Mr Slime-Snake-Monkey-Mutant himself, Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., has been paying a few visits to scienceblogs — he popped into Stranger Fruit, and paid call on my thread, too. Just once, I wish one of these soundly castigated hoople-heads who come ’round to defend their affronted sanity would actually muster a brief moment’s coherence and simple rationality to refute their kookiness, rather confirm it.
Sam Harris has a letter in Nature today, urging scientists to unite against religion — even the moderate religion that so many are willing to support.
But here is Collins on how he, as a scientist, finally became convinced of the divinity of Jesus Christ: “On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains… the majesty and beauty of God’s creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ.”
What does the “mode of thought” displayed by Collins have in common with science? The Language of God should have sparked gasping outrage from the editors at Nature. Instead, they deemed Collins’s efforts “moving” and “laudable”, commending him for building a “bridge across the social and intellectual divide that exists between most of US academia and the so-called heartlands.”
He seems to feel the same way about Collins that I do.
We movie stars are used to the resentment of the little invertebrates.
(It desperately needs some correction, though — he ought to refer to himself as “a body-regenerating echinoderm“, singular, rather than using the name of the group.)
Aaargh. When will the media learn? National Geographic is running this ridiculous headline right now: New Fossil Ape May Shatter Human Evolution Theory, in which the reporter claims a discovery of some teeth could “demolish a working theory of human evolution.” It’s not true. Where is this nonsense coming from?
I read the article. It’s titled “A new species of great ape from the late Miocene epoch in Ethiopia.” The exciting news is that the “combined evidence suggests that Chororapithecus may be a basal member of the gorilla clade, and that the latter exhibited some amount of adaptive and phyletic diversity at around 10-11 Myr ago.” It concludes with a suggestion that we need to do more research in sediments appropriate to Miocene apes. There aren’t an exploding paradigms or revolutions suggested.
I read the associated news article in Nature. It’s titled “Oldest gorilla ages our joint ancestor.” It says that this discovery pushes back the time of divergence of the gorilla lineage from our own. This is just ordinary science.
Now read the blogs — they’re doing a much better job of evaluating this work than the traditional media. For one thing, they’re actually looking at it critically. Afarensis points out that these are only a few teeth, and it’s awfully thin grounds for a substantial revision of the timeline. John Hawks makes a similar point, but also highlights the fact that there is an unresolved problem — we need to reconcile paleontological and molecular dates. Even John Wilkins, a “mere” philosopher, weighs in sensibly that teeth are plastic characters in phylogeny, and deplores this peculiar media habit of taking a recalibration of a historical detail as a major reformulation of theory. All these discussions are sober and interested and most important of all, accurate.
The lesson is clear: when you see some wild and crazy claim of scientific revolutions and the demolition of long-held theories, go immediately to the science blogs for some clear-eyed sanity and informed evaluation from experts.
This week’s Nature has a horribly depressing article. If you’re a graduate student, don’t read any further.
Really, stop. I hate to see young biologists cry.
NSF data show that the number of students in US graduate programmes in the biological sciences has increased steadily since 1966. In 2005, around 7,000 graduates earned a doctorate. But the number of biomedical PhDs with academic tenure has remained steady since 1981, at just over 20,000. During that period the percentage of US biomedical PhDs with tenure or tenure-track jobs dropped from nearly 45% to just below 30%.
7,000 students per year casting a covetous eye on a total of 20,000 positions? You’re all waiting for me to die, aren’t you?
What about the post-docs?
Although numbers of applicants for postdoctoral fellowships awarded by the NIH increased between 2002 and 2006, the percentage who were successful dropped sharply (see graphic). And the average age of scientists earning their first R01 grant — the NIH’s bread-and-butter grant to an independent researcher — has risen from 34 in 1970 to 42 now.
A suggestion:
A posting to an online careers discussion group puts the matter bluntly: “If you aren’t thinking about ‘alternative careers’ before ever setting foot in graduate school, then you’re being foolish.”
The article does mention that the number of Ph.D.s going into industry has tripled in recent years, so it’s not totally hopeless … but we are seeing a shift in the biology profession, that’s for sure.
Check, E (2007) More biologists but tenure stays static. Nature 448:848-849.
If they aren’t singing about the drugs they take to make them work, they’re wondering why their ex-wives set them on fire. I think I have a new explanation for the Fermi Paradox: the aliens are out there, but they’re so freaked out and baffled by human sexual behavior that they don’t want to get any closer than the orbit of Pluto. Or maybe the reason the alien Greys are hoovering up people and giving them anal probes is that they’ve got this twisted idea that that is how we say “hello.”
(Yes, I am aware that those are two contradictory rationales.)
I must have been sleeping, because I hadn’t noticed that this came out: Janet Browne, the author of a most excellent two-volume biography of Darwin, has a new book titled Darwin’s Origin of Species: A Biography. That one is going right to the top of my Amazon wishlist.
Michael Barton has a review.
Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis.
Hello Mr. Myers,
My name is Mark Mathis. I am a Producer for Rampant Films. We are
currently in production of the documentary film, “Crossroads: The
Intersection of Science and Religion.”At your convenience I would like to discuss our project with you and to see
if we might be able to schedule an interview with you for the film. The
interview would take no more than 90 minutes total, including set up and
break down of our equipment.We are interested in asking you a number of questions about the
disconnect/controversy that exists in America between Evolution,
Creationism and the Intelligent Design movement.Please let me know what time would be convenient for me to reach you at your
office. Also, could you please let me know if you charge a fee for
interviews and if so, what that fee would be for 90 minutes of your time.I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Sincerely,
Mark Mathis
Rampant Films
4414 Woodman Ave. #203
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
www.rampantfilms.com
Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis.
Hello Mr. Myers,
My name is Mark Mathis. I am a Producer for Rampant Films. We are
currently in production of the documentary film, “Crossroads: The
Intersection of Science and Religion.”At your convenience I would like to discuss our project with you and to see
if we might be able to schedule an interview with you for the film. The
interview would take no more than 90 minutes total, including set up and
break down of our equipment.We are interested in asking you a number of questions about the
disconnect/controversy that exists in America between Evolution,
Creationism and the Intelligent Design movement.Please let me know what time would be convenient for me to reach you at your
office. Also, could you please let me know if you charge a fee for
interviews and if so, what that fee would be for 90 minutes of your time.I look forward to speaking with you soon.
Sincerely,
Mark Mathis
Rampant Films
4414 Woodman Ave. #203
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
www.rampantfilms.com
Come February, we are going to be privileged to see a brand new movie that stars Ben Stein and portrays Intelligent Design creationism as the cool rebel oppressed by the stodgy old Darwinist bullies. Did you know that “scientists are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator”? I didn’t either. I think a lot of scientists have thought about it and noticed that there is no evidence for such a hypothesis, and have therefore rejected it.
This movie fits with the intelligent design strategy of declaring itself the victim of an unfair exclusion (which isn’t true, of course: they haven’t ponied up the science that would legitimize them), but interestingly, its central theme seems to be that Big Science has excluded god from the classroom and the lab … it’s a raw demand for a violation of the separation of church and state and for the inclusion of superstitious dogma in science. That’s very convenient. It’ll make it easier to use the courts to keep their religious propaganda out of the classroom.
Oh, and putting Ben Stein in short pants and playing “Bad to the Bone” does not make him a rebel. He’s a Republican apologist, and he’s not “cool” at all.
