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.
Ten days ago I pointed you to a post on Birding Beijing in which Terry Townshend and his partner Marie Ng were lucky enough to see and take videos of the rare Pallas’s cat—on Terry’s birthday, too!
Well, the guy is having a run of good luck, because his latest post describes an encounter in China’s Qinghai Province with not one, but twosnow leopards (Panthera uncia, also known as the “ounce”)—and only six days after the Pallas Encounter.
Terry has a two-minute video distilled from the two hours he watched these beautiful cats, and also some swell photos. To see the post, click on the link above or on the screenshot below. The video is midway through the post.
If I were religious, I’d say this guy is blessed. But being a naturalist, all I can say is that the laws of physics favored him over me.
Today I was interviewed by the French radio station, France-Culture (colloquially known as France-Cul), for a programme about Rosalind Franklin, the King’s College, London, researcher whose data were used by Watson and Crick as the basis of their double helix model of the structure of DNA.
Much of the discussion, inevitably, revolved around the point raised by Jim Watson at the recent Francis Crick Centenary event in Cold Spring Harbor – but for chance events, we would speak of the ‘Franklin-Wilkins’ structure of DNA rather than the ‘Watson-Crick’ structure. During the interview I found myself coming up with an alternative version of history, in which we could have got to the Franklin-Wilkins structure of DNA, with rather interesting consequences.
I have been thinking about ‘what if’ versions of history for an article on another part of the history of DNA that I am writing – if it’s accepted, I’ll let you know; if it’s rejected, I’ll publish it here. [JAC: What are we? A garbage bin for rejected pieces? 🙁 ]
As the British historian Richard Evans points out in his excellent book Altered Pasts, which is all about ‘counterfactual history’, there are many problems with this approach to history, and most examples of it are weak attempts at wishful thinking and many have a clear political agenda; few cast any light on history or how it happened. Nevertheless – here’s my ‘jeu d’esprit’: What would have happened if Wilkins and Franklin had got on?
What happened
The main reason why Watson and Crick were able to come up with the double helix structure of DNA in early 1953 is that their competitors at King’s – Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins – could not work together. Franklin and Wilkins had strikingly different personalities, but above all they were misled about how their work was to be coordinated, thanks to the behaviour of the lab head at King’s, John Randall.
Rosalind Franklin
Wilkins was Randall’s deputy and had been working on the structure of DNA for some time, using X-ray crystallography. Randall decided to recruit a new researcher with greater expertise in this technique, Rosalind Franklin. As far as Wilkins understood it, Franklin was to work with him, or even be his assistant; the appointment letter to Franklin from Randall made clear that she alone would be working on the structure of DNA.
Wilkins was on holiday when Franklin arrived; when he returned, he found a highly-skilled, assertive young woman not only apparently in charge of ‘his’ project, but supervising his PhD student, Ray Gosling. A simple conversation between Franklin, Wilkins and Randall could have sorted things out, but it never happened (Wilkins didn’t see the Franklin appointment letter for decades, and was shocked when he did – he had no idea, the poor sap).
John Randall
Whether Randall wanted to kick Wilkins up the backside, or to get the two researchers to compete is not clear; whatever the case, the result was catastrophic – as well as the structural misunderstanding of who did what and who was in charge, there was a major clash of personality. The introverted Wilkins became even more withdrawn, and the outgoing and argumentative Franklin became frustrated.
They were unable to cooperate, and as a result the work in King’s did not get off the ground properly. Wilkins and Franklin were separated, each working on a different form of the DNA molecule – Franklin worked on the drier A form, which gave misleadingly precise X-ray images, while Wilkins worked on the biologically more significant B form, which gave blurrier images. They spent much of 1952 this way, not talking to each other, not collaborating, not exchanging ideas.
Franklin became dismayed and fed up of the atmosphere at King’s, and decided to leave for nearby Birkbeck College and to move from the study of DNA to virus structure.
Meanwhile, at the end of the year, the Cambridge lab, where Watson and Crick were based, heard that the US chemist Linus Pauling was turning to the study of DNA. The head of the Cambridge lab, Bragg, had previously forbidden Watson and Crick from pursuing their unofficial interest in DNA structure, as the problem was the ‘property’ of King’s.
With the threat of being scooped by Pauling, Bragg changed his mind and told Watson and Crick to start working on the problem; they were also given a semi-public report from King’s, containing summaries of the research they were doing on DNA, which included some decisive data from Rosalind Franklin.
(This is the source of the oft-repeated charge that they ‘stole’ her data; Watson’s later claim that Wilkins showed him an X-ray photo of the B form taken by Gosling (*not* Franklin!) and that this was the decisive insight, can be dismissed; the key step for building the model was found in the numbers. Ironically, this information was very similar to data presented in November 1951 by Franklin in a talk at which Watson was present; by his own admission, he didn’t take notes and didn’t listen closely, musing instead about her hair and her dress sense… More on all that here; that is not the point of this post, however!)
These data were what Watson and Crick used to build their double helix structure. They – or rather. Crick – could see the implications of those data where Franklin had not because Crick had recently developed a mathematical procedure for turning the 2-dimensional data produced by a molecular helix into a 3-dimensional model; he had published this in Nature in October 1952. This was pretty complex stuff, and Crick was one of the few people in the world to know how to do this.
By the beginning of March 1953, they had finished their model; at the same time, Franklin, working on her own, had realised that DNA was made of two strands, going in opposite directions, with the bases that connect the two strands organised in an infinite number of ways, providing the variability that could encode genetic information. She never got any further, because the Cambridge duo beat her to it, using her own data.
The double helix structure appeared in Nature in April 1953, together with two empirical articles, one by Franklin, the other by Wilkins. The Watson and Crick article included the acknowledgement “We have also been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished experimental results and ideas of Dr M. H. F. Wilkins, Dr. R. E. Franklin and their co-workers”.
Franklin went on to make major contributions to virus structure, but died of ovarian cancer in April 1958. In October 1962, following the cracking of the genetic code that summer, Watson, Crick and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for determining the double helix structure of DNA.
What if?
Now, what if Franklin and Wilkins had been able to work together? What if Randall had been straightforward and explained how he wanted them to work – as partners, or even with Wilkins in charge (he was the more ‘senior’ in academic terms)? What would have happened?
Things would have turned out rather differently. Wilkins and Franklin would still have rubbed each other the wrong way, there would still have been rows, but it seems virtually certain that Watson and Crick, as a duo who shaped subsequent events, would not have got a look-in. By mid-1952, Wilkins and Franklin would have obtained data from both A- and B-forms of DNA, and would be trying to understand how they were structured.
Other people in the King’s lab were suggesting that the molecule might be a helix (this is what happened); Wilkins and Franklin, however, did not have the mathematical tools to work through the calculations and turn their 2-D data into a 3-D model.
And then something lucky happened – in summer 1952, Wilkins’ friend, Crick, showed him a manuscript he was writing, based on work for his PhD on horse haemoglobin, showing how to analyse data from helical molecules, using the specific example of the keratin molecule. Crick hoped to submit the article to Nature, and asked Wilkins to give him his opinion.
Wilkins read through it and realised its significance for his work with Franklin on DNA; after a brief hesitation, he showed the unpublished paper to Franklin. She, too, saw how they could use it, and over the coming weeks the pair worked through the maths, and then turned to building a structural model of the B-form of DNA.
By October 1952, they had finished the model, which was a beautiful double helix. They submitted an article to Nature, which appeared in December 1952, including an Acknowledgement that their work had been stimulated by a knowledge of the general nature of the unpublished results and ideas of Francis Crick. In 1962, the Nobel Prize was awarded to Maurice Wilkins and, posthumously (this was still allowed at the time), to Rosalind Franklin, who died in 1958.
Watson never got to work on DNA, nor did Crick, who both had very minor places in the history of science and were forgotten. Much of the history of 20th century genetics remained basically the same, but the pace and focus of work was different, lacking the intellectual leadership of Crick and the obsessive focus of Watson.
Wilkins’ life was pretty much the same, and Franklin’s name was writ much larger in the annals of biology – her name was taught to all high school students when they learned of the Franklin-Wilkins structure of DNA. However, in the early 21st century, a campaign began on the internet, arguing that Crick had been robbed of the rewards he was due, as without his method, Wilkins and Franklin would never have been able to crack the problem.
So what?
Well, probably, not a lot. But it’s interesting, no?
I call your attention to a new post on Heather’s site, one that deals partly with Reza Aslan’s pathetic apologetics for Islamic violence. In her post, “Reza Aslan is still excusing Islam,” Heather points out Aslan’s curious assertion of a disconnect between religious beliefs and behavior—something that Maarten Boudry and I have also written about (paper available on request).
I’ll avoid excerpting Heather’s post, as it deserves to be read on her site, but she deals with one comment that Aslan made when asked about regressive Islamic beliefs like killing gays and apostates. This is what he said:
I mean, we may be appalled by certain regressive beliefs, but they are just beliefs. The issue is people’s actions.
I needn’t say more; it’s a ludicrous and dangerous claim Aslan’s making here. Heather goes on to show an absorbing 40-minute video from CNN, “Why they hate us,” narrated by writer Fareed Zakaria. I watched it in its entirety, and recommend that you do, too. It’s in that video that Aslan appears, and, mirabile dictu, Heather actually agrees with something that he says.
The double standard of today’s politics is instantiated in those people who are so willing to call out Donald Trump for his malfeasance and lies (and there are many), and even laugh at naked statues of the man, while at the same time excusing Hillary Clinton’s numerous ethical breaches. “I’m with her!”, the saying goes. Well, my stand is—especially in light of the continuing revelations about Hillary’s shady behavior—”I’ll vote for her, but that’s about it.” I’m not going to talk about the email business, though I think she dissimulated there, but want to discuss the Clinton Foundation (CF), about which there are increasing revelations of “conflict of interest” behavior. In particular, there are new reports that Clinton, while Secretary of State, gave preference, both in terms of access and favors, to CF donors. There are further reports (see my post from two days ago) that the CF broke its promise to identify donors, as well its promises to restrict foreign donations and get State Department approval for all of them.
Last week Bill Clinton announced that he’d step down from the CF board were Hillary elected as President, though we now know from NPR that Chelsea will not. In the meantime, donors can still pump money into the CF anticipating, based on the new reports (see below) that they might get favors or meetings if Hillary were elected. Further, if Hillary wins, the CF won’t accept any corporate or foreign donations. But until she does, in November, the donors can keep swelling the $2 billion coffers of the Foundation. Bill should get off the board now, and then, if she loses (unlikely), he can get back on.
Before I summarize the latest Associated Press analysis of donations, let me add that there is absolutely no question that the CF does great things. Although their structure of charity work is unusual (they don’t take grant requests, but disperse the money on their own volition), the money is largely used for good things—education, eradication of disease, clean water, and so on—and most of the money does go to this work. The question is not about the Foundation’s work itself, but how donations to it may have bought donors access to Hillary Clinton, even when she was Secretary of State.
Now the defenses of Hillary (and Bill) on this issue run along four lines:
Every politician does stuff like this; it’s just business as usual. My response: no they don’t. Obama doesn’t have the long, shady history of mendacity that plagues both Hillary and Bill Clinton. Besides, are we really going to lower our standards for politicians every time there’s some shady dealing revealed by a politician we like?
It’s a “vast right wing conspiracy” against Hillary. She’s being singled out! I have no doubt that some of the opposition to Clinton is based on sexism, just as some of the opposition to Obama was because he’s half black. But that doesn’t explain why a) Trump is being vetted (and excoriated) even more strongly than Clinton, and b) the organs that have investigated Clinton include not only a Democratic Justice Department, but, more important, liberal news media like the New York Times, NPR, the Associated Press, and the Washington Post. If you think those are part of the “right wing conspiracy”, you’re nuts. The main focus on Clinton derives from one thing: her long history of questionable behavior, when, probably because of the Clintons’ feelings of entitlement, Hillary often skirted ethical norms. (I’ll mention only once her repeated lies about being under fire in Bosnia. Brian Williams was fired as the anchorman for NBC News for making a very similar false claim, as NBC thought the lie had permanently damaged his integrity.)
Clinton hasn’t done anything illegal, so it’s all okay! Seriously? The Justice Department admitted that Clinton’s behavior with respect to her email was wrong, but didn’t rise to the standards of a prosecutable offense. The pattern of donations to the CF being associated with Hillary giving face time to or doing favors for donors (see below) is deeply suspicious, though none of that is a tit-for-tat prosecutable offense, either. But again, is this the hill you want to die on for Hillary? The whole issue of “conflict of interest”, in which politicians are supposed to behave in a way that minimizes conflicts between their personal interests and their political behavior, is one of abiding to high standards, not just “not breaking the law.” In my view, every member of the Clinton Family—Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea—should have stepped off the board the minute Hillary formulated plans to run for President. That’s not the way it worked: only Hillary did that, and only because the public outcry had she not would have been a serious stain on her candidacy.
The Clintons don’t benefit personally from the CF, so what’s the big deal? A claim like this is based on ignorance. First of all, the Clintons get power: the ability to get people to do what they want. Second, they get people sucking up to them for political access. Third, they get public promotions, the kind of high-profile presence that brings them big private income, and travel expenses. As NBC reports, Bill Clinton earned 17.6 million dollars in only five years as “honorary chancellor” of the world’s biggest for-profit education company, Laureate Education, Inc. Apparently all he had to do was travel the world extolling the company, giving speeches. (Remember, too, that Hillary continues to criticize for-profit universities.) And the money wasn’t for the Foundation, but for the Clintons themselves. The high profile of the Clinton Foundation certain enhances that kind of moneymaking ability. I’m not suggesting, of course, that the CF was set up just as a way for the Clintons to make personal income; just that the Foundation gives them cachet that they wouldn’t otherwise have, and contributes to their high profile.
Finally, if you don’t buy any of my counterarguments, ask yourself this: Why, if everything’s copacetic, did the Foundation suddenly announce that Bill would step off the Board if Hillary is elected, and that they’d take no more foreign or corporate donations? There are two answers: the first is they realized what they should have done all along: avoid the appearance of conflict of interest. The second is that Hillary and/or Bill realized that this would hurt her candidacy if they didn’t do it, and, believe me, Hillary wants the Presidency more than a starving lion wants a zebra.
But on to the latest reports from that important organ of The Right Wing Conspiracy: The Associated Press. After investigating donors to the CF and lists of people who got to talk to her while she was Secretary of State, the AP notes a disturbing pattern of people getting access to Hillary while she was Secretary after they made big donations to the Foundation. (This puts the lie to the claim that she doesn’t know who gives money to the Foundation). The AP report says this in part:
More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money — either personally or through companies or groups — to the Clinton Foundation. It’s an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.
Donors who were granted time with Clinton included an internationally known economist who asked for her help as the Bangladesh government pressured him to resign from a nonprofit bank he ran; a Wall Street executive who sought Clinton’s help with a visa problem; and Estee Lauder executives who were listed as meeting with Clinton while her department worked with the firm’s corporate charity to counter gender-based violence in South Africa.
They are among at least 85 of 154 people with private interests who either met or had phone conversations scheduled with Clinton and also gave to her family’s charities, according to a review of State Department calendars released so far to The Associated Press. Combined, the 85 donors contributed as much as $156 million. The 154 does not include U.S. federal employees or foreign government representatives.
The AP’s findings represent the first systematic effort to calculate the scope of the intersecting interests of Clinton foundation donors and people who met personally with Clinton or spoke to her by phone about their needs.
The meetings between the Democratic presidential nominee and foundation donors do not appear to violate legal agreements Clinton and former president Bill Clinton signed before she joined the State Department in 2009. But the frequency of the overlaps shows the intermingling of access and donations, and fuels perceptions that giving the foundation money was a price of admission for face time with Clinton. Her calendars and emails released as recently as this week describe scores of contacts she and her top aides had with foundation donors.
Now one person wrote on my FB page, “But half the donors didn’t get access to Hillary.” That’s fatuous, of course. First of all, a lot of donors probably didn’t ask for access to Hillary. The real question to be answered is this: Among all people seeking access to or favors from Clinton as Secretary of State, was the proportion of CF donors who were successful higher than the proportion of non-donors who were successful? My guess is that the donors got an advantage.
The Clinton campaign has of course fought back, denying that there was any tit for tat here, but of course they would say that, wouldn’t they? They can hardly say otherwise. (The State Department has also said it’s not aware of any illegal acts performed by Hillary as Secretary of State in conjunction with the Foundation.) But of course imagine how difficult it would be to prove tit for tat! That’s why we have to avoid its appearance, pure and simple.
You can read the AP report yourself, and dismiss it if you’re One of Those, but it’s disturbing to anyone who’s not off the rails. (NPR also reports that “Released emails have shown some efforts to connect donors or associates at the foundation to personnel at the State Department.”). The AP also gives several examples of potential tit-for-tat behavior by Hillary as Secretary of State. Here’s one:
In another case, Clinton was host at a September 2009 breakfast meeting at the New York Stock Exchange that listed Blackstone Group chairman Stephen Schwarzman as one of the attendees. Schwarzman’s firm is a major Clinton Foundation donor, but he personally donates heavily to GOP candidates and causes. The next day, according to Clinton emails, the State Department was working on a visa issue at Schwarzman’s request. In December that same year, Schwarzman and his wife, Christine, sat at Clinton’s table during the Kennedy Center Honors.
Blackstone donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. Eight Blackstone executives also gave between $375,000 and $800,000 to the foundation. And Blackstone’s charitable arm has pledged millions of dollars in commitments to three Clinton Global aid projects ranging from the U.S. to the Mideast. Blackstone officials did not make Schwarzman available for comment.
Do you seriously think there’s no connection here? The problem, of course, is proving that there was a direct relationship between donations and access. That would be very hard to do without a paper trail. I think the data suggest that strongly, but of course diehard Hillary fans say, “She was never proven to have done anything illegal.” That’s a pretty low bar for supporting a Presidential candidate, n’est-ce pas?
In my view, every Clinton should get off the board now, even though some damage has already been done. They should have nothing to do with the Clinton Foundation until no Clinton holds public office. I don’t think the CF should be shut down, as some have suggested, for it does good work. It should simply become a “blind charity,” having no connection with the Clintons except in name, until Bill, Chelsea, and Hillary once again become private citizens.
Today’s Jesus and Mo strip is a good one, particularly timely, and speaks directly to the notion of the degree to which Muslim women “choose” to be covered. When a Western Muslimah (not one in Iran or Saudi) declares that she wears the hijab “by choice,” I never accept that claim at face value. Was she brought up wearing one? Did she go to school where other girls wore them? Are her friends mostly hijabis? This whole notion of “choice” in Islamic dress needs to be examined, yet I haven’t seen a single article on it. It’s the rhino in the room.
But I digress (well, not really, since this strip makes the same point):
Today we’re having a special version of the RWPs—vacation shots of Leon and his staff, Elzbieta Wierzbicka and Andrzej Marciniak. (The humans took the photos.) All three are vacationing in a little-known region of Europe called Lemkivshchyna, which includes the region where Poland abuts Slovakia. A map is below, with areas identified by the dialects spoken by of their inhabitants.
Nominally, Leon and his staff went there to do the final paperwork on the wooden house they bought, which will be dismantled, transported to near Dobrzyn, and then re-erected. But they’re also taking a hiking vacation before school starts again (Elzbieta and Andrzej are teachers). Elzbieta posted some lovely photos of the area on her Facebook page, which I reproduce with permission.
It’s a lovely area, and probably one that few tourists frequent. We’ll see the hilly landscape, the beautiful old wooden structures, the pervasive signs of Catholicism, and, of course, Leon hiking! I’ve put sections of the Wikipedia entry on the area in between the pictures; those sections are indented. Enjoy!
Lemkovina (Polish: Łemkowszczyzna; Rusyn: Лемковина/Lemkovina; Ukrainian: ЛемківщинаLemkivshina) is a region in Europe that is traditionally inhabited by the Lemko people. While the Lemko are a distinct ethnic group, they consider themselves to be part of the broader Rusyn and/or Ukrainian communities. Lemkovina mostly stretches along the border between Poland and Slovakia covering some western territories of Ukraine.
The region forms an ethnographic peninsula 140 km (87 mi) long and 25–50 km (16–31 mi) wide from the Ukrainian border within Polish and Slovak territory. The Lemko region occupies the lowest part of the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains—most of the Low Beskids, the western part of the Middle Beskyd, and the eastern fringe of the Western Beskyd. It includes the higher elevations of the Carpathians of modern-day Poland, extending to around the Poprad River to the west (see: Ruś Szlachtowska), and extending to the east as far as the region around Sanok, where it meets the Boyko region. The corresponding latitudes of the adjacent highlands of present-day Slovakia are also included by some in the description of Lemko-land.
Previously a frontier area under the nominal control of Great Moravia, Lemkivshchyna became part of Poland in medieval Piast times. It was made part of the Austrian province of Galicia due to the First Partition of Poland in 1772.[1]Parts were briefly independent under the Lemko-Rusyn Republic, and later annexed to Poland.
After the deportation of Lemkos from the northern part of this area in 1946, only the southern section, southwest of the Carpathian Mountains, known as the Prešov region in Slovakia, has remained inhabited by Lemkos.
Leon (and Andrzej) on the trail!
The landscape is typical of medium-height-mountain terrain, with ridges reaching 1,000 m (3,300 ft) and sometimes 1,300 m (4,300 ft). Only small parts of southern Low Beskids and the northern San river region have a low-mountain landscape. A series of mountain passes along the Torysa River and Poprad River—Tylych Pass (688 m (2,257 ft)), Dukla Pass (502 m (1,647 ft)), and Łupków Pass (657 m (2,156 ft))—facilitate communications between Galician and Transcarpathian Lemkos.
Leon on the trail, leading Elzbieta:
That is not Polish language!
A lovely old wooden church:
And our hero, resting his paws. Sometimes he’s carried in the backpack, which has a mesh Cat Compartment:
It’s August 24, 2016, at least in Chicago, and the cool weather continues here, a welcome relief from the scorchers of yore. But now the sun doesn’t rise until an hour after I walk to work—a harbinger of BACK TO SCHOOL time.
It’s National Waffle Day in the U.S., celebrating Cornelius Swarthout’s patent on the waffle iron that was granted on this date in 1869. Have a waffle—they’re great! Now there’s also an International Waffle Day, which takes place on March 25. That one started in Sweden and is called Våffeldagen. I’d be pleased if a Swedish reader would inform us if people really do eat waffles on that day, and what they look like. Here’s a specimen of we eat in America—the so-called Belgian Waffle, though I have no idea if they actually serve these in Belgium. I prefer mine with pecans and real maple syrup (the lowest grade, and hence the tastiest):
If you don’t like it, keep your opinion to yourself.
On this day in 1456, the printing of the Gutenberg Bible—the first mass-produced book printed using movable type—was completed. 49 copies survive today. And, on this day in 1875, Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the English Channel.
Notables born on this day include Ronee Blakely (1945; remember her in Nashville?) and paleontologist Tim White (1950). Those who died on August 24 include Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (2004), who completed all her stages, and Julie Harris (2013♥). Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili keeps getting involved in quite intellectual dialogues (for a cat):
A: What is genius?
Hili: It’s a creative ability to avoid plagiarism.
In Polish:
Ja: Na czym polega geniusz?
Hili: Na twórczej umiejętności unikania popełniania plagiatów.
And for lagniappe, reader Taskin forwarded this very short video of a cat in a pirate suit:
