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.
I’m off early this morning for two days of filming. I can’t say much about it now except it involves the evidence for evolution, a group of creationists, and the Grand Canyon (where I’m headed). I’ll endeavor to keep Owl Week going, and Matthew Cobb and Greg Mayer will try to fill in as best they can.
Rest assured that I’ll be defending evolution while I’m gone.
This solar flare took place at 12:45 p.m. Chicago time yesterday. It’s a release of energy from the sun, and this one, though quite impressive, rates only as of “moderate size.” For more information about what causes these, check out the Wikipedia page.
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.1017079&w=425&h=350&fv=videoId%3D1565278972001%26linkBaseURL%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.space.com%252Fvideo%26playerID%3D1403109806001%26playerKey%3DAQ%7E%7E%2CAAAAAFR6xVM%7E%2C85KKOZyvPf6qwFANvqEzo9EFltY58YnJ%26domain%3Dembed%26dynamicStreaming%3Dtrue]
In an article in today’s New York Times, “A sharp rise in retractions prompts calls for reform,” Carl Zimmer documents and analyzes the sharp increase in the proportion of papers retracted in the scientific literature. The trend is disturbing: here it is from 2000-2009:
The article notes:
In October 2011, for example, the journal Nature reported that published retractions had increased tenfold over the past decade, while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent. In 2010 The Journal of Medical Ethics published a study finding the new raft of recent retractions was a mix of misconduct and honest scientific mistakes.
Retractions, of course, reflect not just scientific misconduct, but honest mistakes that were caught later. My suspicion, though, is that most of them involve either misconduct or the publication of quick-and-dirty results that aren’t checked carefully enough. Zimmer posits that, in case of simple error, the wider proliferation of journals online makes those errors easier to spot. To me this is insufficient to explain the huge rise shown above, but that’s just a feeling. (Of course, there have been well-documented cases of fraud.) The root cause of fraudulent or quick-and-dirty publication is increasing pressure to publish and get grants, leading to more anxiety and careerism:
But other forces are more pernicious. To survive professionally, scientists feel the need to publish as many papers as possible, and to get them into high-profile journals. And sometimes they cut corners or even commit misconduct to get there.
To measure this claim, Dr. Fang and Dr. Casadevall looked at the rate of retractions in 17 journals from 2001 to 2010 and compared it with the journals’ “impact factor,” a score based on how often their papers are cited by scientists. The higher a journal’s impact factor, the two editors found, the higher its retraction rate.
The highest “retraction index” in the study went to one of the world’s leading medical journals, The New England Journal of Medicine [NEJM]. In a statement for this article, it questioned the study’s methodology, noting that it considered only papers with abstracts, which are included in a small fraction of studies published in each issue. “Because our denominator was low, the index was high,” the statement said.
The NEJM’s claim makes no sense to me: the size of the denominator (number of papers with abstracts) shouldn’t affect the average number of retractions, only the variance around the mean.
And let me reproduce what Zimmer says about the changing nature of science, a pernicious trend with which I agree 100%:
In such an environment, a high-profile paper can mean the difference between a career in science or leaving the field. “It’s becoming the price of admission,” Dr. Fang said.
The scramble isn’t over once young scientists get a job. “Everyone feels nervous even when they’re successful,” he continued. “They ask, ‘Will this be the beginning of the decline?’ ”
University laboratories count on a steady stream of grants from the government and other sources. The National Institutes of Health accepts a much lower percentage of grant applications today than in earlier decades. [JAC: The same is true at the National Science Foundation, where funding has dropped to about 7% of applications.] At the same time, many universities expect scientists to draw an increasing part of their salaries from grants, and these pressures have influenced how scientists are promoted.
“What people do is they count papers, and they look at the prestige of the journal in which the research is published, and they see how many grant dollars scientists have, and if they don’t have funding, they don’t get promoted,” Dr. Fang said. “It’s not about the quality of the research.”
Dr. Ness likens scientists today to small-business owners, rather than people trying to satisfy their curiosity about how the world works. “You’re marketing and selling to other scientists,” she said. “To the degree you can market and sell your products better, you’re creating the revenue stream to fund your enterprise.”
Indeed. Getting a grant used to be a means to an end: it provided the money to help us do the research to understand nature. There’s now been a curious inversion of priorities, in which the research itself becomes the means to procuring the end: the grant money, needed by universities to pay for their facilities and faculty salaries. All of us at research universities are feeling increasing pressure to get grants. Once, for example, I was offered a job at another university. My own school offered me a raise and some research money to stay, but in return I was asked apply for more grants—this despite the fact that in my entire career I have been funded by a single, multiply-renewed NIH grant that was ample for my research. I didn’t need any more grant money, but my university did!
Zimmer interviews some scientists who suggest solutions (one of which I heartily approve is to judge the quality of work produced by a scientist more than the grant money accrued or the number of publications), including capping the amount of money that can go to a single laboratory. Will these changes be made? I doubt it. The money culture of science seems unstoppable.
The Great Grey Owl, Strix nebulosa, is a large owl found throughout the northern hemisphere:
Its large facial disc helps focus sound, and its feathers are configured so it flies relatively silently, both to avoid alerting prey and, as this amazing BBC video shows, to avoid interfering with its uniquely keen sense of hearing, crucial in detecting prey:
Wikipedia says this about the “snow plunge”:
They then can crash to a snow depth roughly equal to their own body size to grab their prey. Only this species and, more infrequently, other fairly large owls from the Strix genus are known to “snow-plunge” for prey, a habit that is thought to require superb hearing not possessed by all types of owls. Unlike the more versatile eagle and horned owls, Great Gray Owls rely almost fully upon small rodents, with voles being their most important food source.
Here’s another video showing a relatively tame male:
The World Owl Trust has this fascinating information about the eyesight of owls:
Because of their predominantly nocturnal tendencies, owls have evolved several physical adaptations which facilitate catching prey in the dark. All owls have large forward facing eyes giving good stereoscopic vision, vital for judging distances. Indeed, owls have the most forward facing eyes and hence the best stereoscopic vision of all birds. In smaller species the head often appears flattened so that the eyes can be as widely spaced as possible to increase the stereoscopic effect. This is often further enhanced by bobbing or weaving the head to give a differing perspective known as the parallax effect.
The eyes are very large, those of a Snowy Owl weighing as much as our own. They are modified in nocturnal species to improve sensitivity in low light intensities. They are tubular, rather than round, giving a relatively large cornea in proportion to the overall size of the eye and enabling more light to enter the eye. The light passes through the pupil (which can be closed by the iris to a small pinprick in bright light or opened so wide that virtually no iris is visible at night) to the lens. This is large and convex, causing the image to be focused nearer to the lens hence retaining maximum brightness. One drawback is that owls are long sighted and cannot focus on objects which are too close. Tactile bristles around the beak partially compensate for this. The tubular shape also gives a comparatively large retina size which is packed full of light sensitive rods, about 56,000/square mm. in the Tawny Owl. These rods are far more sensitive than cones at low light levels. The phenomenal light gathering properties of the owls eye is further enhanced in many species by a reflective layer behind the retina, called the tapetum lucidum [JAC: cats have this, too!], which reflects back onto the rods any light that may have passed through the retina without hitting one the first time. Tawny owls would appear to have the best developed eyes of all the owls, indeed of all vertebrates, being probably about 100 times more sensitive at low light levels than our own.
As well as rods, all owls possess colour sensitive cones in their eyes. Although having fewer light sensitive cones than humans, they can probably detect colours to some extent. They are certainly not blind in daylight and some, like the Eagle Owl, have better day time vision than us. Our night time vision, however, is better than some diurnal Pygmy Owls.
Owls are unable to move their eyes in the sockets because of the size and tubular shape. To compensate, they have a deceptively long flexible neck which enables them to turn their head 270° in either direction horizontally and at least 90° vertically.
Courtesy of Token Skeptic, we have the Global Atheist Convention’s tribute to Christopher Hitchens, just shown in Melbourne. It’s only 11 minutes long but contains some of his best bon mots and compelling statements. Like the Charlie Rose video below, this is well worth watching.
Alert reader Sigmund has worked his way through an interesting new survey summarizing how both religious and nonreligious people perceive the impact of Christianity on society. He’s summarized the report, and its lessons for nonbelievers, below:
What difference does Christianity make?
by Sigmund
The United States stands apart from most Western nations by its high level of religiosity, with over 78% of Americans describing themselves as Christian of one denomination or another. As a belief system that seeks to teach people the correct or moral way to behave, Christianity should be expected to have an impact various areas of society, and exactly how it does so may be perceived differently depending on whether you’re a Christian or not.
A new survey has recently been published that examines this very question.
Produced by ‘Grey Matter Research and Consulting’, a private research organization that occasionally releases studies on US religiosity, the report is called “What Difference Does Christianity Make? How People Feel the Christian Faith Really Impacts (or Doesn’t Impact) America”
A demographically representative sample of 1000 US adults were asked how they feel the Christian faith impacts 16 different areas, including how it affects whether children are raised with good morals, the less fortunate are helped, and about areas like ethics in the business world, the environment, women and sexuality, and so on.
The sample population included Christians of varying denominations, atheist/agnostics, and well as those of non Christian faiths.
The survey is worth examining for several reasons.
First, because the overwhelming majority of Americans describe themselves as Christian, the overall results are a good approximation for how the US Christian community views the impact of its own teachings.
Probably the most surprising result is that Christianity is seen as having little or no impact on many areas.
“Over half of all Americans (54%) believe the Christian faith really does not impact how people treat the environment. Almost half believe the faith has no impact on ethics in the business world (44%), participation in politics and voting (44%), the amount of substance abuse in society (43%), or differences of opinion being discussed in a civil manner (42%). Christianity is considered to lack any real impact in eight other areas by around one out of three Americans”
Here’s a summary figure from the survey, combining the results from everyone surveyed, religious, Christian, and heathen:
Second, the results allow for a comparison of the different perceptions of Christians and non-Christians, showing that the issue is more complex than a simple black-and-white picture of Christians answering that religion is always positive and nonbelievers asserting the opposite.
For example, when asked about the impact on helping the less fortunate, Christians answer, as expected, assert overwhelmingly (79%) that Christianity has a positive impact. Atheist/agnostics, on the other hand give a similar answer – 67% stating that Christianity had a positive impact in this area. Curiously atheists/agnostics gave Christianity a far more positive score on this question than did members of other religions (only 49% of the latter agreeing that Christianity had a positive impact on helping the less fortunate).
One other compelling point is the inter-denominational differences in opinion within Christian groups – in particular between Protestants (which in the US consists mainly of evangelical Christians and lower numbers of mainstream Protestant groups) and Roman Catholics. Here the results suggest that while the Protestants in general see Christianity as having a positive impact on everything, Catholics hold more nuanced opinions. As illustrated in the final results table in the summary of the report, Catholics, unlike their bishops, see Christianity as having a far more negative impact on sexuality (41%) compared to Protestants (27%)
There are several more intriguing points that can be gleaned from the results, in particular the close agreement between ‘atheist/agnostic’ answers to those of members of ‘other religions’ in many of the questions – a possible sign of underlying shared interests.
The results overall demonstrate that Christianity is perceived to have positive effects on only select areas of society, and even those positives are a mixed bag – confounded by conflicting negative effects on areas such as sexuality. From an atheist perspective, the results are worth noting because they belie the simplistic claim that atheists unthinkingly reject every aspect of religion. In fact, the results demonstrate that atheists, in common with those of non Christian faiths, see some aspects of Christianity as having positive effects (in particular helping the poor, the structural reasons for which we have discussed previously), some aspects having negative effects, and, like the majority of Christians, see little or no effect in many areas.
Don’t miss this. The Charlie Rose show has posted its 53-minute video about Hitchens that was broadcast last Friday. The video, which you can watch here (click on the picture of Hitch), features his friends Martin Amis, James Fenton, Salman Rushdie, and Ian McEwan. It is well worth watching.
Rose is a consummate host, asking incisive questions and then withdrawing, larding the discussion with clips of Hitchens himself. As the talk continues around the table, it’s almost as if these four friends come to new realizations about Hitchens himself.
The brief discussion of religion, staring at about 20 minutes in, is quite interesting, particularly Rushdie’s take. And there’s some intriguing speculation about why Hitchens never wrote fiction. A discussion of his use of booze and smokes begins at 33:50. Finally, at 41 minutes in, they begin a moving discussion of his illness and death—things we haven’t heard before. (McEwan gives an incredibly touching vignette at 44:03.) At 49:15, Amis says, “I saw him die,” and then describes how.
It’s a wonderful memorial, and shows what a rich life the man had.
h/t: Hempenstein
One of the readers pointed out, astutely, that owls are the cats of the bird world. And this juvenile, whose species is unknown to me, surely looks catlike: check out its eyes. (One commenter even said “It’s like a cat with a beak and bird feet.”)
Since we’re all proving to be owl fans, I’ll post one a day for a week, starting with a cute one. But we’ll have some owl biology too.
There are 217 species of owls, all in the bird order Strigiformes. They live on all continents save Antarctica.
Two fun facts about owls:
So identify the species. . .