Category: education

Nature editorial supports science at the Field Museum

March 23, 2013 • 8:41 am

by Greg Mayer

Jerry and I have written about the plight of science at Chicago’s Field Museum, both here at WEIT, and with several colleagues in a letter to Science. In an editorial, Nature, the leading scientific journal of the English-speaking world, has also spoken out in support of science at the Field. In the editorial, Nature decries the imbalance in funding in the biological sciences, and points specifically to the Field Museum:

Solutions to many of the world’s problems will demand intensive research in many disciplines that are too-often excluded from even broad definitions of the life sciences. Efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change will require a detailed inventory of the world’s species (biodiversity, zoology, botany, taxonomy, microbiology, marine biology and so on) and their interactions with one another (ecology) and the environment.

Research into many of these areas is undertaken in museums. At the time the Breakthrough Prize was announced, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, was facing tough decisions over a major shortfall in income. It is in the process of disbanding its separate research departments, reducing both the museum’s capacity for research into biodiversity and its high quality of educational outreach — crucial in a nation in which the very idea of evolution is perpetually under threat.

The occasion for the editors to make this plea was the announcement last month of the awarding of the “Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences“, a new and extremely generous prize ($3 million per person for 11 people!) funded by several Silicon Valley billionaires. Nature laments that even one of these awards going to a research museum like the Field would have a huge impact, not just on one recipient’s lab, but on entire scientific departments.

Further cuts will be necessary; the museum announced in December that it will have to slash $3 million from its research budgets (see Nature http://doi.org/j6q; 2012): an amount, coincidentally, that is equivalent to just one Breakthrough Prize, given to just one researcher in life sciences as defined by the Breakthrough Prize Foundation. It is a laudable aim to work for ways to prolong lives, even those that are already long and luxurious. To work for a world that can harbour billions of human beings in tolerable comfort is also worthy of recognition.

Grrl Scientist and Jack Stilgoe, both at the Guardian, raise similar concerns about the misdirection and imbalance of funding in the life sciences. Grrl Scientist notes that giving the prize to individuals ignores the collaborative nature of much science, especially in the award recipients’ fields; the parochial and narrow nature of its understanding of the “life sciences”; and the mistaken notion that scientists are motivated by the same kind of get-lucky-and-strike-it-rich mindset as are technological entrepreneurs. Stilgoe asks, “What’s the point of the Breakthrough science prize?”, answering, “It’s not clear if Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner’s award will add to scientific discovery or just Silicon Valley’s ego”. Grrl Scientist summarizes

… this prize is flawed and seriously misguided and thus, I don’t think it will accomplish its stated goals.

In fairness to the prize founders, they were explicit about their limited vision of what the life sciences are in setting up the prize, stating their goal was “to recognize excellence in research aimed at curing intractable diseases and extending human life,” so the fact that the recipients (one of whom, Lew Cantley, was an outstanding shooting guard on my grad school basketball team!) would be limited to biomedical fields could have been predicted. But that they were upfront about their limited and misguided vision does not vitiate its limitations.

Chicago’s Field Museum must continue its historic mission of high quality scientific research

March 8, 2013 • 12:10 am

by Greg Mayer

At the end of last year, the Field Museum in Chicago announced that it was considering draconian budgetary cuts to, and even more ominous institutional restructuring of, its scientific departments. Jerry and I wrote about this here at the time, decrying the Field administration’s plans.

In January, Science published a news article on the situation. A number of us had been discussing various actions to protest the planned cuts, through petitions (change.org here), resolutions, critical commentary, and letter writing. In response to the Science piece, Jon Losos, Johannes Foufopoulos, Neil Shubin, Doug Futuyma, Ben Campbell, Scott Edwards, Jerry, and I wrote a letter to Science supporting scientific research at the Field Museum. The letter was published in today’s issue. The opening snippet:

Field Museum Science letter

The headline, which was written by Science, is appropriate: it refers to a famous line by the English scientist James Smithson, founding benefactor of the Smithsonian Institution, that we quote in our letter. Smithson wrote that his institution would be devoted to the “increase and diffusion of knowledge“. While many (especially newer) science museums can contribute to the diffusion of knowledge, only great natural history museums like the Field, with its priceless treasure of collections and and staff of outstanding scientists can contribute so much to the increase of knowledge. It is this mission that the Field administration threatens to give up, but must not dare, for shame, to abandon.

There’s another letter supporting science the Field Museum in the same issued, by Sophie Warny of Louisiana State University, arguing for the importance of natural history museums for practical applications.

Public outcry has worked before in saving some of the research departments at the Smithsonian. If  you have not yet done so, you can sign the petition linked above, or write to the Field’s President, Dr. Richard Lariviere (rlariviere@fieldmuseum.org ) or Board Chair John Rowe (postal address for both is The Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605-2496).

_____________________________________________________________

Mayer, G.C., J.A. Coyne, J.B. Losos, J. Foufopoulos, N. Shubin, D.J. Futuyma, B.C. Campbell and S.V. Edwards. 2013. Museums’ role: increasing knowledge. Science 339:1148-1149. (pdf; if link doesn’t work for you, email me and I can send you a pdf)

Jesuit college teaches atheism!

January 28, 2013 • 7:44 am

Well, as reader Diane G. told me when she sent me this link, “Don’t get your hopes up.” And indeed, although, as the Washington Post reports, the Jesuit-run Regis College at the University of Toronto is starting a new course, “Responding to 21st-Century Atheism,” it isn’t all it appears to be. (Why are Jesuits running a college at the University of Toronto, anyway?)

It’s an attempt, says the Rev. Scott Lewis, for people of faith to understand and come to terms with the increasingly muscular secularism and atheism that has arisen in Western societies over the past generation.

Atheism “has become militant, aggressive and proselytizing,” said Lewis, a Jesuit scripture scholar, who teaches the class with three other scholars. “It’s made great in-roads and is now socially acceptable. If you’re young and educated and believe in God, you’re (seen as) a jerk.”

When I read that second sentence, my reaction was identical to that of one commenter:

Picture 1

While the course examines the increasing polarization between non-believers and people of faith, it will not be about confronting secularists or engaging in polemics, Lewis stressed before the first class of about 155 students in the adult-education program.

Both sides need to lighten up, he said.

“One idea for atheists to leave behind is that people who believe are stupid or naive,” Lewis suggested. “And perhaps we should leave behind the idea that an atheist is someone who is not ethical or a good person.

I like that “perhaps”—as if Lewis isn’t quite sure!

The comments, by the way, are not pro-Catholic: another sign public nonbelief is becoming more acceptable in the U.S. Here’s another:

Picture 2

What is the syllabus?

Lewis said he’ll look at both sides of the debate. “What we will be focusing on is our response to individuals who have thrown down the gauntlet and say ’To believe in God is not to be believe in science, and to believe in science is not to believe in God.’”

The course comprises two lectures from Lewis; a look at psychology and atheism from Jesuit psychologist Rev. Joe Schner, who will examine whether the human brain is hard-wired for religion; an examination of suffering by Michael Stoeber, who told the introductory class that the “New Atheists” tend to overemphasize “the underbelly of the Catholic Church”; and a theological and philosophical perspective from Jesuit Gordon Rixon.

What—no atheist lecturers? (Well, at least they admit that the Catholic Church has an underbelly!)

However one parses the numbers, nonbelievers are undoubtedly getting bolder and even celebrated, as evidenced by best-seller lists in recent years. Lewis and other instructors conceded they will find it hard to avoid mentioning “New Atheist” authors Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, but said they would not dwell on the trio.

Why would they even consider not mentioning those New Atheist authors? But of course they won’t dwell on them, for those are the three who have posed the strongest challenge to faith.

Lewis said he’ll look at both sides of the debate. “What we will be focusing on is our response to individuals who have thrown down the gauntlet and say’ To believe in God is not to be [sic] believe in science, and to believe in science is not to believe in God.’”

“There’s a little fundamentalism on both sides of the aisle.”

There’s that “fundamentalist atheist” trope again. What, exactly does it mean for an atheist to be “fundamentalist”? What Lewis means, actually, is “passionate and strong-minded.”

Apparently there’s also theodicy, though I’m not sure why it’s included in this course:

Central to the course will be the question of suffering — “the oldest religious question in the world,” Lewis said. “Why, if there’s a good God, do we have suffering, especially of the innocent?”

It’s also the hardest question for Abrahamic religions, and one that has never received a satisfactory answer. If you want to befuddle a religious person in private or public debate, ask them that question, then stand back and watch the fun!

What about evolution?

As for science and Darwinism, the biblical book of Genesis “is not a science book and should not be read as one. Our faith does not rise and fall on the age of the Earth.” And people of faith are at a threshold moment: “We cannot continue thinking of God in traditional ways and still accept Darwinian science.”

Lewis said it’s not uncommon for Catholic thinkers to believe in evolution. The course will include the work of the Rev. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest who was also trained as a paleontologist and geologist. Teilhard de Chardin accepted Darwinism as fact as early as the 1930s, but his writings were condemned by the Vatican.

Whenever I hear the phrase “the Bible (or the book of Genesis) is not a science book,” I read it as “the Bible is not true.” For it, and the Catholic church, make epistemic claims that are indeed scientific, in the sense that they can be empirically tested—at least in principle.  So if the Bible isn’t a science book about Genesis, Adam and Eve, or the Exodus, why is it a science book about the divinity of Jesus and the Resurrection?

And about Catholic thinkers “believing” (I prefer “accepting”) evolution, I echo the comment of Thomas Carlysle resonding to Margaret Fuller’s comment, “I accept the universe”: Gad, they’d better! Accepting evolution (with the caveat that humans evolved a soul) is the official position of the Catholic church.  Anyone who considers himself a “Catholic thinker” better take note of the multifarious evidence for evolution.

Nevertheless, 29% of American Catholics remain creationists. To me, that shows that when science conflicts with what you want to believe—even if the science is accepted by Church dogma—you can still reject the science. In a Time Magazine pol in 2006, 64% of Americans stated that they’d reject a scientific fact if it conflicted with the tenets of their faith.

At any rate, this is a sham course in atheism, one that would certainly please the Templeton Foundation. Its whole purpose is apologetic: to show how to answer the New Atheists rather than truly come to grips with their arguments.  In other words, it’s about how to keep believing what you want to believe despite some nagging criticism. Stay classy, University of Toronto!

I close with a final comment from a reader of the Post piece:

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Joint post: Chicago’s Field Museum endangered by unwise budget cuts

December 27, 2012 • 5:31 am

I’ve lived in Chicago for more than 25 years, and have watched the Field Museum’s public exhibits degenerate from an educational experience to an entertainment experience. This isn’t unique to that museum: it’s happening everywhere as natural history museums seek to make more money by displaying dinosaur skeletons and offering ‘hands-on’ experiences and animated exhibits for  kids weaned on video games.

The mantra here is “user friendly.” And I deplore this trend.  And I deplore this trend.  Steve Gould wrote an essay on this topic, also bemoaning the dumbing-down of museums (see also Gould’s essay in Natural History, January 1994, and here and here on WEIT for moar):

As a symbol of our dilemma, consider the plight of natural history museums in the light of commercial dinomania. In the past decade, nearly every major or minor natural history museum has succumbed (not always unwisely) to two great commercial temptations: to sell many scientifically worthless, and often frivolous, or even degrading, dinosaur products in their gift shops; and to mount, at high and separate admissions charges, special exhibits of colorful robotic dinosaurs that move and growl but (so far as I have ever been able to judge) teach nothing of scientific value about these animals. Such exhibits could be wonderful educational aids, if properly labeled and integrated with more traditional material; but I have never seen these robots presented for much more than their colors and sound effects (the two aspects of dinosaurs that must, for obvious reasons, remain most in the realm of speculation). If you ask my colleagues in museum administration why they have permitted such incursions into their precious and limited spaces, they will reply that these robotic displays bring large crowds into the museum, mostly of people who otherwise would never come. These folks can then be led or cajoled into viewing the regular exhibits, and the museum’s primary mission of science education receives a giant boost. I cannot fault the logic of this argument, but I fear that my colleagues are expressing a wish or a hope, not an actual result, and not even an outcome actively pursued by most museums. If the glitzy displays were dispersed among teaching exhibits, if they were used as a springboard for educational programs (sometimes they are), then a proper balance of mammon and learning might be reached. But, too often, the glitz occupies a separate wing (where the higher admission charges can be monitored), and the real result gets measured in increased body counts and profits.

Well, perhaps fiscal constraints mandate such changes. But what is more serious for Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History is that budget cuts are now about to seriously degrade its scientific mission, eliminating much of the behind-the-scenes research that is the soul of any good natural history museum. Public exhibits are merely the frosting on the cake, for not visible to casual visitor are the research collections and laboratories of the scientists that lie behind closed doors.

Museum-based research has been essential in studies of ecology, evolution, and natural history, and this kind of downsizing is a serious danger to work on organismal biology.  Alarmed, Greg Mayer and I co-wrote the following plea for the Field Museum to reconsider its rash decision. And we’re asking readers to help by writing a brief protest.

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Field Museum: Don’t savage your science!

by Jerry Coyne and Greg Mayer

According to the Chicago Tribune, the Field Museum of Natural History is about to engage in a budget-slashing reorganization that will all but eliminate science at that institution (our emphasis added):

Staff reductions would be aimed at curators and scientists, according to museum officials.

“This may turn out to involve shrinking certain areas of inquiry,” said John Rowe, chairman of the museum’s board of trustees.

The Field Museum is both an international research institution and a vital cultural attraction for residents and tourists, drawing about 1.3 million visitors in 2011.

The natural history museum is home to Sue, the best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex in the world and a Chicago icon. In the bowels of the museum and all around the world, Field scientists also are discovering new plants and animals—more than 200 last year alone—along with preserving rain forests and studying artifacts. …

[New Museum President Richard] Lariviere, who started in October, said he wants to use the cost-cutting measures as an opportunity to refocus the museum’s mission. …

Museum officials said they also expect to cut research staff as they seek to narrow the scope of its mission…

Currently the museum is organized much like a university, with researchers divided into academic departments. Under Lariviere’s plan, that structure would be simplified into four broad areas: science and education, programming, fundraising and operations.

“Narrowing the scope of its mission” apparently means “deep-sixing most of the science.”

Lariviere, dismissed last year as president of the University of Oregon, said the Field’s future is “rosy” if they carry out this plan out, but in reality its future would be bleak indeed.

There are only a handful of great natural history museums in the U.S., and the Field is one of them. (Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, where both of us received our doctorates, is another.) These museums have always had a dual mission of research and education, and in fact the research mission has usually occupied the lion’s share of the museums’ efforts. The public doesn’t realize that the research collections of the Field Museum hold a vastly greater number of specimens than those on public display.

Indeed, the Field Museum—like many others of its kind—uses “behind-the-scenes” access to its collections and its scientists as principal attractions for members and donors. It is these collections that scientists, both in-house and from other institutions, use to advance biology, geology, and anthropology. What are to become of these tremendously important, and literally irreplaceable, collections?

The research of natural history museums has been crucial for the development of evolutionary biology. Ernst Mayr, the “Darwin of the 20th century” who pioneered studies of speciation, did so at natural history museums (successively, the British Museum, American Museum, and Museum of Comparative Zoology), using the collections to formulate and test his ideas. The Field’s scientists continue this tradition, and have been enormously productive.

Jim Hanken, Director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, had this to say to Nature and Scientific American:

It’s one of the great research institutions in comparative zoology, biodiversity and natural history, and it has been one of the leading centres of research for more than 100 years. There’s no way the Field Museum will be able to maintain its position of prominence under those circumstances.

As the Chicago Sun-Times noted, the Field is a “treasure [and] a responsibility”, and the current management can’t be allowed to savage what must be a resource for future generations. There’s a change.org petition to oppose this:

https://www.change.org/petitions/protect-research-at-field-museum-of-natural-history-chicago

and you can contact the management through info here (Dr. Lariviere’s email address is rlariviere@fieldmuseum.org ; remember-be respectful!) and Board Chair John Rowe and other Board members through info here (no emails; postal address is The Field Museum, 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605-2496.) We ask readers to do this, and let the Museum and its Board know that you support science. Outcry by the scientific community and public can work— it saved the Smithsonian’s Conservation and Research Center a decade ago from a similarly ill-advised cost-saving refocusing of mission.

If you are in favor of research in organismal biology (and I hope that most of our readers are!), we ask you to sign the petition (which takes all of one minute) and write a short note to the management opposing these changes.

Thanks!

h/t: Matthew Cobb

Three easy pieces: creationists pwned

December 20, 2012 • 5:31 am

The battle against creationism is never-ending, but I declare three victories this week. The first is symbolic but important, the others not so consequential but fun.

1. Creationism banned in New Orleans. From The Raw Story (thanks to several readers who alerted me to this), we learn that “the New Orleans schools board has banned the teaching of creationism in that parish’s schools (a “parish” in Louisiana is the equivalent of a “county” in other U.S. states; it’s not a religious term). They also repudiated any books that, like those in Texas, have been altered to reflect a revisionist, right-wing history of the U.S. The pdf of the resolution is here, and here are the relevant statements:

No history textbook shall be approved which has been adjusted in accordance with the State of Texas
revisionist guidelines nor shall any science textbook be approved which presents creationism or
intelligent design as science or scientific theories.

No teacher of any discipline of science shall teach any aspect of religious faith as science or in a
science class. No teacher of any discipline of science shall teach creationism or intelligent design in
classes designated as science classes.

As the Raw Story reports,

None of the six schools run by the board actually teach creationism, according to The Times-Picayune, but outgoing Orleans Parish School Board President Thomas Robichaux felt strongly about the measure (PDF) anyway, which passed in two parts. . .

The school district is not alone in pushing back against growing religious and conservative influence on science and history curriculum. When education officials in Texas began altering textbooks to reflect right-wing and religious viewpoints, lawmakers in California acted quickly to pass a bill that bans the state’s revisionist standards in California schools.

Thus the victory is symbolic, but still important because the Louisiana governor and legislature are constantly pushing faith and creationism in the public schools, using both proposed legislation and voucher programs for religious schools (recently defeated). And New Orleans is the most important city (and parish) in Louisiana, and thus a bellwether.

2. The Discovery Institute caught with its pants down. According to Panda’s Thumb (“The Disco ‘Tute’s fake laboratory“), and a post at ars technica, the Discovery Institute has embarrassed itself by posting a video supposedly taken in the Biologic Institute, the part of the D.I. that engages in scientific “research” (LOL!), but the background of the video is actually faked.

In the video below, “senior research scientist” Ann Gauger decries population genetics because similarity of DNA sequences between species like chimps and humans doesn’t necessarily show common descent (they have no explanation, of course, for why noncoding sequences match the posited evolutionary tree perfectly).

But have a look at their “lab.” It isn’t their lab; it’s a stock photo taken—perhaps illegally—from a website full of copyrighted pictures. It’s been “green screened”!

Here’s the link to the stock “lab at night” photo from Shutterstock (I won’t reproduce it because it’s copyrighted).

More creationist lying!

3. More kerfuffle about young-earth creationist Paul Nelson. Finally, in a post at his site EvolutionBlog, “Coyne vs. Nelson,” Jason Rosenhouse revisits my pwning of young-earth creationist Paul Nelson when I checked up on his claims about the denigration of natural seleciton by prominent biologists.

More important, Jason watched  a talk about evolution Nelson gave at Saddleback Church during “Apologetics Weekend”, and takes that talk apart. (I couldn’t bear to watch it.) A snippet of Jason’s critique:

Nelson argues that the commitment of science to methodological naturalism (MN) blinds scientists to what is put so plainly before them. It is a requirement of their profession that only naturalistic explanations are acceptable, you see. We are to believe, apparently, that this requirement is so blinding that they are unable to see things that are obvious to Nelson’s more clear-thinking audience.

This is the standard ID explanation for the popularity of evolution among scientists. It is, sadly, a ridiculous argument. As I explain in Chapter 20 of Among the Creationists, I have my problems with some of the rhetoric people on my side have used in defense of MN. But even if we accept Nelson’s characterization of it as a hard and fast rule, the fact remains that there is no requirement that scientists slavishly accept any old naturalistic explanation that comes along. It’s perfectly acceptable to say we don’t have a scientific explanation for the origin of species.

Moreover, being a scientist is not the entirety of anyone’s life. Scientists could agree that when practicing their profession they accept the constraints of certain conventions, and that invocations of supernatural intelligent designers are not part of their professional lives, while also believing that the evidence points strongly to an intelligent designer. But that is not what is happening. Scientists are not all mopey and dejected because their profession requires them to accept evolution when privately they think it’s a weak theory. Instead it is defended enthusiastically by virtually everyone in the relevant areas of science, while Nelson’s arguments are dismissed angrily not just as unscientific, but as totally worthless on the merits.

In Paul Nelson, who admits that the scientific evidence seems to point to an old earth but nevertheless rejects it, we have the pathetic stand of a man who holds fast to his fairy tales regardless of how strongly reality repudiates them. To be a young-earth creationist in this day and age is to be, frankly, an idiot.

UPDATE: Let me qualify that last statement. The “idiots” are not all young-earth creationists, for some have never been exposed to other viewpoints, or to the counterevidence for an old earth. Rather, the true idiots are those who know the evidence but refuse to accept it because they’re blinkered by faith. Nelson is one of those.

“MOOC”s on critical thinking at Michigan State and on genetics and evolution at Duke

December 15, 2012 • 12:34 pm
I hate the acronym “MOOC” almost as much as I do the word “blog.” But what it stands for—”massive open online courses”—are innovations that promise to make education widely available to those who aren’t near universities or lack the time or exorbitant tuition that modern universities demand.
My ex-student, Mohamed Noor, is again running a sort-of-MOOC at Duke, teaching “Introduction to Genetics and Evolution” beginning January 4. It’s ten weeks long, FREE, has no “prerequisites” (i.e., it’s for beginners) and, judging by the enthusiastic reaction of students in the earlier incarnations, I’d urge you to take it.  Watch the short introductory video at the site.  (Full disclosure: my book is recommended but not required. I’ll also be Skyping in some time during the course to answer students’ questions.)
And here’s another that looks intriguing: a course at Michigan State University on critical thinking and the Foundations of Science. This one begins in May 2013, and runs through June. Sign up here; again, it’s free.  You’ll have to enter your name and email to get more information, and you can also read this blurb about the course at the MSUToday news:

Tongue-in-cheek humor aside, Foundations of Science is intended to help students improve critical thinking skills and empower them to make intelligent decisions. If they happen to laugh along the way, that’s all the better, said Stephen Thomas, MSU assistant professor of zoology and one of the course creators.

“Science isn’t just for nerdy people wearing white lab coats; it’s useful for everybody,” he said. “Results from the traditional course offered by our collaborators Matt Rowe and Marcus Gillespie at Sam Houston State University showed highly significant improvements in students’ critical thinking skills as well as their understanding of science.”

. . . The course will offer multiple types of media and exercises to give students experience applying critical thinking to different scenarios involving pseudoscience, such as psychics, homeopathy and ghosts. Students also will be able to participate in group discussions, compete for badges and interact with members of the scientific community.

There you go!  If you don’t have a background in evolution and genetics, Mohamed’s course will help you navigate my own site as well.
h/t: Diane

Evolution cover boy on a science magazine

December 8, 2012 • 5:37 am

I doubt that this will make many hearts flutter, and there’s no centerfold, but the latest issue of the wonderful Spanish-language science magazine Órbitas Cientificas is all about evolution—50-odd pages worth!. It also has yours truly on the cover, and a longish interview with me (in Spanish).  You can download the whole magazine, which is a free online monthly, here.

Portada 10

Now I have no idea what I said, because the phone interview was transcribed into Spanish and I forgot, but Spanish-speaking readers will understand (let me know if I said anything stupid; I think I managed to get in a few words about religion). Some of the anti-theistic parts of the interview that didn’t make it into Órbitas appear in the magazine’s ancillary site, Sin Dioses (“without Gods”; an atheist/skeptical forum for Spanish-speaking readers).

More important is the emphasis on the truth of evolution throughout the magazine, which is not the easiest thing to convey in a religious country where evolution is a bit anathema (the magazine is published in the Dominican Republic). Check out the list of the “10 most common errors about evolution” on pp. 58-59 (my interview follows it). There’s also a piece on my Chicago colleague and paleontologist Paul Sereno, a dinosaur hunter often called “the modern Indiana Jones”.

The magazine is edited by the energetic and science-loving Glenys Álvarez, and is aimed at the general public, trying to convey hard science—and skepticism—in an accessible and fun way.  The contributors are professionals who write about all manner of topics, including philosophy, quantum mechanics, entomology, and so on.   If you’re a Spanish speaker/reader, you can sign up for free monthly alerts by sending an email to editoraneutrina@gmail.com , which will let you know when a new edition is out. Thanks to Glenys for conducting and translating the interview.