Questions from Brother Kent Hovind

He’s still pestering me. Kent Hovind asks:

Can you, as a committed BELIEVER in the evolution religion please explain why;
1. ALL live forms from bacteria to whales “evolved” the myriad of complex processes to reproduce offspring.

You’ve got it backwards. Replication is a prerequisite for creatures to evolve, so they all inherited the capacity from their parent(s), all the way back to the first replicator about 4 billion years ago. At first it was just the crude expansion and division of a pool of metabolites, and gradually became more elaborate (and weird!), because this is an essential process for producing the next generation.

Do you think every new species has to re-evolve the entire reproductive apparatus from scratch?

2. Doesn’t this use lots of the individual’s resources and energy and obviously create more competition for food, air, water, housing etc?

Yes. Since, from the perspective of evolution, reproduction is the key process for populations to maintain themselves, it’s worth the investment. Your line goes extinct without it.

It takes a lot of work to keep yourself healthy and well-fed, so why do you bother? Just stop eating. You’d save yourself so much effort.

3. How does that benefit the individual?

Some of us find value and joy in our children and grandchildren, so obviously it’s a benefit to us. Others do not, and choose not to reproduce. That’s OK, they can contribute to society in other ways.

If you’re questioning the benefit of reproduction, then you must understand why some people use birth control, or choose to limit their investment in offspring with abortion.

4. Why didn’t any life forms “evolve” the ability to live forever instead?

Because it’s a physical impossibility. Life is fragile, any one individual is inevitably going to die, whether by accident or the actions of another individual. If your hypothetical Immortal falls into a volcano or is buried in a mudslide or pisses off another Immortal with a spear or gets eaten by a carnivore (all inevitable, given a long enough life, and none that you could acquire a resistance to), you’re done, no successor, if you don’t also have the ability to reproduce.

It’s a race between living fast, having lots of children, and burning out early, vs. longevity, a slow cautious life, and risking a death before you have a chance to have children.

5. Your offer to come visit Dinosaur adventure land in Lenox Alabama and learn REAL SCIENCE is still on the table.

In case readers were unaware, Hovind has offered to pay FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($500) for my travel expenses to go to his plywood fantasy land and hang out with his culties.

PZ, would you like to come to Dinosaur adventure land in Lenox Alabama for our Creation Bootcamp July 24-27? We will let you share the best three evidences for why you believe in evolutionism and take questions from the audience. We will pay your expenses to get here up to $500. Call 855-big-dino ext 3 if you want to come.

I’ve told him no. I’ve told him FUCK, NO! I’m especially not going to get entangled in that waste of time for a pittance.

My fee for creationist debates is $6000. For his 4-day conference, that would be $24,000. If he insults me again with such a ridiculous low-ball offer, the price is going up to $7K.

Fly any flag you want at NASCAR! Maybe.

NASCAR, a sport I have negative interest in following, has decreed that Confederate flags are no longer allowed at their events, which have always been characterized by good ol’ boys waving traitor’s flags and decorating their cars with them. Bold move! I imagine a fair number of their fans are choking on their chaw right now. One of them, Ray Cicarelli, has announced that he will no longer be participating.

Ciccarelli said he does not like the direction NASCAR is headed, adding that he does not believe in kneeling during the National Anthem, nor does he believe in taking away the right for people to fly whatever flag they choose.

What an interesting position to take! So you can fly whatever flag you want…although I’ve noticed a remarkable dearth of these flags at NASCAR, but then, I haven’t paid much attention. I think you’d get beat up pretty bad if you tried.

So you could commend his commitment to free speech, except that he also declares that you shouldn’t be allowed to kneel during the Glorious Patriotic Drinking Song, which means his reasoning isn’t at all based on personal liberty. What could his rationale be?

I mean, the reason the Confederate flag is on a shit list is because it represents white supremacy, bigotry, and oppression — and also, incidentally, slavery — so it’s easy to understand why The Libs think it is inappropriate. Is Mr Ciccarelli in favor of those things?

The real reason Ciccarelli is leaving the game:

Impressive. A perfect record.

I’m never gonna get my jaw up off the floor again

I just read J.K. Rowling Writes about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues (does she always refer to herself in the third person?). It was gobsmackingly oblivious and stupid. My opinion of Rowling’s intelligence and writing ability has just been blown to bits. It just goes on and on, alternating between self-pity and denial and bad science. I’m not going to quote from it, with the exception of one sentence that is absolutely bonkers.

Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.

So, because they reject the identities of trans men, they aren’t really exclusionary? Trans men are OK because they’re actually women? That was so totally a TERFY statement.

That settles it. The grandkids are not ever going to get any Harry Potter books from me.

I’m bustin’ out of this joint this morning

I’ve been laid up for almost a week with a bad knee (very bad knee! It shall be punished!), so I’ve been doubly-confined by the stupid virus and the stupid knee. Today I’m feeling well enough to trek across the street and get some work done — boring work. I have to shuffle microscopes and balances around to get them ready for a maintenance visit. But! I also get to check in and feed the spiders, who were left last week with possible mates, and set up some new spiders recently caught, and check on some wild spiders around the science building. It will be a better day than usual, I hope.

I also have big plans for some more elaborate spidering expeditions next week, so I’m going to be careful of this obnoxious knee now, so that it will be even stronger then.

Further goodness: I’m expecting a present for myself from myself in the mail today. I’ll show you later.

The COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity for charlatans on all sides

I’d never heard of Surgisphere before. Apparently, no one had. They just suddenly appeared out of nowhere with vast amounts of data from numerous hospitals, a gigantic database that they’d used to address the question of the utility of hydroxychoroquine in treating COVID-19, and came back with the expected answer: no, it’s not any good. They got quoted all over the place! Great PR! Suddenly, lots of people had heard of Surgisphere.

Unfortunately, Surgisphere is a crock.

The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known US healthcare analytics company, also calling into question the integrity of key studies published in some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.

A Guardian investigation can reveal the US-based company Surgisphere, whose handful of employees appear to include a science fiction writer and an adult-content model, has provided data for multiple studies on Covid-19 co-authored by its chief executive, but has so far failed to adequately explain its data or methodology.

Data it claims to have legitimately obtained from more than a thousand hospitals worldwide formed the basis of scientific articles that have led to changes in Covid-19 treatment policies in Latin American countries. It was also behind a decision by the WHO and research institutes around the world to halt trials of the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine. On Wednesday, the WHO announced those trials would now resume.

Hey! Nothing wrong with citizen input from science fiction writers and adult-content models. There had better be more substance behind the claims, though. It turns out that there is confusion about how many employees the company has (100? 6? 3?) depending on the source, there don’t seem to be any people with the special skills need for the study — this is Big Data stuff, lots of statistics and computer science — and the data has been falling apart. The study claimed to be derived from “96,000 patients with Covid-19, admitted to 671 hospitals from their database of 1,200 hospitals around the world”, but various hospitals have reported that the data doesn’t match what they’ve reported.

And then, the big question: how did this company get access to so much confidential medical information?

One of the questions that has most baffled the scientific community is how Surgisphere, established by Desai in 2008 as a medical education company that published textbooks, became the owner of a powerful international database. That database, despite only being announced by Surgisphere recently, boasts access to data from 96,000 patients in 1,200 hospitals around the world.

When contacted by the Guardian, Desai said his company employed just 11 people [nobody seems to know how many people work there]. The employees listed on LinkedIn were recorded on the site as having joined Surgisphere only two months ago. Several did not appear to have a scientific or statistical background, but mention expertise in strategy, copywriting, leadership and acquisition.

What is clear is that there was a massive falsification of data. It also looks like the chief executive of the company, Sapan Desai, is a con artist with a history of pseudoscientific schemes.

What’s interesting about the story, though, is that it demonstrates how everyone is a bit gullible, and is willing to suspend skepticism a bit when the science, pseudo or otherwise, seems to support prior expectations. Lots of people got fooled by this one. Researchers even suspended ongoing trials because they thought Surgisphere had just provided the definitive answer! At first, it was only the hydroxychloroquine fanatics who were skeptical of the study, and embarrassingly, they were right, in this one case. But the real difference is that the real scientists, like David Gorski, will reassess their conclusions in the light of new information, admit to their error, and move on.

That’s the difference between the cultists and me. I’ll change my mind if they present new information that checks out when I dig into it. It’s also a lesson that a believer’s skepticism when examining something he disagrees with will always be far more rigorous than when looking at a study that goes against what he currently believes. Think of it as a somewhat embarrassing reminder to myself (coupled, perhaps, with a bit of self-flagellation) to remain humble in the future and not to be too fast to dismiss criticisms coming from even the cultists.

Surgisphere’s papers are getting trashed. The legitimate hydroxychloroquine studies have resumed — way too many studies than the treatment deserves, if you ask me. If they come back with positive information about the value of the drug (I don’t think they will, since the claims all originated from sources as quacky as Sapan Desai) then I’ll accept new treatment recommendations. The question is, will the drug’s proponents accept any evidence from any studies that show its efficacy is baseless?

The patient didn’t make it, doctor

Emergency surgery: the patient, a handsome Mozambique tilapia in the prime of life, was trapped inside a maze of tunnels, an environment not compatible with life. Medical scans revealed its location, but it was deep and too large to be easily extracted.

The only solution was to go in and widen the tunnels. When they finally got to the fish, though, it was too late. It had expired.

It may have been dead for a while, and its location was not exactly conducive to preservation.

To make matters even more disgusting (if that’s possible), medics were reportedly gagging at the smell in the operating theatre.

Tragic and horrifying. O Poor Tilapia! We grieve for you.

The question remains: how did this terrible event happen to the fish?

When a nurse questioned him on it, the patient claimed he’d ‘accidentally sat on’ the fish, which then entered his body via his anus.

Seems legit.

A chat transript has circulated on China’s social media service Weibo. It states that the healthcare worker responded, saying: “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

People, look before you sit down. You never know when a fish might be sitting in your chair. From the perspective of any innocent small animal taking a break on your office chair, you’re just an ominous stinky dark hole lowering itself to engulf anything on the seat.