Synthese scandal makes the New York Times

You may recall the furious debate among philosophers about a philosophy journal, Synthese, that made a tacit rebuke of critics of Intelligent Design creationism in an editorial added after acceptance of a number of papers on ID; it’s not just that they caved to creationist pressure, but that the editors-in-chief went over the heads of the working editors who assembled that issue of the journal to criticize excellent work by rational philosophers like Barbara Forrest. There has been a boycott of the journal; links to various commentaries on the issue can be found on a status page.

Well now the furor has hit the big time, with a summary article in the New York Times.

It’s clear from that article what the problem is: Francis Beckwith, weasely creationist apologist, got his butt hurt by a discussion of his role as a public enabler of bad science. I have long rolled my eyes at every mention of Beckwith — he’s a disingenuous creationist who struggles mightily to pretend that he’s a serious scholar arriving at serious conclusions, despite the fact that his conclusions always agree with those of professional liars and academic frauds. Did Barbara Forrest call him out on his history of baloney? Yes, she did. Is this a problem in an academic journal? I should hope not.

Australians are going to be insufferable

I can tell it’s going to be even worse than usual. They’re going to have another Global Atheist Convention, which I predict will be even bigger and more successful than the first one, and now I’m getting requests to plug other skeptical events in Melbourne, as if the kangaroos and drop-bears who will attend that sort of thing need even more recognition of their ungodly superiority over us gullible Americans.

It’s going to be a long 11 months, isn’t it? And even when it’s over, Oz will be smirking in that superior way over how they were able to pull off such a grand event.

Hey! How about if some of the smart Aussies come over here? All we ever get are the dregs.

Squid in space, again

Since I previously expressed my disappointment in the “squid in space” experiment that will be going up on the space shuttle, I’ve received a rebuttal from the lead investigator of the project. Fair’s fair; here it is.

Dear Dr. Myers,

I am the lead investigator on the Squid in Space project and an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida. I have read your description of the project in your blog and I feel that it is incomplete and missing the major point of the experiment. As you can imagine one doesn’t like to have their work labeled as “Bad Science” so I wanted to take this opportunity to write to you to elaborate on the press release that I assume inspired you to write the blog.

First, as you correctly pointed out in the blog that the squid are a models for how bacteria interact with animal tissues. For over 20 years this symbiosis has provided important clues as to how bacteria “talk” and communicate with host animals cells.

Vibrio fischeri induces several developmental events in the juvenile squid including a modification of the host immune system, and induction of an apoptotic cell death event. Similar events also happen in humans in response to both mutualistic bacteria, so by understanding how these mechanisms work in a simple squid/vibrio association we can make inferences to the human body. So that is why we chose the squid as a model system for the space experiment.

Second, we know that in microgravity conditions an astronaut’s immune systems appear to be dysregulated. However, in the few studies that involved human astronauts the results have been variable. So again the squid model allows us to be a bit more invasive than we could with human studies.

Also some bacteria become more virulent in space. The work of Cheryl Nickerson from Tulane has shown several microbes including Salmonella become far more virulent after exposure to microgravity conditions. However nothing is know about how commensal/mutualistic bacteria respond to microgravity conditions at the cellular level. So this experiment allows us to see the impact the microgravity treated V. fischeri has on the immune response and development juvenile squid (no embryos are going into space that was an error by the student reporter who wrote the release; we are sending hatched juvenile animals).

As 90% of the cells in our bodies are bacterial, we wanted to assess whether microgravity influences the “healthy” bacteria in anyway. Are developmental time lines disrupted? Does the V. fischeri initiation the changes in the host immune system and normal development (e.g. cell death events)? Basically do “good” bacteria go “bad”? These could be important questions to address for long-duration space flight and reduce the potential risk that astronauts may have to face.

We are also learning more about the natural symbiosis by experimenting with these animals under natural and simulated microgravity. By removing gravity as a constant we are able to determine to see if gravity might be obscuring aspects of the association. For example we are learning that some signals that activate the immune system (e.g. the trafficking of macrophages) are actually uncoupled in microgravity telling us that the signals may not function as we previously thought. More work on what the second signal could be is underway using simulated microgravity.

I hope this explains in a bit more detail why we are looking at these animals and flying the “Squid in Space” experiment. I know the press release did not fully explain the rationale behind the student run experiments.

If you have any additional questions or concerns regarding the science and objectives I would be happy to provide more detail.

Sincerely,
Jamie S. Foster

And her name is MYERS.

It’s even spelled correctly. Amy Myers, high school student, has challenged Michele Bachmann “to a Public Forum Debate and/or Fact Test on The Constitution of the United States, United States History and United States Civics”.

There’s no way Bachmann will take the challenge, unfortunately. There’s no upside to being publicly shown to be less well informed than a high school sophomore.

The 2012 Global Atheist Convention

You’re all going, right? They’ve just announced the next Global Atheist Convention for 13-15 April, in Melbourne, Australia, with Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens committing to attending. There are a few other noisy rude arrogant atheists that I’ve heard will be showing up, but they’re going to dribble out the announcements to torment you.

By the way, the Australian government has been forced to recognize that the last GAC was pretty darned successful, and this time they’ve actually agreed to subsidize it to a small degree, like any other profitable convention that would help the local economy. Progress!

Partyin’

I’ll be back in online action in a while, but I thought I’d just mention that we had a grand time at the anti-superstition party, and today we had an equally lovely time touring the U Penn Museum with a few of the regular commenters (I hope they’ll link to some of the photos they took: Jack C was our official tour photographer, I think). Now I have to relax for a bit and enjoy a nice dinner with Tom and Margaret Downey.

I’m just posting this so you’ll all be jealous and wish you’d shown up, too.

A Pharyngula poll?

Awww, my presence in Philadelphia today is acknowledged in Faye Flam’s blog with a poll. I’m sure you’ll all be able to give the correct answer to this one.

What is a pharyngula?

The structure in the back of your throat that hangs between your tonsils.
A retractable “penis bone” that supports erections in cats, dogs, hedgehogs and chimpanzees but not humans.
The language spoken by the aliens that Scientologists believe started life on Earth.
An advanced Kama Sutra position that requires partners to put both feet behind their heads.
A tiny parasitic catfish that lives in the Amazon and occasionally invades the human urethra.
A stage in the development of vertebrate embryos when construction of a spine begins and we all have brief possession of a “post anal tail.”

Yes, as you all already knew, the correct answer is #4.