Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Unbeknownst to me, the powers that be in our department decided to celebrate my creation of the Jerry Coyne/Honey the Duck Graduate Fellowship (a grad-student fellowship for studying organismal evolutionary biology) by putting pictures and captions on the wall of our seminar room, which features other photos of research activities of department members. Here are two photos related to the JCHDGF over the blackboard:
And enlargement of the photos:
And the two captions that go with the photos (first one for the left photo, second for the right).
I was delighted to see this, for the photos and fellowship will be the only real form of immortality I have. Like all scientists, I realize that whatever research I produced will eventually be outmoded or replaced. And Honey will live at most a dozen years; in fact, she’s probably already crossed the Rainbow Bridge. But my fellowship is forever.
Kudos to the office staff for getting this made and installed.
And two other photos of Honey, just for old times’ sake:
Here’s the second part of my interview with Scott Jacobson, published on the Substack site A Further Inquiry (part I is here). I’ll give just two excerpts below:
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We’re speaking mainly about Christian-majority countries. However, according to recent census data from Statistics Canada, the total number of Christians in Canada is around 53 to 54%. If you track the trend line from the 1971 data through 2001 and 2021, Canada will fall below half-Christian in terms of its total population sometime this year. That’s a significant shift. The United Kingdom is already closer to 40%. While the United States still reports around 67%, that was different from two decades ago. So, there is a general decline. Does this mean that the acceptance of evolution—or at least theistic evolution—is likely to become more prevalent in these cultures?
Jerry Coyne: Yes, that’s what the statistics suggest. If you look at Gallup polls, you’ll see that the only steady increase is in the acceptance of naturalistic evolution. It started at about 9% in 1982 and has risen to around 25% by 2024. That’s a promising trend, but it’s important to note that more than half of Americans—nearly three-quarters—still oppose purely naturalistic evolution.
Keep in mind that 34% of Americans are theistic evolutionists. They accept evolution, but only up to a point. That point usually involves human evolution because they believe God created humans in His image. This belief skews the data, making the acceptance of evolution seem higher than it truly is. Many people struggle with the idea that what they perceive as a random, accidental process could lead to the complexity of human beings and our brains. This is a mischaracterization of natural selection, but it’s a common barrier to accepting evolution.
. . . \Jacobsen: It’s quite a story. So, when you’re less active on that particular subject, such as tracking the Discovery Institute’s activities, what do you consider the enduring thread from Mencken’s era to the present regarding attempts to infiltrate school systems and advocate for a divine role in evolution? What common themes have persisted over time?
Coyne: The fact that evolution is inherently offensive to many people. Steve Stewart-Williams wrote a book about this—although I can’t recall the title—that delves into the different ways in which the concepts of evolution and natural selection challenge deeply held beliefs. It’s not just about religion. Evolution strikes the core of human exceptionalism and the belief that we are somehow separate from the rest of the natural world.
You don’t have to be religious to believe in human exceptionalism, but religion certainly reinforces it. The idea that naturalism alone is responsible for everything, including consciousness, is unsettling for many.
Some people propose supernaturalism or extranaturalism because they don’t believe naturalism can account for phenomena like consciousness. I remember talking to Steven Weinberg, the Nobel laureate in physics, at a meeting several years ago. My presentation was on free will and why it doesn’t truly exist—because our will originates in the brain, which is composed of molecules that follow the laws of physics. Therefore, we can’t step outside ourselves to make truly independent choices. At any given moment, the arrangement of molecules in the brain allows for only one possible action.
That idea is offensive to many people, including Weinberg. He asked, “Are you telling me I couldn’t have chosen something else when I choose what to eat at a restaurant?” I said, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” He objected, saying he didn’t believe it.
That reaction highlights how deeply unsettling naturalism can be, especially when it challenges the notion of free will. Naturalism, which underpins evolution, is inherently challenging. Evolution itself isn’t a philosophical concept, but it embodies methodological naturalism. Darwin’s work epitomized this, especially at the end of On the Origin of Species, where he wrote about the natural laws governing cosmology and biology. He drew a parallel between the laws of physics that dictate planetary motion and the laws that drive evolution, which are based on chemistry and physics.
So, yes, evolution offends people on multiple levels. Even if religion were to disappear—which it won’t, at least not in our lifetimes—people would still find reasons to object to evolution. However, it’s also true that the less people believe in God, the more likely they are to accept evolution. Suppose you graph countries based on religiosity and acceptance of evolution. In that case, you’ll see a clear trend: the more religious a country is, the less likely its population is to accept evolution. This appears to hold globally.
The least accepting countries are typically the most religious ones, such as Muslim-majority countries. Even within Europe, countries like Spain and Italy, which have strong Catholic traditions, are less accepting of evolution compared to more secular countries.
If you analyze the 50 United States similarly, you’ll also see a significant positive correlation between acceptance of evolution and atheism or lack of religiosity. The states most resistant to evolution, such as Tennessee—known for the famous Scopes Trial—are primarily in the American South. These states are also the most religious in the United States. The underlying thread is the tension between materialism and religion, which inherently rejects materialism.
Religion, by its nature, involves the supernatural. This theme has consistently run through the debate over evolution.
Apropos of the negative correlation between religiosity and acceptance of human evolution, below is one figure I gave in my paper in Evolution, “Science, Religion, and Society: The Problem of Evolution in America” (access is free). It was the paper I was allowed to publish in the journal because I was President of the Society of the Study for Evolution.
Now the plot below shows a correlation and doesn’t indicate causality. For example, one could posit that acceptance of evolution in a country erodes its acceptance of religion, or, alternatively, the higher the religiosity of a country, the less likely its inhabitants are to accept human evolution. Or both. My own view is that the latter is more credible because people get their religion before they learn anything about evolution—if they ever learn anything about evolution. They may simply, as happens often in Islam and Orthodox Judaism, reject human evolution from the outset because that’s what it says in the scripture they encounter.
(From paper): The correlation between belief in God and acceptance of human evolution among 34 countries. Acceptance of evolution is based on the survey of Miller et al. (2006), who asked people whether they agreed with the statement, “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.” (Original data provided by J. D. Miller.) “Belief in God” comes from the Eurobarometer survey of 2005, except for data for Japan from (Zuckerman 2007) and for the United States from a Gallup Poll (2011b). “US” is the point for the United States. The correlation is −0.608 (P= 0.0001), the equation of the least-squares regression line is y= 81.47 − 0.33x.
Here’s another excerpt from my paper:
There is ample evidence, then, that aversion to evolution stems from religious belief not just in the United States but in the world as a whole, and no evidence that resistance to evolution reflects a lack of outreach on the part of teachers and scientists. A final bit of data (Masci 2007) supports this conclusion:
When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of [American] people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll. Indeed, in a May 2007 Gallup poll, only 14% of those who say they do not believe in evolution cite lack of evidence as the main reason underpinning their views; more people cite their belief in Jesus (19%), God (16%) or religion generally (16%) as their reason for rejecting Darwin’s theory.
That last bit of data is scary!
There is another section of the paper called “Incompatibilities between science and faith,” which made me have to fight a little to get the paper published. For the mere suggestion that religion and science are incompatible (in my view, the incompatibility lies mainly in their different ways of ascertaining “truth”) gets people riled up. That section also inspired my book Faith versus Fact, which I published a few years later.
I often hear “liberal” religionists say that true religion doesn’t need evidence, as faith comes from authority, scripture, and revelation, so religion and science occupy “nonoverlapping magisteria,” as Steve Gould maintained. (See my TLS review of Gould’s book about this, which I’ve reposted on this site.) But of course every bit of evidence supporting religious doctrine, like miracles (two are required for sainthood in Catholicism), evidence of life after death with Jesus (books like Heaven is for Real are invariably best sellers), or bogus evidence of “irreducible complexity” adduced by ID advocates—this “evidence” is eagerly glommed onto by believers, who also often make pilgrimages to holy sites.
Yep, undergirding nearly all faith is acceptance of a set of empirical tenets, tenets without which religion becomes superfluous. (Reread the Nicene Creed if you don’t believe me.)
Reader Lou Jost, a naturalist and evolutionist who works at the Dracula Reserve of Ecuador’s EcoMinga Foundation, just sent me this Facebook post put out by an Ecuadorian province a few years ago. It features MY frog, Atelopus coynei (it’s got a Wikipedia page, too), so it’s a bit self-aggrandizing of me to post this, but in fact the species is critically endangered and I want it saved. There are surely other undescribed and endangered species on the property (here’s a new tree frog discovered and described by the tem on the reserve.)
The story of the frog, how it got my name, and how it seemed to have gone extinct, but, Lazarus-like, was discovered by Andreas Kay decades later in Chinambi, Carchi, Ecuador, can be seen here.
Isn’t it a beaut? I suspect that its colors indicate that the frog is aposematic, i.e., toxic or dangerous to eat or touch. (The photo is by the late Andreas Kay courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)
Click photo below go to the FB post:
Lou adds this:
The province is proud to be the only place in the world where your frog survives. It is one of the fruits of our work trying to raise awareness for the rare species of our reserves.
Our president, Noboa, is firing massive numbers of public employees from ministries he doesn’t like, and closing or re-organizing them so he can do what he wants. Last week he placed the ministry of the environment into the ministry of energy and mining, and this is expected to make it harder for us to fight our main threat in the Dracula Reserve, mining.
There is at least one population of A. coynei outside our reserves. It was the first one that Andreas Kay found. We tried to buy it but the property was apparently involved in drug trafficking and arms dealing, and this scared us too much to deal with it. Maybe someday we or others will be able to protect this population too. We also continue to search for more populations using eDNA. Meanwhile we are monitoring our own populations and they are doing well. Each individual can be identified by their back pattern, so we can keep track of many of them.
If you want to donate to the reserve to save not only the frog, but tons of rainforest wildlife, Lou gave me this information:
Thanks Jerry, the Orchid Conservation Alliance is a US charity that can accept donations for us, and give tax credit for the donations. Donors should specify that their support goes to EcoMinga’s Dracula Reserve (which protects your frog)
I hope some readers can cough up a few bucks for the Reserve! Any amount will help.
photo by Juan Pablo Reyes and Jordy Salazar/EcoMinga
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.
Greg Lukianoff is, as most of you know, President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He’s also a lawyer and co-author, with Jon Haidt, of the excellent book The Coddling of the American Mind. Yesterday in Quillette, Lukianoff wrote a piece that many of us may find useful, outlining how to give comebacks to flimsy arguments against free speech. The advice is especially useful now that both extreme Left and extreme Right are finding reasons to curtail speech, the former through demonizing certain opinions that go against Righthink and the latter through banning or censoring books. I think the article below is free, so have a look.
I’m just going to put the arguments down, and if you’re savvy you should be able to give comebacks to most of these. Nobody will get them all, I think, so go back and read the piece. I’ve indented Lukianoff’s arguments below, but have left out the ripostes. For some reason I can’t see the graphics that Lukianoff has embedded in the article.
I’ll note first that anyone using the phrase “freeze peach” when referring to free speech is simply mocking this important concept. On to the objecftions (Lukianoff thanks some people at the end for helping him out.)
Assertion 1: Free speech was created under the false notion that words and violence are distinct, but we now know that certain speech is more akin to violence.
Assertion 2: Free speech rests on the faulty notion that words are harmless.
Assertion 3: Free speech is the tool of the powerful, not the powerless.
Assertion 4: The right to free speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say; it still leaves other people free to kick you out.
Assertion 5: But you can’t shout fire! in a crowded theatre. (I have to do some self-aggrandizing here by quoting part of his answer):
This old canard, afavourite reference of censorship apologists, needs to be retired. It’s repeatedly and inappropriately used to justify speech limitations. People have been using this cliché as if it had some legal meaning, while First Amendment lawyers point out that it is, as Alan Dershowitz puts it, “a caricature of logical argumentation.” Ken White penned a brilliant and thorough takedown of this misconception. While his piece is no longer available online, you can find a thorough discussion of the arguments by Jerry Coyne here. Please read it before proclaiming that your least favourite language is analogous to “shouting fire in a crowded theatre.”
Assertion 6: The arguments for freedom of speech are outdated.
Assertion 7: Hate speech laws are important for reducing intolerance, even if there may be some examples of abuse.
Assertion 8: Free speech is nothing but a conservative talking point.
Assertion 9: Restrictions on free speech are OK if they are made in the name of civility. (Note that this argument doesn’t hold for this website; as I explain in the Roolz, if your comment is uncivil or insulting to another reader, I don’t have to publish it. On a website like this, I do not have to put up every comment that comes in, though I try to use a light hand when moderating. But First-Amendment-style free speech doesn’t apply to websites, discussion groups, and the like.)
Assertion 10: You need speech restrictions to preserve cultural diversity.
Assertion 11: Free speech is an outdated idea; it’s time for new thinking. (Note that this is the same argument made in #6 above).
Assertion 12: I believe in free speech, but not for blasphemy.
Of these, the one I think it’s most useful to understand is the rebuttal to #7: the claim that “hate speech” doesn’t count as free speech. To answer this properly you’ll have to know what exceptions to First Amendment-style free speech have been carved out of that Amendment by the courts (false advertising, defamation, etc). Indeed, in countries like Germany and Britain, “hate speech” is a violation of the law, but Lukianoff notes that, at least crudely, “hate speech” laws don’t seem to go along with a strong reduction in bigotry, nor would you expect them to.
In his conclusion, Lukianoff once underlines the need for free speech. And speaking personally, I’d recommend that everyone who hasn’t read Mill’s “On Liberty” do so now (it’s free here on the Internet).
Lukianoff:
Free speech is valuable, first and foremost, because, without it, there is no way to know the world as it actually is. Understanding human perceptions, even incorrect ones, is always of scientific or scholarly value, and, in a democracy, it is essential to know what people really believe. This is my “pure informational theory of freedom of speech.” To think that, without openness, we can know what people really believe is not only hubris, but magical thinking. The process of coming to know the world as it is is much more arduous than we usually appreciate. It starts with this: recognise that you are probably wrong about any number of things, exercise genuine curiosity about everything (including each other), and always remember that it is better to know the world as it really is—and that the process of finding that out never ends.
Welcome to Wednesday, a Hump Day (“Ден на грпка” in Macedonian); it’s April 10, 2024, and National Cinnamon Roll Day, an obligatory part of a good breakfast. And the bigger the better. This one needs more icing and a larger size:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 10 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Briefly, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld an ancient (1864) law that made all abortions, save those necessary to save the mother’s life, illegal in that state. But the court also put the decision on hold pending a lower court’s ruling on the law’s constitutionality. Both the women and doctors performing abortions could be sent to jail. Republicans are backing away from this ridiculous ruling, and, on last night’s NBC News, the state’s top law-enforcement official said she will not enforce the law even if it goes into effect.
A Michigan judge sentenced the parents of a teenager who killed four classmates at his high school to 10 to 15 years in prison each, the first parents of a school shooter to be held directly responsible for their child’s attack.
Neither defendant showed a strong reaction to the decision, and both impassively signed various forms before being escorted out of the courtroom.
“These convictions were not about poor parenting,” said Judge Cheryl Matthews. “These convictions convey repeated acts or lack of acts that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”
Prosecutors had sought 10 to 15 years each for the parents, higher than state minimum sentencing recommendations of 43 to 86 months, citing what they called a lack of remorse by the parents and threatening comments directed at the district attorney made by James Crumbley in jailhouse telephone calls.
. . . At trial, prosecutors portrayed both parents as unconcerned by their son’s deteriorating mental state, failing to take him home after a troubling meeting with school officials the day of the shooting and failing to securely store the gun used in the attack. The parents argued in their presentencing statements to the court that they were unaware of their son’s mental-health issues. James Crumbley maintained that he had taken prudent steps to secure the weapon.
Here’s the (pardon me) smoking gun that did the parents in:
Both Crumbley trials hinged on a meeting among the parents, Ethan Crumbley and two school officials the morning of the shooting. On a school math sheet, Ethan had drawn a picture of a 9mm handgun resembling the one he had received as a Christmas present, a person bleeding and the words, “blood everywhere,” “the thoughts won’t stop” and “help me.”
School officials recommended the parents seek immediate mental-health services for their son, but the parents opted to leave him in school after school officials extended the deadline to 48 hours. He opened fire in a hallway shortly after the meeting.
Crikey, what kind of parents are they? Well, they’ll have 5-10 years to think about it.
*The Jerusalem Post reports a totally asymmetrical deal proposed by, yes, the CIA, a U.S. agency, to let Israel’s hostages go. It involves a mass release of convicted Jew-killers from Israeli jails:
The CIA’s proposal for a hostage deal includes the release of 900 Palestinian prisoners, a senior Israeli source told Kan News on Tuesday.
Included in the 900 prisoners at 100 “heavy” prisoners.
The term “heavy” prisoner refers to the high-profile nature of the crime for which said inmate was imprisoned, with Palestinians imprisoned for murdering Israelis in terror attacks considered “heavier” than inmates with no blood on their hands.
The source further said that in return, Israel demanded that it retain the right of veto over some of the prisoners and that it be allowed to exile those it releases outside the precincts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
I have a sick feeling that Israel, under strong pressure to bring the hostages back, will go for this deal, which, by releasing 100 “heavy” terrorists, will simply perpetrate terrorism. Further, I’ve heard that Hamas will give up only 40 prisoners for this. (Remember, Israel once let go 1000 terrorist prisoners in return for a single kidnapped IDF soldier!) Hamas refuses to give to either Israel or the Red Cross a list of the hostages they’re holding, and I suspect that the 130-odd that are supposed to be alive are actually mostly dead. I can’t tell Israel what to do, but it seems to me that it’s a fair demand to let EVERY hostage go if Israel is going to release a lot of Jew-killers from its jails.
*Surprise! According to FDD, the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry,” whose casualty figures are uncritically accepted by the world’s press, actually has some serious problems with its data.
The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said on April 6 that it had “incomplete data” for 11,371 of the 33,091 Palestinian fatalities it claims to have documented. In a statistical report, the ministry notes that it considers an individual record to be incomplete if it is missing any of the following key data points: identity number, full name, date of birth, or date of death. The health ministry also released a report on April 3 that acknowledged the presence of incomplete data but did not define what it meant by “incomplete.” In that earlier report, the ministry acknowledged the incompleteness of 12,263 records. It is unclear why, after just three more days, the number fell to 11,371 — a decrease of more than 900 records.
And, of course, the Health Ministry considers as “children” anybody under 18, and a fair number of those could be Hamas members. There is no separation, among the “civilian” deaths or injuries, of Hamas members or other combatants from real, genuine civilians. But let’s proceed.
Prior to its admissions of incomplete data, the health ministry asserted that the information in more than 15,000 fatality records had stemmed from “reliable media sources.” However, the ministry never identified the sources in question and Gaza has no independent media.
“The sudden shifts in the ministry’s reporting methods suggest it is scrambling to prevent exposure of its shoddy work. For months, U.S. media have taken for granted that the ministry’s top-line figure for casualties was reliable enough to include in daily updates on the war. Even President Biden has cited its numbers. Now we’re seeing that a third or more of the ministry’s data may be incomplete at best — and fictional at worst.” — David Adesnik, Senior Fellow and Director of Research
“It is important to recognize that Hamas is deeply invested in shaping the narrative that emerges from Gaza, particularly regarding the number of casualties in the war. Moreover, this control of data extends beyond the statistics provided by the Hamas-controlled health ministry, as there is also a deliberate effort to downplay the number of terrorists who have been killed by Israel in the war, potentially numbering more than 10,000.” — Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal
On October 16, the health ministry told global media that an Israeli airstrike was responsible for an explosion that killed 500 Palestinians at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza. U.S. media quickly reported the story even though it became clear within hours there was no evidence to support claims of an airstrike or a death toll close to 500. Soon, evidence emerged showing that a rocket fired by Palestinian terrorists was nearly certain to have caused a blast in the hospital’s parking lot. An unclassified U.S. intelligence report on October 18 said the blast likely caused between 100 to 300 deaths, and it leaned towards casualty estimates at “the low end of the 100-to-300 spectrum.”
Nevertheless, the health ministry does not identify the individuals who died as a result of errant Palestinian fire, even though the Israel Defense Forces reported that 12 percent of rockets fired during the first month of the war fell inside Gaza — more than 1,000 total misfires.
I don’t think it’s wise to uncritically report this incomplete data, or perhaps even divulge any statistics given by Hamas, especially if they’re reported as “civilian” deaths. For it is the “civilians” supposedly killed that has brought the wrath of the world down on Israel.
It was only a matter of time before a college would have the nerve to quote its cost of attendance at nearly $100,000 a year. This spring, we’re catching our first glimpse of it.
One letter to a newly admitted Vanderbilt University engineering student showed an all-in price — room, board, personal expenses, a high-octane laptop — of $98,426. A student making three trips home to Los Angeles or London from the Nashville campus during the year could hit six figures.
This eye-popping sum is an anomaly. Only a tiny fraction of college-going students will pay anything close to this anytime soon, and about 35 percent of Vanderbilt students — those who get neither need-based nor merit aid — pay the full list price.
But a few dozen other colleges and universities that reject the vast majority of applicants will probably arrive at this threshold within a few years. Their willingness to cross it raises two questions for anyone shopping for college: How did this happen, and can it possibly be worth it?
That’s the sticker price, though, and not many people pay it:
According to the College Board, the average 2023-24 list price for tuition, fees, housing and food was $56,190 at private, nonprofit four-year schools. At four-year public colleges, in-state students saw an average $24,030 sticker price.
That’s not what many people pay, though, not even close. As of the 2019-20 school year, according to federal data that the College Board used in a 2023 report, 39 percent of in-state students attending two-year colleges full time received enough grant aid to cover all of their tuition and fees (though not their living expenses, which can make getting through school enormously difficult). At four-year public schools, 31 percent paid nothing for tuition and fees while 18 percent of students at private colleges and universities qualified for the same deal.
Those private colleges continue to provide hefty discounts for people of all sorts of incomes. A National Association of College and University Business Officers study showed private nonprofit colleges and universities lowering their tuition prices by 56 percent from the rack rate during the 2022-23 school year.
Vanderbilt provides discounts, too, and its financial aid is extraordinarily generous. This year, it announced that families with income of $150,000 or less would pay no tuition in most instances
Still, over 2,000 students there who get no need-based or merit aid will soon pay $100,000 or more. Why does Vanderbilt need all of that money?
Why? Well, Vandy says that it actually costs more than the sticker price to educate its students;
According to Vanderbilt, its spending per undergraduate is $119,000. “The gap between the price and cost of attendance is funded by our endowment and the generous philanthropy of donors and alumni,” Brett Sweet, vice chancellor for finance, said in an emailed statement.
And that is why the job the a liberal-arts private university’s administration is largely to suck in funds.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, the governing body for mostly small colleges, announced a policy Monday that all but bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
The NAIA Council of Presidents approved the policy in a 20-0 vote. The NAIA, which oversees some 83,000 athletes at schools across the country, is believed to be the first college sports organization to take such a step.
According to the transgender participation policy, all athletes may participate in NAIA-sponsored male sports but only athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth is female and who have not begun hormone therapy will be allowed to participate in women’s sports.
A student who has begun hormone therapy may participate in activities such as workouts, practices and team activities, but not in interscholastic competition.
NAIA programs in competitive cheer and competitive dance are open to all students. The NAIA policy notes every other sport “includes some combination of strength, speed and stamina, providing competitive advantages for male student-athletes.”
NAIA President and CEO Jim Carr said in an interview with The Associated Press he understands the policy will generate controversy but that it was deemed best for member schools for competitive reasons.
“We know there are a lot of opinions, and a lot of people have a very emotional reaction to this, and we want to be respectful of all that,” Carr said. “But we feel like our primary responsibility is fairness in competition, so we are following that path. And we’ve tried as best we could to allow for some participation by all.”
Remember, this is for all the college sports save the few exemptions like cheerleading and dance given above. And it’s a real change from last year’s policy:
The NAIA’s 2023-24 policy did not bar transgender and nonbinary athletes from competing in the division of their choice in the regular season. In the postseason, and with some exceptions for those who have had hormone therapy, athletes had to compete in the division of their birth sex.
The tide seems to be turning on this issue, and various sports are converging on the NAIA’s policy. The Biden Administration tends to conflate biological sex with “identified gender” in its proposed rules for secondary-school sports, but they’ve held back on issuing a policy unitl after the election. No wonder! But also remember that this is a small-college body, while the big one, the NCAA (the National Collegiate Athletics Association) adheres to the timorous policy of the Olympics: it allows each sport to make its own rules. And within each sport’s rules, there is this sub-rule, which doesn’t really address the issue:
Beginning Aug. 1, 2024, participation in NCAA sports requires transgender student-athletes to provide documentation no less than twice annually (and at least once within four weeks of competition in NCAA championships) that meets the sport-specific standard (which may include testosterone levels, mitigation timelines and other aspects of sport-governing body policies) as reviewed and approved by CSMAS. More information about the specific application of Phase Three will be provided prior to implementation.
It’s the “sports-specific standard” that is the very thing at issue!
*I haven’t followed Dave Rubin for a long time, but here’s a short clip a reader sent me showing a pro-Palestinian gay activist (an oxymoron if ever there was one) trying to join a pro-Palestinian demonstration. I’ve never seen something like this, but it shows the opposition of “sanity versus stupidity”, as Rubin says (he’s gay). Note that the burka-clad demonstrator tells the gay guy, “”God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”.
Here’s a comment under the video; it’s hilarious:
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili meets Baby Kulka (who she hates), coming down to the veranda roof on the special ladder that Paulina made for her:
Kulka: It’s nice to see you.
Hili: I hope you are not planning to visit us.
In Polish:
Kulka: Miło cię widzieć.
Hili: Mam nadzieję, że nie wybierasz się do nas.
*******************
This song was made by webmaster Phil using AI, apparently in my honor. Phil calls this “an unheralded classic from the Sixties” and that “it might have been The Cowsills”. Indeed, though I like this a lot but like only one Cowsills song. Click and then hit “play”. I’m chuffed!
Here’s Ozy sleeping after his breakfast on Sunday (photo by Rosemary Alles). I am helping support this giant pig.
From Maish: Iranian women students get into big trouble—for DANCING to celebrate their graduation. Such is the repressive Iranian theocracy. (Nice video, too!)
Surreal; This awesome graduation dance video got these female students into trouble. They now face prosecution for the “crime” of dancing during their graduation ceremony at Al-Zahra University in Bushehr, Iran. The university president threatened legal action against all these… pic.twitter.com/aUoanA17nK
Tweets from Proessor Cobb. Speaking of ducks, here’s the world’s most beautiful duck, the East Asian Mandarin duck (Aix galericulata), which has been imported to many places, including here:
Mandarin Ducks at Virginia Water Lake. Five males together with a single female. They are pretty special. pic.twitter.com/9PqbOMni78
Hari Sridhar, a Fellow of the Konrad Lorenz Institute, has, with others, launched a new site called Reflections on Papers Past. Here’s the site’s aim (read more at the link):
Reflections on Papers Past is a collection of back-stories and recollections about famous scientific papers in ecology, evolution, behaviour and conservation.
The personal back-story of this project can be found here.
Allen Orr and I were honored to have one of our papers included in this pantheon (see below), which is on the site as a long interview I did with Hari a while back.
The site’s blurb and links on the front page are below:
Reflections on Papers Past is a collection of back-stories and recollections about famous scientific papers in Ecology, Evolution, Behaviour and Conservation based on interviews with their authors. To find out more about the project click here.
Full interviews with authors about the making of their papers and the papers’ fates after publication
If you’re an organismal biologist, you might scan the list of papers (divided by field) and get the skinny on them.
I’d completely forgotten about my interview, as it took place over three years ago. It concerns what is probably my most-cited paper, Coyne and Orr 1989, which was called “Patterns of speciation in Drosophila“, appeared in Evolution, and can be found here (the pdf is here). It was an attempt, which met with some success, to figure out how species form in this genus of flies by looking at the reproductive barriers between pairs of species and correlating the strength of those barriers with the estimated divergence time taken from molecular differences. (There was an update with new data in 1997.) This could give us an idea of how fast genetic barriers form between populations, and which barriers evolve fastest.
As I said, I believe this is my most-cited paper, but my most cited scientific publication is surely going to be the book Speciation, also written with my student Allen Orr, a terrific scion and great collaborator (he’s now a professor at the University of Rochester.) I’m only guessing about citations here because I no longer check them.
At any rate, if you click below, you’ll see Hari’s interview with me. It’s long and may not be of interest to non-scientists.
A couple of pictures from yore of Allen and me. The first one is when we enacted a mock squabble in Bellagio, Italy (2001), where we both received Rockefeller Foundation Fellowships to plan and start writing the book Speciation. But yes, there were disagreements, though not as violent as this. The book came out in 2009 and I am prouder of it than any other piece of science I produced (I can’t speak for Allen).
Relaxing on Lake Como. Fellows stay at the Villa Serbelloni, a mansion now owned by the Rockefeller Foundation and open to tourists only for guided tours. (George Clooney’s mansion is nearby.) The Foundation affords artists and scholars a month of freedom (and luxury) to work without interruption, save the lovely breakfasts and dinners and breaks for drinks. (You specify your lunch on a checklist filled out at breakfast, and they bring it to your door to enjoy while working or roaming the extensive and beautiful gardens.) Allen and I got a LOT done in that month. Our partners got to come to Italy, too, and we dedicated Speciation to them (they had projects to do as well.)
The Foundation also had two rowboats:
An aquatic jaunt during lunch. Allen shows the way, though of course he’s looking backwards
One more picture of Orr and me, taken at the Evolution meetings in Portland, Oregon in 2001. He was the outgoing President of the Society for the Study of Evolution, and I was the incoming President. This was before Portland became woke and went down the drain:
