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.
It’s Wednesday, February 22, 2017: remember that there are but 28 days in this month. The temperatures remain high in Chicago, and today we may hit another record: a high of 71° F (22° C) is predicted. It’s another triple-header food holiday: National Cook a Sweet Potato Day, National Margarita Day, and National Cherry Pie Day. I doubt I’ll partake of any of these, though I do have a homemade cherry pie in my freezer. For Episcopalians in the U.S., it’s the Feast Day of Eric Liddell, the “muscular Christian” portrayed in the movie Chariots of Fire.
News of the day: once again the judiciary has blocked regressive Republican policy: a federal judge in Texas ruled that the state could not withhold funding from Planned Parenthood.
On February 22, 1943, three members of the White Rose resistance group, Sophie Scholl, Hans Scholl, and Christoph Probst, were executed in Nazi Germany for treason: they had been caught distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. They died bravely on the guillotine. Here is the unspeakably sad last scene from the German movie “Sophie Scholl: The Final Days,” when the 21 year old Sophie says goodbye to her brother and Christoph, is given a one-minute trial, and then immediately taken to the guillotine. Note: while there’s no blood, there is a scene at the very end when she’s put into the apparatus. Her reported last words were these:
“How can we expect righteousness to prevail when there is hardly anyone willing to give himself up individually to a righteous cause? Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go, but what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?”
Here’s the real Sophie; imagine the bravery it took to stand up to the Nazis at that time:
And do you remember this day in 1980, when the U.S. hockey team defeated the Soviet Union hockey team at the winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York by a score of 4–3? I and millions of Americans were watching that game (even though I’m not a hockey fan); it was a political as well as sporting event, and the Soviet’s defeat was called “the miracle on ice.” The USA were huge underdogs in that game, but won, and went on to secure the gold medal by defeating Finland. Here are the last two minutes, with the famous “Do you believe in miracles?” comment by Al Michaels. I remember this well:
Notables born on this day include George Washington (1732), Frédéric Chopin (1810), Robert Baden-Powell (1857), Olave Baden-Powell (1889, these two founded the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, respectively), Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892), Edward Gorey (1925), and Ted Kennedy (1932). Those who died on this day include geologist Charles Lyell (1875, Darwin’s pal), Kasturba Gandhi (1944), Oskar Kokoschka (1980), Andy Warhol (1987), Chuck Jones (2002), and Charlotte Dawson (2014). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Cyrus are nosing about:
Cyrus: Come on! What have you found there?
Hili: I’m checking to see what you were sniffing here.
In Polish:
Cyrus: Chodź już, co tam znalazłaś?
Hili: Sprawdzam coś tu obwąchiwał.
Here’s a video from today showing a cowed Milo Yiannopoulos falling on his sword—resigning as an editor at Breitbart. Within just 24 hours, his life has fallen apart: his book deal with Simon and Schuster was canceled, as was his keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, and he’s lost his job at Breitbart. He’s also going to be branded as a pedophile for the rest of his life.
Whether or not you think Milo had this coming to him, I still find it sad, especially when I found he was a victim of sexual child abuse. There’s no evidence that he himself was a pedophile, and I’m not sure whether canceling his book was the right thing to do. What I’m pretty sure of is that his notoriety has cost him his image; as one columnist said, the Right finally found it expedient to eject him. I was no fan of Milo, but I don’t think this is a time to gloat. Whatever you think of him, he’s smart and charismatic, and I hope he can leverage that into a new life.
I haven’t followed this complicated tale closely, and have listened only briefly to the tapes that led to his downfall. With luck, Grania, who has been following this more closely, will write a reasoned post on this soon.
Scientists are the unrecognized benefactors of humanity. How many laypeople will recognize the name of Fritz Haber or Karl Bosch? Togetether they’re estimated to have saved over a billion lives. What about Norman Borlaug? He saved over 259 million lives. Ann Holloway, Samuel Katz, Kevin McCarthy, Milan Milovanovic, Anna Mitus, and Thomas Peebles? Together—over 100 million lives. Andreas Gruetzig? 15,400,000 lives. These people invented synthetic fertilizers, new breeds of wheat, measles vaccines, angioplasty, and so on.
The average person might recognize the name of Edward Jenner, who popularized (but perhaps didn’t invent) smallpox vaccination, thereby saving an estimated 530,000,000 lives; and they’d probably recognize Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin, whose polio vaccines saved the lives of over a million people, but I bet you could stop a college student, give them those three names, and none would be recognized.
You can see their stories, and read about (or question) the numbers of lives they saved, at the Science Heroes site. Click on Nils Bohlin, for instance, and learn how his improved three-point seatbelt, produced while he was working for Volvo, is estimated to have saved over 1,300,000 lives:
Now you can question the figures, but there’s no doubt that many lives were saved by antibiotics, smallpox vaccinations, and so on. Sometimes the innovations were sought deliberately, like polio vaccine, and others came accidentally, like penicillin, but it doesn’t matter. What these data do show is that, in the only way that matters to many people—human lives saved or improve—science has made a difference.
When I give lectures about science, I often ask people raise their hands if they would be dead if it weren’t for antibiotics, and many hands go up, for simple infections killed many people before there were these drugs. If you asked people how many would be there if formal science didn’t exist, well, probably everyone could raise their hands, but many of the innovations that kept us here are unrecognized—like having obstetricians simply wash their hands.
Are these people heroes? Well, they didn’t risk their lives, and of course had they not lived, someone else would have produced their innovations. In those senses they differ from traditional heroes. But no matter; what’s important is that science works, and Science Heroes shows that it works to save lives. Can you think of any other area of intellectual or practical endeavor that has improved the lot of so many people? Theology? I don’t think so.
The Women’s World Chess Championship is underway in Iran, and, as I’ve mentioned repeatedly, the country (and the World Chess Federation) is requiring that all women wear hijabs. This is not only an infringement on women’s freedom (both the foreign players and the Iranians themselves), but I can imagine that playing in a hijab could be an annoyance if you’ve never worn one before.
In response to World Chess Federation’s (FIDE’s) refusal to contest the hijab requirement, several important players have pulled out of the tournament, most notably U.S. champion Nazi Paikidze-Barnes, who simply refused to wear the covering because she saw it as a symbol of women’s oppression.
Reader Will G., whose words were previously posted in a piece on the Women’s World Champion, took the time to write me an email discussing whether forcing women players to wear hijabs actually advanced the cause of Iranian women, as some people maintained. It appears that it didn’t. I am publishing his email with permission, and note that Will is himself an accomplished amateur chess enthusiast, ranking in the upper 5% of players, so he knows something about the game. And now to his email:
***********
Sibling Teen Chess Masters Banned In Iran For Going Unveiled and Playing An Israeli
Yeah, so that change.org petition to FIDE about moving the Women’s championship from Tehran had the expected effect. It’s good that so many people made themselves known (17,000+ signed!), but the train went a-rolling along anyway. Right now, we’ve reached the quarterfinals in Tehran. (Just look at the pics. Is there anything more depressing outside of war zone photojournalism?)
“It’s not right to call for a boycott. These games are important for women in Iran; it’s an opportunity for us to show our strength.”
“I am firmly against the international community using the compulsory hijab as a means to put pressure and isolate Iran.”
“If Iran can host this event, it will be a big step for us; it will help our women chess players and it will boost women in other sporting fields. It will pave the way for them, too.”
“Calls for a boycott will only disappoint Iranian women and destroy their hopes.”
So, now that some of the strongest female players have shown up and shown they can fianchetto with the best of them, things are looking up for women in Iran right? At least, the ones who play chess?
The Iranian National Chess Team dismissed 18-year-old Dorsa Derakhshani for appearing at the Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival 2017, which ran from January 23 to February 2, without the Islamic head scarf that became compulsory in Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Her 15-year-old brother, Borna Derakhshani, was banned for playing against an Israeli opponent at the same event. . .
“Unfortunately, what shouldn’t have happened has happened. Our national interests have priority over everything,” [Iranian Chess Federation Head Mehrdad] Pahlevanzadeh said. He added that there would be no “leniency” for those who trample on Iran’s “ideals and principles.”
“Our national interests have priority over everything. . . ” In these days when a stubby-fingered Caligula occupies the White House, I take solace in the fact that a totalitarian statement like this still has the power to shock me.
Here’s a video of the offending temptress, doing her wicked post-match interview after holding International Grandmaster Damian Lemos to a draw, in a disgraceful attempt to undermine the Islamic State of Iran’s good reputation.
And here’s the offending game her little brother played against an Israeli Grandmaster. To an onlooker, it looks like a painfully dull French defense exchange variation with a significant blunder in a probably drawn endgame (85. g3??), but apparently the real blunder was showing up like some kind of competitor and not feigning illness.
So I ask the pious folk quoted in The Guardian, and everyone who thinks they may have a point: What the hell is wrong with you? How many women’s championships will have to be held in Iran before the misogyny and antisemitism ends? When would you say we are no longer reaching out in love and understanding, but enabling intolerance and hatred?
And finally, I think that the Derakhshani siblings should be made automatic American citizens, if they so wish.
***********
Happy Western chess players, advancing the cause of Iranian women (LOL):
UPDATE: I forgot to include the blurb from the ASU news office summarizing the accommodationist study discussed in this post. It says this:
Then, the class discussed that science can answer certain questions and religion can answer other questions. According to Brownell [one of the study’s authors], evolution and science in general are excellent when it comes to answering “what and how?”, but religion is able to answer “why?”
“Science can’t really answer why,” Brownell said. “In the same way, religion can’t really explain how something actually works. They’re just two different ways of knowing. So, presenting that to students helped them see they don’t have to be in conflict. They can have both of these beliefs and use them to answer different questions.”
This, of course, is Gould’s solution, but it’s even worse, because Brownell states flatly that religion IS ABLE TO ANSWER WHY QUESTIONS that science can’t.
Can anything be more tendentious–and ludicrous–than such a claim? Religion can’t answer any “why questions,” because it has no method for answering them to everyone’s satisfaction. As we all know, different religions given different “answers”, and they’re often flatly contradictory. To tell students that religion can answer questions about purposes, meanings, and values is to lie to those students in the service of getting them to accept evolution. Unlike creationists, who are lying for Jesus, Brownell and her colleagues are lying for Darwin.
__________
It’s one thing to think that science and religion are compatible; it’s another to devise methods of indoctrinating students with that belief—a belief that, after all, depends on how you construe “compatible” as well as which religion you’re talking about. Plenty of scientists, and a considerable number of believers, don’t think science and religion are compatible, and in Faith Versus Fact I argue for incompatibility on the grounds that both endeavors are based, at bottom, on factual assertions about the cosmos, and that only science has a valid method for determining what’s true. That is, the incompatibility rests on grounds of methodology, outcome, and philosophy, which diverge markedly between science and faith.
The big battle between the two areas is, of course, fought mostly in the arena of evolution. Now if you construe “compatibility” as “the ability to be religious and accept evolution at the same time,” well then you’re home free, because many religious scientists accept evolution (examples: Ken Miller and Francis Collins), and many religious laypeople also accept evolution. But that’s not compatibility; it’s compartmentalization. Another “proof” of compatibility is Steve Gould’s claim that science and religion are “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA): the claim that the domains of science and religion are mutually exclusive. As Gould said in his book Rocks of Ages (see my review here), Gould defined these non-overlapping domains:
“Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that coordinate and explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important, but utterly different, realm of human purposes, meanings, and values—subjects that the factual domain of science might illuminate, but can never resolve.”
But in Faith Versus Fact I argue that this claim is also wrong—for two reasons. First, religion doesn’t limit itself to studying meaning, purposes, and values; it makes factual assertions, and not just about Jesus and the Resurrection, either. If religion didn’t make factual assertions, then creationism wouldn’t be so popular in America, and nobody would go to the Ark Park. This is why the most vocal opponents of Gould’s thesis are not scientists, but theologians who realize that their faiths do depend on factual assertions (see my book for what they say). Second, “purposes, meanings, and values” are not the sole purview of religion. There’s a long history of secular philosophy, beginning with the ancient Greeks, that deals precisely with those issues.
But there are those who are accommodationists for tactical reasons: if we can convince religious people that evolution is compatible with their faith, opposition to evolution, they say, would wane. This, for instance, was one goal of the National Center for Science Education, and remains the main goal of the organization BioLogos, founded by Francis Collins. That this tactic hasn’t worked very well (forcing BioLogos to devote a lot of its energy and money to Christian apologetics) hasn’t stopped people from pushing accommodationism as a weapon against creationism.
And that is the explicit aim of M. Elizabeth Barnes, James Elser, and Sara E. Brownell, who published an accommodationist “experiment” in the latest issue of The American Biology Teacher, an experiment designed to see whether telling kids that evolution and religion are compatible would make them accept that. Their paper (free online, with pdf here, reference below) was also touted as “resolving the conflict between evolution and religion” by Arizona State University (ASU), where the three authors work.
It’s very clear from the paper, and explicitly stated, that the authors’ aim was to convince students that evolutuion and religion were compatible; it wasn’t just a “let’s-do-this-and-see-what-happens” approach. If that were the case, they should have done the mirror study in which they try to convince students that religion and evolution are incompatible. They claim, though, that if they don’t teach compatibility, religious students tend to see a greater incompatibility after learning about evolution.
I’ll be brief in describing the study. The authors added a two-week “compatibility module” to one first-year class in biology at a “large public university located in the southwest United States.” Surely it must be ASU! Students’ religiosity and their perception about whether religion conflicted with evolution was measured both before and after the module was inflicted on the helpless students. The module included the following:
Guest scientists!. As the paper notes, they had an accommodationist and what appears to be a “control” visit by scientists, which seems unnecessary since the class wasn’t split into two bits. Rather, the “second guest” was added to provide a female role model (why did that add that?) as well as to highlight new research. All quotes are from the paper:
“The students met with two guest scientists during the module. The first guest was a biologist who is a devout Roman Catholic and a public defender of evolution. In class, the students were shown a video of this biologist discussing the potential compatibility of religion and evolution. [JAC: My bet is that this was Ken Miller.] Then the biologist videoconferenced with the students in class and discussed his own journey of reconciling his Catholic faith with evolution. This biologist’s visit was meant to provide students with a potential scientist role model who is both religious and an advocate for evolution, thus demonstrating that religion and evolution do not have to be in conflict. The second guest was an evolutionary biologist and ecologist. She videoconferenced with the class and discussed her research on microbial communities. The purpose of her visit was to provide students with a female scientist role model who studies evolution and to showcase that current researchers are working on evolutionary problems.”
Readings and videos, which included the odious National Academy Report, which is thoroughly accommodationist:
“Students were required to read a chapter on natural selection and a chapter on speciation from their textbook Biological Science (Freeman et al., 2013). Students were also assigned to read a handbook from the National Academy of Sciences entitled Science, Evolution, and Creationism (NAS, 2008). A theme throughout the handbook is that evolution and religion can be compatible with one another. For instance, the handbook explains how science only explores natural causes in the natural world and is neutral to the existence of God. The handbook also includes statements from biologists and religious leaders explaining how religion and evolution can be compatible.
The students also watched videos about evolution itself, and were propagandized about accommodationism by the instructors:
“Similar to the Science, Evolution, and Creationism handbook, the course instructor highlighted that scientists study natural causes within the natural world, whereas religious ideas address questions of morality, purpose, and the existence of a higher power. In accordance with the NOMA paradigm described in the introduction, the course instructor told students that if religion was bounded to address questions of only purpose, ethics, and the existence of a God/gods, then it is not in conflict with evolution. In one of these videos, the instructor described the history of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.”
In-class activities. These included making a timeline of the universe and evolution, doing a simulation of natural selection, and having a discussion of the evidence for evolution and counterarguments by creationists.
The results. 95 students took the course and the module, and 60 of these completed the pre- and post-module surveys of religiosity and whether they saw evolution in conflict with religion. The results are shown in the graph below; note that the Y axis is “numbers of students”, which aren’t numerous
As you see, the number of students who saw a conflict before the module dropped from 32 to 21 (the graph appears to be erroneous here), and the number who saw them as initially compatible rose from about 14 to 28 (I’m estimating from the graph here, as numbers aren’t given in the text.) Those who were unclear about the issue increased very slightly. Notably, no student changed their perception from “compatibility” to “conflict”, while 18% of all students changed their perception from “conflict” to “compatibility”.
When the authors looked at religious vs. nonreligious students (they assessed this by deeming students “religious” if they fell in the upper half of the religiosity scale), 28% of religious students changed from either “unclear” or “conflict” to “compatibility”, while 35% of nonreligious students made the same switch. In other words, the module was slightly more effective with nonreligious than with religious students—an unexpected result.
(From paper): The number of students who had a perception of conflict or compatibility between religion and evolution pre- to post-evolution module. “Unclear” means the student’s answer could not be unambiguously characterized as whether they perceived religion and evolution to be in conflict or compatible.
It’s clear that both the authors and ASU think this is a great result, not just an interesting finding, and one that needs to be implemented in many classrooms. As the ASU blurb notes:
Evolution is a historically controversial topic, and those that hold religious beliefs often reject the concept due to a perceived conflict between the two. However, in a study published in the journal American Biology Teacher, a group of Arizona State University researchers proved that evolution and religion don’t need to be at odds in the classroom.
“A ton of our students still don’t accept evolution, and the number one reason is because of their religious beliefs,” said Sara Brownell, a faculty member in the Center for Evolution and Medicine. “We could ask students to choose, but the reality is that for the most part they aren’t going to give up those beliefs to learn evolution. But while it’s often presented in the literature and popular press as an either-or situation, it doesn’t have to be.”
. . . As it turned out, simply talking about the subject went a long way toward clearing the air between religion and evolution. Brownell explained that, due to personal beliefs or the potential for controversy, many teachers shy away from the subject. However, this study demonstrates that embracing the discussion will help keep religious students from rejecting evolution, which Brownell described as the core thread that connects all areas of biology.
As a next step, Brownell and Barnes plan to condense what was previously a two hour module into a ten minute discussion. The thinking is, if they can condense this down to such a short period of time, teachers lose very little class time discussing it and stand to help students a great deal.
My objection to this study is that it was tendentious, didn’t look at the effect of the mirror-image study, used small samples, and, most important, took a particular theological point of view, pushing it on students in a public (state) university. This module requires a special interpretation of religion—one saying that it is not at all in conflict with evolution. Yet many religionists feel otherwise.
In other words, the instructors, in a well-meaning attempt to get people to accept evolution, are propagandizing the students with theological views. That’s clear since they trotted in a religious scientist and let the students read accommodationist literature while denying them arguments about the incompatibility of faith and evolution, which I see as powerful. (Why else are most scientists nonreligious—far more so than the general public?) By pushing a particular view of theology on the students, I see the experiment as a First Amendment violation. Would it be any better if the professor propagandized the students with a view that science and religion are incompatible? For that, at least, is a philosophical rather than a theological view. But if they did that, they’d be excoriated. Such is the eagerness of Americans to “respect” faith—the tendency to believe without evidence.
But in my own view, they should leave the accommodationism or anti-accommodationism out of public school classes. Just teach the damn science, and let the students work out the issues themselves. To do otherwise is to push a certain view of religion on them, one that should be left to parents, private discussion, or preachers. The authors of this paper are going the route of Elaine Ecklund at Rice, who has devoted her career to accommodationism. It’s not a pretty endeavor. And it’s injurious because it lets the students retain their view that faith, belief without evidence, is a valid way to accept religious claims.
Biologos Travel Grant: Awarded $500 to cover travel expenses to present research and collect data at the Evolution and Christian Faith 2015 conference hosted by the Biologos foundation. Awarded March 2015.
Brownell (left) and Barnes, apparently overjoyed that they achieved accommodation in the students. Photo from ASU blurb.
This new short video, including several of my colleagues at Chicago’s Field Museum, shows scientists at the Museum standing up for the facts about ecology and evolution. I like that, and I also like the absence of anything overtly political. But of course we all know why this was made: it is a political video made in reaction to the Trump administration’s disdain for truth and, in particular, Kellyanne Conway’s statement about “alternative facts”—which now has its own Wikipedia page.
I like the emphasis on facts and the uncompromising statements about evolution, which need to be made to a public that’s largely creationist. In the main, then, I see this as a positive statement. But my feelings are a wee bit mixed, for the video wouldn’t have been made without Trump, so it’s also politically-motivated statement that could have been (but wasn’t) made without political motivation. Nevertheless, it can stand on its own as a commitment of scientists to the truth.
Another political bit: the poster at 32 seconds in saying “ALL humans are immigrants from Africa.” Now if that’s not a reaction to Trump’s misguided executive orders on immigration, I’ll eat my Stetson. It is true that the ancestors of all modern humans originated in Africa, but, for instance, all indigenous New World humans were more recent immigrants from Siberia. The poster might have been a bit more accurate.
It’s warmed up a bit in Ontario, and Diana MacPherson has some lovely photos of emerging chipmunks. Below are her notes for a series that could be called “Four Ways of Looking at a Chipmunk”, but which Diana calls “Someone is awake from torpor”:
With the warm weather, the resident chipmunk has woken from torpor and is eating some seeds left out for him/her. Check out the mark on the nose & the mangled ear. I think my chipmunks get in a lot of fights with one another as I’ve seen these ripped-up ears on many different chipmunks and it looks like a bite from another ‘munk! The last photo is amusing because the chipmunk has such a wide open mouth for the seed.
Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) Having a Break from Torpor to Eat a Seed:
Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) Enjoying a Seed:
Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) Seems to Whisper Something:
Eastern Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) Opens Mouth for Seed:
Nicole Reggia, who has apparently rescued at least one member of every vertebrate species in Eastern Pennsylvania, sent four photos. The first is of a hatchling ring-necked snake (Diadophis punctatus), with pennies for scale:
This juvenile groundhog (Marmota monax), who lived in Nicole’s yard with its three siblings, was removed from the yard and temporarily placed in a bucket before the lawn was mowed. Then they were all put back by their burrow.
This box turtle (Terrapene carolina) was snapped having an adventure:
