Species without relatives?

November 8, 2011 • 6:33 am

Whenever I get a reader comment that starts with, “I don’t want to be nitpicky. . . “, I know that what follows will totally pick a nit.  Well, that’s usually okay in the interests of accuracy, and I have my own nit to pick this morning. (And do recall that “nitpicking’ has a biological origin: it originally referred to removing lice eggs—”nits”—from people’s hair.)

Today’s New York Times has a piece by Douglas Quenqua on attempts to breed the okapi in captivity.  Okapis are artiodactyls (even-toed mammals) found in central Africa, and there’s only one species (Okapia johnstoni). Here’s a specimen (note the slightly elongated neck):

Okapis are in the mammal family Giraffidae, which contains one other species, the giraffe (Giraffa cameleopardis, of which there is only one species but many [contested] subspecies). The specific name of giraffes, cameleopardis, has a Medieval Latin origin reflecting the fact that giraffes have spots like leopards but faces like camels. See? (camel photo from Shutterstock).

Anyway, the gist of the Times piece is that okapis are skittish, solitary, endngered, and notoriously hard to breed in captivity:

The pairing of two okapis begins with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which keeps a “stud book” that contains genetic information on all okapis in American zoos. Mates are chosen to prevent inbreeding and maximize genetic diversity among calves.

Once they are paired, okapis at the Bronx Zoo are placed in adjoining cages with a multistage sliding door between them. At first, the door is opened just enough to let the animals smell each other. If they don’t respond aggressively, another part of the door is opened after a week or two so they can see each other, then another the next week so they can touch.

“They’re working it out socially,” said Pat Thomas, general curator and associate director of the Bronx Zoo. “We let them tell us when they’re comfortable.”

To prepare female okapis for pregnancy, they are given mock sonograms every day. The idea is to make the procedure, which requires close contact with handlers, less stressful for the animal and less dangerous for the humans.

When it comes time to give birth, the okapi mothers — unlike other animals in the zoo — are left alone, monitored only by a closed-circuit camera.

Breeding M’bura was somewhat simplified by the fact that her parents — Kweli, a 14-year-old female, and Poucet, “a genetically desirable male,” according to Mr. Breheny — had mated before. This time, the two were brought together in March 2010, and M’bura was born on June 2 this year.

But birth is not the end of the husbandry process. Because okapis are easily spooked, curators forgo neonatal exams on the calf. This reduces the likelihood that the mother will refuse to nurse or, worse, try to harm the calf. One way the handlers know the calf is doing well is if it doesn’t defecate for the first four to six weeks.

Live and learn.  But what really bothered me about the piece (and I’m channeling Andy Rooney here) was this statement:

Okapis are the only known relative of the giraffe, but with the silhouette of an antelope.

What? “Only known relative of the giraffe?”  In fact, everything is a known relative of the giraffe, including ferns, alligators, and humans! All species are related to greater or lesser degrees.  The Times statement is like saying that “Jerry is the only known relative of his sister,” despite the existence of my many cousins.

What Quenqua meant, of course, is that okapis are the closest living relative of the giraffe, a statement that’s accurate.

What are the next closest relatives? Guess. It’s not obvious!

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It’s the family Antilocapridae, which contains only a single species, the pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) which is, of course, native to North America, not Africa. It’s the sole living representative of what was a diverse family of artiodactyls during the Pliocene and Miocene.   Here’s a phylogeny from the reference given at the bottom:

Note that giraffes are more closely related to whales than to camels! That would surely confuse many laypeople.

Voilà le pronghorn, a lovely beast:

So that’s my nit, but one that bears on one of the most important findings of evolutionary biology: every species is related to every other.  The Times should correct the sentence.

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Price, S. A., O. R. P. Bininda-Emonds, and J. L.Gittleman. 2005. A complete phylogeny of the whales, dolphins and even-toed hoofed mammals (Cetartiodactyla). Biological Review: 80: 445-473.

Dallas newspaper excludes secular voices

November 8, 2011 • 5:19 am

Over at SocraticMama, Anne Crumpacker (mother of Mason) is asking readers to sign a petition to include a secular voice in the Dallas Morning News (the interview with Mason Crumpacker was a very rare exception). As Anne says,

In my view, part of the problem is that Mason’s little interview, to the best of my knowledge, was the first time in over a year that the Dallas Morning News editorial staff had written about the secular point of view.

A quick look at the “Texas Faith” blog shows the last entry under “Atheists, agnostics and doubters” was published on September 28th, 2010. The title?

TEXAS FAITH: Why do we pray for Christopher Hitchens?

Have a look at that link: it’s totally pro-religion! It’s also a bit offensive, since Hitchens has explicitly requested that people not pray for him.

Newspapers are starting to recognize that any “faith” or “religion” section should include a voice for secularism as well.  If a newspaper has a section devoted to promulgating religion, it should, by all standards of fairness and free discussion, include humanist and secular pieces.  The Washington Post does it. Even the Chicago Tribune does it.  Texas, of course, is Texas, but it’s not immune to reason.

We can make a difference.  Go over to SocraticMama’s website, read her post, sign the petition at the bottom and, if you’re feeling really ambitious, write a letter to the managing editor (and post it in the comments section as well).  Thanks.

The Darwin two-pound coin

November 7, 2011 • 1:12 pm

Brits! Inspect your pocket change!

This would never fly in America, but it’s good to go among our cousins in Britain.  In 2009 they issued a two-pound coin in honor of Darwin Year. (He was born in 1809 and published The Origin in 1859.)  I didn’t know about the coin, and never saw one of these in England. No surprise, as they’re rare: Wikipedia says there are only 3,900,000 in circulation, and another site claims that they’re worth twice their face value, even in used condition.  Here’s one side:

Of course everyone who goes to England already knows that Darwin is on all the ten-pound notes.  Imagine that happening in the U.S.!

h/t: Douglas, who almost dropped his Darwin into a soda machine

Mississippi about to confer the same rights on zygotes and adults

November 7, 2011 • 9:19 am

Tomorrow the good (and bad) citizens of the state of Mississipi will go to the polls to vote on a referendum to amend the state constitution.  Here’s Amendment 26, which will define a fertilized egg, and every other developmental stage of H. sapiens, as a “person.”

Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, “The term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.” This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.

The New York Times notes:

The amendment in Mississippi would ban virtually all abortions, including those resulting from rape or incest. It would bar some birth control methods, including IUDs and “morning-after pills,” which prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. It would also outlaw the destruction of embryos created in laboratories. . .

The approach, granting legal rights to embryos, is fundamentally different from the abortion restrictions that have been adopted in dozens of states. These try to narrow or hamper access to abortions by, for example, sharply restricting the procedures at as early as 20 weeks, requiring women to view ultrasounds of the fetus, curbing insurance coverage and imposing expensive regulations on clinics.

The Mississippi amendment aims to sidestep existing legal battles, simply stating that “the term ‘person’ or ‘persons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof.”

If this passes, and I’m betting it will, abortion will become murder. And the amendment will be appealed all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, if they affirm it, will constitute the effective overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that a woman has a right to an abortion, at least up to the moment the fetus considered “viable.”  The current Court is very conservative, and may well overturn its 38-year-old decision.

Where does this come from? Mostly from religion, of course, for the whole premise is based on the presence of a soul in the zygote. Barring that, it’s just an undifferentiated ball of cells and this kerfuffle would surely not exist—or at least be as widespread.

If a zygote is a “person,” then consider what we already believe about developmental stages:

x

The science/faith wars are over!—or so says Michael Zimmerman

November 7, 2011 • 6:55 am

No matter how much conflict we see between science and faith, there are some people and organizations all too ready to assure us that all is well. This is especially true for those so desperate to get evolution accepted by Americans—and taught in the public schools—that they cozy up to religion, ignoring the fact that faith creates harms far worse than simple creationist intrusions into the science classrooms.  At least those don’t kill anyone.

Such accommodationist outfits and people include BioLogos, The National Center for Science Education, and, of course, Michael Zimmerman, a biologist and administrator at Evergreen State College who’s known for his “Clergy Letter Project,” in which he gets various churches to sign statements that all is well between faith and evolution. (I’ve written about this project before, and characterized it as “harmless at worst.”)

Zimmerman’s still at it.  In a new piece at PuffHo, “Peace breaks out in the war between religion and science,” he argues that the so-called “war” between religion and science is really a “manufactured conflict,” ginned up by both religious fundamentalists and atheists for unspecified ulterior motives. Moreover, he says that the war is over—peace has “broken out”.

What’s the evidence for the peace? He cites several organizations devoted to reconciling science and faith. One is the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which, to its shame, has an 18-year, $5.3 million dollar grant from the Templeton Foundation to “promote a public conversation” between science and faith).  What has this Templeton-Funded AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion done this year? Have a look:

On November 18-19, 2011 the Association of Theological Schools (ATS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are presenting three events at this year’s American Academy of Religion & Society of Biblical Literature (AAR/SBL) Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The two workshop sessions are entitled, “Seminaries and Science: Challenges and Opportunities” and “Seminaries and Science: From Principles to Practice.” During these workshops we will present the benefits of incorporating forefront science into theological education. On Friday night we will be hosting a reception as well. For more information click here.

The program lists six theologians and two scientists.

Zimmerman also cites the National Academy of Sciences which, also to its shame, hosted the award of the Templeton Prize two years ago, and has published an accommodationist pamphlet. Other signs of peace breaking out are Zimmerman’s own Clergy Letter Project, and organizations like BioLogos and the humorously named “Not Mutually Exclusive initiative“of the United Church of Christ.

I question whether the creation of a bunch of initiatives to convince the faithful that they can have both science and Jesus is a sign of “peace breaking out.”  Instead, it’s a sign that the war continues, and that a lot of people are invested in pretending that science and faith don’t conflict.  It’s as if the failed 2000 Camp David summit was a sign that “peace broke out” between Israel and Palestine. If there was already peace, why do we need all this investment of time and money by accommodationists?  It won’t work, because it doesn’t attack the root of the problem: the persistence of faith and superstition in America.

But here’s a scary announcement from Zimmerman:

. . . let me point to an exciting new initiative that is just getting started. Funded by the Templeton Foundation, this project will bring scientists into congregations with the goal of creating meaningful conversations about faith and science. The Templeton Foundation put up $1 million for this initiative, providing up to $30,000 to each of 37 congregations. You can read more about how some of these projects are playing out within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in a good article written by Susan Barreto. In summary, though, it is fair to say that the individuals involved will explore how it is possible to retain faith while appreciating science — without compromising either.

Note the part about  making sure that people “retain their faith”!  Why can’t science organizations concentrate on science instead of theology? It’s not our job to show people what kind of religion they should have. And, if what the Pew Forum says is true, it won’t work anyway:

When asked what they would do if scientists were to disprove a particular religious belief, nearly two-thirds (64%) of people say they would continue to hold to what their religion teaches rather than accept the contrary scientific finding, according to the results of an October 2006 Time magazine poll. Indeed, in a May 2007 Gallup poll, only 14% of those who say they do not believe in evolution cite lack of evidence as the main reason underpinning their views; more people cite their belief in Jesus (19%), God (16%) or religion generally (16%) as their reason for rejecting Darwin’s theory.

Further, Zimmerman doesn’t seem to realize that many faiths don’t just deal with ethereal questions of spirituality, but with facts on the ground. He says this, for instance:

Thousands upon thousands of religious leaders recognize that scientific principles need not be compromised for faith to be honored. These deeply religious individuals know that they turn to religion for questions of spirituality that science neither asks nor answers.

Yes, but those people don’t need to be convinced.  And what about the millions of other followers—including all those Catholics who oppose abortion on the grounds of a nonexistent soul—whose faith not only requires that they compromise scientific principles, but compels them to force their belief on others (viz. Mississippi, tomorrow)?  Insofar as religions are theistic, they intersect, and conflict, with science.

So why do the “science/faith wars” persist? According to Zimmerman, both scientists and religious fundamentalists have an interest in prolonging the war:

And, yes, there are some scientists, who do exactly this [conflate religious fundamentalists with the “vast majority of religious individuals” who, presumably, are willing to acccept science]. They characterize anyone who holds any religious belief in the same fashion as they describe those who are dogmatic in their misunderstanding of science. Some of these scientists believe that science must lead to atheism and, while such a path may have made sense for them, it is demonstrably not the case for large numbers of other scientists and millions of citizens interested in both religion and science.

For those on both ends of the spectrum, the religious fundamentalists who mischaracterize science and the scientists who misconstrue the motives of any who believe in religion, there is value in keeping the war between religion and science alive.

I don’t know of anyone—and that includes the Four Horsemen—who think that “science must lead to atheism.”  Even the most atheistic of us think that science comports better with atheism than with religion, but there are plenty of religious scientists.  So what? They’re still fooling themselves when they do double-blind studies during the week and recite the Nicene Creed on Sunday.

And I don’t think many of us “misconstrue the motives” of those who believe in religion.  There are plenty of motives: fear of death, longing for answers, belonging to a community of like-minded people, and so on.  The motives aren’t the problem; it’s the results of faith.

Zimmerman invokes Ronald Numbers (who always exaggerates, I think, the comity between faith and science) to support his idea that the conflict is a manufactured one:

In fact, however, the “war” may never have been more than a manufactured controversy in the first place. As historian Ronald Numbers so evocatively pointed out in his wonderful book “Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion,” the view that there was longstanding and deep conflict between religion and science was “more propaganda than history.”

It’s not propaganda, for crying out loud.  We see it every day: in the constant fights against religiously-based creationism that spurred the creation of the National Center for Science education, in the political incursions of faith that is palpably anti-science, in the lies about condoms that the Catholic Church tells Africans, and so on. And there are these statistics from a Pew Forum Survey in 2009 (click to enlarge):

The controversy is of course “manufactured” in the sense that it’s a result of human thought and faith.  But it’s not “manufactured” in the sense that scientists and some religious people have decided for other reasons to pretend that there’s a conflict when there isn’t one. Let me tell you what is manufactured:  the idea that there’s no conflict at all, and the pretense that if religious people are told that they just have to tweak their beliefs into some “correct” faith, it would all go away.  That’s an illusion, and I think Zimmerman knows it. But he “manufactures” a false peace because he thinks that’s the way to get the faithful to accept evolution and the rest of science.

h/t: Sigmund

A good place for my book

November 7, 2011 • 5:57 am

This photo was taken by my friend Florian Maderspacher, Senior Reviews Editor of Current Biology, on a visit to China.  Florian notes:  “Chinese edition of WEIT filed between fossils of feathered dinosaurs, seen in the office of Zhou Zhonghe during a recent visit to IVPP [Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology] in Beijing.”

Florian explains:

[Zhou is] the current director of the institute of vertebrate paelaeontology and palaeoanthropology in Beijing where he and his colleagues described several of the unique ancient birds and feathered dinosaurs unique to China. He’s also a very fun guy to talk to.

I visited the institute recently. It’s a phenomenal place, most likely the most impressive place in all of China in terms of scientific output, yet with a very modest feel (and looks) to it, far from the flashiness of the biomedical places. They also have a small associated museum where originals of some of the most amazing fossils (four winged dinosaurs etc) are sitting in poorly lit cabinets.

Here’s a picture of Florian taken when he visited the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on October 10 of this year, giving a presentation on “how to get a paper published.”  Florian’s a big dude, towering over his hosts:

Professor or hobo?

November 6, 2011 • 2:19 pm

It’s sometimes hard to tell the difference, isn’t it? Someone at the University of Toronto has posted ten pictures of scruffy individuals, each of which is either a vagrant or a professor.  You have to guess, and your score is revealed at the end. (Sadly, it doesn’t tell you which is which.) I got only seven out of ten, though one of them is bloody obvious.  Greg Mayer, who found this site on Andrew Sullivan’s blog (Sullivan is okay when not nattering about religion), also got the same score.

e.g.:

If anyone recognizes the professors, post their names below.

Guardian writer foolishly claims that religion answers factual questions

November 6, 2011 • 10:24 am

About two weeks ago Julian Baggini wrote a nice piece for the Guardian explaining why science and religion are incompatible.  Now, over at Comment is Free, Keith Ward—a retired professor of divinity at Oxford and now a research fellow in religious philosophy at London’s Heythorp College—responds in a piece called “Religion answers the factual questions science neglects.”

Now that title is bizarre right off the bat.  What factual questions has religion ever answered?  It turns out that Ward wants to limit “science” to those questions that can be tested in the laboratory:

Many religious statements are naturally construed as statements of fact – Jesus healed the sick, and rose from death, and these are factual claims. So Stephen Gould’s suggestion that religion only deals with value and meaning is incorrect, though it is correct that scientists do not usually deal with such questions.

A huge number of factual claims are not scientifically testable. Many historical and autobiographical claims, for instance, are not repeatable, not publicly observable now or in future, and are not subsumable under any general law. We know that rational answers to many historical questions depend on general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment. There are no history laboratories. Much history, like much religion, is evidence-based, but the evidence is not scientifically tractable.

There is always argument about what “science” means in cases like this. When trying to deal with factual claims about the universe, I would use the definition of “science” as “a combination of empirical investigation and reason.” That is, if you want to see if Thomas Jefferson had six children with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves (he did), there are multiple empirical avenues of research, including letters, accounts of contemporaries, and, of course, DNA evidence (check out much of this evidence at the Monticello website).  There is no notion of “repeatablility” or “direct observation” here, any more than there is about whether birds descended from dinosaurs. What we’re looking for are multiple lines of reliable empirical evidence that converge to the same conclusion.

To say that human history is “not scientifically tractable” is just about as dumb as saying that evolutionary history is not scientifically tractable.  It baffles me when I hear this accusation leveled so often, as if the same methods evolutionists use to uncover the origin of birds differ fundamentally from the methods linguists use to uncover the origin of new languages, or historians use to determine how much Churchhill drank (a lot).

And, of course, even if such denigration of empirical study outside “traditional” science were correct, that doesn’t say anything about the ability of religion to uncover truth, which doesn’t rely on empirical study at all!

I do not see why Baggini says that religions “smuggle in” agency explanations where they do not belong (for instance, claiming that the cosmos exists because it is created by a God with a purpose). That seems to be a perfectly acceptable factual claim that no known scientific technique can answer. The physical sciences do not generally talk about non-physical and non-law-like facts such as creation by God. That does not mean that such questions are meaningless, or that there are not both rational and silly ways of answering them.

Saying that God created the universe is no more a “perfectly acceptable factual claim” than is “the universe was created by a giant turtle” or “invisible and undetectable fairies move the pistons of my car.”  A factual claim is “acceptable” when it is both testable and doesn’t violently contradict what we know of the world.  And if “no known scientific technique” can answer the question of whether some deistic act ultimately stated the universe, then, contra Ward, there is no “rational” way to answer such a question. 

But not all facts are scientific facts – the claim that I was in Oxford last night, unseen by anyone, will occur in no scientific paper, but it is a hard fact. So it is with the miracles of Jesus, with the creation of the cosmos and with its end. The interesting question is not whether religion is compatible with science, but whether there are important factual questions – and some important non-factual questions, too, such as moral ones – with which the physical sciences do not usually deal. The answer seems pretty obvious, without trying to manufacture sharp and artificial distinctions between “hows” and “whys”.

No, not all facts are “scientific facts” in the sense that a). they’re investigated by scientists, b). they’re studied in the laboratory, c). there has to be “repeatability” in the scientific sense; that is, you get the same result when you do the same experiment.  But all “facts” must be empirical facts, susceptible to empirical investigation, confirmation by several lines of evidence, and the possibility that the claim can be falsified.  That goes for the claim that Ward was in Oxford the night before he wrote this.  There are many ways to investigate that question, including eyewitness accounts, travel receipts, videos, and so on.

This kind of denigration of “science”—with science defined so narrowly that it comprises only “the things that laboratory scientists do”—takes place for only one reason: to justify religion.  But Ward’s line of analysis is so palpably weak that I’m surprised anybody would accept it.  According to his definition, much of evolutionary biology isn’t science because the subjects are “not publicly observable now or in future, and are not subsumable under any general law.”

I challenge Ward to give me just one reasonably well established fact about the world that comes from “general philosophical views, moral views, personal experience and judgment” without any verifiable empirical input.