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.
Ahnaf Kalam has posted an update to his petition at Change.org [JAC: it now has almost 9,000 signatures]:
“Today, I was informed that the Southern Poverty Law Center has no intention of removing Maajid Nawaz from their list. ”
You can read the full statement here. This is the bit that makes my hair stand on end.
Apart from the frankly bizarre claim of “conspiracy theory” talk which makes me think that Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the SPLC, has never spent much time listening to Maajid Nawaz speak at all; the more chilling claim is that she (and presumably the SPLC) have already decided what the only acceptable talking points about Islam are. Any deviation from this will be punished.
She’s essentially engaging in rather dangerous and illiberal speech of her own. It is unbelievably chilling and threatening for her and her organisation to publicly denigrate and dismiss the work of Muslim (and ex-Muslim) men and women trying to reform aspects of their own religion.
I’ll leave you with a few clips of the sort of talk that appears to be “dangerous” and laden with “conspiracy theories”.
A while back I discussed a paper in Current Biology by Julian Fennessy et al. . That paper used genetic analysis (the total genetic divergence among groups) to claim that there are actually four species of giraffe instead of a single species with nine subspecies. Using the Biological Species Concept (BSC), however, I argued that there was no objective basis for recognizing four distinct species on the basis of genetic distance and monophyly alone, for such recognition is purely subjective. How much genetic divergence between geographically isolated groups is necessary before we call them “separate species”? Any decision must necessarily be subjective, since no cut-off point of genetic distance is biologically meaningful.
I concluded that although the press gave the Fennessy et al. paper a ton of publicity, there’s no good reason to recognize four instead of one species of giraffe so long as all the “species” are geographically isolated from one another. (Greg Mayer and Matthew Cobb, my biology co-writers here, agreed.)
Now, mirabile dictu, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the U.S. has taken up the issue, and I had several conversations about speciation with writer Becca Cudmore, who proved to be one of the more inquisitive and savvy science journalists I’ve encountered. And, miracle of miracles again, she gives substantial publicity to the idea that giraffes may not really comprise four species.
Unlike Coyne’s approach, the study used genetic differences to separate the giraffes. This is a method of defining species by their “phylogenetics,”or by their shared traits. In this case, Goethe University researcher Axel Janke found genetic markers, such as mutations, that were common among certain giraffes and not shared by the others. This suggested to him that there has been very little gene sharing between the groups.
But by Coyne’s definition, this doesn’t prove that giraffes are reproductively isolated. “The only way to show whether or not they are separate would be to move the wild giraffes into the same area and see if they produce a fertile offspring,” he says. While the different subspecies are known to hybridize in captivity, there is very little evidence of this in the wild.
“The Biological Species Concept is more meaningful because it helps to explain one of evolutionary biology’s most profound questions”: Why is nature discontinuous? he says—why is it not all “one big smear” that can exchange genes?
And so on. There is of course some pushback:
Still, with what we know about hybrids between species in the wild, Janke calls Coyne’s approach too “pure” and says that it’s going out-of-date.
Janke is just wrong here. (I have no idea what he means by “too pure”!) The fact that some species exchange genes is not a serious problem for a concept based on reproductive isolation between entire genomes, and in fact most closely related species do not exchange genes. The cases of gene exchange between biological species, while widely publicized, are not the rule but the exception. (See Coyne & Orr, Speciation, for the evidence.)
Most tellingly, virtually every paper I’ve seen on the process of speciation—that is, on the ways that new species come into being—deals not with the accumulation of genetic distance per se, but on the development of reproductive barriers that eventually prevent populations from exchanging genes. That’s a tacit admission of the importance of the BSC.
I think the impetus behind naming more giraffe species is largely connected with conservation, for with more named species we can put more species on the endangered list and save more of the phenotypic and genetic diversity in what was formerly one species. But while that may be an admirable goal, it should not be a motivation for recognizing species in nature.
It may not be a coincidence that Fennessy works for the Giraffe Conservation Foundation. Cudmore notes this:
Whether one, four, or six species, giraffes have experienced a 40 percent plummet in population over the past 15 years. They’re currently listed as a species of “least concern” by the IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] and unlike alarm bells ringing for Africa’s elephants, gorillas, and rhinos amid the poaching crisis, they receive relatively little attention.
“With now four distinct species, the conservation status of each of these can be better defined and in turn added to the IUCN Red List,” said study co-author Julian Fennessy of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation in a release. For example, said Fennessy, there are now less than 4,750 Northern giraffes and fewer than 8,700 reticulated giraffes in the wild. “As distinct species, [this] makes them some of the most endangered large mammals in the world.”
This makes me suspect that behind the “splitting” of giraffes is a conservationist motivation, not an attempt to partition out nature in biologically and evolutionarily meaningful ways.
(from PBS article) A recent study proposed that giraffes are actually comprised of four main species (from left to right): reticulated, northern, southern and Masaai.
It’s time for one of our favorite features, courtesy of reader Mark Sturtevant:
It has been a while since we had a ‘Spot the ______’ challenge, and I found I had a couple more. So here is a spot the katydid challenge. Can you find the katydid in this picture?
Click to enlarge; answer at 1 p.m. Chicago time. I would rate this one as “pretty hard.”
The prosecution asked whether this was the sort of book “you would wish your wife or servants to read”? One’s wives and servants were presumably too delicate to have an opinion of their own. The book was the subject of several court cases around the world, and not all countries agreed with the UK decision.
It’s also the birthday of k.d. lang (1961) so in her honor here’s one of her more famous songs Miss Chatelaine
And one more, her cover of the Cole Porter song So In Love recorded for the Red Hot + Blue album to benefit AIDS research.
In Poland Hili is discovering an unsettling truth.
Hili: Is there anything I don’t know?
A: Plenty.
Hili: Just as I suspected.
In Polish
Hili: Czy jest coś o czym nie wiem?
Ja: Bardzo wiele.
Hili: Tak podejrzewałam.
As a lagniappe, we get a Monologue from that most solemn of tabbies, Leon.
A few days ago I discussed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC’s) descent into blacklisting, reminiscent of the days of Joe McCarthy. The SPLC compiled a “Field Guide to anti-Muslim Extremists,” which included the names of Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz, both Muslim reformers, the former now an atheist and the latter a believer. I won’t reprise the SPLC’s stupid accusations and trumped up “evidence” against these people, but I urged readers to sign a petition removing these two from the list. At the time I mentioned that petition had 1952 signers, but now there are 7979.
Of course the SPLC will ignore the petition, but perhaps they’ll become at least dimly aware that they should be careful about whom they demonize—or about making blacklists in general. Several readers objected in general to such blacklists, and I can see the point of their objections. As my friend Malgorzata commented:
I’m sorry but I’m not going to sign this petition. The idea that an SPLC took upon itself the right to libel and smear people is abhorrent as it is. To defend just two people listed there because their opinions are similar to my own would be the same as endorsing their right to issue such lists. There are other people on that list; I do not have to agree with everything they say to think that placing them on such a list is a scandal. The existence of this “hit list” should be condemned.
If you object to such blacklists in general (I’m on the fence, for while I see nothing wrong with calling out real anti-Muslim bigots, I now agree that an official “list” with the imprimatur of the SPLC is over the line), I’d urge you to email the SPLC directly at this link.
In the meantime, pushback against the SPLC’s bonehead move has begun. Yahoo! News describes many who have objected, including Nawaz’s own eloquent response in The Daily Beast and tweets by Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, and Michael Nugent. Nawaz’s eloquent column agrees with Malgorzata; an excerpt:
If there was anything we liberals should have learnt from McCarthyism, it is that compiling lists of our political foes is a malevolent, nefarious, and incredibly dangerous thing to do. And this terrible tactic, of simplifying and reducing our political opponents to a rogue’s gallery of “bad guys,” is not solely the domain of the right. As the political horseshoe theory attributed to Jean-Pierre Faye highlights, if we travel far-left enough, we find the very same sneering, nasty and reckless bullying tactics used by the far-right. Denunciations of traitors, heresy and blasphemy are the last resort of diminutive, insecure power-craving fascists of all stripes. Compiling lists is their modus operandi.
. . . . Nothing good ever comes from compiling lists. And so I say to the Southern Poverty Law Center: You were supposed to stand up for us, not intimidate us. Just imagine how ex-Muslim Islam-critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali must feel to be included in your list of “anti-Muslim” extremists. Her friend Theo Van Gogh was murdered on the streets of Amsterdam in 2004. And back then there was another list pinned to Theo’s corpse with a knife: it too named Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
And so the SPLC, like many regressive Leftists, have joined the gay-hating, women-oppressing, apostate-demonizing forces of Islamism. I don’t suppose that the SPLC has made a list of the many imams in the U.S. and U.K. who preach genuine hatred on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, Nick Cohen, the unsung hero of true, non-regressive Leftism, let the SPLC have it with both barrels in his Spectator column, aptly titled “The white left has issued its first fatwa.” (Now that’s an attention-grabber!)
Cohen notes that, for the first time, he’s actually urged someone to take advantage of the British libel laws, and even gave Nawaz the name of lawyers willing to help. I’d love to see the SPLC have to defend their allegations in court, though I suspect this won’t come to pass. But clearly the SPLC’s petition can be taken, as does Cohen, to be a death list.
[The SPLC’s Mark Potok] and his colleagues have issued the white left’s first fatwa: a blacklist that could be a deathlist.
“It’s not as if there’s any shortage of Muslim extremists who want me dead. They exist in numbers so plenty that former jihadists have even taken to calling in to my live LBC radio show to confess to once having made plans to assassinate me. Europe has witnessed around 6,000 of our fellow Muslims leave to join ISIS. Here in Europe, amid jihadist assassinations and mass terror attacks planned with military precision, we truly are in the thick of it. Meanwhile, from the comforts of sweet Alabama comes this edict that liberal Muslims working to throw open a conversation around reforming Islam today are somehow to be deemed ‘anti-Muslim extremists.’”
Do these jerks not think about the consequences of their rote-learned, pseudo-leftist bombast? Have they not heard that, across the world, lists circulate of ‘apostates’ along with invitations to the faithful to kill them when they can?
Maybe they have but do not care, and it will take drastic action to shake them out of their spiteful stupor. A court action could do it. If Nawaz sues, SPLC’s work in fighting the white far right will suffer grievously. But, as it is so eager to be on the wrong side in the fight against the religious far right, I think we could call it evens.
I don’t know what to make of this. Certainly men have been dominant over history, denying women the opportunity to melt the ice caps, build smokestacks or start the Holocaust (though there were plenty of women guards who abused women in the women’s camps). And the reason men have been dominant is largely sexual selection, which happened to make women the childbearers and the men larger and stronger. This is NOT to say that socialization and sexism have played no role in the oppression of women, for a group with higher status and dominance will culturally try to maintain that privilege. But the inequality between the sexes had to start somewhere, and that start is sexual selection. (Again, I’m not justifying the inequality, just explaining its inception.)
But I have a feeling that Moore means something more here: that women are by nature less aggressive and competitive, and more conciliatory. That is, some part of these differences are inborn—genetic. And I suspect he’s right. But evolutionary biology also helps explain that, since men must compete for women and status, and the hormones that promote that behavior can have all sorts of bad side effects. I have little doubt, in fact, that a world in which women had power equal to that of men would be a world we’d like better. But to say that is to admit that the differences in behavior between men and women are not purely cultural. They must be at least partly based on evolved genetic differences. (Of course men and women have almost the same sets of genes, except for those on the Y chromosome, but evolution has caused them to be expressed differently in the sexes.) If there were no genetic differences, and women gained full equality of power and opportunity (i.e., experienced the same cultural environment), then culturally-based differences would disappear, and women and men would behave the same. (What that behavior would be is of course unpredictable.)
Moore’s tweets, then, while expressing a social reality, are also a tacit admission of biological differences in behavior between the sexes, something that to most evolutionary biologists is palpably true, but is anathema to many liberals and feminists—especially gender feminists. If you maintain that women are by nature the kinder, gentler, sex, and will always be so, then you’re usually admitting that the behavioral differences between men and women are based on part on genes.
I have to add a sardonic tw**t by one of my hosts here in Singapore, Melissa Chen:
