defied the stuffy Harvard stereotype. I learned all about the department, life as a grad student, living in Boston. Don’t want to say anything more than that before I visit my other potential schools, though. Sorry! (Though as a fun side note, I met the professor who did the study that was in Nature recently on how running barefoot actually causes less stress and injuries – you may have seen it around the internet. He was wonderful!)

My potential advisor and her husband (another professor in the department) took me out to a very nice restaurant for dinner. Our conversation was everything you shouldn’t talk about at dinner – sex, politics, and religion. They were really interested in what it was like being an evolutionary biologist and an atheist in Indiana (I included the Society in my resume, and they gave me major kudos for it). Long story short: I think I will be much more comfortable living in the east coast. Perk: No longer have to totally freak out about the professor finding my blog, since she’d probably agree with what I’m saying. Downside: What the heck will I blog about if I’m living in Liberal Land?

The flight back was kind of uneventful, except for Random Talkative Older Guy who talked to me the whole first flight (only 45 minutes, thankfully). Usually I don’t mind chatting with strangers, but I was just so exhausted that morning. He was nice though, and surprisingly very pro science and evolution. He was joking about how he’d keep an eye on me for when I’m presenting my awesome research on tv – maybe one day!

(Oh, and since people were asking, yes, I’m pretty much in. Just going to come down to me saying yes or no!)

How this kid became a scientist – Part 1: Books

As graduation approaches, I find myself reflecting more and more about the past and the future. It seems somewhat unbelievable that in less than four months I’ll be graduating with degrees in Genetics and Evolution (with a minor in Psychology!). That surreal feeling is even stronger when I tell people that I’ll soon be striving towards my PhD studying Human Genetics & Evolution at…well, university soon to be decided.

I’ll be the first Dr. McCreight in my family, and the only scientist. That makes me wonder how I ended up this way. How did a daughter of an art teacher and history teacher become such a big science geek? And more importantly, what can I learn from my upbringing to better encourage kids to be interested in science?

Books

The importance of reading is so well known, but I need to mention it. I never was given explicitly pro-science books that are targeted towards kids. In fact, the only real nonfiction science book I enjoyed was the first book I ever read, in preschool, and was about dinosaurs. I’m still baffled how you can have a book with complex dinosaur names that a 3 year old can understand, but I loved that thing.

That’s the one exception, because it was fiction books that really got me pumped about science. They sort of tricked me into thinking like a scientist, rather than ramming it down my throat. For example, I still vividly remember reading a passage from A Wrinkle in Time where a character is explaining the different dimensions, and they accidentally travel through a 2-D world and experience what it would be like to be squished flat:

She tried to gasp, but a paper doll can’t gasp. She thought she was trying to think, but her flattened-out mind was as unable to function as her lungs; her thoughts were squashed along with the rest of her. Her heart tried to beat; it gave a knifelike, sidewise movement, but it could not expand.

But then she seemed to hear a voice, or if not a voice, at least words, words flattened out like printed words on paper, “Oh, no! We can’t stop here! This is a two-dimensional planet and the children can’t manage here!”

I read that book over a decade ago, but that passage still stuck with me – in fact, it’s one of two scenes I remember from the entire book. I understood the concept of dimensions because it was humanized, regardless if we could really do the magical sort of traveling they do in the book. If someone had tried to my ten year old self down and explain dimensions scientifically, I’m not sure if I would have understood it or wanted to pay attention, no matter how passionate the teacher was.

But books don’t just have to teach scientific concepts. In 5th grade we read The Westing Game, a Clue-like murder mystery. It was full of puzzles and red herrings, and trying to solve them was pretty much the most amazing thing ever. We were living the Da Vinci Code (well, it wasn’t written yet, but you know what I mean). Every time we’d read a new chapter as a class, we would collect all of our new clues, add them to a giant bulletin board, and try to figure it out. We weren’t just reading a story – we were actively participating, gathering evidence, working as detectives, forming hypotheses, and using logic to solve the problem. It was teaching us to think like scientists and have fun while doing so.

Sci-fi and murder mysteries are all well in good, but it was naturalistic books that really got me interested in biology. I was a shy, indoors sort of kid; I loved painting, drawing, reading, and playing videogames. My parents aren’t outdoors people, so we never went hiking or camping – the only time we spent with nature involved sitting on a golf cart.

So when I was assigned books like Where the Red Fern Grows and My Side of the Mountain, it was a type of escapism. The idea of interacting with animals and living off the land was as spectacular and amazing as zipping through dimensions and traveling through space. It wasn’t just novel – the books were great, and I started to eat that genre up. I looked for more books by Jean Craighead George, and found Julie of the Wolves. I absolutely loved it, and it was the first time I ever thought about animal behavior and ecosystems. I wanted to gobble up anything about wolves, so my dad bought me The Call of the Wild and White Fang by Jack London.

But again, things don’t necessarily need to be realistic fiction. My sudden curiosity for animals was also filled by Animorphs – and aliens giving people abilities to turn into animals isn’t exactly scientific. But it made me think about what it would be like to be certain animals – how their behaviors differ, how they’re similar, how they’re like us. I even loved the evolution-like covers, long before I had ever learned what evolution was. Aliens giving people abilities to turn into animals isn’t exactly scientific, but it ultimately increased my interest in nature, and that’s what matters.

This isn’t just an exercise in nostalgia – trust me, it makes me feel suddenly old, not a feeling I enjoy. But reading matters when it comes to getting kids interested in science. The books don’t need to be non-fiction or have the goal of teaching science in mind – they just need to inspire. They need to plant that spark of interest that kids can choose to follow if they wish. This is especially important for kids like me who didn’t get any real life experience with nature – sometimes a book is all we have, and sometimes a book is all it takes.

Actually getting a child to read is a totally different problem, one I don’t have a good answer to. I was a little bookworm, so you never had to encourage me. But one thing to notice is that nearly all of these books were assigned to me in school. Left to my own devices, I would probably still be rereading Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein to this day, and never have picked up something new. Did I love every book I was assigned in elementary school? God no. I didn’t even get halfway through the Secret Garden (still got a B on the essay – developed my BSing skills early). Not everyone is going to love everything, but inspiring some children down the road to science is worth it.

More parts to How this kid became a scientist will be forthcoming soonish. Hey, scientists are busy people!

If you could have the answer to any question in science, what would you ask?

This morning I received an email from a professor at Harvard (who’s currently one of my top grad school choices) that she would like to talk to me over the phone sometime this week. After much flailing of happiness, I also had to answer one preliminary question that I enjoyed so much that I had to share it with all of you:

If you could have the answer to any question in biology, what would you ask?

I would have to ask “How did life originate?” It’s probably not particularly original, but it’s simply too fascinating to ignore. We have plenty of hypotheses about the origin of life, but I would love to know exactly which one is correct. What was the biochemical process that slowly took inorganic molecules to the first cell? Are our hypotheses about an RNA world correct? Were there other “life-like” systems totally different than the cells we know today that didn’t withstand the test of time? Could this same process conceivably take place on other planets?

I guess I’m cheating a bit by asking a question that ultimately leads to many more questions, but such is the nature of science, right?

This question isn’t exactly something I would want to personally research – I’m good at chemistry, but not passionate enough about it to devote my whole life to organic and biochem. I still find it very interesting, probably because it’s human nature to wonder “why are we here?” And as an atheist, I’m always looking for the scientific explanation for things. Is there a naturalistic way that life came about on its own? Or are more “creative” ideas involving aliens or gods really true? I doubt the latter, but heck, if that really did happen, I’d want to know!

I suppose in a way it’s tangentially related to my interests in evolution. I often hear people (falsely) claiming that since scientists can’t explain the origin of life, evolution must be false. It would be nice to be able to go, “Um, actually, here’s the natural way life did come to be” and whip out a flowchart from hammerspace. Though I doubt that would convince everyone – we all know how much scientific facts affect most creationists – but at least I’d feel a bit more intellectually fulfilled.

I know everyone here isn’t a biologist, so I’ll propose the question to you a little more vaguely: If you could have the answer to any question in science, what would you ask?

Friday Feminist Roundup

No, I don’t plan on making this a weekly tradition – I’m not organized enough to have required themes for certain days. I just have a bunch of feminism related articles that I’ve accumulated throughout a busy week, and I figure I’d dump them all at once.

  • Australia bans porn containing female ejaculation and small breasts. Why? Apparently they think female ejaculation is just urination and fake body fluids. Yeah, not sure how it can be both. And the small boobies? Apparently if you’re an A cup, that’s too close to pedophilia. Thank you Australia, as if women weren’t insecure enough about their bust size, now a huge group is too creepy to think about sexually because they’re not womanly enough. Awesome.
  • School district pulls Diary of Anne Frank because Anne, a developing young woman, dared to talk about vaginas. Apparently female genitalia is the most horrifying aspect of the book, not the fact that she was forced to live in hiding from fear of death and then later died in a concentration camp. Overprotective parents are awesome.
  • In case games for girls weren’t mollifying enough, you can now get a Ouija board in pink! Because apparently the gender neutral versions don’t channel ghosts who can answer girl specific questions like “Who will call you next?” and “Will you be famous?” Come on, we all know girls only care about talking on the phone, becoming the next Paris Hilton, and pink woo bullshit.
  • Being attractive and feminine in the sciences isn’t easy. Go read about this chemist who also happened to be an NFL cheerleader, and the stereotypes she faced along the way. I actually think being more of a tomboy has helped me avoid negative stereotypes – which isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Over 100 Russians hospitalized after drinking holy water

This is yet another example of what can happen when people ignore scientific facts for superstitions. The Orthodox Christian holiday of Epiphany was January 19, and the Russian Orthodox have an interesting superstition that goes along with it:

The Holy Spirit, coming down upon the water, changes its natural properties. It becomes incorrupt, that is, it does not spoil, remains transparent and fresh for many years, receives the grace to heal illnesses, to drive away demons and every evil power, to preserve people and their dwellings from every danger, to sanctify various objects whether for church or home use.

Yep, God is apparently so good at water purification, he changes its natural properties…whatever that means. The Russian Orthodox take this very seriously:

People line up in churches to fill their bottles with the holy water which is believed to have a curative effect. Many defy sub-zero temperatures and take a dip in an ice hole to cleanse themselves of sins and take advantage of the heath-giving properties of Epiphany water as it is thought that any water on this day, be it tapped water or a pond, becomes baptismal. The number of “walruses” increases by the year. In Moscow, some 60,000 people are expected to enjoy Epiphany bathing. The holy water doesn’t spoil and therefore needn’t be kept in a fridge.

And what’s the result?

More than 100 Russian Orthodox believers have been hospitalized after drinking holy water during Epiphany celebrations in the eastern city of Irkutsk, an official said Monday.

A total of 117 people, including 48 children, were in the hospital complaining of acute intestinal pain after drinking water from wells in and around a local church last week, said Vladimir Salovarov, a spokesman for the Irkutsk Investigative Committee.

Salovarov said 204 people required some medical treatment after consuming the water, the source of which was a stagnant lake. He said, however, that it was too early to say what caused the illness.

You know what? I have a feeling they’ll discover that it’s caused by some sort of bacteria or parasite in the stagnant lake, not by the priest praying incorrectly.

While these sorts of studies are fun for giggling at people who hold ludicrous beliefs, they’re also useful. People often argue that religion and science occupy different realms of knowledge, and that science cannot test religious claims. That is totally false when religion claims to affect the natural world. Here’s a simple test:

1. Get water from a pond on January 18th (this is your control)
2. Let priest pray on it for Epiphany.
3. Collect water from the same pond on January 19th.
4. Make observations:

  • Have all (or any) of the microbes in the water been destroyed?
  • Has the concentration of harmful chemicals decreased?
  • When left out, does the control water spoil and the holy water not?
  • When administered to ill patients in a double blind study, does the holy water significantly increase their health? (Okay, maybe giving pond water to sick people isn’t ethical…)

5. Repeat at multiple water sources.

If my hypothesis that Science Wins is supported, that falsifies their religious claims. They are outright wrong. It’s not a matter of opinion, it’s not a separate magisterium, and it’s not something we should respect. It’s a false claim with consequences. How many adults and children need to get sick with scientific explanations before people give up their superstitions? How is it ethical for churches to be telling all of these people that it’s safe to drink from this water when it’s not?

Scientologists "heal" Haiti victims by touching them

“Volunteer ministers” from the Church of Scientology are descending upon Haiti to help quake victims. That’s great! Oh, wait, how are they helping them? By using magical touching powers to reconnect nervous systems:

“We’re trained as volunteer ministers, we use a process called ‘assist’ to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication,” she said.

“When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch.”

Thank you, Scientology, for being completely worthless and insane. People are injured and dying, and you’re going around poking people. You’re doing more harm then good by making people think that they’ve actually received some sort of medical care, when you haven’t done diddly squat.

I love the skeptical quote from the doctor, which sums up things quite nicely:

Some doctors at the hospital are skeptical. One US doctor, who asked not to be named, snorted: “I didn’t know touching could heal gangrene.”

Indeed. Maybe the Scientologists could enlighten us on this wonderful healing power? It would certainly make universal health care more viable, if all we had to do was touch people.

Scientologists “heal” Haiti victims by touching them

“Volunteer ministers” from the Church of Scientology are descending upon Haiti to help quake victims. That’s great! Oh, wait, how are they helping them? By using magical touching powers to reconnect nervous systems:

“We’re trained as volunteer ministers, we use a process called ‘assist’ to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication,” she said.

“When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch.”

Thank you, Scientology, for being completely worthless and insane. People are injured and dying, and you’re going around poking people. You’re doing more harm then good by making people think that they’ve actually received some sort of medical care, when you haven’t done diddly squat.

I love the skeptical quote from the doctor, which sums up things quite nicely:

Some doctors at the hospital are skeptical. One US doctor, who asked not to be named, snorted: “I didn’t know touching could heal gangrene.”

Indeed. Maybe the Scientologists could enlighten us on this wonderful healing power? It would certainly make universal health care more viable, if all we had to do was touch people.

Morality: Philosophy vs Biology

This semester I’m taking an introductory course through the Philosophy department called Biomedical ethics. After four classes, I’m convinced I’m insane for taking this class “for fun.” So far we’ve just been learning about ethics in general, and my brain is already melting. Somehow my mind manages to agree and disagree with about every topic we’re presented, no matter how contradictory they are. I admit I’m totally unfamiliar with philosophy, but right now it just seems like a whole lot of bullshit that grad students pull out of their ass while at the pub.

I’m fine on understanding sound and valid arguments – those are based on logic, which I understand – but my mind explodes when we start talking about various moral theories. I think my problem is that I view things as a scientist and a biologist, and I have a really hard time getting into the mindset of a philosopher.

For example, our professor has spent the last two classes talking about how moral subjectivism (moral statements are true and false, but their truth is determined by the attitudes and beliefs of society and culture) and emotivism (moral statements are neither true nor false) are piles of crap. I don’t know if this is the common opinion of the philosophical community, but it doesn’t sit well with me.

As an atheist, I don’t think moral codes were carved into stone or written in a book. Rather, evolutionary biology and instincts explain most of our moral behavior (I recommend Marc Hauser’s book Moral Minds). We automatically and rapidly come up with moral decisions based on instincts and emotions, and then after the fact we come up with reasoning to support our opinion. So are we really all just emotivists, but trick ourselves into thinking we’re being rational?

I also don’t understand how you can prove something to be morally right or wrong without invoking evolved behavior/emotion/instinct. Let’s say my professor is right and moral subjectivism and emotivism are totally and utterly wrong, and we’re just little logical machines. Whether you subscribe to consequentialist or deontological moral theories (or other ones, I have no idea what I’m talking about), it still doesn’t seem right to me. Let me play the annoying child for a bit:

Philosopher: Stabbing a child in the face is morally wrong.
Me: Why?
Philosopher: Because it lowers the happiness of others/causes harm to others, and that is morally wrong.
Me: Why?
Philosopher: Because that’s the moral theory we’re using.
Me: Why?
Philosopher: *fails Jen*

Alright, yes, I think stabbing a child in the face is morally wrong. And if you asked me to outline the certain moral “rules” I follow, they would generally be to reduce harm to others. But why should that be my rule? Why do we label reducing harm as good? The way this class is teaching it, it seems like right and wrong are some sort of voodoo mysterious universal constants that simply are.

But the way I see it, morality evolved. We want to reduce harm to others because we evolved in a group situation, and the only way we could survive is if we stopped killing our family and tribe members long enough for us to all cooperate. If we evolved in a more independent environment, we may have a totally different moral system. Maybe the moral rule that would have evolved would have been caring only about your own children, and killing other children would be seen as a moral act.

Of course, maybe I’m totally wrong. I’m not familiar with philosophy, and it’s quite possible that I’m over thinking it by wondering where morals even came from to begin with. But that seems like a really important point to me. If instinct decides what’s morally right and wrong, what value do all of these various theories have? They’re not merely trying to predict what humans do do, because we don’t always act morally – they’re trying to say what we should do. I have a hard time accepting that my professor 100% rejects emotivism when everything seems to start there, and then get tweaked by a cognitive theory.

Aannddd I’ve gotten to the point where I think I’m self contradictory and my brain has oozed onto the floor. I really don’t know what I’m talking about and none of this stuff makes sense to me. As this is an atheist blog, I have a good feeling that I have a fair number of philosophers (amateur or otherwise) in my readership. Maybe you all can help explain this to me, because I’m not even making sense to myself.

The creators of “The God Equation” probably won’t get this joke

Remember that nonsensical “God Equation” that was ripped apart over at Pharyngula about a month ago? Yeah, I don’t think its creators will get this joke:I really think the amount you laugh* at xkcd could be a good predictor of nerdiness/science knowledge. I know when I stare at a comic scratching my head, it’s because I don’t know something. This frequently happens when the punchline has to do with programming. Sadness.

*Assuming laughter correlates with getting the joke. If you get it but don’t laugh, I don’t get your sense of humor. If you don’t get it but laugh, you may be insane, really like stick figures, or have a judgmental nerd peering over your shoulder.

No G-Spots?! …Wait, what?

If you have the same taste in blogs that I do (aka you’re obsessed with sex), you’ve probably been inundated with posts about how a new study has proven that G-spots don’t exist!

The scientists at King’s College London who carried out the study claim there is no evidence for the existence of the G-spot — supposedly a cluster of internal nerve endings — outside the imagination of women influenced by magazines and sex therapists. They reached their conclusions after a survey of more than 1,800 British women.

Well, I’ll be damned. I was fairly certain from personal experience that G-spots do exist, but I can’t argue with scientists, can I? They must have carefully inspected all 1,800 of those British women (what a lucky grad student!), right?

In the research, 1,804 British women aged 23-83 answered questionnaires. All were pairs of identical or non-identical twins. Identical twins share all their genes, while non-identical pairs share 50% of theirs. If one identical twin reported having a G-spot, this would make it far more likely that her sister would give the same answer. But no such pattern emerged, suggesting the G-spot is a matter of the woman’s subjective opinion.

And what was that questionnaire? Just a single question:

“Do you believe you have a so called G spot, a small areas the size of a 20p coin on the front wall of your vagina that is sensitive to deep pressure?”

…Alright boys and girls, it’s time for a lesson on why this is “Bad Science.”

Questionnaires are always a bit subjective and iffy – especially when asking someone about their anatomy. If you ask people how many chambers their heart has, and some say 3, that doesn’t mean they’re actually missing a chamber. Simply asking people if they have a G-spot doesn’t confirm it’s existence or lack thereof. I can’t believe that this study would rely on opinion rather than medically examining females to see if it is there or not.

The fact that they didn’t see any correlation in identical twins just illustrates that personal opinion about the existence of a G-spot is not genetically determined. Their initial logic that genetically identical twins should have identical sexual responses is flawed. Sexual response has a huge environmental component, which the study finds but apparently ignores:

While 56% of women overall claimed to have a G-spot, they tended to be younger and more sexually active.

That makes perfect sense. Finding the G-spot isn’t easy. It usually takes a patient partner, sex positions other than missionary, or specialized sex toys – all of which are more likely to be found in younger, sexually active people. What’s more likely: that these women are partaking in activities that make them more likely to find their G-spot, or that the majority of women are all delusional about a specific area that causes intense pleasure? I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to hallucinate a pleasure button, I’m going to put it somewhere I little easier to reach.

A quote from the researcher also sends up a red flag for me:

Andrea Burri, who led the research, said she was anxious to remove feelings of “inadequacy or underachievement” that might affect women who feared they lacked a G-spot.

Yep, it’s always great to go into research with an agenda and preconceived result in mind!

This all may be the result of bad science reporting, which is always a likely cause, since the actual paper is coming out next week. I’ll look forward to reading it and seeing if it’s also so strident in its claims.