Atlanta Pharyngufest!

All right, I think I have a decision: we will meet at 6:00pm or thereabouts on Saturday, 12 July, at Manuel’s Tavern, 602 N. Highland Ave., and have a grand old time for as long as you all can handle it. Remember, those Denverites could barely make it to 10pm — I think Georgians have to show that they can both party and offer entertaining rational conversation as good as the Coloradans gave. The honor of the South demands it!

Oh, and look: Atlanta skeptics are meeting at the same place and roughly the same time. It should be an excellent crowd.

Our Serious News Media: Newsweek

i-d16205f3913ffb6a6e8f5869541bd67e-lincolnvdarwin.jpg

Yikes. As everyone seems to have noticed, their cover story this week is Lincoln vs. Darwin, an absurd premise driven by the coincidence of their common birthday, which stoops to quoting their horoscope at us.

As soon as you do start comparing this odd couple, you discover there is more to this birthday coincidence than the same astrological chart (as Aquarians, they should both be stubborn, visionary, tolerant, free-spirited, rebellious, genial but remote and detached–hmmm, so far so good).

And of course, this being our brain-dead media, it can’t actually discuss them as independent people who made their own unique contributions to the world, it has to turn it into a horse race and ask, “Who was more important?” (I won’t give the answer away, but here’s a hint: which one was American?) It’s a glib and superficial bit of tripe.

The only good part is that it does define what a scientist is. This will be handy when people ask what I do for a living.

And Darwin, at least at the outset, was hardly even a scientist in the sense that we understand the term–a highly trained specialist whose professional vocabulary is so arcane that he or she can talk only to other scientists.

You can read more about this major media event at the Sandwalk and RichardDawkins.net. Sad to say, I don’t seem to share a birthday with any major historical figures, precluding any hypothetical rivalries. Although I was born on the same day as a major earthquake in the Aleutian Islands, if that means anything.

SNL circa 1975

Did anyone else catch Saturday Night Live last night? NBC rebroadcast the very first episode with host George Carlin, and I had to watch. Saturday Night Live came out in 1975, when I first went off to college at Depauw University, and it was a major event — every Saturday night, we’d mob the TV lounge in the basement of Bishop Roberts Hall to see that show (this was in the days when no one had a TV in their room; we didn’t even have our own telephone, but shared one on each floor. I tell kids this nowadays and they don’t believe me).

The old show has acquired a nice rosy patina in my mind because it was such a fun communal event…but man, seeing it again, I realize that it really, really sucked. The skits were lame and not very funny, and sad to say, even Carlin was a bit feeble, despite his dark-haired youth, and seemed to have left his edge at home. It’s true — 90% of everything is garbage, even the happy irreverence of my first year away from home.

What is wrong with journalists?

We’ve got a couple of appalling examples of awful journalism to scowl at today. The first is this credulous piece by Gordy Slack in The Scientist. I’ve been unhappy with Slack before — he sometimes seems to want to let creationist absurdity slide — and I got yelled at by some readers for my uncharitable interpretation of his review of the Creation “Museum”. Well, I think I’ve been vindicated now.

This article tries to give credit to the Intelligent Design creationists for some discoveries or interpretations. It’s wrong from top to bottom. Here’s his list, with my brief rebuttal; Jeffrey Shallit has a more thorough dissection.

  • ID gets credit for saying there are big, open questions in science. Scientists say this. It is not news. Go ahead, ask us, and we’ll give you long lists of exciting research questions. They won’t be invented or falsified controversies, as the DI is fond of puking up.

  • The cell is more complex than Darwin imagined. Scientists say this. The complexity of the cell was not figured out by creationists of any kind — it is the outcome of hard work by cell biologists and molecular biologists. It’s also not true that Darwin had a poor understanding of cellular complexity: as I’ve said before, the mid- to late 19th century was the period when the light microscope reached its optical limits, and there was all kinds of amazing work being done into developing new staining techniques and identifying new organelles. When do you think Camillo Golgi lived?

  • IDists are correct to say love is not an illusion. Scientists say this. Frankly, this is the most dumb-ass argument in a whole slop-bucket of dumbassery; that cherished, complex phenomena like love have a material basis does not in any way imply that they are not “real”.

  • IDists are right to say that some proponents of evolution are blind followers. Scientists say this. We don’t sit around thinking, “How can I get people to obey me?” The concern about improving public understanding of science is about getting people to be skeptical and ask intelligent questions. And just how can Slack give credit for noticing dogmatism among evolution supporters when ID is all about rationalizing dogmatic beliefs in a creator?

There is nothing in this mess that Gordy Slack credits to creationists that is actually something that they have done first. And then in conclusion he asks an utterly inane rhetorical question: “Should IDers be allowed to pursue their still very eccentric and outlying theory?” Has it ever even been suggested that creationists not be allowed to do research? More often, we’re snarling at ’em to go get some reasonable evidence. Slack’s article was just plain bad, strawmen aplenty and the gullible acceptance of ID propagandists’ appropriation of basic ideas.

Here’s another example of godawful stupid journalism, this time from the New York Times. Academics in Philadelphia have done a wonderful thing: they have organized a Year of Evolution to celebrate the Darwin year; I praised this before, and it really is an excellent, positive way to celebrate and inform about science. (I should also mention that I’ve been invited to come speak in November. This is not necessarily why it is such a good event.) This is a fantastic opportunity for people in that region to learn about the amazing progress science has made in the last century and a half.

How does the NY Times article start? “In the long-running culture war between evolution and creationism, Philadelphia is firing the latest shot.”

What?

I’m wondering…when St Patrick’s Cathedral opens its doors on Sunday morning, will there be journalists there covering the latest assault in the war on reason? Would they even think to phrase it that way? When scientists gather, though, and try to present their work to the community … that’s fighting a war.

Now, since the NY Times is the greatest paper in America, and they have to excel in everything, when they screw up they don’t just make a little boo-boo and then correct their course and try to move back towards something reasonable — that would produce a mediocre article. No, they have to compound the error. They have to make it monumental. Who would be the worst person to consult to add ‘diversity’ to the article, to put it into the standard boring frame with two sides and nothing in between? Can you guess?

Of course you can. Ken “Wackaloon” Ham.

Please. This is insane. I can understand getting multiple sources for a story; I can see how if a doctor has just told you some important medical news, you might want to get a second opinion. But if that second opinion was delivered by an inebriated, unwashed schizophrenic the doctor obligingly dragged out of a dumpster for you, you might be unimpressed with the quality of his search for diverse, informed perspectives. This, however, is pretty much standard operating procedure at the Times.

Jerry Coyne asked an editor publicly about this policy.

I noticed that when the Times reported on the recent discovery of the transitional fossil between fish and amphibians (the “fishapod”), they asked a creationist for comment. As an evolutionary biologist, I was dismayed by this. Creationism is simply a discredited enterprise, and asking a creationist to comment on a new fossil is like asking a faith healer to comment on a medical advance, or an astrologer to comment on a new discovery about human behavior. I respect the newspaper’s desire to be objective and give opposing viewpoints, but don’t see the need to do that when the “opposing viewpoint” is simply a form of quackery.

Here’s her reply. It starts out well enough.

How to cover the politicization of science, intelligent design and other manifestations of what Mr. Fishkin and other readers call the war on science is a question that comes up again and again in the science department. We’re well aware that giving equal time to opposing views of an issue makes no sense when one side has no solid evidence to stand on. The old FCC idea of a fairness doctrine simply shouldn’t apply to science journalism.

Right. Philadelphia is planning a major event around the discoveries and evidence and ideas of evolutionary biology, and that certainly is newsworthy. Ken Ham has no solid evidence to stand on, so it makes no sense to call him up and asks for his opinion…but they did. As she said, this makes no sense.

So why do they bring in anti-intellectual reprobates and promote their ignorance to a kind of equivalence to scientific ideas?

Yet viewpoints that may strike scientifically literate people as absurd, dangerous or even evil have a way of making news that insists on being dealt with. In recent years creationism’s hip cousin, intelligent design, has grown to be a divisive issue at every level of society, from school boards to the White House. So it seems to me that a serious paper is obliged to investigate the phenomenon, beginning with the question ‘What is going on here?’

Wait — so now she’s claiming that bringing aboard an irrational wackaloon is the mark of a “serious paper”? Wow. I guess that makes World Net Daily one of the pinnacles of serious journalism. The NY Times must be trying to catch up with them.

If the newspaper was writing an article on the serious sociological and political issues of creationism, evolution, and education, then sure — bring in many sides, explore them, and weigh them, and try to come to a conclusion. Unfortunately, there are two observations that invalidate the editor’s defense.

One is that even in those instances where the topic warrants the inclusion of these multiple perspectives, journalists tend to just let them lie there, limp and unresolved. We have scientists and we have creationists, they disagree with one another, we can’t resolve this issue, we can’t suggest that maybe one side is the province of insanity and ignorance, we’re just reporters for the NY freaking Times. There is no investigation, only the bland, blinkered recitation of each side’s position.

The other problem is that in both the cases of the Philadelphia Darwin celebration and the discovery of Tiktaalik, the creationist side had nothing of substance to contribute, other than sullen, unfounded disagreement. Denial is not an argument. The newspaper does a disservice to work that has heft to it, that has a solid foundation of serious evidence behind it, when they take any event on the side of reason and reflexively pair it with some cretin who has nothing but a dogmatic denial of science and reason as his credentials.

It seems to me that that is not what a serious paper would do.

Sneaky distractions

I’ve got all this work to get done right now, and what happens? Electronic Arts sends me the Creature Creator for their upcoming Spore video game (which is not going to be about evolution, no matter what their PR says — I’ve read the blurbs, and it’s all non-evolutionary). It is fun, though. And of course I quickly whipped up a pharyngupod:

Now I’m putting the game away. No more playing until I get back from my meetings this weekend.

How Life Began

As I said I would, I’m watching this History Channel documentary about the origin of life. How about a little live-blogging?

8:00. Ugh. It begins with a bunch of tripe from Coyne and Polkinghorne, claiming we need religion to understand the meaning of life. This is a bad, bad start, but I’m hoping it’s nothing but a weasely preliminary that they will then abandon to get to some real science.

There are lots of gimmicky special efects, but OK, let’s get the general audience interested. I’m not too keen on the parade of talking heads, though: they keep trotting out different investigators, letting them say a sentence or two, and then zipping off elsewhere. I know you don’t want some guy sitting and droning at you, but this seems like a poor compromise.

8:15. It’s a quick tour of the complexity of the cell. They’re using this special effects analogy of a “factory of life” where chemistry is going on.

First important element of life: metabolism. Second: life is cellular, with compartments. Third: life can replicate.

Now we get a parts catalog of polymers: lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.

Very weird: in their factory analogy, they point to something hidden behind a big red curtain and say that that’s where all these bits and pieces come together to make something that’s alive; it seems a bit of a cop-out, a way to pretend there’s something hidden where the viewer can imagine anything they want. Come on, bite the bullet and admit it: life is chemistry, and there is nothing more.

Now we get a fairly lengthy discussion of the idea of emergence. At least they clearly state that emergence is nothing magical, but is just a consequence of the execution of the laws of nature. This is a rather pointless digression, I think.

OK, now we get a timeline of the origin of life: it appeared about 3.8 billion years ago, on a very hostile planet with no oxygen in the air, and just cooling after the last of the great meteor bombardments. This leads naturally into a discussion of extremophiles, with a tour of Mono Lake.

Segue to commercial by mentioning that life will change the environment of the earth.

8:30. Conditions on early life are hostile to us, but chemical energy is abundant. Life would have existed as single-celled forms only, which may have been unrecognizable to us (why are they showing video micrographs of nematodes while they tell us this?)

Stromatolites are introduced, as organisms that grew on chemical energy sources. What are those energy sources?

The camera crew goes spelunking. They’re collecting rock-eating microbes, which the scientists argue is a kind of primitive chemistry that evolved before photosynthesis.

Nice reminder that single-celled life was the only form of life here for 80% of the history of earth, but then they make the mistake of using the past tense in saying they were the dominant form of life on the planet.

Wait…now they’re saying that the ability to reproduce is a property of DNA? That’s kind of cutting off the possibility of an interesting discussion of alternative paths.

Suddenly, boom, they’re talking about Leeuwenhoek. Hang on, this is a bit jumpy. Can we talk more about extremophile chemistry before we start on 17th-18th century microscopy?

Now it’s all about photosynthesis. We’ve moved way, way beyond the period of early abiogenesis already, and they’ve scarcely touched on any of the major theories.

Before the commercial, we get talk about multicellularity and oxygen chemistry. Either they’re going to be jumping about an awful lot and scrambling the story, or we’re not going to get anything about abiogenic chemistry…

8:45. Oops, I had to miss part of this section to run some real-world errands. I come back to see the Burgess Shale and a discussion of the Cambrian explosion. This is long, long after the origin of life!

It’s an excuse to show some computer animations of Anomalocaris, anyway.

George Coyne does a good job now saying that life doesn’t need a designer; Polkinghorne pops up to make excuses for the metaphorical nature of the book of Genesis. Bugger off, Polkinghorne, you bother me, ya twit.

Now we get a summary of the importance of selection and sex. I don’t think we’re going to get a good review of biogenesis anymore — sex is not an important issue in that field.

I am completely baffled. Before the commercial, they say the big question was how human life arose…then they ask, “What was the specific mechanism that caused non-living chemistry into living biology?” Weird. These are very different questions. They seem to be muddling up the origins of life with the origins of the only important form of life, humans.

9:00. We’re back to animals. Come on, animals are peculiar latecomers.

Maybe it’s an excuse to return to a historical survey of ideas about the origin of life. I hope.

Aristotle proposes the idea of spontaneous generation, an idea that hangs on for centuries but is relatively easy to disprove…as Redi and Spallanzani do. This stuff isn’t bad, but it feels like introductory material they should have brought up at the beginning.

Actually, I’m enjoying this part best of all so far. They’re actually talking about the experiments done to disprove spontaneous generation, so it’s a useful summary of how scientists actually do science.

Our closing question: so how did life arise from chemistry? The second half is off to a good start, I think.

9:15. I’ve got to say…the actor playing Charles Darwin looks nothing like him, and that beard looks cheesy and fake.

We get the early concepts: “warm little pond”, “primorial soup”. There the questions are about what kind of chemicals and conditions existed at the beginning of life. They mention Oparin’s ideas about the chemical monomers available, and the idea that these chemicals would accumulate in the oceans. It seems like a very low probability sort of exercise.

The Miller/Urey experiment at last. This is well done, with a very nice illustration of the apparatus and techniques. They get it right, too — it was nice work that showed that the natural chemistry that would produce organic substrates for life was relatively trivial. It also set up unrealistic expectations for how easy it would be to create life.

Closing premise: now there is a race to figure out prebiotic chemistry.

9:30. Let’s consider other sources of organic matter!

Space-borne debris. Complex organic molecules are found in metorites and in space. We get to see scientists extracting organic molecules from ground-up meteorites. Panspermia is mentioned, but they aren’t doing a good job of distinguishing chemicals from life. At least Bob Hazen is razor sharp in pointing out that panspermia is a cop out.

Hazen also clearly explains bottom-up (exploring basic principles about biochemistry to replicate the events at the origin) vs. top-down (working in reverse from extant life backwards to the origin). He also explains that we need a multiplicity of approaches, and the origin may also have been generated from diverse sources.

Hmm. Commercials seem to be coming more frequently as we get close to the end.

9:40. It’s deep-sea vent time, with nice shots of black smokers and squid. Then Bob Hazen shows us how his experiments on the chemistry at high pressure and temperature are done. Cooking a little pyruvate for a while generates substances that form micelles.

Clays! Clays are shown as potential catalytic surfaces that would concentrate organic compounds and promote reactions that form, for instance, RNA. RNA monomers will polymerize in the presence of clays.

Transition: are scientists on the verge of creating artificial life in the lab?

9:50. It’s “3000 years after Aristotle”? What?

Never mind. Now we get pretty crystals growing and changing. This bit is a little fluffy.

All right: Jack Szostak. They describe his efforts to try and create a protocell. Cool video of creating cell membranes — beautiful little droplets bubbling out of an electrode. Some good cautionary statements: if they succeed, this will still only be a model, not a demonstration of how it actually happened 3.8 billion years ago.

They don’t really say much about the mechanisms in the closing minutes, but they do have a nice statement by Neil de Grasse Tyson about how the search is the important thing, even if we don’t get an answer.

Summary: the first hour was a muddle, and not worth watching. If you’re going to catch it later, just watch the second half.

The last half wasn’t bad. It at least talked very briefly about the actual science and how it is done. It was all painfully abbreviated and only touched lightly on the subject, but I think that is simply a limitation of the medium. I imagine it’s a seriously difficult balancing act to try and meet the needs of real nerds (like us!) and the more casual viewer, so I’ll accept the compromise.

Something at the end to lead the interested viewer to more in-depth sources would have been a good idea — they could have at least mentioned Hazen’s Genesis as a plug.

I guess I’m going to have to dust off the telly tonight

In addition to the abiogenesis program on the History Channel, it looks like Ken Miller is going to be on the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. I hope you’ve got cable!

By the way, if you don’t have cable, and you still want to see Ken Miller, the HHMI offers a DVD of Miller lecturing on evolution and ID for free to North Americans. I’m reviewing it right now for consideration in our introductory biology class.

(I actually don’t use a television, I’ve got one of these tuner gadgets for my laptop, so I’ll probably record both programs tonight.)