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.
Reader Joe Dickinson sent some lovely photos of elephant seals; his comments are indented:
Historically, the northern elephant seal (Mirounga angustirostris) had rookeries only on islands, presumably to avoid terrestrial predators. With the extirpation of all large predators, several mainland rookeries have been established since the 1960s by a rebounding population (from near extinction in the early 20th century). Dating to the early 1990s, Piedras Blancas is now the largest of all the rookeries, with a peak population approaching 10,000.
The rookery stretches four or five miles along the coast, but the densest section is arc of sandy beach roughly a half mile long, backed by dunes and low bluffs. The first two photos look in opposite directions from near the center of that section. You can see in the first shot part of the viewing area that has been constructed along the bluff.
Males, females and juveniles come and go on different schedules, but all are represented from about mid-December until early March. Here is a “family group” in which you can see the enormous sexual dimorphism. The pup was born probably in January and is near weaning. The female will come into estrous and mate at about that time. Shortly thereafter, she heads back out to sea. The male in this shot almost certainly is not the father of the pup, but likely will sire a half-sibling to be born next year.
Here are closeups of male, female and pup. ( I’m also going to send a video of pups “racing” along the beach):
Females do not feed during the birthing and nursing season (4 – 6 weeks). After giving birth, they basically become milk dispensers for about a month. They lose something like 1/3 of their body weight, say from about 1800 lb down to 1200. [JAC: Males can weigh up to 4000 kg, or nearly 9,000 pounds! That is almost three times the weight of a Volkswagen Beetle.]
By the time of our visit, most females had departed, leaving the weaned pups behind to undertake their own migration without adult supervision a few weeks later. Except for one male upper left, this shot shows only weaned pups (dare I say “pile-o-pups”?).
Earlier in the season, when males are vigorously contesting territories and access to females, being crushed is a significant danger for pups. This particular encounter just evoked some rather strident squealing.
Finally, I can’t help imagining this pup thinking “Am I going to look like that when I grow up?”
Roadrunners don’t fly much; in fact, I’ve seen Greater Roadrunners (Geococcyx californianus) many times in the desert, but have never seen one leave the ground. After all, there’s a reason they’re called “roadrunners.”
But this one did levitate. According to the Audubon News site, photographer Roy Dunn saw the possibility of a roadrunner snatching a hummingbird from his feeder after the roadrunner had been lurking below it for some time.
During all that time watching hummingbirds, [Dunn] occasionally has had some company: a Greater Roadrunner. While Dunn lurked behind his camera, the carnivorous bird, which typically eats lizards and insects, would lurk at the base of a flowering cactus or a hummingbird feeder and wait for a feathery snack to stop by. Then, while the hummingbird is enjoying a sip of nectar—pounce! Even when ambushed, the hummingbird gets away most of the time; roadrunners only make a successful catch about once in 10 tries, Dunn says.
The first time Dunn saw a roadrunner attempt to catch a hummingbird has stuck with him. “It was really quite sensational to witness, and it made me feel a little uncomfortable,” he says. But he refuses to be squeamish about it. “Nature is nature, and I’m steadfast in my belief that it should be documented how it occurs.”
So this fall, Dunn set up a camera in his kitchen, frame fixed on a feeder. Then, he waited. Getting the video took patience, given the roadrunners’ failure rate. And natural photography aside, Dunn does meddle on the hummingbirds’ behalf to try and deter roadrunners from becoming too reliant on the high concentrations of hummers around his house. He, his wife, and his dog have all been known to chase roadrunners away from the feeders. “I’m not out to give the roadrunners a free lunch, put it that way,” he says.
But the day he made this video, Dunn didn’t scare the roadrunner off. Instead, he waited almost three hours to catch the right moment—and for the roadrunner to catch his meal. “He missed quite a few before he nailed one,” Dunn says. He was ready, with a camera that can stretch two seconds of action into twenty seconds of amazing action. “And once he nailed one, I raced out and chased him away!”
I think I would have chased the roadrunner away; natural selection be damned.
UPDATE: As Wikipedia notes, this is actually the first time the song was performed, and the other singer is Nicks’s soon-to-be sister in law, Lori Perry-Nicks. And the entry adds this:
The famous video was recorded during a Rolling Stone photo shoot in 1981. It starts with Nicks singing a rendition of Love In Store, a song by Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie. The video ends with a version of McVie’s “Wish You Were Here”. The video has been viewed over a million times on YouTube. The backing music was written by Lindsey Buckingham found in a demo which can also be found on YouTube.
___________________
Here’s some music to end the week.
Steve Nicks and Fleetwood Mac were national treasures, far, far above the autotuned pap that passes for rock music today. (Get off of my lawn!). There was an excellent article about Nicks in the November 28, 2016 issue of the New Yorker: “What the heart says: the resurgent appeal of Stevie Nicks“, by Amanda Petrusich. Toward the end you can read this (but read the whole piece, too):
The artist Justin Vernon, of the band Bon Iver, uses a brief sample of “Wild Heart” (a track from “The Wild Heart”) on the group’s new album, “22, A Million.” Nicks’s voice is sped up, pitch-altered, and barely discernible as human—just a high, grousing “wah-wah,” deployed intermittently. Vernon pinched it from a popular YouTube video of Nicks, in which she sits on a stool having her makeup done, wearing a white dress with spaghetti straps. She begins to sing. Soon, someone is messing with a piano; one of her backup singers joins in with a harmony. The makeup artist gamely tries to continue with her work, before giving up. While the studio recording of “Wild Heart” is saturated, almost wet, this version is all air, all joy.
What affects me most about the video is how profoundly Nicks appears to love singing. Her voice has an undulating, galloping quality. It is as if, once it’s started up, there’s no slowing down, no stopping; the car is careering down a mountain, with no brakes. You can see on her face how good it feels just to let go.
I found that video, apparently a spontaneous outburst from a Rolling Stone photo session. Here it is:
Good Friday (well, not the real one): it’s March 3, 2017, and it’s National Cold Cuts day. (Do they call them that in other English-speaking countries?) It’s also Cold Weather Day in Chicago, with a temperature of 20° F (-7° C) when I walked to work, and it won’t rise above the freezing point all day. More important, it’s World Wildlife Day, proclaimed by the UN on this day in 2014 when the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora was adopted.
On this day in 1875, Bizet’s opera Carmen opened at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. On the very same day in Montreal, the world’s first organized indoor game of ice hockey was played (I’m sure some Canadian reader will contest this.) On March 3, 1931, the U.S. adopted “The Star-Spangled Banner” as its national anthem. That was a terrible choice: “America the Beautiful” would have been much better. On this day in 1986, Australia became fully independent from the United Kingdom. Finally, I’ll quote this 2005 anniversary from Wikipedia, as I’ll soon be in that country: “Margaret Wilson is elected as Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives, beginning a period lasting until August 23, 2006 where all the highest political offices (including Elizabeth II as Head of State), were occupied by women, making New Zealand the first country for this to occur.”
Notables born on this day include Georg Cantor (1845), Alexander Graham Bell (1847), Jean Harlow (1911), Doc Watson (1923), Ira Glass (1959), Jackie Joyner-Kersee (1962), and Brian Cox (1968; he’s 49 today). In honor of the great Doc Watson, here he is with the equally great Earl Scruggs, both of their sons, and some guy named Stevie, in an impromptu performance of “John Hardy,” “Cripple Creek,” and another song I don’t recognize. Mountain music at its best, played outdoors at Doc’s house.
Those who died on this day include Lou Costello (1959; the same day Ira Glass was born), Hergé (1983), Danny Kaye (1987, real name David Daniel Kaminsky), geneticist Sewall Wright (1988, he was 98), and Albert Sabin (1993). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being paranoid:
Cyrus: They are working all the time.
Hili: They are just pretending they don’t want to go for a walk with us.
(Photo: Sarah Lawson)
In Polish:
Cyrus: Oni ciągle pracują.
Hili: Udają, nie chce im się iść z nami na spacer.
(Foto: Sarah Lawson)
Lagniappe: The BBC reported that, on Wednesday, a church in North Galway had a “drive through Ash Wednesday” service, in which hurried motorists could drive by the church, stop briefly, and have the priest anoint their foreheads with ash—all without leaving their cars. One Irish reader in Australia responded with this clever letter to the Irish Times:
The Verge describes this video, showing a bunch of turkeys (there must be a formal name for such a group) circling a dead cat in the middle of the road, somewhere near Boston. Why are they doing this?
The Verge suggests two explanations, neither of which I find all that convincing. But go to the link and see for yourself. Whatever is happening, it’s plenty weird.
Emily Atkin, who writes for The New Republic, interviewed me about the March for Science a few days ago, and has just written a piece about it, “Is the march for science bad for scientists?” It’s a fair piece, and I’m chuffed that she talks about my old days of activism, including my arrest at the South African Embassy for protesting apartheid, which of course gives me “activism cred.”
My take on this March has been consistent: I’m waiting to see how it shakes out before deciding whether to participate. I’m willing to march as a scientist to defend the truth, our methodology for determining the truth, and to defend those issues for which science has a best-guess idea of what the truth is (vaccination is not harmful, humans cause global warming, evolution is real). I just don’t want the march to fracture along identity-politics lines so that it becomes a “cause of the moment” potpourri of stuff. And I think the less prescriptive the march is, the more useful it will be. By all means tell people that global warming is real and is caused by our species, and you can even say it’s going to do bad things to the planet–and to our species. But should we be advocating for nuclear power plants? (I do, but many disagree). And yes, I’ve seen Ed Yong’s description of the psychology study supposedly showing that scientists don’t lose credibility when they advocate for specific policies, but that study, which I’ve read, is weak, and in fact does show that prescribing certain policy changes, like building more nuclear power plants to combat global warming, can damage a scientist’s credibility. And I’m not talking here about whether that limited study even addresses the issue.
Finally, I think a neglected but crucial aspect of the march is the drastic cut in the government’s science funding that has taken place over the last several decades. Basic research has taken it in the neck, and, with Trump threatening to cut $54 billion from the non-defense budget, it’s going to be hurt even more. I haven’t even seen that mentioned in conjunction with the march, but bringing that to public attention may be the best thing the Science March can accomplish. Science, nearly all of which rests on basic research (largely funded by the government) has immensely improved human life, and yet basic science is endangered. Do Americans know that? Well, let them know. And if it’s prescriptive for me to say I want to see fewer goddam cruise missiles and more money in the NIH and NSF budgets, well then call me prescriptive.
At any rate, I’m still waiting to see what the organizers decide to do about the Science March, and if it’s to my satisfaction, I’ll be out there with my colleagues. I see from Atkin’s piece that there’s now an educational component to the March, described below, and I endorse it wholeheartedly (my emphasis):
Perhaps, then, the real value of the march will not be converting the non-trusting public, but educating them. Seventy percent of Americans cannot name a living scientist. They don’t know what the $70 billion in non-defense spending for research is used for; nor do they know how that research contributes to their lives. And there are countless ways it has. Federally funded research has led to the development of everything from Google’s search algorithm to advanced prosthetic limbs to Lactose-free milk.
“We think it’s important to have a huge part of our post-march programming be connecting scientists to people,” Weinberg said. That’s why the march in D.C. will be followed by a teach-in on the National Mall, where speakers will talk about their research “in a more intimate way than most people are used to,” she said.
That may wind up being the most impactful part of the March for Science: Providing a public platform for the work that so often goes unnoticed. Marshall Shepherd, a meteorologist who hosts a talk show on the Weather Channel, has often cautioned scientists against political speech. But he said he supports the March for Science if it can stay focused on what science does for society—and perhaps humanize his colleagues to the rest of the country.
I do want to correct one bit from the New Republic piece; I’ve put it in bold below:
Jerry Coyne knows a good protest when he sees one. Once a rambunctious leftist, the esteemed evolutionary biologist recalls traveling regularly to Washington to march for civil rights. He remembers when state police chased him off his own college campus for protesting the Vietnam War. For his most climactic endeavor, Coyne says he tried to post an anti-apartheid petition on the door of the South African embassy, and was arrested for trespassing.
Despite this activist streak, Coyne isn’t sure he’ll attend the March for Science on April 22 (Earth Day), when millions of scientists and their supporters are expected to march on Washington and other cities across the country. He says the march’s message has the potential to “alienate the public.”
“I’m in favor of rights for gay people. I don’t care what bathroom somebody uses. I’m pro-choice,” said Coyne, an occasional the New Republic contributor. “But scientists can’t get involved in that kind of stuff. Science cannot adjudicate issues of morality.”
I did not mean that scientists shouldn’t engage in political activism–far from it! What I meant is that the Science March should avoid wedding itself too closely to specific remedies, especially those involving “social justice.” Participating in a march, however, is not the same thing as personally advocating for societal changes. Had Martin Luther King, Jr. marched not just for civil rights, but for every other wrong in the world, would those marches have been as successful? Nope, for he kept his eyes on the prize. And so should we.
Admit it: you’ve wondered, because you’re interested in evolution, why giant pandas are colored that way: “parti-colored”, as they say in the trade. (Their Latin binomial, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, means “cat-foot, black and white”.)
Here’s one, in the extremely unlikely case you’ve forgotten:
No other bear looks anything like that. A new paper in Behavioral Ecology by Tim Caro et al. attempts to explain this pattern, though access isn’t free. (The reference is at the bottom, and if you need a pdf file, judicious inquiry might yield one.)
In the new paper, the authors first describe the panda’s color pattern in appealing language, and then lay out the hypotheses that have been advanced to explain that pattern. Remember that pandas are the only completely herbivorous bears, subsist on a diet of low-quality bamboo, and live (at least now) almost entirely in Szechuan Province of China, though they previously ranged more widely. They live at fairly high elevations and often encounter snow. This ecology must be taken into account when framing and testing hypotheses.
The color (all indented text comes from the paper):
. . . a small number of mammals do have sharply contrasting black-and-white pelage, the function of which is known for only a very few (Caro 2009; Caro et al. 2014). Perhaps, the most outstanding example is the coat of the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) (e.g., Croke 2005). This strangely patterned ursid has black eye markings and black ears set on a white face. The neck and torso are white but the forelimbs, shoulders, and hindlimbs are black (Figure 1a). The species shows little sexual dichromatism. Such a pelage pattern is very rare among mammals and the adaptive functions of the giant panda’s external appearance remain mysterious, despite the species being a familiar charismatic species to people all over the world.
And the four (actually six) hypotheses (my emphasis):
Four ideas have been explicitly proposed to explain giant panda coloration: 1) the species’ pelage is aposematic and advertises pugnacity (Morris and Morris 1966), 2) the white fur of the panda is cryptic against a snowy background (Morris and Morris 1966; Lazell 1974), although its current population is found in snowy habitats for only a third to a quarter of the year, 3) the dark fur is used to retain heat in cold environments (Schaller et al. 1985), and 4) the contrasting markings on the giant panda’s face are used in intraspecific communication (Schaller et al. 1985; Schaller 1993). Additionally, without referring specifically to the species in question, it has been proposed that dark fur around the eyes reduces glare from the sun (Ficken et al. 1971). Sharply contrasting pelage might also be an example of disruptive coloration where internal edges draw the eye away from the true outline of the animal. A theme running through all these suggestions, except the last, is that different regions of the body may have coloration that serves different functions.
I’ll try to be brief in how the authors tested these hypotheses and what they found. They divided up the panda into 7 sections of coloration as in the figure below (it looks like a butcher’s diagram of “panda cuts”!). They used another method as well based on the pelage of other carnivores (“b” in the figure below), and divided the face and head into 12 areas (“c” in the figure below).
They then assessed the coloration of 195 terrestrial carnivore species in each area, getting a “color map” of each species. (Remember, pandas are in the order Carnivora though they eat only bamboo.)
(from paper): (a) Regions of the carnivore body used 1 in Method 1. (b) and (c) Regions of the carnivore body used in Method 2.
Then they did correlations of each of these areas with various aspects of the animal’s ecology: where it lives, whether it encounters snow and/or shade, hair depth and length, annual temperature, and aspects of the animals’ social behavior: whether they were “pugnacious” or had noxious anal secretions (which might explain any “warning coloration”), whether they were nocturnal or diurnal, or crepuscular (active at dawn or twilight), whether they lived alone or in social groups, and whether they were territorial. They then tried to correlate pigmentation with each of these variable.
Which hypotheses stood up? Well, none of them explained everything, and most of them were supported only weakly with the data.
Temperature and shade: There were significant associations between low temperature and white winter coloration, as well as snow and some areas of white coloration (these variables are cross-correlated, of course), so the authors conclude tentatively that the white areas of the panda camouflage them in the snow against predators (they are eaten by dholes [canids], leopards, wolves, and Asiatic black and brown bears). Animals inhabiting shady areas, like pandas, tended to be more darkly marked on the back and legs, though not the head. From this the authors suggest that the black and white body coloration is cryptic in general, hiding pandas in both shade and snow. They don’t address whether the contrast in color might make them, overall, more conspicuous, but I assume they know what they’re talking about.
Disruptive and aposematic coloration: The analysis gave no evidence that the patterns serve to break up the body outline (read the paper to see how they did this), nor that the panda’s color was aposematic, since they’re neither pugnacious nor have smelly anal secretions.
Sociality and intraspecific communication: The authors suggest that the black patches on the eyes and ears, but no other aspect of coloration, are there for social communication among individuals. They have no direct evidence for this, but use anecdotal observations to support the idea:
Schaller (1993) noted that a stare represents a threat in giant pandas, and the patches enlarge the giant panda’s eye 10-fold making the stare more potent. To show lack of aggressive intent, a giant panda averts its head, covers the eye patches with its paws, or hides it face. At present, we cannot separate whether giant pandas have exaggerated eye marks to signal aggressive intent to other giant pandas, and possibly predators, or whether they are involved in intraspecific recognition, or both. But we do know that intraspecific signaling is important in this species (Nie et al. 2012; Owen et al. 2016).
As dark ear markings are closely associated with dark eye markings across carnivores, the possibility that dark ears are a form of eye automimicry cannot be discounted. Schaller (1993, p.97) reports “a staring panda often holds its neck low, a position that not only presents the eye patches to an opponent but also outlines the black ears against the white neck, in effect presenting 2 pairs of threatening eyes.”
In the end, as shown in the diagram below, the authors propose a multi-part explanation of the parti-colored pattern. Black and white on the main body are there for camouflage to hide the bears from predators, while black eyes and ears are for communication with other pandas. The authors offer the proper caveats, including that these correlations are based on human vision rather than animal vision, and that correlational analysis in other carnivores may not explain the peculiar situation in pandas.
So here’s the best explanation we have yet, but, due to our inability to go into the wild, dye the fur of pandas, and then see what happens to them, this may be the best we can do:
(from paper): Working hypotheses for pelage coloration in the giant panda (drawing by Ricky Patel).
Finally, Caro et al. note that all of this might ultimately come from the panda’s low-quality diet, which prevents it from either hibernating or molting, leaving it stuck with a coat that’s on display year round and can’t be shed:
Ultimately, we suggest that the giant panda’s dual coloration stems from its poor nutritional diet of bamboo and inability to digest plant material efficiently (Schaller et al. 1989; Xue et al. 2015), forcing it to be active throughout the year as it cannot lay down sufficient fat reserves to hibernate. Thus, it encounters several backgrounds and lighting conditions during the course of a year, extremities of which are an alpine snowy habitat and dark tropical forest. We propose that as the giant panda is unable to molt sufficiently rapidly to match each background (although anecdotes of individual black bears changing color between molts have been documented [Rogers 1980]), it has evolved a compromise white and black pelage. This is an alternative evolutionary strategy to smaller carnivores like the ermine and arctic fox that have winter and summer coats.
So, my friends, we’ve reached the end of this post. Panda coloration isn’t nearly as well understood as is the striping of zebras (also black and white), but the authors gave it a game try, and they may well be right! And since you’ve read this far, here’s your reward: a video of baby pandas, perhaps the world’s cutest animal.
h/t: Dom
_________
Caro, T., H. Walker, Z. Rossman, M. Hendrix and T. Stankowich. 2017. Why is the giant panda black and white?. Behav Ecol 2017 arx008. doi: 10.1093/beheco/arx008
I have to say that I’ve gotten more pushback from readers on chiropractic “medicine” than I expected, especially given that there’s no good scientific evidence for its efficacy. If it’s benefited you, ask yourself whether you might have gotten better without treatment (this often happens), or whether some more qualified or experienced person, such as a physical therapist or even a massage therapist, would be a better choice than these undereducated but greedy quacks, who often claim that many diverse illnesses can be cured by manipulating the spine (“subluxation”), and who often try to sell you expensive treatment programs (in advance!) or use useless diagnostic tools like X-rays. Chiropractors are not medical doctors, and no hospital will allow them through the doors—at least no hospital that I know.
I did, however, get some of what I expected: comments from new people vigorously defending chiropractic. There’s no convert quite so vocal as enthusiasts who see their pet woo attacked. Yesterday I got one comment from a chiropractor who, unfortunately, runs a school for gifted children. And just this morning three comments, all from new people who love chiropractic, wriggled into moderation. I present them below; none of these commenters be posting here again because I simply don’t want to get into arguments with the medical equivalent of flat-earthers.
Ava Ronchetti [JAC: if you Google this name, you’ll come up with a chiropractor in Massachusetts]
You my friend, are as ignorant as you are uneducated. First of all, the comprehension of the human biology can be taught to a 3rd grader in the simplest of terms. THE NO SCIENTIFIC DATA bullshit is tiring at best, to explain to a dummy such as yourself…just ask thousands of non biased REALPERSONS, who have actually been to other allied health professionals and were helped. SCIENTIFIC evidence???? Is there SCIENTIFIC un altered data on the drugs that are addicting chronic pain sufferers by the millions. Doctors are taught to pass out drugs like they are candy..Cover up those symptoms your body is screaming at you to repair!! Medical and big Pharma to the rescue.They are killing us by the millions and youre here complaing about a Zoo helping a cub ti thrive by removing nerve interference so its little body can heal in its own..That my ignorant friend, is how Chiropractic works..take all your stuffy “lack of scientific data and sit down…way over there..in the nosebleed seats…
Yes, here’s a person who rejects scientific data for personal anecdotes (neglecting the fact that such anecdotes can be found for any form of quackery), and who makes the frequent claim that doctors are to blame for deaths. Well, yes, they are, sometimes, and do make errors, but they also do stuff like open-heart surgery and cancer treatment that carry substantial risks or constitutes palliative care. And they’re not wedded to quackery. I wonder if Ms. Ronchetti, if diagnosed with a severe infection like appendicitis, or a tumor on her brain, would abjure “Medical and Big Pharma.”
As for doctors killing people by addicting chronic pain sufferers, well, many doctors won’t prescribe the most addictive drugs, many patients don’t follow the regimen (is that the doctors’ fault?) and many peopole get the medication illegally. Should that really be blamed on “Medical and Big Pharma”?
It’s truly sad that the best these people can say about chiropractic is “some people claimed to have been helped” along with “but look! Medicine and Big Pharma kill people too!”. And their rejection of scientific testing of medical treatment brands them as charlatans, unwilling to accept the best way to actually get evidence for the usefulness of their methods.
*********
David Black
You really do need to do your research. There are nearly a million people who die at the hands of the medical profession every year. I have said many times that organized medicine would kill to have our safety record. Check it out. You might save a few lives.
David Black, Doctor of Chiropractic
Really? I’d save a few lives by referring everybody with a medical problem to a chiropractor? If you do that, pal, you’ll kill a lot more than a million people per year!
*********
James
Chiropractic is based on neurology. If you don’t understand neurology you won’t be able to vet what comes your way about others options noons. The fact that allopathic Medicine using allopathic model tries to explain a wholistic process is part of the critics problem not to mention he is most likely a paid advocate for strictly the politaical medical establishment. The fact that some of the talented medical practitioners are crossing over from allopathic medicine into the realm of Holistic Mediicine speaks loudly of how ahead the Holistic practices and the profession of chiropractic is ahead of allopathic medicine in terms of Functional Performance. Thier is plenty of science backing the efficacy & safety of the practice of healing & treating health conditions more effectively than procedural/ symptom medicine or with use of drugs. The fact is a balanced system OutPerforms. Chiropractic is about one thing, removing nonproductive Resistance and restoring structural balance. The rest takes care of itself with appropriate Stewardship of Lifestyle. It’s that simple.
I’m not aware of any practicing physicians who have given up real medicine for chiropractic medicine. Maybe there’s one or two, but you’d be an idiot to do that, not just because you’ll lose money, but because you’ll trade a helping profession for a greedy and ineffective profession. (Remember, chiropractors aren’t allowed into hospitals to practice.)
As for the rest of the letter, it’s pretty much gibberish, so you can understand why “James” has succumbed to the blandishments of woo.
