Comment problems?

I just got hit by a major wave of comment spam, and it took me while to puzzle out all the tools available in this MT system to purge them. I’m tinkering a little bit with comment settings to try and prevent it from happening again (tip: don’t put lots of links in comments, because they will get held up for my approval before posting), and I’ve clicked a few checkboxes in the settings on. If things get freaky and it doesn’t let you comment, send me an email and I’ll try to fix it.

Textbooks and Haeckel again

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[When I started this weblog, one of the hot topics in the Creationist Wars was Jonathan Wells, a Moonie who had trained as a developmental biologist and written a screed against evolutionary biology titled Icons of Evolution. This book purported to document serious flaws in some of the major examples of evolutionary biology, although what it actually did was parrot old creationist arguments and get much of the science wrong. One of the subjects he focused on was the pharyngula—the embryonic stage that exhibits a common morphology across all vertebrates. This fascinating developmental period has an unfortunate history, in that Ernst Haeckel published some fraudulent drawings of it, and also made exaggerated claims about it. One of Wells’ strategies was to condemn every biology textbook that illustrated homologies in pharyngula stage embryos, tarring them with the broad brush of Haeckelism. This got to the point where he was absurdly damning books that even included photos of embryos, and one of the things I’ve tried to do is document the way he misrepresents science teaching.]

I got a request to document some of Wells’ claims from his execrable book, Icons of Evolution. Specifically, Wells chastises several textbook authors for using modified versions of Haeckel’s drawings:

Starr & Taggart, 10th ed and this was mentioned in
Well’s testimony, p. 315, “slightly simplified version of
Haekel’s original fraudulent drawings”

Raven & Johnson, Biology, 6th ed

“modified version … exaggerates actual similarities” p. 450

I don’t have all of the textbooks he describes, but I do have the 5th and 9th editions of the above books, and I suspect the figures haven’t changed. Below, I’ve scanned in several of the figures that Wells finds objectionable, and for the most part, they aren’t bad at all, and actually make useful pedagogical points. I suspect that the real reason Wells and other creationists dislike them is that they reveal deep homologies that support evolutionary explanations of the origins of animal diversity.

[Read more…]

Another religious assault on education

Conservative religious groups are once again making grade school textbooks the battleground. In California, supremacists and revisionists are trying to make radical changes to kids’ textbooks, inserting propaganda and absurd assertions that are not supported in any way by legitimate scholars. The primary effort is to mangle history, but they’re also trying to make ridiculous claims about scientific issues.

Such as that civilization started 111.5 trillion years ago, and that people flew to the moon and set off atomic bombs thousands of years ago.

(OK, everyone, let’s all do our best imitation Jon Stewart double-take: “Whaaa…??”)

Yeah, these aren’t fundamentalist Christians, but Hindu nationalists with very strange ideas—still, it’s the same old religious nonsense. Two groups, the Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education Foundation, have a whole slate of peculiar historical ideas driven by their religious ideology, and are pressuring the California State Board of Education to modify textbooks. They want to recast Hinduism as a monotheistic religion, whitewash the caste system and the oppression of women, and peddle racist notions about Aryan origins.

This is what happens when religious dogma is allowed to dictate educational content—reality and evidence and objective analysis all become irrelevant. The earth is neither 111.5 trillion years old, nor only 6,000 years old, and the errors and misperceptions of old priests are not a sound foundation for science. It doesn’t matter whether those priests spoke Sanskrit or Hebrew, since their ideas are the product of revealed ‘knowledge’ rather than critical, evidence-based research, they don’t belong in a public school classroom.

Heck, what am I saying? It’s just another idea, right? Let’s teach the controversy and allow orthodox Hindu supremacists to battle it out with fundamentalist Christian dominionists in front of sixth graders. It should be exciting and enlightening.

(via Butterflies and Wheels)

Ambergris!

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Majikthise reports that an Australian couple has found a $295,000 lump of ambergris on a beach. Ambergris is cool stuff, so let me add to it’s splendor by bringing up two scientific views of it.

First, let’s hear from the chemists:

Since ancient times, ambergris has been one of the most highly valued perfumery materials. It is secreted in the stomach or intestinal tract of the sperm whale and released into the sea in the form of a grey to black stone-like mass. When exposed to sunlight, air and sea water, the material gradually fades to a light grey or creamy yellow colour and, at the same time, the main component, the odourless triterpene alcohol ambrein, is oxidatively degraded. Some of the products resulting from this chemical process are responsible for the organoleptic properties of ambergris.

We know the chemical structure of many of the active components of ambergris—it’s a beautifully complex collection of compounds.

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Two ambergris odorants and their natural precursor, ambrein (1).
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Examples of non-trans-decalin ambergris odorants.

And what about us biologists?

The effect of ambrein, a major constituent of ambergris, was studied on the sexual behavior of male rats. The rats were administered ambrein in doses of 100 and 300 mg/kg body weight. Male sexual activities were assessed by recording the erectile responses (penile erection) and homosexual mountings in the absence of female. The copulatory studies were carried out by caging males with receptive females brought into estrus with subcutaneous injections of estradiol benzoate and progesterone. The copulatory pattern of treated male rats (mountings, intromissions, ejaculations and refractory period), the pendiculations (yawns/stretches) and orientation activities towards females, the environment and themselves, were recorded. Ambrein produced recurrent episodes of penile erection, a dose-dependent, vigorous and repetitive increase in intromissions and an increased anogenital investigatory behavior, identifying the drug used in the present study as a sexual stimulant. It is conceivable from the present results that the ambrein-modified masculine sexual behavior in male rats supports the folk use of this drug as an aphrodisiac.

Mmm-mmmm. Good stuff, that ambergris.


Gorbachov M.Yu., Rossiter K.J. (1999) A New Electronic-Topological Investigation of the Relationship between Chemical Structure and Ambergris Odour. Chem. Senses 24:171-178.

Taha SA, Islam MW, Ageel AM (1995) Effect of ambrein, a major constituent of ambergris, on masculine sexual behavior in rats. Arch Int Pharmacodyn Ther 329(2):283-94.

A few links to delightful anti-ID pieces

Some good news first: Dembski gave a talk in Kansas. Kansas! You’d think they’d love him there, but his audience was better informed than you might expect, from the example of their elected Board of Education officials.

Dembski, who may have been led to expect a warmer reception for his ideas—he was in Kansas, after all—seemed to grow testy as questioner after questioner expressed doubt about his assertion that evolution is a failed theory and that patterns in nature are best explained as a result of intelligence.

I know there is a solid body of intelligent, well-informed people in Kansas, and the escapades of the klutzes trying to railroad the state back into the Middle Ages are probably rousing quite a bit of antagonism. I also suspect the Discovery Institute schtick is getting old, and since Intelligent Design is a proven loser in the courtroom, its fans are looking for a new angle. The DI Fellows might want to think about revamping their CVs.


The New York Times once again screws up by asking a religion writer to comment on evolution, and of course she casts it all in religious terms, opting in to Ruse’s terrible characterization of it as “evolutionism”. Fortunately, John Rennie has ripped into that claim satisfyingly.

Shulevitz and Ruse can go on about “evolutionism” if they like, but the kinds of claims they find troubling have nothing to do with what would be taught in public school science classes. Thus their arguments might be relevant as social context, but they have no bearing on any of the specific disputes involving whether or how evolution should be taught. Whether Shulevitz and Ruse would want this to be the case, their arguments help the creationists distract the public from the real issues.

Chris Mooney also has some good criticisms of the piece, although he and I do disagree on strategy (I think promoting secularism, of which atheism is a part, is a necessary component of any long term resolution of the creationism problem, and that is not the same as this mythical “evolutionism”.)


There is this fellow, Krauze, who runs some forgettable Intelligent Design blog, who can be best described as polite, persistent, and utterly clueless. He’s been having a little back-and-forth with Jason Rosenhouse (who has a more patient temperament than I do, clearly), and Jason neatly polishes off Krauze’s claim that ID just needs more time to develop. It’s entertaining and thorough.