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.
This, taken yesterday, is from our anonymous reader who lives in a beautiful part of Idaho.
His explanation of the photo:
This is an HDR photograph — high dynamic range, a composite of three photos at different exposures. It would have been impossible otherwise. The full-resolution version of the original image is drop-dead stunning.
Click to enlarge (hint: if you enlarge it a lot, you’ll see the bald eagle nest in the treetops about 10% of the way in from the left border of the photo).
He sent a leaping deer (also taken yesterday) as lagniappe:
The first thing I want to say is that I had nothing to do with this episode, so don’t start calling me the Religion Police. It’s simply one of the many admirable actions of the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) in its incessant battle to keep religion out of the public-school classroom. And that includes college classrooms.
In May of last year, a professor at Erie Community College in Williamsville, New York did a bit of proselytizing toward two of her students. This led to a letter of complaint to the College’s president from attorney Rebecca Markert at the FFRF. To quote the letter (names redacted by request):
It is our information that [name redacted], [subject redacted] professor at Erie Community College’s South Campus, approached a student with a manila envelope during her May 8, 2012 [subject redacted] final, and gave it to him with instructions to open it when he was alone We are informed she did the same to at least one other student in the class. The package contained a bible, which was addressed directly to this student and contained a personalized message on the inside cover and select passages underlines for him to focus on. Please find enclosed pictures of this bible.
[JAC: here are the offending items; I love the fact that the FFRF doesn’t capitalize “bible”!]:
[JAC: I have left the names off the note; the last sentence is “I would love to hear from you.”]
The FFRF’s letter continues:
This student, who practices a different, minority religion, was offended by this offering. He stated that “it made me feel extremely uncomfortable, particularly the wording of her message to me, which I felt was bizarre and unstettling. We are also informed that Professor [name redacted] bans “using the Lord’s name in vain” in her clasroom. Please find enclosed a scanned copy of the flier outlining this rule. [JAC: I’ve left off the professor’s name.]:
The letter continues:
This “gift” from Professor [name redacted] constitutes an official endorsement and advancement of religion over nonreligion, and specifically Christianity over all other faiths, within a public school classroom. Her actions, egregious in their own right, are inevitable are [sic] imputed to Erie Community College. Therefore, the College must take the necessary and appropriate steps to avoid Establishment Clause violations as well as undue pressure on students, who may be non-Christian or nonreligious. Regardless of religious orientation, students have signed up for a math class, not for proselytizing.
The FFRF then goes on to cite case law against professors producing unwarranted religious expression in the classroom, including Piggee v. Carl Sandberg College (“holding that a community college had a right to insist that a part-time cosmetology instruction [sic] refrain from engaging in speech related to her religious beliefs while serving as an instructor”), and Bishop v. Aronov, a case we’ve read about in the Ball State case. In the Piggee case, the court held that the professor’s “passing comments to his class about Jesus Christ, even with his personal disclaimer, constitutes an Establishment Claus concern for the University.” As the FFRF letter notes:
The university directed the professor to discontinue “1) the interjection of religious beliefs and/or preferences during instructional time periods and 2) the optional classes where a ‘Christian perspective’ of an academic topic is delivered.” Id. The court found this decision was valid because “without unnecessarily restricting the academic freedom of a faculty members [sic], the University endeavored to avoid both Establishment Clause violations and undue pressure upon students.” Id. Therefore, to avoid these concerns the court concluded “the University as an employer and educator can direct [the professor] to refrain from expression of religious viewpoints in the classroom and like settings.”
Note again that this is not high school, but a public college, and some of the classes that were found unacceptable were optional. I have still not heard a good argument from readers (or from Larry Moran, who’s getting increasingly exercised on this issue, to the point of arguing that it’s okay for a professor to teach alchemy in a college chemistry class) why, in a country where the separation of Church and state is mandated (we’re not in Canada, Larry!), it’s not okay for high school teachers to inject religion into their classes but it’s okay for professors at state universities to do so. There is no relevant difference here: in both cases it’s government entanglement with religion. There is no Constitutional provision for “academic freedom,” but there is for separating religion from government activities, which include teaching in public schools. Do remember that teachers and professors at public schools are government employees.
At any rate, the Erie case didn’t have to be litigated, for on May 13 the Legal Affairs department at Erie Community College ordered the offending professor “to refrain from communication with students that would conflict with [her] duty to show complete neutrality toward religion or would otherwise promote religion.” They also warned her that if she didn’t follow this directive she’d face “serious disciplinary consequences.” I understand the professor agreed with this sanction.
To my mind, this is a lesser offense than Eric Hedin actually teaching religiously inspired “science”, like intelligent design” in a science class at Ball State University. But in both cases the professor was proselytizing for Christianity in the classroom. Both activities are unconstitutional, and at Erie Community College they realized it. Let’s hope the officials at Ball State University do the same.
This is indeed a slippery slope, and without a watchdog to prevent even the merest proselytizing for faith in public school classes, we’d be on the downhill slide toward a theocracy. Thank Ceiling Cat that the FFRF acts as this watchd-g.
Do consider joining the FFRF (you can do so here). Unlike other secular organizations, they don’t engage in drama—they go about their job quietly, and effectively. To my mind it is the most admirable of the antireligious organizations. And kudos to their team of watchd-g lawyers!
And you thought Refrigerator Cat was tenacious? Have a look at this moggie who opens five—count them, five—doors to get to the outside.
As The Atlanticnotes, where this video appeared (thanks to reader Michael for the alert):
It’s not exactly The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man territory, but this extraordinarily determined and observant feline from Skopje, Macedonia, appears to have some unusual human-world savvy. “Leon the cat,” according to YouTube uploader Marjan Kirovski, performs the trick of opening five doors in a row by jumping up on their handles and pulling them down with his paws until the catches release. Then he bats at each cracked door until it swings open, allowing him his next few steps of freedom.
And your special bonus for Caturday: a moggie who wants water really bad! (From Peter Brock via Emma Hunt via Michelle Beissel):
I usually end the week (a long one this time!) with a kitty, but three readers sent in nice animal photos, so I’ll post those instead. But the cats will come out tomorrow: bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be cats.
First, reader Pete Moulton sent a lovely but grisly scene from nature (click all photos to enlarge):
I’ve attached a photo of a colorful, but ferocious, insect by way of example. This one is an Apiomerus flaviventris, popularly known as a yellow-bellied bee assassin, and, yes, it’s captured a bee, which it’s injecting with the venom that liquefies the bee’s internal organs. The venom is also active against human tissues, and assassin bug (Reduviidae) bites are exceptionally painful.
I asked Pete for the photo information, just in case tech-minded readers wanted to know:
The equipment was all Canon: a T1i body in aperture-priority mode and 100-400mm image-stabilized lens (not my preferred close-up arrangement, but it was really a birding trip), with a +2 diopter screwed onto the front of the lens. Photo taken about 18 inches from the subject at 235mm focal length. The EXIF data say the exposure was F/16 at 1/320 second and ISO 400.
And from reader Adrian, an orca (killer whale) breaching, with the note:
I did some whale watching for a day and was lucky enough to get within a respectful distance of a pod of orcas. Stunning stuff. Truly the best part of the trip. Hearing these animals surface to take a breath was really impressive. Our guide was great as well and gave us a nice potted history of cetacean evolution that would have made you proud.
I have a terrible little camera – no zoom lens, but still managed to bag the following shots quite by blind luck. Both were taken in an around the San Juan islands close to the Canadian / US border.
Finally, owls are rapidly becoming (next to cats, of course) the Official Website Vertebrate™. Here’s a shot from reader John (I’ve cropped his photo a bit to show off the owl):
My Eastern Screech Owl isn’t as good as the National Geographic one featured on WEIT recently, but it’s better than most of my attempts.
As you know, these are hard to see, but we’ve seen several owls here in Denver, CO. I was walking my dog one evening and heard it above me in a tree — a soft, descending trill. I was able to locate a bump on a branch against the evening sky. But by the time I returned with my camera he had already left for his night-hunting.
Next night I found him in exactly the same spot, and sent my son back for the camera. While he held a flashlight, I snapped a few shots. I was surprised the owl didn’t fly away, but the flashlight didn’t appear to bother him much.
He’s in the same tree most times I pass by — even in the day — not in any sort of nest or hole, but just on a cross-branch as close to the trunk as he can get.
Ball State University has agreed to investigate complaints that a course taught by a physics and astronomy professor has crossed a line from being about science to being about Christianity.
The letter was sent to Ball State’s president, Jo Ann Gora, on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the university issued this statement: “The university received a complaint from a third party late yesterday afternoon about content in a specific course offered at Ball State. We take academic rigor and academic integrity very seriously. Having just received these concerns, it is impossible to comment on them at this point. We will explore in depth the issues and concerns raised and take the appropriate actions through our established processes and procedures.”
The university’s statement did not identify the faculty member — Eric Hedin — but his course has been much discussed in recent weeks on science blogs.
The report goes on to describe how this website (based on an anonymous tip) started the controversy, how the FFRF ran with the ball, and how both Larry Moran and P. Z. Myers disagree with my assessment of the unconstitutionality of the course—as well as with the notion of even asking the professor to stop teaching the course. As I recall, P. Z. argued that the professor, who appeared to have been relegated to a low academic status in the department, had been treated properly, and that no other sanctions were necessary.
Thomas Robertson, Hedin’s chair to whom I’d written before complaining about the course (and who brushed me aside like a mosquito), has now issued a statement that doesn’t reflect well on either him or BSU. How can anybody look at the syllabi for Hedin’s courses and not be deeply concerned? The guy is pushing his Christian views in the guise of science!
Coyne said that he wrote to the chair of the physics and astronomy department at Ball State, Thomas Robertson. Coyne wrote that Robertson responded, but had not granted permission for his response to be published. But Coyne said that Robertson confirmed the accuracy of the syllabus and said that the course helped students challenge the ideas they had upon enrolling in college. Coyne said that the course must be stopped because it is a violation of the separation of church and state.
Robertson did not respond to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed. (UPDATE: On Friday morning, after this article was posted, Robertson responded to the questions with an e-mail saying: “The information provided to me by Jerry Coyne contains nothing in addition to information that has been in my possession for some time. The syllabus published was approved by our department Curriculum and Assessment Committee. We review faculty performance regularly through student and peer/chair evaluations. I receive complaints and concerns from students familiar with faculty performance in their classes and investigate when appropriate. Given the totality of information available to me at this time, I do not share the opinions expressed on the web sites cited below. We will continue to monitor our faculty and their course materials and practices and take appropriate action when deemed necessary.”)
That’s a lame and bureaucratic response.
Surprisingly, the National Center for Science Education is lukewarm on the issue:
Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, said he has been watching the emerging debate with interest. Branch said he doesn’t think enough facts are clear to know whether the course has crossed a line. Via e-mail, he called the syllabus and reading list “suggestive but hardly dispositive.” While Branch said that there are academic freedom issues when discussing what professors say in the classroom, “it is possible for a professor’s religious advocacy, even if not breaching the separation of church and state, to go so far as not to be protected by academic freedom considerations.”
At any rate, I can see how there might be some disagreement about whether this issue should be resolved by the courts, but I still fail to understand those who maintain that this is not a violation of the First Amendment. Hedin is a government employee, teaching at a government school, using taxpayer money to push his Christian viewpoint in a science class. How is that not unconscionable entanglement of government with religion? Does the fact that the class is optional, or at a public university instead of a public high school, make it okay? What about those students who sign up for the class and then, as some have experienced, found themselves misled?
I see even less justification for the viewpoints of Larry and P. Z. (P.Z. isn’t as clear on this as Larry) that Hedin should be left alone to teach what he wants. Really? Is it okay for a professor to teach Holocaust denial in a class on European history, or Biblical flood geology in a paleobiology class? We should allow that because of academic freedom? I find that view indefensible.
I know we all agree that Hedin’s class is a bad idea, a bit deceptive, and certainly not accepted “science.” But on what grounds should we allow him to fill students’ minds with Christianity, and at taxpayer expense?
“Academic freedom” is not a license to teach whatever you want. Or does someone disagree? Never in a million years would I think of telling my students that learning evolution may lead to atheism, or that I don’t think there’s a God. Those may be my private views, but even at a private university I don’t promulgate them, for my business is to teach science, not, as an authority figure, to intimidate an audience of students.
At any rate, I’ll be happy if this doesn’t go to court but is simply resolved by BSU telling Hedin that he can’t shove Jesus down the throats of his students. If they don’t do that, then I have no problem with saying that the BSU administration is simply cowardly and unwilling to stand up for good science. And it would make a lie out of the university’s statement that they “take academic rigor and academic integrity very seriously.” They haven’t done that with Hedin.
One goal of the young science of “Darwinian medicine” is to understand how infectious microorganisms might actually manipulate the host’s behavior to facilitate the microorganisms’ own transmission. This is nothing new to evolutionists—we have several examples of larger parasites, like flukeworms or fungi, making their hosts behave in a way that helps the parasite complete its life cycle—but it’s a phenomenon of evolutionary biology that is at once fascinating to contemplate, tricky to understand (what chemicals can a simple parasite produce that can affect the host’s brain or behavior?), and of potential value in treating disease.
Evolutionists have speculated, for example, that cold viruses leave you ambulatory because they have to spread by person-to-person transmission, while the malaria parasite makes you prostrate, because mosquitoes (their vehicle of transmission) are more likely to bite successfully when the victim is laid out and unable to slap the insect.
By “adaptive” in the title, then, I mean “adaptive for the malarial parasite”, which in this case is the the sporozoan Plasmodium falciparum—a protozoan. The parasite infects mosquitoes of the species Anopheles gambiae, and those parasites migrate to the mosquito’s salivary gland, from where they get injected into humans when mosquito bites. They then multiply first in the human liver and then in the red blood cells before being re-ingested by a subsequent mosquito bite. (That’s if they don’t first kill the human!) It’s essential for mosquitoes to bite humans because that’s the only way they can multiply both sexually and asexually and then spread from mosquito to mosquito. Without the infected mosquitoes biting, the parasite goes extinct. Ergo, any adaptation in the parasite that makes its mosquito host bite more readily will be an adaptive trait.
Falciparum malaria, as you may know, is the deadliest form of malaria, and virtually all malarial deaths are caused by this one sporozoan species (770,000 per year!) rather than by other forms of Plasmodium. At present 200 million people have the disease, which is one reason why the Gates Foundation has targeted eradication of the disease in the next decade or so. Such eradication can be achieved by eliminating transmission of the parasite between mosquitoes for three years, something that was achieved in the U.S. by 1951.
Here, from a Wiki Commons site, is a photo of a human blood smear containing P. falciparum gametocytes—the sexually reproductive stage of the parasite, The page notes that “At the peak of infection time, the infected person may carry up to 2 million parasites per microlitre of blood.” That is two million parasites per one-millionth of a liter of blood! I find that hard to believe.
Which brings us to the paper. In a report in the latest PLoS ONE (link and free download below), R. C. Smallegange and colleagues report a simple experiment: they looked at the feeding behavior of mosquitoes that were either uninfected or infected with P. falciparum. It was already known that another species of mosquito (Aedes aegypti) that carries bird malaria (P. gallinaceum) bit guinea pigs more readily when the insects were infected than when uninfected.
What Smallengange did was simply replicate this experiment with two changes: using human rather than guinea pig odor, and using mosquitoes infected (or uninfected) with P. falciparum. The “bioassay” was a nylon sock worn for 20 hours by a Dutch volunteer (a single male who had been shown to be the most attractive to mosquitoes among 47 volunteers exposed to the insects). The socks were put in a cage containing either infected and uninfected mosquitoes, and the landings of each type of mosquito on the sock were recorded (this was done blind, of course).
The results were clear cut: infected mosquitoes landed far more frequently on the sock when infected than when uninfected. Here’s the figure from the paper. No odor, no bites. With human odor, significantly more bites when the mosquitoes were infected than uninfected.
Total number of landings by uninfected (green bars) and P. falciparum infected (red bars) An. gambiae s.s. females in response to no odor (left bars) or human odor (right bars). Error bars represent the standard error of the mean.
I suspect that it would prove real on replication, although the authors should test this with odors of nonhuman animals as well. (It would also behoove them to repeat this experiment with more than one odiferous Dutchman, for the effect is, after all, supposed to be general.) If the result is replicable, it implies that the sporozoan parasite is doing something to the mosquito to make it bite more avidly. That, as I said, is to the parasite’s advantage.
If the parasite is indeed manipulating the mosquito to bite, how does it do this? We don’t know. As far as I know, in fact, in none of the cases of parasites manipulating hosts do we understand the biochemical/physiological basis of the manipulation. The authors report one study of the same mosquito, but infected with the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei, in which infected mosquitoes showed altered expression of 12 proteins expressed in their heads—including proteins possibly involved in the olfactory system. Smallengange et al. suggest that whatever the parasite is doing to the mosquito, it’s possibly doing it by changing the mosquito’s sense of smell, perhaps through changing how the olfactory receptor (OR) proteins bind to airborne stimulants.
It’s fascinating to contemplate how very simple organisms can induce complex behavioral changes in their hosts. It all goes to show the truth of the old dictum, “Evolution is smarter than you are.”
I’m very pleased that posting of some some readers’ photographs has inspired others to send me their nature photos. If you’ve got good ones, send them along, but I reserve the right to choose which ones to publish.
This one clearly made the cut. Reader John Chardine, a professional bird photographer, sent me a picture of a shy North American bird, the Virginia rail (Rallus limicola), adding this note:
I’m a bird photographer- yes they do exist- so thought I would send this calling Virginia Rail to you. They are incredibly secretive birds, sticking to the marsh, but at this time of year you can coax them out with a little song fro your iPhone.
Of course I had to ask John about the iPhone app and how it worked, and he replied:
The iPhone app is called “Birdtunes” and offers up songs and calls for all North American bird species. Lang Elliot- the recordist- provides several different songs and calls for each species. The app is one of several available but I like this one. The idea of course is to play the call of a male of a certain species and have a nearby territory holder react by approaching and calling back. In a sense this is like sending a message directly to the brain of the bird in question so one has to be careful and not over-use the technique. Usually a short burst of sound is enough to bring a territory holder into view. At this time of year these birds are doing this all the time with real territory holders around them, so the additive effect of a recording being played is minimal, again so long as it is done judiciously. Once the bird is in view I then use my professional Canon camera equipment to make the images.
Check out John’s website here; there are some gorgeous images, including birds, other animals, plants, and landscapes (there are several pages for each category).
For a gallery of Virginia rail pictures by other photographers, go here, and a collection of videos is here.
Finally, do not confuse the Virginia rail with the Virginia reel:
