Category: Science

A lecture by Anna Krylov on the erosion of merit in science

December 15, 2024 • 11:30 am

Over at the Heterodox STEM site, Anna Krylov (a Professor of Chemistry at USC) just posted a recent 40-minute lecture she gave about the ongoing erosion of the concept of merit in science (the alternative to merit, of course, is “equity”).  Because the original video was poor, Anna went ahead and re-recorded the lecture slide for slide and word for word. You can see the new version of the lecture at the video below, and read transcript by clicking on the headline just below.

The video:

Her lecture begins by citing a paper that many of us collaborated on, “In Defense of Merit in Science,” finally published in Peter Singer’s Journal of Controversial Ideas. Let me just put down a short excerpt about the paper from Anna’s talk, referring to its rejection from the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science:

Ben Gibran writes: “It’s crazy enough that an article entitled “In Defense of Merit in Science” needs publishing; it’s mind-blowing that it’s published in the Journal of Controversial Ideas. What next, “In Defense of Not Drinking Battery Fluid”?

But PNAS editors had a different opinion.

Here is the feedback we received following our initial inquiry. The board was concerned with the word MERIT in the title of the paper. They wrote: “The problem is that the concept of merit, as the authors surely know, has been widely and legitimately attacked as implemented…” They finish with an advice: “If the authors could use a different term, I would encourage that.”

We considered to change the title to this: “In Defense of M**** in Science,” but ultimately we were not able to address all editorial concerns. So this is how we ended up in the Journal of Controversial Ideas.

And, in a bit of self-aggrandizement, but one that’s relevant, Anna and I wrote an editorial about this mishigass in the Wall Street Journal (click to read, or, if you don’t subscribe, find the article archived here):

DEI “studies” displace scientific research at the National Science Foundation

December 3, 2024 • 9:00 am

Yes, this analysis and report are from Texas’s Republican Senator Ted Cruz, but let’s not use that to dismiss his press release and report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation. If you won’t read something simply because it’s from Ted Cruz’s office, you are at the wrong site.

At any rate, the press release”reveals how Biden-Harris diverted billions from science to DEI activists.”  I have no reason to doubt this claim given the increasing tendency of federal funding agencies (the NSF in this case) to divert money from real science into ideological project furthering the “progressive” agenda. But if you want to undercut this claim, simply look at the projects that are classified as “DEI activism”. Only a few are offered, and they support the claim, which is not surprising.

Although I finished my last grant about eight years ago, I am told by active researchers, scientists I know personally, that the entire system has changed in the last decade, exactly in the way this report describes. And the pressure to change from pure science to Social Justice must have come from the top. I don’t know who applied it, but the buck stops at the President’s desk, and it was clearly the Biden Administration that approved the change in direction.

Click the headline below to read, and you can find the committee’s 43-page report here.

The upshot is that over the four years that Biden was President, over two billion dollars were allocated to projects that Cruz’s committee classified as “DEI grants”. Over 3,400 such grants were given.  Disturbingly, such grants used up only 0.29% of the funding in 2021, but their number swelled each year until, in 2024, they used up over 27% of NSF funding.

The three paragraphs below are taken from the press release. Yes, the language is from the Right (i.e., “neo-Marxist” and “radical perspectives”), but who can deny that the DEI agenda has damaged universities, making them more divisive and imposing an orthodoxy on thought and research that’s inimical to free thinking and academic freedom?

In its first week, the Biden-Harris administration mandated that all taxpayer-funded scientific research and development (R&D) must incorporate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) values. Sen. Cruz’s investigation found that in response to this directive, NSF allocated over $2.05 billion to thousands of research projects that promoted neo-Marxist perspectives or DEI tenets. Taxpayer dollars supported projects of questionable scientific merit, often led by researchers who used federal R&D dollars to drive divisive, extremist ideologies in their classrooms and on their campuses.

The Committee’s analysis identified 3,483 grants—over 10% of all NSF grants awarded during the Biden-Harris administration—totaling more than $2.05 billion went to questionable projects that promoted DEI or pushed neo-Marxist perspectives about enduring class struggle. The Committee grouped these grants into five categories: Status, Social Justice, Gender, Race, and Environmental Justice.

The report reveals, through examples across categories, that many of the most extreme research proposals were led by principal investigators who are also promoting radical perspectives through on-campus activism and in their classrooms.

Here are two figures from the report itself (click pictures to enlarge) showing the number of grants and total funding in each of five “DEI” categories:

And the NSF obeyed the Biden administration’s directive. This shows the total NSF funding per year, and the amount and proportion of funding directed towards what are classified as DEI initiatives:

The report also gives examples of grants that sound ludicrous. These of course are cherry-picked and remind me of Senator William Proxmire’s old “Golden Fleece Awards,” (Proxmire was a Democrat), given to agencies who squandered public money. Below are two examples cited, and I urge those who want to examine the Cruz Committee’s contentions to examine them further. Others are given in the report. Bolding is from the press release:

  • Shirin Vossoughi is an associate professor of learning sciences at Northwestern University and the co-principal investigator for a $1,034,751 NSF grant awarded in 2023 for a project titled, “Reimagining Educator Learning Pathways Through Storywork for Racial Equity in STEM.” Vossoughi credits Marxist traditions for her decision to teach children “the meaning of ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’” after Hamas’s attack against Israel.

 

  • In 2023, NSF awarded Georgia Institute of Technology’s (Georgia Tech) Kelly Cross $99,791 to “disrupt[] racialized privilege in the STEM classroom” by acknowledging “Whiteness and White Supremacy” are “deeply ingrained in the past, present and future of U.S. Higher education.” Cross sought to “subvert[] these toxic systems… to creat[e] a more equitable educational system” and “initiate a national conversation about addressing racial inequity and White Supremacy in the STEM profession and classroom” with the support of the grant.

There are further examples given in the report, but you can look at them yourself. Here are the conclusions taken from the paper, not the press release:

The Biden-Harris administration has methodically weaponized federal agencies to drive a partisan, divisive agenda. President Biden and Vice President Harris tasked federal science agencies to restructure scientific investigation into an exercise in categorizing individuals by their background, not by their talent and capabilities.

This year, almost 30 percent of NSF grant projects will seek to promote these divisions. Already, billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted. These grants both crowd out other kinds of research that could advance understanding of the physical world and advance a deeply divisive philosophy antithetical to the tenets of empirical scientific research. The NSF must return to a merit-based focus on legitimate science of the kind that resulted in landing Americans on the moon and making the U.S. technology industry the engine of the global economy.

If this analysis is correct, then I have no quarrel with the last paragraph, particularly the insistence that the NSF go back to “a merit-based focus on legitimate science”. America has long been a Mecca for scientists from foreign countries, many coming here to study, do research, or take faculty positions. This kind of funding, if continued, would seriously erode the nation’s scientific reputation. It’s already happened to New Zealand, but the “social justice” there involves incorporating “indigenous knowledge”, like Polynesian navigational astronomy, into modern science.

It is too late to stop the awokening of New Zealand’s science, but I’m pretty sure that the new Trump administration—if it doesn’t cut real science—will ameliorate the current trend. (Note: this is NOT an endorsement of Trump as President, but a hope that his admiinistration will fix the wrongly skewed direction of science funding.)

In a jeremiad that scientists should become political activists, Agustín Fuentes conflates science with scientists

November 25, 2024 • 11:00 am

Agustín Fuentes is a biological anthropologist at Princeton University, and has appeared in these pages more than a couple of times, for he is also somewhat of a “progressive activist” who, for example, has indicted Darwin for being a racist and espoused the view that sex is non-binary (see video below).   In the latest issue of Science, he justifies his activism, asserting that scientists should be political and ideological activists because this helps us fight what he sees as an encroaching attack on science that will accompany the Trump administration.

But Fuentes’s short letter is deeply confusing, for it conflates the idea of scientists being activists with science itself being activist. I’ll give some quotes to show that conflation, and then give my disagreement with the ideas that science should be activist, as well some reservations with the notion that it’s generally good for scientists to be activists. Click below to read the letter, ironically classified under “expert voices”:

First Fuentes implies that his promotion of activism in science and among scientists in this piece came explicitly because of the threat he sees posed by the Trump administration:

Science, both teaching and doing, is under attack. The recent US presidential election of a person and platform with anti-science bias exemplifies this.

That itself is a problem, as it’s not going to win over half of America (see below).

But to some extent I agree with this, for it certainly looks as scientific truth will be endangered by Trump and, especially, his appointments in the area of public health and science.

Certainly scientists who see their field as endangered are entitled to speak out as individuals against stuff like climate-change denial, vaccine denialism, and opposition to GMOs and nuclear energy.  When politicians or other scientists present misleading data to support a political  position, it is scientists who know the data to correct the record. After all, that is one of the great benefits of science: it is self-correcting.

But of course correcting the record, for example giving data showing that nuclear energy can replace fossil fuels, is not the same things as saying okay, we have to replace fossil fuels with nuclear energy now.  For fixing problems often requires expertise beyond the ambit of scientists: things like political savvy, economic and practical considerations, and so on. Ergo, accepting a scientific argument is not always identical to saying that we must go ahead and fix society according to the “winning” scientific assertion, for in the long run such fixes may be more harmful than helpful. (Note: I am not saying we should keep using fossil fuels as much as we do: this is just an example!)

But I digress. I want to show how Fuentes conflates the activism of scientists as individuals with the activism of science as an institution, something he does throughout the letter (bolding is mine):

Whether science is political, and if it should be, is an age-old debate. Some assert that scientific institutions and scientists themselves should seek to remain apolitical, or at least present a face of political neutrality. Others argue that such isolation is both impossible and unnecessary, that scientists are and should be in the political fray.

Notice that he conflates scientists with scientific institutions, the latter including scientific organizations, journals, and granting institutions.

Here’s more:

The Editor-in-Chief of Science recently wrote that although science has always been political, it “thrives when its advocates are shrewd politicians but suffers when its opponents are better at politics.” Given the current political reality and the expansion of attacks on science, it is time for scientists to be more effective, forceful, and vociferous as their own political advocates.

Who is supposed to be political here—science itself or scientists?  It’s clear that he means scientists, but also throws “science” into the mix as he does in the last sentence of the excerpt below. It’s also clear that the activism he wants from scientists is progressive left-wing activism, presumably of the kind that Fuentes himself has promoted in his previous articles. I don’t think he’s calling for right-wing scientists to be activists!

There are many taking vocal stances asserting key scientific findings and practices in the face of attacks by anti-science forces. Most scientists are familiar with the prominent cases of Anthony Fauci or Peter Hotez in public health, and of Michael Mann in climate science. But for every one of the high-profile examples, there are other, less publicly known attacks on scientists and science educators working in public spheres, social media, and the classroom. These attacks are often especially intense when the scientists are also women, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color), queer, or from other marginalized groups. The increasingly anti-science political ecosystem creates a dire need for science to be proactive, not only reactive.

More conflation:

If one’s job, salary, research support, etc. are at risk, it is not surprising that one may not want to “stick their neck out.” And such threats will grow in the US under the incoming administration. There also remains some prominent fear of the term “political” in the scientific community, as if being political represents a bad thing or something that diminishes the value of science or the scientist.

Finally, here’s Fuentes’s final pronouncement that science itself should become a vehicle for promoting a social mission, almost certainly the “progressive mission of the left”:

As the social scientists Fernando Tormos-Aponte, Scott Frickel, and John Parker discovered in a survey just after the 2020 US elections, for many scientists “political advocacy is no longer anathema to scientific research, but should be embraced as a central aspect of science’s social mission.” This is even more true here at the end of 2024.

Once again this conflates what scientists should do with how we conceive of the “social mission of science”, that is, we should change our view of science to make activism a part of it.

Fuentes doesn’t seem to realize, as we know from statistics about the public’s view of science and of universities, that there is indeed a danger to scientists and to science itself from scientists taking stands in particular venues, like journals or professional societies. We know that when Nature endorsed Joe Biden for President in 2020, it not only did not convince more people to vote for him, but reduced the credibility of the journal, and of science itself, in the eyes of readers. When Scientific American became activist, publishing article after article taking “progressive” stands, including two misguided pieces by Fuentes himself, it lost credibility in the eyes of many and, in the end, the editor-in-chief left the journal, probably because she had no choice.  What was the cause of the final rupture between the magazine and the editor? Her attacks on Bluesky against supporters of Trump.

Finally, we know that public trust in science among both Democrats and Republicans has declined significantly in the last decade, and there’s been an even steeper drop in public confidence in colleges and universities.

Now of course you’ve surely said to yourself, “But there is no impersonal ‘science’ that takes stands. It must be the scientists themselves who do.” And of course that’s correct.  But what I am trying say is that there are ways and ways of scientists being activists, and some of them are useful but others are not. My points are below:

a.) Scientists should use their recognized expertise to correct false arguments that affect society. For example, if vaccines are effective and we have data on their efficacy, and we also have data that they don’t cause autism, we should say so.  But arguments are more effective when the scientists making them are experts in the area, which leads to the next point:

b.) Scientists should shy away from making scientific arguments outside their sphere of expertise. A prime example of this is evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, who has severely hurt his own reputation by making statements about covid vaccines and touting the efficacy of ivermectin as both a treatment for and preventive of Covid.  Weinstein did not know what he was talking about, and had no good data to back up his claims. He was dead wrong, but of course people used his statements to justify using horse de-wormer for their virus infection. Such statements may well harm or even kill people.

c.) Scientists should not make arguments that they say are scientific if they are imbued with ideology. This only serves to turn off a public who may know better. Luana and I deal with six of these arguments in the paper by me and Luana Maroja in Skeptical Inquirer, including rejection of the sex binary, claims that there are no evolved differences between males and females, and the idea that indigenous knowledge should be considered coequal with modern science. Ideology based arguments in these areas are misleading and injurious to the public understanding of science.

d.) “Science” itself should not be seen as incorporating activism as a necessary component.  Sure, scientists can use their knowledge to cure diseases like Covid, or create vaccines to fight polio. If you see that as “activism”, well, it’s not a form of activism that is very injurious, since nobody wants those diseases around. However, there will still be opposition to vaccination, and part of that, for covid, was due to scientists themselves either not being straightforward with data (not good) or changing their recommendations based on changing understanding of the virus and its transmission (a normal party of science).

Here are some forms of activism that can be seen as part of science itself and should be avoided:

1.) Scientific journals, magazines, or societies making ideological statements (viz. Lancet, the Society for the Study of Evolution. etc. saying that sex is a spectrum)

2.) Scientific organizations using ideology to dispense scientific funding, for example using criteria other than merit to advance “equity”.

3.) Scientists claiming the authority of science when advancing what is are biased and ideological views (see my paper with Luana).

4.) Scientists hiring other scientists or accepting graduate students based on criteria other than merit (ee #2).

In general, science gets eroded when its practitioners elevate criteria other than merit, including ethnicity, gender, or Marxist beliefs in human malleability.

Now all of these, in my view, have the potential to damage science itself, as well as to damage universities, in which science education plays a large part.  When people see the criteria above violated, they become more anti-science and more anti-university. They are less willing to support science or to give their kids (or themselves) higher education.

It is largely the ideological neutrality of “science itself”, as ideally instantiated in science departments, science journals, granting agencies, and science societies and organizations, that has kept the reputation of science unsullied.  But now it is getting sullied, and sullied from both the right and left. One of the reasons for this is the very activism that Fuentes wants so badly.

As I said, scientists have an important role to play in improving society, but that role should, as far as possible, be limited to ensuring that the data fed into societal arguments be as accurate as possible. When scientists go beyond that, infusing their data with ideology, the potential for harm to their brand is very real.  This doesn’t mean that scientists shouldn’t have free speech, for of course they should and they do.  What it means is that unless they speak carefully, and avoid a partisan bias, they risk the reputation of the very fields they love.

In the five-minute video below we see Fuentes being an ideologue while at the same time arguing that science shouldn’t “become ideology”.  He mischaracterizes atheism as saying ‘I know for sure there is no god,”  argues that evolutionary biology is imbued with racism and sexism, and maintains that the sex binary “is not the best way to characterize humans.” Yes, humans are messy and vary in their gender, but the sex binary, as I’ve argued, applies as much to humans as it does to any other animal. There are exactly two sexes, and there are no more than two sexes. Yes, Dr. Fuentes, the world is “complex and messy”, but I don’t buy your claim that the sex binary itself somehow misrepresents or distorts our knowledge of variation in human behavior or culture. After all, the sex binary is just a definition, and one that has the advantage of holding universally in all animals and vascular plants. It has nothing to say about culture or variation in behavior.

From the YouTube notes:

This interview is an episode from ‪@The-Well‬, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the ‪@JohnTempletonFoundation‬.

Templeton! Wouldn’t you know it?

h/t: Anna and Luana, my partners in crime

The journals Science and Nature politicize science over the recent election

November 14, 2024 • 9:30 am

It is surely within the ambit of scientific journals to take stands on issues that affect the fields they cover, but endorsing political candidates is a dangerous matter. In 2020, for example, Nature endorsed Joe Biden for President (a first for them). It did not change the readers’ views of Biden, but it eroded the credibility of both the journal and science in general. This is according to a study by Floyd Zhang published in Nature Human Behavior, and is summarized in a later issue of Nature:

Overall, the study provides little evidence that the endorsement changed participants’ views of the candidates. However, showing the endorsement to people who supported Trump did significantly change their opinion of Nature. When compared with Trump supporters who viewed Nature’s formatting announcement, Trump supporters who viewed the endorsement rated Nature as significantly less well informed when it comes to “providing advice on science-related issues facing the society” (Fig. 1). Those who viewed the endorsement also rated Nature significantly lower as an unbiased source of information on contentious or divisive issues. There was no comparable positive effect for Biden supporters.

Zhang also found that viewing Nature’s political endorsement reduced Trump supporters’ willingness to obtain information about COVID-19 from Nature by 38%, when compared with Trump supporters who saw the formatting announcement. This finding echoes other work on how partisanship influences interest in scientific information5. Furthermore, Trump supporters who viewed the endorsement also rated US scientists, in general, as much less well informed and unbiased than did Trump supporters who viewed the formatting article. There was no comparable positive effect for Biden supporters.

This lesson was apparently lost on Nature‘s American competitor, Science, which (like the new Nature article below it), is calling for scientists to hold Trump to account on things like climate change, pandemics, and so on.  That’s fair enough, but then they politicize the whole thing by demonizing Trump from the outset, doing exactly the thing that will erode confidence in the journal and its pronouncements.

The article was written by Science‘s editor, Holden Thorp. He considers himself “progressive,” and has debated my partner in crime, Luana Maroja, on the role of politics in science (see also this video).  Thorp also devoted a column in his journal to criticizing a paper on which both Luana and I were coauthors, a paper on “In Defense of Merit in Science” by Abbot et al.

Click to read:

Here’s the way it starts, guaranteed to alienate Republicans:

The reelection of Donald Trump for a second, nonconsecutive term as US president—mirroring only Grover Cleveland’s 22nd and 24th presidencies after the Civil War—underscores a reality: Although his success stems partly from a willingness to tap into xenophobia, sexism, racism, transphobia, nationalism, and disregard for truth, his message resonates with a large portion of the American populace who feel alienated from America’s governmental, social, and economic institutions. These include science and higher education. Winning back this disaffected group will require science leaders to foster and promote a more inclusive scientific landscape for all Americans and lay out how science can be successful under Trump.

How willing will readers be to take these lessons to heart if they are Republicans? (Granted, most readers, who are budding scientists, will be Democrats, but then they don’t need these lessons.) Who wants to be implicitly told that they are xenophobes, racists, sexists, and nationalists?

And there’s a statement whose first part is tautological and the second part is debatable:

Make no mistake, the political assaults on science stem largely from those who seek to undermine the truth for political gain, and this dynamic is the major contributor to declining trust in science.

Some of the declining trust in science is also due to scientists’ changing their views, as during the COVID crisis, but much of that was simply due to the acquisition of new information and is not the fault of scientists. We are supposed to change our minds when new data undercuts our previous stands. But that erosion is not due to scientists “undermining the truth for political gain”. There is no mention of Nature’s contribution to declining trust in science by simply endorsing a candidate in 2020.  Other erosion of trust occurs when scientists or journals make statements like “human biological sex is a spectrum,” something that is flatly wrong and contradicts what people already know.

The article above, then, is not only bound to do precisely what it’s decrying—eroding trust in science by politicizing it—but is also disingenuous by neglecting the causes of distrust in science that come from progressive politics, as well as from the infusion of politics in science.

The rest of the article is anodyne, urging scientists to change their minds when they’re wrong, not to engage in falsifying results (duh!), and not to blame “their students and postdocs for problems” (duh again!).  The article ends by taking another swipe at an administration that hasn’t yet begun:

The attacks [on science] are going to keep coming and probably accelerate for the next 4 years. As painful as that will be, it’s up to the scientific community to respond in a way that makes those blows less successful.

The “four years” implies that the Trump administration will be bad for science. That may well be true, but we don’t know yet! Here we have journals playing Chicken Little.

Nature, already stung by its endorsement of Biden in 2020, didn’t endorse anyone in the last election, but might as well have endorsed Biden if you read this article. The piece also contains a survey showing that nearly 40% of  Nature readers in the U.S. would consider moving out of the country if Trump won. I wonder how many actually will move?

At any rate, the new Nature article below also evinces fear of the Trump administration, but does so in a fear-mongering way that I wouldn’t employ were I editor. It also gives anodyne advice. But it’s not as bad as the Science article:

A few excerpts:

When Donald Trump was first elected to the US presidency in 2016, Nature advised scientists to constructively engage with Trump. We said that the incoming president’s contrary approach to evidence, among other things, had no place in modern society. We added that the science community had a responsibility to step up and work with the president and his new administration so that they govern on the basis of research and evidence.

. . .The United States has now re-elected Donald Trump as president. Many researchers have told Nature that they are in despair, seeing the election result as a step backwards for facts, reason, knowledge and civility.

Last week, Nature said that the United States needs a leader who respects evidence. The incoming administration must embody this principle. On behalf of the research community, we will hold it to account if it falls short.

We hope that the incoming administration will govern in the best interests of the United States. That means holding on to the best of what the previous administration did, and not returning to some of the policies of the first Trump presidency.

Is it journalism to cite the “many scientists who are in despair” without mentioning that some scientists (granted, a minority, given our political leanings) are happy?  This is a slanted take.

The article then calls out the Trump administration (properly) for its weakness on recignizing climate change and for threatening to defund the World Health Organization.  But then it becomes anodyne like the Science article above, and ends on a lame note:

The research community must engage with the new administration with courage, tenacity, strength and unity. At the same time, scientists in the United States must know that they are not alone. The research community is a global one. We need to stand together and stand strong for the challenges that are to come. And that will mean continuing to speak facts to power.

“Stand together” clearly means “stand together against the Trump administration,” and I think that’s obvious to any reader with eyes.

Readers here know that I abhor Trump, but even more than that I abhor the ideological erosion of my beloved science. In four years Trump will be gone (hopefully to be replaced by someone who’s not mentally ill), but any damage done to the reputation of science by journals rushing to take sides will last a lot longer.

Science-and-ideology conference at USC in January (with Prof. Ceiling Cat and friends)

November 10, 2024 • 11:00 am

From January 10-12 (Friday through Sunday), there will be a substantial conference at the University of Southern California on censorship in science, and by that they mean all the sciences: STEMM.  You can see details about the conference at the website below (click on screenshot), and view the preliminary program here.  (There was an sketchier announcement of the conference in August, but now things are in their final stages.)

You can register here; the fee is $200 ($100 for students), and that’s not a bad deal given that the registration includes lunches, coffee breaks, and receptions with drinks and food.  And the participants include, beyond a passel of working scientists, people like Jonathan Rauch, Jesse Singal, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff and, mirabile dictu, Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Science.

And of course there’s this by way of self-promotion (end of the meeting):

Yes, I team up again with my partner in crime Dr. Maroja, on a two-person panel moderated by UC Berkeley molecular biologist Julia Schaletzky.

I hear that space is filling up, so if you want to register, and have the time and ability to go to USC (in LA), I recommend registering ASAP.

Readers’ wildlife photos

March 15, 2024 • 8:15 am

Today we divert from wildlife for a day so we can read Athayde Tonhasca Júnior’s test-and-photo post of bizarre scientific papers. Athayde’s narrative is indented and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Nullius in verba

The Royal Society‘s motto, adopted in 1662 and loosely translated as ‘take nobody’s word for it’, is a reminder that scientific advancement and knowledge come from evidence. A while back, we looked at some unusual titles of science papers. Here we explore data gathering done in unorthodox or quirky fashion.

The common knowledge that “every child in Germany knows that ‘storks bring babies'” inspired Professor Helmut Sies to look for an explanation for West Germany’s demographic problem. He found an almost perfect correlation (r = 0.982) between the number of breeding storks and the number of newborn babies (Nature 332: 495, 1988):

Feline pesematology (from the Greek pesema, for ‘fall’), could help us understand why cats have nine lives. Professor Jared Diamond explained in layman’s terms the findings of Whitney & Mehlhaff from 132 careless tabbies who plunged from windows two or more storeys high in New York (High-rise syndrome in cats. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 191: 1399–1403, 1987). 90% of them survived despite landing on hard pavements. “A kitty named Sabrina fell 32 storeys onto a sidewalk and suffered nothing worse than a chipped tooth and mild chest injuries” (How cats survive falls from New York skyscrapers. Natural History 8: 20-26, 1989). It’s all about physics: “a cat falling in the atmosphere reaches a terminal velocity of about 60 mph (compared with 120 mph for adult humans) after only about 100 feet. As long as it experiences acceleration, the cat probably extends its limbs reflexively, but on reaching terminal velocity it may relax and extend the limbs more horizontally in flying-squirrel fashion, thus not only reducing the velocity of fall but also absorbing the impact over a greater area of its body. This may explain the paradoxical decrease of mortality and injury in cats that fall more than 100 feet” (Why cats have nine lives. Nature 332: 586-587, 1988):

Benno et al. proposed that “anyone who has watched a penguin fire a ‘shot’ from its rear end must have wondered about the pressure the bird generates”. So, they set out to investigate the artillery power of the chinstrap (Pygoscelis antarctica) and Adélie (P. adeliae) penguins. Their results suggest giving these birds a wide berth, lest you be hit by a “material of higher viscosity similar to that of olive oil”. They concluded their paper with a warning to other penguin researchers and a hint to funders: “It is interesting to note that the streaks of the faecal material radiate from the edge of the nest into all directions (no preference is noticeable). Whether the bird deliberately chooses the direction into which it decides to expel its faeces or whether this depends on the direction from which the wind blows at the time of evacuation are questions that need to be addressed on another expedition to Antarctica” (Pressures produced when penguins pooh – calculations on avian defaecation. Polar Biology 27: 56–58, 2003):

Entomologist John Wesley Brown left no doubts about his views regarding rules for naming species (Nomenclatural nonsense – flying in the face of a farcical code. Journal of the Lepidopterists’ Society 55: 1 -7, 2001):

‘Yes’ was Lorna O’Brien’s answer to Caleb Brown’s question, which he posed in the last line of his and Henderson’s paper: A new horned dinosaur reveals convergent evolution in cranial ornamentation in Ceratopsidae. Current Biology 25: 1641–1648, 2015.

In 1962, Tusko, a male Indian elephant, was enjoying a quiet life at the Oklahoma City Zoo until discovered by psychologist Louis Jolyon West and colleagues in search for a subject for a psychedelic experiment. They injected Tusko with a massive dose of LSD and recorded the outcome: “Tusko began trumpeting and rushing around the pen… his restlessness appeared to increase for 3 minutes after the injection; then he stopped running and showed signs of marked incoordination. His mate (Judy, a 15- year-old female) approached him and appeared to attempt to support him. He began to sway, his hindquarters buckled, and it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain himself upright. Five minutes after the injection he trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily onto his right side, defecated, and went into status epilepticus.” The men of science suspected things were not going according to plan – whatever the plan was – so they injected Tusko with a huge dose of Thorazine, an anti-psychotic drug. It didn’t work: one hour and 40 minutes after the start of the experiment, Tusko was dead. The authors’ conclusion, reproduced in the image, was that acid ain’t groovy, man; far out. Their paper (West et al. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: its effects on a male Asiatic elephant. Science 138: 1100-1103, 1962) inspired Alex Boese to title his book on outrageous experiments from the history of science: Elephants on Acid: and other bizarre experiments. Besides trippin’ elephants, Louis West’s other academic interest was mind control trials at the CIA-sponsored Project MKUltra, an organisation that would leave James Bond’s SPECTRE feeling jealous and amateurish.

Possibly the shortest scientific note ever published. Tropical ecologist Dan Janzen‘s acknowledgment that colleagues who refuted one of his hypotheses (Schubart & Anderson. Why don’t ants visit flowers? A reply to D. H. Janzen. Biotropica 10: 310-311, 1978) were probably right.

Stack & Gundlach (Social Forces 71: 211-218, 1992) gave academic support to what many of us have long suspected: Country Music can kill you. These classic country songs of all time could have gone in the paper’s appendix:

I keep forgettin’ I forgot about you.
You done tore out my heart and stomped that sucker flat.
How can I miss you if you won’t go away?
If the phone don’t ring, you’ll know it’s me.
I still miss you, baby, but my aim’s gettin’ better.
I’m so miserable without you, it’s like having you here.
Please bypass this broken heart.
I liked you better before I knew you so well.
Get yore tongue outta my mouth ’cause I’m kissing you goodbye.
My wife ran off with my best friend and I sure do miss him.
She got the ring and I got the finger.

In a properly designed randomized controlled trial, Yeh et al. found that jumping from an aircraft with or without a parachute makes no difference for survival (Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial. British Medical Journal 363: k5094, 2018). The next image gives a possible explanation for this statistically robust result:

The authors’ point was that you don’t need randomized controlled trials to draw reasonable conclusions about certain observed effects. “Advocates of evidence-based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence-based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.”:

Hollywood is taking too long to snap up Yap et al.’s creepy creation: the Necrobotic, a robot built with the carcass of a dead spider (Necrobotics: biotic materials as ready-to-use actuators. Advanced Science 9: 2201174, 2022):

In this age of alternative facts and personal truths, Hoogeveen et al.’s reported ‘Einstein effect’ is heartening: “our results strongly suggest that scientific authority is generally considered a reliable source for truth, more so than spiritual authority. Indeed, there are ample examples demonstrating that science serves as an important cue for credibility; the cover of Donald Trump’s niece’s family history book is adorned by ‘Mary L. Trump, PhD’; advertisements for cosmetic products often claim to be ‘clinically proven’ and ‘recommended by dermatologists’, and even the tobacco industry used to appeal to science (for example, ‘more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette’).” All good, but the paper’s methodology is the best. See next item.

Hoogeveen et al. tested their hypotheses by using the New Age Bullshit Generator (http://sebpearce.com/bullshit/), which “combines new age buzzwords in a syntactically correct structure resulting in meaningless but pseudo-profound sounding text”. Have a go at it, it’s great fun. Deepak Chopra, Paulo Coelho and Jordan Peterson must have dipped into it:

Brave guinea pigs for the sake of kids’ welfare. Not many people would be keen to gobble down Lego pieces and have their SHAT (Stool Hardness and Transit) and FART (Found and Retrieved Time) scores investigated (Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health 55: 921-923, 2019):

Lastly, this from Australia: Mamils (middle-aged men in Lycra) are thriving (Medical Journal of Australia 209: 490-494, 2018). “It is believed that Mamils have evolved from the dawn patroller species, typically found in droves throughout the nineties and noughties on golf courses”. Now, “Sydney’s Mosman allegedly has more Mamils per square metre than the Tour de France.” “The group bonding… is good for mental health: it may foster stronger bonds between men and have positive effects on their wellbeing and morale, as Mamils are having a wheelie good time.” Excellent health news despite the disturbing aesthetical side effects:

The Biden administration’s program for using “Indigenous Knowledge”

February 16, 2024 • 11:30 am

On November 20, 2022, the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a “Memorandum for Heads of Federal Departments and Agencies” designed to guide those agencies in interacting with indigenous people of the U.S. as well as in meldiong their “indigenous knowledge” with modern science in useful scientific and practical endeavors. There’s a long draft proposal (see below) as well as a shorter description of the origin and aims of the project here.

Having read the 46-page draft proposal as well as the ancillary documents, I’ll give my impressions of the project in this post.  My general take is that the document is far more concerned with bringing indigenous people into scientific endeavors than it is with improving projects by incorporating indigenous knowledge. Further, it seems more concerned with helping indigenous people’s lives (growing crops, getting better healthcare) than with ferreting out their knowledge. The latter is still a worthy endeavor: Lord knows that Native Americans have been treated horribly by “colonists”, and this project can be seen as a form of reparations. But let us not pretend that the main aim of the project are the ones the government gave below:

  • Understanding Indigenous Knowledge
  • Growing and maintaining the mutually beneficial relationships with Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples needed to appropriately include Indigenous Knowledge
  • Considering, including, and applying Indigenous Knowledge in Federal research, policies, management, and decision making

Of all of these, the second is the one that occupies the most space in the paper: how to collaborate with indigenous people and, especially, how to interact with them in a polite and non-offensive manner.  But the aim isn’t really “mutually beneficial” in the sense that modern scientific projects will be enhanced by collaboration with Tribal Nations. Rather, the project is a way of drawing Native Americans into empirical research, even though the number of projects seems limited and the use of “indigenous knowledge” (always ill defined) unclear. I prefer to think of this as a huge DEI project, one designed to achieve some kind of equity in scientific research, but one that’s better than the usual DEI projects because it aims to actually improve the lives of Native Americans. If it does that by masquerading as a way to achieve “knowledge equity”, however, at least we must know of the masquerade, because the presumed equivalence of “indigenous knowledge” with “scientific knowledge” is a growing trope, and we need to understand it. Undue respect for “indigenous ways of knowledge” has substantially degraded science education in New Zealand, and we shouldn’t let that happen here.

Click below to see (or download) the big fat memo:

First, what is indigenous knowledge? Here are two definitions, based largely on the OED, that I gave in a recent post:

knowledge: “The apprehension of fact or truth with the mind; clear and certain perception of fact or truth; the state or condition of knowing fact or truth.” I interpret this to mean “the public acceptance of facts”, so that “knowledge” becomes an apprehension, as Steve Gould argued, that would be held by any person who is not perverse.

way of knowing: A system or group of procedures used to produce knowledge. (This is my definition since it’s not in the OED.)

These don’t comport exactly with the BA’s definitions (below), but the sense is the same: knowledge is the widespread apprehension of what is true. It is the way that knowledge is produced thatdiffers between scientific knowledge and indigenous knowledge.  The latter includes sources that some may see as numinous or nonscientific, such as “spiritual” and “cultural grounding”, as well as “lessons passed from generation to generation”. In this way North American indigenous knowledge resembles New Zealand’s indigenous knowledge, or “Mātauranga Māori.” It is a mixture of real empirical observation with myth, legend, and cultural practices.

Here are two definitions of indigenous knowledge given by the Biden administration, the first from the big document and the second from a related page:

Note in part A the connection between “knowledge” and “social, spiritual, and natural systems”.  Ideally, knowledge should be free from such considerations, or it isn’t really knowledge in the scientific or empirical sense.

And this government page:

Indigenous Knowledge is a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, innovations, practices, and beliefs developed by Tribes and Indigenous Peoples through interaction and experience with the environment. The Biden-Harris Administration has formally recognized Indigenous Knowledge as one of the many important bodies of knowledge that contributes to the scientific, technical, social, and economic advancements of the United States and our collective understanding of the natural world.

Henceforth we’ll use the abbreviation “BA” for “Biden Administration,” “IK” for indigenous knowledge, and “SK” for scientific knowledge (the stuff that science accepts today as provisional truth).  One important difference between IK and SK is that the latter can be kept secret if the tribes with that knowledge so wish it. So, on p. 31 of the document, and elsewhere, you can find this:

Funded by the National Science Foundation, ELOKA responds to twin imperatives: The Federal mandate to make data collected with Federal dollars public and broadly accessible, and the right of Tribes and Indigenous Peoples to control their own knowledge.

This means that if Native Americans wish to keep their indigenous knowledge to themselves rather than making it public, they have the right to do so. If that’s the case, it violates the ethos of science, which is to make all knowledge (at least knowledge resulting in publication) available to everyone.  Knowledge kept private isn’t really “knowledge,” as it can’t be tested by others to see if it’s true.  Leaving that aside, let’s move on.

The report is divided into several parts, but the two main ones are parts 2-6 (pp. 4-21), which lay out ways to interact with Native Americans when collaborating with them on projects using IK, and Appendix A, “Examples of indigenous knowledge application and collaboration between the federal government and tribes and indigenous peoples,” which occupies pages 22-33. (There are a few more appendices with references and the like.) It’s this second part that most interests me, but I’ll say a few words about the first bit.

Part I not only explicitly brings up the historically abysmal treatment of Native Americans, but also blames science for part of this. All of it is to the end of how to deal with Native Americans, and I have little objection to most of it:

Acknowledge Historical Context and Past Injustice. Understanding the different experiences of Tribal and Indigenous Peoples is critical for Agencies to work with them and engage effectively with Indigenous Knowledge. Agencies should acknowledge the history of the department or agency they represent, and the Federal Government broadly, when working with Tribes and Indigenous Peoples. Recognizing past injustice, while upholding Tribal treaty and reserved rights, and respecting Tribal and Indigenous communities, cultures, and values will assist Agencies in developing collaborative processes that are more equitable and inclusive of Indigenous Peoples and their knowledge systems. The genocide and ethnocide of Indigenous Peoples in the United States is well documented.39 Historically, Federal policies have resulted in the separation (both physically and intellectually). of Indigenous Peoples from the places they are connected to, severing relationships with lands, waters, and social systems, which are all critical elements of Indigenous Knowledge. 40 These policies systematically served to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures.41

Historically, Federal policies have resulted in the separation (both physically and intellectually) of Indigenous Peoples from the places they are connected to, severing relationships with lands, waters, and social systems, which are all critical elements of Indigenous Knowledge. These policies systematically served to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures.

But then we get to the inevitable criticisms of “science” as being oppressive:

. . . At times, Western science has been used as a tool to oppress Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples. Indigenous Peoples in the United States have experienced significant unethical health research abuses, including the use of genetic data and health records without their knowledge or consent.

I wouldn’t say that “Western science’—again, a term I abhor since science has become worldwide—oppressed Tribal Nations, but rather unethical or uncaring scientists did. It’s not a dictum of “science” to “use data from people without their consent” .  This is a way of doing down science itself as an oppressor—something we see in New Zealand as well. But here’s one more example of how to collaborate with Native Americans

Include Indigenous Knowledge into Federal Decision Making and Research. Agencies should obtain consent from Tribal Nations and Indigenous Peoples prior to including Indigenous Knowledge in Federal policy, research, or decision making. After securing consent to access Indigenous Knowledge, Agencies should ensure that Indigenous Knowledge is appropriately included in the Federal action. Inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge in Federal decision making and research starts with the recognition that Indigenous practices and methodologies underlie Indigenous Knowledge. Accordingly, Indigenous Knowledge should guide metrics and evaluation; Agencies do not need to judge, validate, or evaluate Indigenous Knowledge using other forms of knowledge in order to include Indigenous Knowledge in Federal policy, research, or decision making.

I’m not sure I agree with the last two sentences, but then again I’m not sure what they mean. If they mean that indigenous knowledge should not be tested against modern scientific knowledge, I disagree.

Here’s a note about the co-equality of Indigenous and modern science (bolding is mine):

When [Federal] funding is awarded, especially through competitive grant processes, Agencies should ensure that the methods, people, and grant assessment process are not biased against proposals that include Indigenous Knowledge. To guard against such biases, Agencies can ensure that Indigenous Knowledge holders are included in funding allocation decisions, and can ensure that merit-based funding decisions involve scoring rubrics that value Indigenous Knowledge on par with other forms of evidence and methods of inquiry. Agencies should also develop evaluation criteria that includes Indigenous methodologies and approaches to ensure that Indigenous Knowledge is not inappropriately disadvantaged in the review process.

I would say that valuing indigenous knowledge in comparison to scientific knowledge would depend on how that indigenous knowledge is generated. If it’s through tradition and word of mouth, for example, you might cast a cold eye on it.  To ensure that indigenous knowledge is comparable to modern scientific knowledge, of course, it has to be judged by the standards of modern scientific knowledge, not by the standards of indigenous knowledge.

Part II deals with specific projects that are said to involve indigenous knowledge, and the document gives a fair number of examples. The problem is that with many of these examples, it’s not clear either what the relevant indigenous knowledge is or how it’s supposed to be used. Here’s one example of that:

ACHP Advances Indigenous Knowledge in Policy on Burial Sites, Human Remains, and Funerary Objects The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) strives to ensure Agencies implement their work in harmony with the National Historic Preservation Act. The ACHP is incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into its updated Policy Statement on Burial Sites, Human Remains, and Funerary Objects82 to elevate consideration of Indigenous Knowledge in Federal historic preservation decisions. Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge into the policy statement will help Indigenous People elevate their concerns during the Section 106 process, which requires Agencies to consider the effects of projects they carry out, approve, or fund, on historic properties throughout the country.

Elizabeth Weiss has emphasized that this is problematic in two ways. First, it is really indigenous claims that are taken as knowledge. If a skull or a funerary object is found on land once occupied by a given tribe, it’s taken for granted that the remains and funerary objects revert to that tribe. No DNA analysis is necessary, though it should be when possible. Second, this section has been expanded to mean that all Native American objects found must be given custodial care under the direction of Native Americans who claim them, regardless of the strength of their claim. If an object is deemed “sacred” or “powerful,” it might be taken off exhibit completely, or given back to a tribe. This is bowing not to indigenous knowledge but to indigenous religion, since such objects are deemed “sacred”.

But there are examples where indigenous knowledge can contribute to conservation. I’ll just give two.

Sweetgrass Shared Governance in Acadia National Park

In Acadia National Park, the National Park Service is working with citizens of Wabanaki Tribes—the Aroostook Band of Mi’kmaq, the Houlton Band of Maliseets (Wolastogiyik), the Passamaquoddy (Peskotomuhkati) Tribe at Sipayik, the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township, and the Penobscot Indian Nation—on shared governance and research on sweetgrass harvesting.80 Wabanaki people have harvested sweetgrass for generations. Research in Acadia, guided by Indigenous methodologies, reinforces what Wabanaki people have always known: that harvesting sweetgrass through a Wabanaki philosophy enhances sweetgrass abundance. Wabanaki knowledge, and the gatherers who generate this knowledge, are leading National Park Service research and management strategies that will enable restoration of Wabanaki harvesting within Acadia National Park.

Here the knowledge of harvesting and cultivating sweetgrass is likely to be useful for keeping this plant going. What I object to here is how “Wabanaki philosophy enhances sweetgrass abundance.” And what the philosophy might be is, of course, not given. To see if it really works, you’d have to test it—but with modern science.

One more example before I pass on. Eulachon is a kind of smelt:

Tribal-led Research and Conservation of Eulachon

Coastal Indian Tribes, including the Cowlitz Indian Tribe, have fished and traded for eulachon (Thaleichthys pacificus) in tributaries of the Columbia River since time immemorial. NOAA and the Cowlitz Indian Tribe— who initiated the project—applied Tribal oral histories to reconstruct historic distributions of the eulachon.96 The Cowlitz Tribal oral histories aided in identifying key spawning habitat, timing of eulachon runs, and run differences between tributaries, and directly informed NOAA’s decision to list a population segment as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.97 The project facilitated joint efforts to identify and protect critical habitat, increase abundance of the species, and promote species recovery.

Here we have some indigenous knowledge that, in combination with scientific conservation, may indeed allow assessments that can help with species conservation. There are a few other examples like this, but also others where the relevant “knowledge”  isn’t specified. Here it’s clear: knowledge about habitats, timing, and subjective judgments of species numbers. Sadly, even this kind of knowledge is missing from most of the examples given.

Overall, I have to say that I wasn’t much impressed with this document. I can’t disagree that indigenous knowledge, which is invariably practical knowledge about foods or plants useful to Native Americans, can be useful—mostly for Native Americans themselves but sometimes for overall conservation. But the article doesn’t make a persuasive case that “indigenous knowledge” is either coequal to modern scientific knowledge or constitutes a “different way of knowing”. To paraphrase Mike Aus, “There is knowing and there is not knowing, and that’s all there is in this world.”  Of course we have to realize that many claims of indigenous knowledge (like the provenance of found human remains) should be tested using modern scientific knowledge as well.

The reason I highlight this is simply to acquaint you with the nature of this program, since if you’re American you’re paying for it. Also, the “indigenous knowledge is sacred” trope has hopped the pond from New Zealand to here and is now invading America piggybacking on wokeness, ergo it must be carefully and critically inspected. Knowledge can’t be immune from modern scientific scrutiny simply because it comes from indigenous people—always people who lack much of the modern toolkit of modern science (hypothesis testing, publication, pervasive doubt, replication, and so on).

In my view implementing this project as a better-than-usual DEI endeavor—a way to bring indigenous people into modern science—is better done in the long run simply by giving Native Americans the opportunities to study, engage in, and ultimately practice modern science as professionals. I know we’re a long way from that, but this is the solution for all problems of equity. In this case, “indigenous knowledge” automatically becomes fused with modern science. But of course if you want to do something now, this bloated document doesn’t convince me that the BA program is a great one.