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.
Roy Eldridge (aka “Little Jazz”) blows with the Gene Krupa Orchestra. Truly one of the greatest trumpet solos in the history of jazz.
The song was composed by Hoagy Carmichael in 1929, and had words: a back and forth between and old man and his son. A vocal version was recorded by Louis Armstrong and Carmichael in 1929 (here), and later by Armstrong and the jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden (here). Eldredge’s version outshines them all by far, despite Armstrong’s 1929 solo. But do see the wonderful camaraderie between Armstrong and Teagarden.
This video was inevitable: but I’m amazed at how good they match the words with the mouth. I guess, though, that movie dubbers have been doing this for years. This one even has a bit about free will at 3:00.
I don’t know who the New York Review of Books is getting to vet its biology articles, but this one below (free access) is really confusing. One reason may be that the authors have no particular expertise in evolution. Israel Rosenfeld is an MD with training in neuroscience, while Edward Ziff is a professor at NYU who works on neural transmission. I’ve never heard of either of them, which doesn’t rule them out as being able to say anything useful about evolution, but I usually am familiar with people who write about evolution for the NYRB, and they always had a name in evolutionary biology (viz., my student Allen Orr). Anyway, here’s the article (click on screenshot to see it).
The problem with this article is that it’s deeply confused, conflating gene regulation within the lifetime of an individual (which can be achieved by “epigenetically” attaching or detaching methyl groups to genes to turn them on or off) with environmentally induced modification of the DNA that is inherited over several generations, causing a form of “non-Darwinian” evolution.
The former is not problematic; we’ve long known that genes can be regulated by environmental factors; that’s what Jacob and Monod got their Nobel Prizes for. We’ve learned more recently that this regulation can also be programmed to cause methylation: genes are adaptively activated and deactivated by the attachment of methyl groups (or small RNA molecules) to segments of genes. But even that adaptive regulation is coded for by DNA. That is, there are genes which are programmed to turn other genes on or off by adding small molecules to them. That’s the way cells differentiated so that even though all cells have the DNA, some become liver cells, others brain cells or blood cells, and so on. That is permanent changes in gene regulation occurring largely by methylation, and over generations of cells, but not over generations of individuals. Such differentiation within an individual still evolved in a Darwinian way, it’s just that natural selection favored particular ways to adaptively activate or inactivate genes.
However, a vocal group of biologists maintain that evolution can also occur when the environment rather than DNA (extrinsic factors like cold or starvation) can methylate genes too, and that methylation can be inherited. The problem with this, as I’ve emphasized repeatedly, is twofold. First those environmental changes are nearly always nonadaptive or maladaptive—they’re more like random screwups—and so can’t be the basis of adaptive evolution.
Second, environmentally induced changes in DNA are nearly always wiped out during gamete formation, and so those changes cannot be the basis of long-term evolution or adaptation. There are a few exceptions, but I don’t know of any such modifications that can last longer than three generations. The fact that this form of “Lamarckian” inheritance isn’t pervasive is also shown by the numerous adaptations that have been dissected genetically: all of them are based on changes in the DNA sequence rather than attachment of methyl groups induced by the environment.
Rosenfield and Ziff conflate the programmed regulation of genes by other genes that induce methylation with the “Lamarckian” changes in DNA sequence. That’s clear when they say stuff like this:
Until the mid-1970s, no one suspected that the way in which the DNA was “read” could be altered by environmental factors, or that the nervous systems of people who grew up in stress-free environments would develop differently from those of people who did not. One’s development, it was thought, was guided only by one’s genetic makeup. As a result of epigenesis, a child deprived of nourishment may continue to crave and consume large amounts of food as an adult, even when he or she is being properly nourished, leading to obesity and diabetes. A child who loses a parent or is neglected or abused may have a genetic basis for experiencing anxiety and depression and possibly schizophrenia. Formerly, it had been widely believed that Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms—variation and natural selection—were the only means for introducing such long-lasting changes in brain function, a process that took place over generations. We now know that epigenetic mechanisms can do so as well, within the lifetime of a single person.
This is deeply confusing, for it conflates gene regulation within an individual with evolutionary changes that evolve over many generations. In fact, the epigenetic regulation mentioned by Rosenfield and Ziff did evolve over generations by natural selection. They are saying that two things are distinct and contradictory when in fact they are the same thing. It’s no surprise that this article (which is largely written in technical jargon) would confuse the layperson.
Likewise, single-generation screwups induced by the environment in adults that affect their children have nothing to do with natural selection or evolution (note that “evolution” is in the article’s title). Even if those changes induce modification of their children’s DNA, this one-generation effect does not persist after that, and has nothing to do with evolution:
The most revealing instances for studies of intergenerational transmission have been natural disasters, famines, and atrocities of war, during which large groups have undergone trauma at the same time. These studies have shown that when women are exposed to stress in the early stages of pregnancy, they give birth to children whose stress-response systems malfunction. Among the most widely studied of such traumatic events is the Dutch Hunger Winter. In 1944 the Germans prevented any food from entering the parts of Holland that were still occupied. The Dutch resorted to eating tulip bulbs to overcome their stomach pains. Women who were pregnant during this period, Carey notes, gave birth to a higher proportion of obese and schizophrenic children than one would normally expect. These children also exhibited epigenetic changes not observed in similar children, such as siblings, who had not experienced famine at the prenatal stage.
During the Great Chinese Famine (1958–1961), millions of people died, and children born to young women who experienced the famine were more likely to become schizophrenic, to have impaired cognitive function, and to suffer from diabetes and hypertension as adults. Similar studies of the 1932–1933 Ukrainian famine, in which many millions died, revealed an elevated risk of type II diabetes in people who were in the prenatal stage of development at the time. Although prenatal and early-childhood stress both induce epigenetic effects and adult illnesses, it is not known if the mechanism is the same in both cases.
Whether epigenetic effects of stress can be transmitted over generations needs more research, both in humans and in laboratory animals. But recent comprehensive studies by several groups using advanced genetic techniques have indicated that epigenetic modifications are not restricted to the glucocorticoid receptor gene. They are much more extensive than had been realized, and their consequences for our development, health, and behavior may also be great.
First, “intergenerational transmission” of this sort has been known for a while: smoking, alcohol, thalidomide, and now famine, can screw up the health of the next generation. But those changes disappear after that. They are not, as the authors admit in the last paragraph, something that’s “transmitted over generations.” But they must be transmitted over generations if they’re to cause evolution.
The authors are a bit weaselly here in saying “whether epigenetic effects can be transmitted over generations needs more research”, when we already know from many studies that they’re almost always never transmitted over generations. Why didn’t they admit that? I presume because they have a bill to sell.
To complete the confusion (I doubt that many NYRB readers have even gotten to this point), Rosenfield and Ziff imply that adaptive epigenetic modification of genes is something distinct from Darwinian natural selection. But, as I’ve said, it is Darwinian natural selection that molds the adaptive regulation of genes: genes tell other genes when and how to be regulated. So read the following paragraph and see if you can make out what the authors are trying to say:
It is as though nature employs epigenesis to make long-lasting adjustments to an individual’s genetic program to suit his or her personal circumstances, much as in Lamarck’s notion of “striving for perfection.” In this view, the ill health arising from famine or other forms of chronic, extreme stress would constitute an epigenetic miscalculation on the part of the nervous system. Because the brain prepares us for adult adversity that matches the level of stress we suffer in early life, psychological disease and ill health persist even when we move to an environment with a lower stress level.
It is not “nature” that employs epigenesis, but genes that have resulted from natural selection. What do they mean, exactly, by “nature.” I’ve read that paragraph several times, and I still can’t figure out what the authors are trying to say, especially in the last sentence. It seems to imply that ill health of children induced by parental environments that persists in low-stress situations is a byproduct of natural selection that adapted us for adversity as adults, and that it has to be that way. But it doesn’t. The paragraph is gobbledy-gook, and an example of bad and confused writing.
This wouldn’t have happened had this piece been edited by the venerable Bob Silvers, the longtime NYRB editor, famous for his punctilious editing, who died last year. There’s a new editor now, and he’s pretty tetchy when criticized, so I’ll expect I’ll get some flak for criticizing this piece. But read it for yourself, and see if, as a non-biologist, you can make sense of it. I am a biologist, and am deeply confused by it.
There’s no excuse for popular science writing that is this bad and confusing. I’d suggest to the new editor, Ian Buruma, that he choose his science writers more carefully. Epigenetics simply has not caused a “revolution in evolution.”
Here’s an evolutionary geneticist, and a really good one, who also read the piece:
We still have eight ducklings, and they’re getting bigger and stronger by the day. Also, they’re learning to be ducks. Here Honey engages in “dabbling” (turning upside down to get food from the bottom of the pond). The ducklings are attentive, and, in fact, started dabbling on their own today, eating bits of corn that I toss into the water. It’s like watching Junior’s first steps!
As always, Honey is a good and attentive mom. Here she is with her whole brood:
How can you not love an animal that looks like this?
A duckling starting to dabble. Sometimes they completely disappear underwater and, a few seconds later, pop up like a cork a few feet away. I suspect they’re foraging on the bottom:
Under it goes!
Siblings:
Anna discovered yesterday that Honey and her brood will eat chopped up lettuce and vegetables, and today I’ll get a demonstration of how she cuts them. Veggies are good for ducks. Anna is a great duck tending partner, and I can’t neglect Sanja, whom I don’t often see, but who is out there looking after the brood as well.
I thought that, by and large, Aussies were nonreligious, though I’m aware of the hold that the church has on certain Australian states. I’m also aware that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is the national public television network—an organ of the government. And its website has just published a pretty dire piece—in its “Science” section, of all places—showing how scientists can reconcile religion and science, and using three scientists as examples. If there’s any freedom of the press at the ABC, perhaps they can put up an article showing the much larger number of scientists (especially accomplished ones) who don’t reconcile religion and science.
Here’s the article, by Anna Salleh, published yesterday (click on screenshot):
The article makes two familiar arguments for the compatibility of science and religion:
Yes, we are talking here about George Lemaitre (a priest), Gregor Mendel (a monk), and Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health. We can discount much of this argument for scientists who lived before 1900, since before that nearly everyone was religious, or if they didn’t believe they kept mum about it.
And yes, there’s no doubt that some famous scientists, even today, accept superstition. But that’s an argument not for compatibility, but for compartmentalization. If you don’t believe me, take a deep breath and read Collins’s book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. The “evidence” consists of his wish-thinking, his viewing of three frozen waterfalls, a feeling that came over him at evensong, the solace that some believers got while dying, and (Ceiling Cat help him), a “deep” reading of C. S. Lewis. If you’re going to say that religion and science are compatible because some scientists are religious, then add that religion and arrant immorality are also compatible because many Catholic priests raped children.
2.) Even today, a lot of scientists are religious.
Scientists these days may be less religious than the average person, but just over half of scientists surveyed in 2009 said they believed in some sort of deity or higher power.
The interesting thing here, which the ABC conspicuously omits, is that scientists are a lot less religious (in both the US and UK) than are non-scientists. Now why would that be? Here is the comparison from the link, a comparison the ABC doesn’t mention:
And here’s the comparison discussed in my book Faith versus Fact:
Finally, if religion and science get along so well, why are so many scientists nonbelievers? The difference in religiosity between the American public and American scientists is profound, persistent, and well documented. Further, the more accomplished the scientist, the greater the likelihood that he or she is a nonbeliever. Surveying American scientists as a whole, Pew Research showed that 33 percent admitted belief in God, while 41 percent were atheists (the rest either didn’t answer, didn’t know, or believed in a “universal spirit or higher power”). In contrast, belief in God among the general public ran at 83 percent and atheism at only 4 percent. In other words, scientists are ten times more likely to be atheists than are other Americans. This disparity has persisted for over eighty years of polling.
When one moves to scientists working at a group of “elite” research universities, the difference is even more dramatic, with just over 62 percent being either atheist or agnostic, and only 23 percent who believed in God—a degree of nonbelief more than fifteenfold higher than among the general public. Finally, sitting at the top tier of American science are the members of the National Academy of Sciences, an honorary organization that elects only the most accomplished researchers in the United States. And here nonbelief is the rule: 93 percent of the members are atheists or agnostics, with only 7 percent believing in a personal God. This is almost the exact opposite of the data for “average” Americans.
(Even more members of the UK’s Royal Society are atheists.) One has to conclude that either nonbelievers are more likely to become scientists, that scientists tend to give up their faith or (as I suspect) both. Whatever the case, we see something about science that’s inimical to faith.
Salleh then highlights three religious scientists.
Jennifer Wisemanis an astronomer who also heads the AAAS’s “Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion” program, and I’ve written about her several times. Let’s look at the “evidence” for why she believes in God (she’s an evangelical Christian). Here are a few bon mots:
While science is a “wonderful tool for understanding the physical universe”, Jennifer says her religious beliefs give her the answers to the bigger philosophical questions in life — like how mere humans can be significant at all in the context of the universe.
“In Christian faith, our significance is basically given as a gift of love from God, who’s responsible for the universe,” she says.
Her religious belief gives her one set of answers, other religious beliefs give other sets of answers, secular humanism gives still more answers. How does she know her religion gives her the right answers? And how does she know that? As for “how mere humans can be significant in the context of the universe”, that’s an ambiguous question. We are significant to ourselves and each other, but not in the grand scheme of the cosmos. After all, in a few billion more years we’ll all be incinerated—if we haven’t yet gone extinct. There’s a reason why people were drawn to Carl Sagan’s elegy about the “pale blue dot.”
But wait—there’s more!
Meanwhile, Jennifer sees her scientific work as deepening her faith.
“God’s responsible for everything. So, by studying more of nature you’re … enriching your understanding of God,” she says.
How does she know this? She doesn’t, and couldn’t provide evidence that would convince even a semi-skeptic. That is the disparity between her science and her faith!
Finally, she uses the “metaphor” escape:
While some point to statements in the Bible as evidence Christianity is incompatible with science, Jennifer says the book has to be seen in its historical context.
“You have to look at biblical literature from the perspective of when it was written, the original audiences, the original languages, the original purposes … the message that was meant to be conveyed by it,” she says.
“The Bible’s not a science text.”
Okay, so is it a science text about Jesus and his miracles (which Wiseman accepts), and about the Resurrection? Remember, the statement “The Bible’s not a science text” really means “What the Bible says is true isn’t really true. But some parts are true!” The question, of course, is “Which parts are true, and how do you know?” Wiseman is unable to winnow the true from the false, which again underscores the incompatibility between science and faith. After all, science has ways to determine whether an asteroid hit the Earth about 65 million years ago. Wiseman has no way to determine if Jesus was the son of God, or was resurrected.
Andrew Harman is an immunologist at the University of Sydney who is also a Buddhist. He apparently doesn’t believe in God, but adheres to the practices of Triratna Buddhism. Given that he sees Buddhism as answering questions (but really, his gloss says it provides methods to help answer questions), yet he abjures the supernatural and doesn’t proselytize, I don’t have much of a problem with his beliefs, which may not be at odds with science if meditation does work in the ways he claims:
Buddhism, Andrew says, is interested in “creating the conditions for enlightenment to arrive” — a state in which people feel “unconditional love, deep spiritual peace, completely free of inner conflict”.
The trick, he says, is to understand and accept “the true nature of reality” and that attachment to things — like our youth, loved ones, jobs or money — is the source of suffering.
“We’re psychologically dependent on things that, at any moment, could be taken away from us,” he says.
“But they are all impermanent, so you will suffer if you depend on them.”
For Andrew, religions that require “blind faith” in God are at odds with science.
“Science is about seeking truth and testing a hypothesis. I don’t believe you can prove the existence of God.”
By contrast, he sees Buddhism as “very compatible” with science.
“I think Buddhism and science are absolutely in tune with each other fundamentally,” he says.
“They’re both driven by the idea that you can’t just believe something without any evidence.
“The Buddha was very clear that you follow a system of practice and only when you’ve experienced those things for yourself is your faith then justified — because it’s a faith that is based on experience.”
Well, that depends on what form of Buddhism you accept. I presume that Harman doesn’t accept woo like karma and reincarnation (stuff that Tibetan Buddhism accepts),and if he does reject that kind of stuff, you can hardly call him religious! He claims “Buddhism is a faith based on experience”, but “faith” and “experience” are somewhat at odds. If by “experience” he means “this practice often has results X and Y on your mind and behavior”, then that’s not faith, but evidence. If by “experience” he means “revelation”, then yes, he’s religious. But I suspect he’s not religious—at least not in the conventional sense of accepting a supernatural being to whom fealty must be given and who provides a moral code and who takes a personal interest in the believer. And what he means by faith is “confidence born of repeated experience,” which is a far cry from religious faith.
But one thing he says does disturb me:
But, says Andrew, there are some clashes between Buddhism and the idea that we can be reduced to a bunch of particles, and that studying matter will ultimately explain the whole of our reality.
“There’s still a very strong current in science that thinks everything can be broken down into bits and put back together,” he says.
But science is changing, says Andrew.
“I think Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum theory show you can’t reduce everything to the sum of its parts,” he says.
I’m not sure that he means what I think he means: that there is something beyond the laws of physics. Regardless, he’s not what I’d call “religious”
Fahad Ali is a a graduate student in genetics at the University of Sydney who is also a Muslim. (He’s also been investigated for misconduct and anti-Semitism, but has been cleared; see here.) Again, it’s not clear how religious he is, at least based on his statements. He sees the Qur’an as metaphorical, something that about 90% of Muslims disagree with (the vast majority see it as having to be read literally). He also ignores the nasty bits of the Qur’an, saying that the book encourages “compassion, common decency, generosity and intelligence.” Well, only under the most blinkered reading can you conclude that: compassion towards women, unbelievers, and apostates? I don’t think so.
Ali credits Islamic scientists as having contributed to world science, which is true, but again, that doesn’t do anything to show that the tenets of Islam are correct. After all, in those countries and in those days, virtually everyone was a Muslim. Why should the religion get credit for the scientific advances? Was there something about the Qur’an that brought about algebra and geometry? I don’t think so.
Further, Ali abjures the God of the gaps, but gives no evidence for The God Who is Outside the Gaps:
“Science closes the gap, and then there’s one less place for God to be found.
“Eventually God will vanish entirely — removed from the picture by science — and then people get aggressive and say science is wrong, which doesn’t help anyone.”
While some see evolutionary theory as threatening faith, Fahad disagrees.
“I think it’s a testament to God more than anything — that we can bring about all life on earth from a single origin.”
But again, Ali simple presumes there’s a God—he was an apostate until his mother got cancer, which brought him back to Islam—and I’d ask him, “How do you know that there is a God? Isn’t natural selection capable of bringing about all life on earth from a single origin? And why do you think that Islam is the right religion?”
Nevertheless, if we must have Islam, then I’d rather have a questioning and thoughtful Muslim like Ali than a fundamentalist who simply accepts the Qur’an.
So of the three scientists who supposedly demonstrate the compatibility of science and religion, only two are really religious. And those two make statements that are insupportable by evidence, but are based purely on wish-thinking—on what they’d like to believe and what makes them feel good.
As Richard Feynman pointed out, science is a way of avoiding fooling ourselves by accepting what we want to accept. That is why science and religion are truly incompatible. And that point is demonstrated by both Wiseman and Ali.
Matthew sent me this tweet from the verified White House Twitter account, which contains the letter from Trump to Kim Jong-un calling off next month’s summit with North Korea. Take it with a slight grain of salt, as it’s so recent that news sources haven’t yet reported it. (UPDATE: It’s been verified by the Guardian.)
A letter from the President to Chairman Kim Jong Un: "It is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting." pic.twitter.com/3dDIp55xu1
This is after Kim Jong-un curtailed talks with South Korea, but also blew up the tunnels to an underground nuclear test site. I’m not sure what the “latest statement” from Kim was that prompted this letter, but both sides were spoiling for a cancellation from the get-go.
Although I predicted that any talks would go nowhere, I didn’t predict that, once scheduled, they’d be canceled.
Do I approve of Trump’s decision? Not really. While I’m pretty sure that nothing would have come of this meeting, as there is no way the DPRK would have given up its nukes, and that country has a long history of abrogating agreements, I would have like to have seen, just out of interest, what was on the table. The only thing I worried about was that Trump would be too mercurial and stupid to see through any promises the DPRK would make.
Well, we’re apparently back to square one—or rather, square zero.
If this proves to be some kind of hoax, I’ll be sure to let you know.
We have some photos today from a new contributor, A. W. Savage, whose notes are indented:
The first three pictures come from Cley Marshes on the north Norfolk coast, part of a chain of nature reserves which together make up the longest continuous stretch of protected coastline in Europe. The first image shows a view across one of the pools on the marsh, which are a mixture of fresh and salt-water lagoons, all surrounded by reed beds. Norfolk reed is still the finest material for making and repairing thatched roofs.
Focusing in on part of the group of birds from the previous image. Mostly Pied Avocet(Recurvirostra avosetta), with a single Shelduck(Tadorna tadorna) and two, badly visible Bar-tailed Godwit(Limosa lapponica) asleep to its right.
Finally, a Northern Lapwing(Vanellus vanellus) in full breeding plumage. This is an excellent example of a “dull, black and white bird”, which, when caught in the right light, shows it is anything but dull. Lapwings breed all along the coast here, though their eggs are often predated by gulls, foxes, weasels and the like.
The final three photos were all taken in my garden. The first shows a pair of Eurasian Siskin(Spinus spinus), female in front and male behind; the second shows a female Siskin sitting in a Hawthorn tree.
Finally, a shot I could not resist. A European Robin(Erithacus rubecula) with a large worm! The lower two-thirds of the worm is blurred, since it was swinging about wildly, whether fighting back or simply blowing in the wind.
