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.
But Corey Bradshaw (@conservbytes) who is currently curating the @realscientists account (it’s what’s called a ‘rocur’ account – that’s ‘rotationally curated’ – a different scientist runs it each week) responded with a rather more interesting challenge:
@matthewcobb@laura193laura Can you picture a better scenario too? One where we choose a smarter path. Or is that unrealistic?
— RealScientists | #BlackInMarineScience | Symone (@realscientists) July 27, 2015
So, the challenge to readers is this: what do you think a GOOD 2100 would look like? Apart from stopping getting more CO2 into the atmosphere, how can we get to a good place in the 21st century, and what would that look like? Shoot my ideas down if you want, but I’m more interested in what you think the world should look like in 85 years when we’re all dead and gone, and how we can get there.
Check out both @laura193laura and @realscientists for further thoughts, then post your answers below.
An article in The NewsNerd notes that the American Psychological Association is about to classify extreme religiosity as a mental illness. A true God Delusion!:
According to the American Psychological Association (APA), a strong and passionate belief in a deity or higher power, to the point where it impairs one’s ability to make conscientious decisions about common sense matters, will now be classified as a mental illness.
The controversial ruling comes after a 5-year study by the APA showed devoutly religious people often suffered from anxiety, emotional distress, hallucinations, and paranoia. The study stated that those who perceived God as punitive was directly related to their poorer health, while those who viewed God as benevolent did not suffer as many mental problems. The religious views of both groups often resulted in them being disconnected from reality.
Dr. Lillian Andrews, professor of psychology, stated, “Every year thousands of people die after refusing life-saving treatment on religious grounds. Even when being told ‘you will die without this treatment’ patients reject the idea and believe that their God will still save them. Those lives could be saved simply by classifying those people as mentally unfit for decision making.”
. . . With the new classification, the APA will lobby to introduce legislation which would allow doctors the right to force life-saving treatment on those who refuse it for spiritual reasons on the grounds that they are mentally incapable of making decisions about their health.
I’ve written at length about this very problem (in Slate, for example), especially the the United States’s shameful coddling of parents who withhold medical care from their children on religious grounds. Those parents are given a legal break in 43 of the 50 U.S. states, and it’s reprehensible and unconscionable.(47 of the 50 states also permit religious exemptions from vaccination for children attending public school.) The last chapter of Faith versus Fact, for example, discusses this issue in detail, for it’s a palpable example of severe harm caused by faith—and the onus to fix it is on all of us.
So the largely free license that religious parents have to hurt their children via faith-healing remains untrammeled. (Tayler even pays me a nice parenthetical compliment for my discussion of the issue: “For a shocking, even heartbreaking exploration of this issue and much more, check out Jerry Coyne’s ‘Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible’, which could be a primer for all rationalists wishing to argue the case for nonbelief.”)
Tayler goes on to insist, as he has before, that extreme religiosity is a form of mental illness. Some readers may disagree, but let those who do remember that if people behaved the same way about Bigfoot as they did about Jesus, they’d be seen as delusional. Tayler:
. . . the satire in the News Nerd’s piece derives its efficacy from an obvious truth: belief in a deity motivates people to behave in all sorts of ways — some childish and pathetic, others harmful, a few outright criminal — most of which, to the nonbeliever at least, mimic symptoms of an all-encompassing mental illness, if of widely varying severity.
Why childish? A majority of adults in one of the most developed countries on Earth believe, in all seriousness, that an invisible, inaudible, undetectable “father” exercises parental supervision over them, protecting them from evil (except when he doesn’t), and, for the mere price of surrendering their faculty of reason and behaving in ways spelled out in various magic books, will ensure their postmortem survival. Wishful thinking characterizes childhood, yes, but, where the religious are concerned, not only. That is childish.
Tayler goes on to recount the palpable harms of faith: not only the death of innocent and brainwashed children, but the oppression of women, the “scarred psyches” of many of those brainwashed kids, Jesus Camp, ISIS, and so on. The list is familiar, but Tayler’s remedy is pure New Atheist:
Yet all is not lost! If the News Nerd’s APA story was a hoax, professionals are, nonetheless, taking note of the danger it was parodying. A San-Franciscan human development consultant named Dr. Marlene Winell, herself a survivor of a Pentecostal upbringing, has bruited the idea of “religious trauma syndrome” and established its symptoms as “anxiety . . . depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning.” Kathleen Taylor, an Oxford neuroscientist, has proposed treating religious fundamentalism itself as a “mental disturbance.”
The cure, in my view? Talk therapy, otherwise known as free speech, focusing relentlessly on religion and its multitudinous, multiplying ills, to be administered by us to the faith-deranged. Treatment might begin in language they can readily understand. The best, most succinct notion to be transmitted to the patients: “The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.” The nineteenth-century British biologist Thomas H. Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog,” said that.
It’s up to us. For the sake of humanity’s future, for the sake of our children, rationalists need to be unabashedly “bull-doggish.”
The time has arrived to bark, and even to bite.
I’ll bite! What say you: should we treat this extreme form of religiosity as a mental illness, when we know it really is one, albeit one that’s widespread? Should we even call it a mental illness, knowing that it will alienate many of the faithful?
Mark Sturtevant has sent us on some more great photographs and commentary to go along with them.
Here is yet another installment of budget close-up photography of local arthropods. I am having a wonderful summer doing this, and I think I am slowly getting better at my hobby. The pictures are numbered in the order of my comments here.
A stink bug nymph, possibly in the genus Apoecilus, feeding on an eastern tent caterpillar (Malacosoma americanum). In this picture you can see something of how a piercing-sucking proboscis works in insects. The proboscis is really homologous to the generalized chewing mouth parts of other insects. The thick, jointed part under the head that is bent aside is the labium (which is like a lower lip), while the thin whitish line seen entering the labium is really a bundle of piercing, needle-like mouth parts that are the mandibles and maxillae. The labium guides the piercing mouth parts into the prey, and those piercing mouth parts alternately pump up and down to scissor their way deeper into flesh. Digestive juices are pumped in, and the insect slurps up a liquid meal. The design is seen here:
Interestingly, the piercing mouth parts of some other insects like mosquitoes are very similar, and so this should be a good example of convergent evolution.
Marsh fly (Tetanocera). I do not have a lot to say about this one except that I am finding that many largish flies do not mind if a big camera lens draws in close to take pictures. I also like all the hairs since that makes ‘em interesting.
Six spotted orbweaver, Araniella displicata. This pretty little spider is so-named because it has six spots on the dorsal side of its abdomen. According to Bug Eric in this post: it is actually very common for this spider to spin a small orb web within the curl of a single leaf, as this one has done here.
Male harvestman (Phalangium opilio). One can recognize this to be a male by its elongated pedipalps. This widespread species is described as the most widely distributed harvestman in the world, and so possibly every reader of WEIT on every continent has seen this small, harmless species of harvestman. Well, harmless to humans. I have seen these animals eating surprisingly large insects.
However bad today may seem for you, it was a worse day for Nixon, for today was the day back in 1974 that the House Judiciary Committee recommended that he be impeached and removed from office.
Apparently Stalin also outlawed “cowards” on this day in 1943. Govern yourselves accordingly.
On the science side, there was an amazing breakthrough in Canada in 1921 when insulin was isolated by Frederick Banting and Charles Best in an effort to prevent and treat diabetes.
Over in Poland, the furry Princess may or may not be thinking of higher things.
Olaf: What do cats most enjoy talking about?
Hili: Allow me to ponder that question for a moment.
In Polish:
Olaf: O czym najchętniej rozmawiają koty?
Hili: Pozwól, że się zastanowię.
It has long been known that some snakes are two-legged, because many modern species have two legs– externally visible hind limbs– a fact we’ve noticed here at WEIT before.
Hindlimbs (‘spurs’) of a ball python (Python regius). The spurs are next to the anal scale, which covers the vent of the cloaca. (Front of snake is toward top of photo.)
These small external legs, capped by keratinous claws, are supported internally by vestigial femurs and a vestigial pelvis. They are larger in males, and are used during courtship. In the fossil record, snakes with much larger hind limbs have been known since Georg Haas described Pachyrachis in 1979 and Ophiomorphus in 1980 from the early Late Cretaceous (about 95 mya). In these the legs were less rudimentary than in modern snakes, having, in addition to the femur and pelvis, a distinct tibia and fibula, and tarsal bones. That legless tetrapods would have legged ancestors is of course expected, and for the caecilians, a modern group of legless amphibians, a four-legged progenitor was described by Farish Jenkins and colleagues several years ago.
In a new paper paper in Science, David Martill, Helmut Tischlinger, and Nicholas Longrich describe a four-legged snake from the late Early Cretaceous (about 120 mya), of Brazil, giving it the rather aptly descriptive name Tetrapodophis, “four-legged snake”. The fore and hind legs are small, but well developed, with five digits on each. The limbs are suggested to have been used during prey capture. They also interpret it as being fossorial. This is significant, as the two major theories of snake origin are that they came from fossorial (burrowing) ancestors, or that they came from marine ancestors (some of the closest known relatives of snakes are extinct aquatic lizards, and Haas’s specimens come from marine sediments).
T. amplectus appendicular morphology. Fig. 4 from Martill et al. (2015). (A) Forelimb. (B) Manus. (C) Hindlimbs and pelvis. (D) Pes. (E) Pelvis. Abbreviations: fem, femur; fib, fibula; hu, humerus; il, ilium; lym, lymphapophysis; man, manus; mc, metacarpal; mt, metatarsals; ph, phalanges; ra, radius; sr, sacral rib; tib, tibia; ul, ulna; un, ungual.
A long, flexible body, recurved teeth, and intramandibular joint (for opening the mouth wide) all suggest to Martill and colleagues that Tetrapodophis was a constrictor, preying on other vertebrates. This also has significance for what it says about the origin of snakes. Under the fossorial theory, the earliest snakes should have been insectivorous or eating other small prey (as are many supposedly primitive burrowing snakes today). Under the marine theory, the earliest snakes should have been predators of prey “bigger than their heads“, having large, extensible mouths, and associated adaptations of the skeleton and musculature– such snakes are called macrostomatan (literally, ‘large mouthed’). Haas’s two-legged marine snakes are macrostomatan. Martill and colleagues have found what they consider to be a very early macrostomatan, yet fossorial, snake– a cross between the two theories.
Tetrapodophis constricting and eating a small mammal, reconstruction by Julius Cstonyi.
Almost immediately upon its publication, the paper became enmeshed in a series of overlapping controversies, which, while nothing compared to the brouhaha over the insults traded between Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift, has created quite a stir in the small world of science social media. There are at least three areas in which questions have been raised, so let’s take them one at a time.
Where (and thus when) is the type specimen of Tetrapodophis from? It turns out that the authors of the paper don’t actually know the provenance of the specimen. They have made an inference about it (and they may very well be right), but the fact that they do not even mention the assumed nature of the specimen’s provenance in the paper is shocking. A specimen’s provenance is absolutely crucial information in systematic biology; it is especially so for fossil specimens, because in most instances it is only by examining the geological context of the discovery (the associated fossils within the bed, and the nature of the over- and underlying beds) that we can date the fossil. In this case, we are not really sure where the specimen came from, and thus we cannot be certain of when the specimen died and was entombed in sediment.
I read the paper, and did not realize the provenance was uncertain. The uncertainty, and the argument for why the authors felt they could identify the provenance, are buried in an online supplement. To some it may seem like I’ve been a bit “hey you damned kids, get off of my lawn” about it”, but I’ve long complained of the growing practice of journals, especially Science, of burying key details of papers in ephemeral online sources, and in this case such warnings have come home to roost. Where (and thus when) it’s from is just about the most basic thing you can say about a fossil, and to hide the fact that in this case it’s unknown in an online supplement is unconscionable.
In the online material, Martill and colleagues state that “no notes as to its [the specimen’s] acquisition or provenance are available.” However, in an interview with the BBC, Martill says that he first saw the specimen at the Museum Solnhofen in an “exhibition of Brazilian fossils”, so some notes on provenance seem to have been available to the Museum. Another source states that the exhibit was of fossils specifically from the “Crato Formation”.
Is the fossil, as the authors claim, from the Nova Olinda member of the Crato Formation of Ceara, Brazil? It might well be. Martill is an expert on the formation. Certain fossil localities do have a distinctive lithology and preservation– I can (usually) recognize Green River Formation fossils myself. But to not mention this up front, and provide the justification for the assignment to provenance in the paper, is beyond the pale.
Is Tetrapodophis even a snake? In a news posting on Science‘s website, Michael Caldwell alleges that the specimen is not a snake; in fact, he says, it’s not even a reptile. Rather, the article says, Caldwell thinks it might be a surviving member of a “group of extinct amphibians that died out during mass extinctions about 251 million years ago, long before Tetrapodophis appeared on the scene.” (I’m not sure what amphibians he’s thinking of– perhaps microsaurs or lysorophids?) This would be astonishing– that a group survives 150 million years without a fossil record and then reappears (which does, though, have a partial precedent in the coelacanth), and that the authors and reviewers of a paper in Science could be so wildly off in the identification of the subject of the paper. This of course is not impossible, but it would be surprising. I have only seen the published figures, but Martill and colleagues do discuss and defend the characters by which they assign the specimen to the snakes. Caldwell has published on early snakes and should know their morphology, but he has not seen the specimen either, so it’s hard to give full credence to his views. We’ll have to wait till others get to look at the specimen more closely, or perhaps for a monographic treatment by Martill and colleagues. This is the scientifically most important controversy (although the first controversy is right up there, because much of its significance as a four-legged snake depends on its supposed time of occurrence).
Should fossil collecting and/or exporting require a permit or license? Since the specimen has no collecting data accompanying it, it is unclear if the specimen was collected legally. Fossil collecting in Brazil has required a license since 1942 (or perhaps 1988– recent sources diverge on the date). This is of course not a scientific question, but a question of public policy that has implications for science. To a great extent, the controversy is an old one in paleontology– does amateur and commercial collecting enhance or retard the growth of scientific knowledge? There are strong opinions on both sides. In the United States, this argument flared up over Tyrannosaurus Sue, which was discovered and collected by commercial collectors, but eventually seized from them without recompense (one even went to jail). The downside of such regulation is that many specimens will never come to light, or, if found, will be tossed aside and left to degrade, as their possession would be illegal. A commercial black market may develop, in which the best fossils may be found, but then disappear, unstudied, into private collections. The upside is that specimens will have known provenance, and be of maximal scientific value. Martill has long argued (also here) that in Brazil the permitting system has become so corrupt that scientists are driven out of the field, and that, through bribery, commercial trade flourishes, while many fossils are left to erode and break, as no one may legally save them. He also says it was not always so– for years he worked successfully under Brazil’s regulations. His view:
‘Protecting fossils’ criminalises palaeontologists. Laws banning fossil collecting and private fossil collections deter amateur palaeontologists, drive them underground and stifle curiosity. Fossils left in the ground weather away and are lost. Banning commercial collecting loses tax revenue.
A group of Brazilian paleontologists led by Max Langer, in a strong riposte to one of Martill’s pieces, wrote
Instead, the Brazilian perspective is that taking fossils out of the country is depleting its scientific resources. Brazil has a growing, but still minor scientific community. For palaeontology, keeping the fossils in the country is a way of promoting scientific opportunities. International partnerships are most welcome, but simply allowing fossils to leave Brazil to be studied by foreign scientists mostly helps science in the other countries.
On the issue of regulation, my own view is an in-between one. An analogy can be made (one which Martill disputes) with wildlife conservation. Many species and natural areas require protection. It is often scientists who are at the forefront of advocating for such protections, even though it will add to the difficulty of doing scientific work on the protected species and habitats. It is true that sometimes such regulations can be over-zealously enforced against scientists (in part because they are so visible and have no economic clout), while ignoring the truly endangering factors. But when scientifically informed and sensibly applied, these protections are welcomed by scientists. And, indeed, Martill describes a formerly good relationship with the Brazilian authorities. I do not know enough about the situation in Brazil to have an informed opinion on whether Brazilian policy and practice on this matter has achieved the right balance to encourage discovery and scientific research, while maintaining proper stewardship of their resources.
Another analogy with wildlife conservation issues is what to do with illegally collected specimens. It is standard for wildlife enforcement agencies to donate such materials to museums or educational institutions (although their value as scientific specimens is lowered by the frequent lack of provenance). More controversial is what to do with seized specimens of commercial, but no scientific, value. For example, some advocate the destruction of seized elephant ivory, while others argue that that only drives up prices, leading to more poaching. In the case of fossils, what scientific value there is in them can be extracted by describing them (again subject to the constraints of knowledge of provenance) and placing them in museums (not, by any means, destroying them!).
Regarding the issue of whether fossils should be exported, I am sympathetic to the need to develop scientific institutions throughout the world, and thus to build local collections and relationships between foreign and local institutions and researchers. This must be tempered by recognition that not all places are in a position to care for important collections or engage in collaboration. In this regard, I would note that Brazil has at least one distinguished student of early snake evolution, Hussam Zaher, and at least some excellent museums, although I do not know enough about the situation with the Crato fossils to have an informed opinion on that specific case. I would point to the recent return of Tiktaalik to the Canadian Museum of Nature after 11 years of study in the U.S., and Costa Rica’s policy of a division of collected specimens among foreign and Costa Rican institutions as policies that seem to be working.
The Brazilian journalist Herton Escobar has conducted an email interview with Martill. In it, Martill’s frustration with being denied further access to his field sites in Brazil is evident. He asserts (correctly, in my opinion) that the scientific value of the fossil is not affected by the legality of its collection (to which, I should add, there is no suggestion that Martill or his colleagues were involved in its collection– he first saw it in Museum Solnhofen during a class field trip); its value is affected by the lack of certain provenance. In response to a question as to whether he had sought a Brazilian collaborator, Martill said he did not. Not seeking a Brazilian collaborator is fair enough– he worked with colleagues in England and Solnhofen, close to him and the fossil, and he had at best difficult personal relationships with Brazilian workers at the time. But Martill also goes off on an odd rant about ethnic and sexual diversity in research groups– not at all what Escobar was asking about.
Haas, G. 1979. On a new snakelike reptile from the Lower Cenomanian of Ein Jabrud, near Jerusalem. Bulletin du Museum national d’Histoire naturelle 4: 51–64.
Haas, G. 1980. Remarks on a new ophiomorph reptile from the lower Cenomanian of Ein Jabrud, Israel. pp. 177–192. In Jacobs, L.L.,
ed., Aspects of Vertebrate History. Museum of Northern Arizona Press, Flagstaff, Arizona.
Martill, D.M., H. Tischlinger, and N.R. Longrich. 2015. A four-legged snake form the Early Cretaceous of Gondwana. Science 349:416-419.
I noticed a comment that said something along the lines of trying to find common ground for a person while despising most of their political beliefs was somewhat like the old Christian aphorism “Love the sinner, hate the sin”.
It’s a slogan that makes most liberal people, even non-atheists, choke a little. But it really deserves some unpacking because I don’t think that the analogy is completely fair. I am not trying to call anyone out on this, I’ve seen it in many places before. In fact I am pretty sure I’ve used it myself.
The reason why “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is a slogan that deservedly gets a lot of scorn and eye-rolling is not really because of what it says but because of what its common association is: i.e. a rather smug self-congratulatory phrase used by bigots in an attempt to paint themselves as reasonable and compassionate, usually seconds after announcing that a percentage of the human race deserves to be treated as second class citizens in all perpetuity for reasons of having been born with different proclivities to their own.
However, in and of itself the idea of being able to discriminate between people and their actions and beliefs is not only a laudable one; but is probably something that all humans do.
For example, if your child comes home from school having gotten themselves into a brawl, even a brawl that is largely their own fault; you are probably not going to stop loving them and cut off all ties with them. Compassion and discrimination are much more important here than absolutism.
Another example, in 2002 Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, and Richard Dawkins worked together on an issue that concerned them: that of the teaching of Creationism in “faith schools” in the UK. They may fundamentally disagree on whether there is a god or not, but clearly their passion for good standards in education is far more important than their philosophical differences.
For some time now politics in the media has fostered a culture of polarizing the “other”, to pretty much the detriment of everyone. If Obama’s years in office have shown the US and the world anything, it’s just how destructive absolute refusal to accommodate and compromise can be. As a non-American, I must confess to just gaping at the non-stop filibustering that has marked his term. The damage done must be hard to quantify.
Anyway, all of this is a long-winded way of saying that one does not have to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. One can find common ground with and compassion for the “sinner”, even if one has serious reservations about the “sin”. There is nothing inherently wrong or illogical with that line of thought.
Of course, none of this means you have to tolerate bigotry, racism or homophobia in your midst; no matter what flowery terms it gets couched in. However, just because some people rather cynically misuse an otherwise fairly sane and astute observation about humanity, doesn’t make it a useless point worthy of consideration. You shouldn’t have to agree with someone on every point to be able to work together on issues that matter to both of you.
