Provided with toys and spider scouting for boys

I wanted to get out and get some exercise today, and also see how the local spider populations are doing. It was not a great outing — the horticulture garden is closed, as is Pomme de Terre park, so the usual haunts where I can go for a nice long walk and see lots of varieties of habitats were inaccessible. I finally ended up at East Side Park, a small central city park, mostly mowed grass, kiddie play structures, and an assortment of picnic tables. Not the best sort of place for wild spiders. Also, it’s been a bit neglected during the pandemic. I saw lots of broken glass (someone snuck out there with the cooking sherry, I noticed), so not entirely the best place for kids right now.

I needed the exercise. I found I’m out of shape from my winter’s languor. I was either in a half crouch, stooped over, or standing on tip-toe holding up my camera, in order to take these photos, and I was trembling after 10 minutes, so I’d just aim and take a dozen photos hoping one of them would be usable.

The park does have a big ol’ band shell, though, and I crawled around that for a while and found 4 different species without looking too hard. It’s a rather grungy structure right now, needing a good power wash, and I found lots of webs clotted with dead insects, especially mosquitos, draped all over the walls. Most of them looked ancient, probably from last summer.

But there were a few new spiders living there! I found 4 species on the side of this one building and you can see the photos on Patreon and also on Instagram and under the #InverteFest tag and the Spiders of Minnesota page. I’m not hiding them, I’m just trying to avoid sticking spiders in the faces of arachnophobes here.

One Theory to rule them all

I’ve been slow on the uptake on all these conspiracy theories. I was completely unaware of all the “5G causes COVID-19” goofiness until all the cell phone towers being set on fire stories hit the news, for instance. Now Orac informs me of another wacky tale. Did you know glyphosate causes COVID-19? How about glyphosate and vaping? Maybe glyphosate in biofuels? Glyphosate in automobile emissions? Glyphosate in jet fuel? Meet Stephanie Seneff.

I am a senior research scientist at MIT [in computer science]. I have devoted over 12 years to trying to understand the role of toxic chemicals in the deterioration of human health. I have been particularly focused on figuring out what has been driving the skyrocketing rates of autism in America and around the world. My research strongly suggests that glyphosate (the active ingredient in the weed killer Roundup) is a primary cause of the autism epidemic in the United States. When the COVID-19 pandemic began its march across the world, I started to consider whether glyphosate might play a role.

If there is indeed a connection between glyphosate and COVID-19, understanding why and how they’re connected could play a critical role in combating this pandemic.

The only thing missing is a claim that glyphosate in contrails causes autism and COVID-19. Maybe it’s already there if I were to dig deeper, but I’m disinclined to dig even shallowly.

Personally, my theory, which is mine and that of every moderately sensible biologist on the planet, is that COVID-19 is caused by a moderately infectious virus that has nothing to do with glyphosate or jet fuel or rivers or I-5. But that’s just me. And most educated persons.

A patron hangout on Sunday

On Easter Sunday, at 3pm Central time, I’m inviting all my lovely supporters on Patreon to join me in a conversation on YouTube about whatever they want to talk about. I’ll come prepared with a few things I’d like to discuss, but if my guests want to go off in other directions, that’s going to be fine.

If there are any gaps in the conversation, I will be ready to talk about a few topics:

• I’m enthusastically getting ready to go spider hunting as the weather warms up. Last summer we explored a few narrow niches, this year I want to look more at spider diversity.

• I have tools and ways of exploring places for spiders, or other critters. We can talk about interesting environments here in Western Minnesota, or where others live.

• If you’re not into spiders, I’ll talk about my growing interest in photography, and show off a few of my favorite lenses. (Warning: amateur here.)

• There has been a curious shift in my thinking as I refocus my interests from lab-based developmental bio to field work on behavior & ecology & eco-devo. We can talk about philosophy of biology!

Also, most importantly, we can talk with those weirdos who support me, and they can share their interests and their expectations for the coming months. Probably not all are dreaming of arachnids.

If you’re a patron, and want to join in, you can find a zoom link on my Patreon page:

https://www.patreon.com/pzmyers

or on our Discord server:

https://discord.gg/gQhq4q

It’ll be fun! It’ll be a distraction from the fact it’s not quite warm enough to go out scouting for spiders.

If you think David Frum will change people’s minds, think again

David Frum is a conservative Republican, a neo-conservative cheerleader who supported George W. Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq and the Israeli occupation of Palestine, who was an apologist for Sarah Palin, worked for Rudy Giulani’s short-lived presidential campaign, etc., etc., etc. He’s a deep Republican insider, although in recent years he has been rather unhappy with the radical turn towards idiocy that he’s observed in the party.

So maybe, you think, Republicans will pay attention to Frum’s agonizingly detailed chronicling of all of Trump’s failures? Maybe? Liberals have been saying the same sorts of things about Trump for years, and they’ve all failed to penetrate, so can we dare to dream that an arch-conservative pointing out the same issues might finally get through?

Nah, we still have meatheads like Joe Rogan favoring Trump. Fox News is still making excuses for him. Ron Paul thinks Fauci should be fired for disagreeing with Trump. Rush Limbaugh thinks the coronavirus pandemic is all hype.

Frum came up with the phrase “axis of evil” to label Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Maybe he would have been better off using it on evangelicals, billionaires, war profiteers, the Tea Party, Fox News, Wall Street, and other enemies of the people right here at home. They’ve already got an ill-gotten conclusion about the right way to run the country, and they aren’t going to change it because of piddly little annoyances like the facts, or even tens of thousands of dead. The hundreds of thousands of dead in Iraq had no effect on Frum’s views, after all.

The gift of Easter

Oh, boy, Easter is this weekend! Aren’t you all excited and looking forward to it? When I was a kid, it was all chocolate bunnies and easter eggs, and we didn’t even think about the religious side of it. I think we might have gone to church services a few times, but that wasn’t something to be happy about, it was kind of a drag.

Now, though, I’m dreading it. A lot of Christians think Easter is a great excuse, even an obligation, to gather together in large groups and infect each other. I think we might even be able to predict a blip in the COVID-19 statistics 2-3 weeks after this weekend. God won’t save you because your purpose is pious, and he certainly won’t save me if you spew more viral particles around in the grocery store to infect me. Stay home. Go into your little closet and pray alone. Please.

We already know that a significant number of COVID-19 cases in South Korea can be traced directly to the Shincheonji cult, and their stealthy habits of congregating to infect each other, and then infiltrating other churches to recruit new members.

South Korea has been remarkably effective and efficient in controlling the disease, it’s sad that their efforts were being undermined by religious fanatics (Daegu, by the way, is where my daughter-in-law is from. Lovely city.)

What’s even sadder, though, are the gormless missionaries who are taking advantage of the idiot president of Brazil’s policies to actively seek out remote indigenous people and kill them with disease. In a time of pandemic, we’re all told to stay-in-place to inhibit transmission of the virus, which makes sense, but these clueless twits are doing the opposite, and charging off to assault uncontacted native tribes with the Lord’s Plague, and also the Lord’s useless Holy Book.

Just like Trump, Bolsonaro has appointed many such fundamentalists to important positions in his government. These appointments include placing evangelical former missionary Ricardo Lopes Dias at the head of the National Indigenous Foundation (FUNAI), Brazil’s governmental agency charged with overseeing the interests of Indigenous populations. In an attempt to quell controversy over his appointment, Dias has said, “I don’t see this as a mission or an opportunity to find new converts.” And yet American missionaries smell an opportunity.

Representatives of the missionary organization Ethnos360, until recently known as New Tribes Mission, “arrived in the Deni Indigenous Territory in Acre state in late February” and acquired a helicopter for the purpose of making contact with uncontacted tribes, according to reporting by Sue Branford for Yes! Magazine. Headed by Larry M. Brown and a member of the Forum of Bible Agencies International (along with better known organizations like the Jesus Film Project and Wycliffe Global Alliance), Ethnos360 focuses on converting “unreached groups.” It also happens to be precisely the organization with which Dias was an active missionary from 1997-2007.

They’re doing more than flouting common sense and reason, they are breaking the law while Bolsonaro looks the other way.

To be sure, Ethnos360’s drive to reach uncontacted peoples contravenes standing FUNAI policy. It’s also certainly a violation of international law, and it arguably falls afoul of the 1988 Brazilian Constitution itself. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Dias will move against his former organization. And as for Bolsonaro, he once casually remarked, with truly stunning bigotry, “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated their Indians.” He may well allow uncontacted groups to be wiped out by missionary zealots.

Sometimes I think the real plague isn’t a physical virus or bacterium, it’s the mind virus of religion that leads people to do real harm with a smug smile on their face and a hymn in their hearts.

Didier Raoult, pretentious git

The source of the claim that hydroxyquinone can treat the coronavirus, Didier Raoult, is a successful biomedical careerist in France, and a bit of a humbug. There are good reasons to be suspicious of the quality of his work.

Not surprisingly, Raoult’s rapid rise raised as many eyebrows as huzzahs. While his fans applaud the 3,000 scientific articles Raoult has co-signed, his critics argue that these staggering numbers do not add up. Do the math, they remark, and it turns out the Marseillais researcher publishes more papers in a month than most productive researchers publish in a career. Raoult’s method, according to one critic, is to task a young researcher at IHU with an experiment, then co-sign the piece before it is submitted to publication. “Raoult is thus able to reach this absolutely insane number of publications every year,” according to one anonymous source quoted by the site Mediapart. More disturbingly, the critic added, “it is simply impossible for Raoult to verify all of these papers.”

Yep. That’s the hallmark of a hack. But I want to focus on something in my bailiwick. He has written a book, Beyond Darwin, which is in French so I’m sorry (or perhaps relieved) to say I haven’t read, but I did read a translated interview with Raoult about it, via Google Translate (any infelicities in the translation should not be blamed on Raoult).

He belongs to a school of all-too-common evolutionary cranks who have a vague impression of what Charles Darwin said in the 19th century, know nothing at all about modern evolutionary biology, and imagine that the two are synonymous, so that they can deliver a double-whammy of ego gratification: evolutionary biologists are stupid, and he is brilliant, having discovered all the flaws in Darwinism all on his own.

For a long time, we thought that we were descended from a common ancestor: the Sapiens. In May 2010, a dramatic development: the results of an analysis of DNA taken from the bones of Neanderthals revealed that 1 to 4% of our genes come from Neanderthal. Whether we like it or not, we are related to this bastard, and not only to Sapiens “the intello”. The two met and mixed. The genealogical tree of the human species is anti-Darwinian because our ancestor is at the same time Sapiens, Neanderthal, a bacterium and a virus!

There are two gross errors in that accusation. The first is the idea that we think speciation has to be abrupt and instantaneous. Nope. No one argues that, so this is not a novel insight on his part. Speciation is often a mingling of braided streams that gradually separate, so the history of Homo neandertalensis and Homo sapiens is fairly typical of two closely related species. Calling that anti-Darwinian is kind of weird, because yeah, modern evolutionary biology is often non-Darwinian or even anti-Darwinian in the sense that we know a heck of a lot more about genes and genetics and the details of evolutionary history than Charles Darwin did. You don’t get a medal for bravery in defying 19th century beliefs in the 21st century, where undergraduate biology majors know things Darwin didn’t.

The second error is his over-emphasis on horizontal gene transfer. Of course some small amount of DNA from outside our direct lineage is occasionally inserted into our germ line via viral infection. Again, no one knowledgeable about evolution is going to be stunned by this revelation. The edifice of evolutionary theory is not perturbed in the slightest by the inclusion of yet another mechanism for mutation. What next? Gamma ray mutation means our genetic makeup has been modified by rays from outer space, therefore we’re all part alien? I probably shouldn’t give him ideas.

I occasionally run into cranks who insist there is no structure to our evolutionary history, that we’re all a melange of bits and pieces cobbled together into patchwork chimeras. Daoult isn’t the most extreme example of this nonsense, but he does have it bad.

The Darwinian tree does not exist. It is a fantasy. The idea of ​​a common core with divergent species like branches is nonsense. A tree of life, why not, but then planted upside down, roots in the air! If the species had definitively separated millions of years ago, there would in fact be no more living species on the planet. Each would have degenerated in its corner for not having been able to sufficiently renew its genetic heritage.

Except that we do have tools to measure the structure of a clade, and the evidence for it exists. I have no idea where this idea that we’d go extinct if we didn’t have other species to interbreed with comes from. I also don’t understand what “renew its genetic heritage” means.

In the Darwinian vision of evolution, everything was created once and for all, and if new species appear, it is only by gradual adaptation of existing species. In fact, nature does not just evolve, it continues to invent species.

This would be a surprising interpretation to the author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. How does nature “invent species”, if not by branching cladogenesis? Do these newly invented species lack ancestors? Do they just spontaneously pop into existence without predecessors?

We discovered that a bacterium called Wolbachia had succeeded, by infecting a worm, in integrating 80% of its chromosome. She had, in fact, made a new species of worm! A brutal and massive evolution which has nothing to do with the slow and vertical evolution described by Darwin. If a woman carrying the herpes HV6 is pregnant, the virus having integrated into her chromosome, her son will have the virus in her genes. The boy’s grandfather will therefore be partly a virus!

This is not a particularly useful way of looking at our evolution. About 8% of our genome is made up of endogenous retroviral sequences, accumulated over many millions of years. These don’t significantly contribute to our physiology or morphology; they have accumulated precisely because they have so little impact on our overall biology that they escape natural selection for humans. So no, these things don’t fit any reasonable definition of “grandfather”.

He wouldn’t be an anti-Darwinian if he didn’t exercise a little hyperbole to show off his resentment of Darwin.

Darwinism ceased to be a scientific theory when Darwin was made a god. By introducing the concept of evolution after Lamarck, Darwin came to upset the frozen conception of creationists, who thought that the world had been stable since its creation. But, from then on, it became the object of a double myth. The myth of the diabolical for creationists, those who think that everything was created in a week, and the myth of scientists, who make “the origin of species” the new Gospel.

If you believe in the Judeo-Christian God, Darwin even makes it easier to understand him. With what we discover about biology, we come back rather to the gods of Antiquity. The men of Antiquity were perhaps animated by a just presentiment when, in mythological tales, they depicted hybrid beings, chimeras: Satyrs, Centaurs and Minotaur. Now imagine an evolutionary story written by a Buddhist scientist. It would be a question of cycle, even recycling, and mosaic beings, which we find in Nietzsche.

Hoo boy. There’s a common creationist trope, that Darwin is our god. It doesn’t work. We’re awfully critical of Darwin, and we rejoice when we discover new violations of his supposedly sacred dogma. Darwin is respected because of his careful, disciplined methodology and his appreciation of the evidence, and because he did have a brilliant insight that changed how scientists thought about history. It’s only kooks who simultaneously think Darwin is unjustly seated on a heavenly throne, and that they have had the grand, revolutionary insight that will allow them to displace him.

I won’t even get into his crap about old gods and chimeras, or his appallingly quaint rant about Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomies. Everything about this guy screams opportunistic kook with an exaggerated ego. At least it’s nice that he has found a friend in Donald Trump. They have much in common.

If you think I’m rude and dismissive, read this:

Now consider this. Raoult’s past papers show falsified data, which even resulted in his ban by ASM for one year, to which Raoult responded with threats of lawsuit. He is a patriarchal control freak and a misogynous bully who violently punishes all disagreement and uses threats against whistleblowers and victims to achieve compliance. He is pathologically resistant to criticism and believes to be infallible and omniscient: Raoult denied anthropogenic climate change in 2013 and before that, the microbiologist even denied evolution in his 2011 book “Beyond Darwin“. Raoult’s new study on chloroquine as the cure for COVID19 is obviously flawed, at best.

Should we really trust his claims and put our all lives in his hands?

Yet somehow he hangs onto his prestigious position with hundreds of underlings and publishes approximately a paper a day. This kind of abuse of the system ought to get him fired. It won’t.

Vertebrate paleontology just won’t be the same

Science has lost two great ones: Jenny Clack and Robert L. Carroll. Clack was an expert on the evolution of tetrapods, as was Carroll, who also studied reptile evolution. Normally, I’d be sitting my office right now and would be able to lift my eyes to my bookshelf and see Gaining Ground: The Origin and Evolution of Tetrapods and Patterns and Processes of Vertebrate Evolution, and re-reading them would be the best way to honor these influential scientists, but I’m stuck at home like many of us, so I’ll have to wait until I can fetch them.