Evidence that modern humans left Africa much earlier than we thought

July 12, 2024 • 11:45 am

The skein of human migrations out of Africa is quite tangled.  We of course evolved in Africa, splitting off from the lineage leading to bonobos and chimps about 5-6 million years ago (mya). The first Homo foray out of Africa was probably Homo erectus, which might have left about 1.75 mya and then spread all the way to eastern Asia by 1.5 mya. Then they died off for reasons unknown. (All of this is tentative and subject to revision after future research.)

Our ancestors also split off from a lineage destined to leave again, at various times estimated from 500,000 years ago to 200,000 years ago. That lineage split into the sister subspecies Neanderthals and Denisovans (I consider them subspecies of Homo sapiens), and perhaps into the tiny species H. floresiensis, which lived on the Indonesian island of Flores (dating is wonky here).

The conventional wisdom is that all of these subspecies and species went extinct until “modern” Homo sapiens made its Big Exit into Eurasia about 50,000-60,000 years ago, proceeding to colonize the world.  Now, as Carl Zimmer reports in the NYT (click headline below or find article archived here)  there’s increasing evidence that modern H. sapiens might have left Africa a lot longer ago: about 250,000 years ago. That’s a substantial revision of our migration out of Africa.

I’ve indented excerpts from the article:

Several new studies, including one published on Thursday, argue that the timeline was wrong. According to new data, several waves of modern humans began leaving the continent about 250,000 years ago.

“It wasn’t a single out-of-Africa migration,” said Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. “There have been lots of migrations out of Africa at different time periods.”

Those earlier migrations went largely overlooked until now, Dr. Tishkoff said, because the people who moved did not leave a clear fossil record of their existence, nor did living people inherit their DNA.

And here’s the evidence that modern H. sapiens left Africa a lot earlier than we think:

Dr. Paabo’s team also discovered that living, non-African people carry fragments of Neanderthal DNA, a signature of interbreeding from long ago. In May, a team of researchers estimated that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred during a short period of time, between 47,000 and 40,000 years ago.

But some Neanderthal DNA does not fit into this neat picture. The Neanderthal Y chromosome, for example, is more similar to the Y chromosome found in living humans than it is to the rest of the Neanderthal genome.

In 2020, researchers offered an explanation: Neanderthal males inherited a new Y chromosome from humans between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago. But that would have made sense only if a wave of Africans had expanded out of the continent much earlier than scientists had thought.

Researchers have recently found evidence for such an early wave in the genomes of living Africans.

Dr. Tishkoff and her colleagues compared the genome of a 122,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil with the genomes of 180 people from 12 populations across Africa. Previous studies had found no sign of Neanderthal DNA in African genomes. But Dr. Tishkoff’s group detected tiny pieces of Neanderthal-like DNA scattered across all 12 of the populations they studied.

When they examined the size and sequence of those genetic fragments, they concluded that Neanderthals inherited them from early Africans. That meant an early wave of Africans expanded into Europe or Asia about 250,000 years ago and interbred with Neanderthals.

This conclusion depends critically not just on the dating of the Y chromosome and other bits of DNA, but also on the date of the migration of the Neanderthal/Denisovan lineage out of Africa. If, for example, the Neanderthal lineage had exchanged genes with the modern H. sapiens lineage in Africa between 370,000 and 250,000 years ago, and THEN the Neanderthal lineage migrated to Europe, we wouldn’t need to invoke an earlier migration of modern humans out of Africa.  I trust that the dating of the Neanderthal migration out of Africa (600,000 years ago or so) is sufficiently accurate that the scenario I invoked wouldn’t have happened. But as far as I can see, the date of Neanderthal migration out of Africa is contested. I’ll punt and take the attitude that “Popppa knows best” since Tischkoff and Paabo are both excellent researchers.

There’s also another study suggesting early migration out of Africa:

Another group of researchers — led by Joshua Akey, a professor of genomics at Princeton University — tackled the same question with its own statistical method. After comparing the genomes of 2,000 people from across the world with three Neanderthal genomes, they reached the same conclusion.

As Dr. Akey and his colleagues reported on Thursday, modern humans expanded out of Africa and interbred with Neanderthals between 200,000 and 250,000 years ago.

But Dr. Akey’s team also found evidence for yet another early wave. By comparing the genomes of young and old Neanderthal fossils, they concluded that another group of people migrated from Africa between 120,000 and 100,000 years ago.

As Steve Gould once said, he always prepared for his class on human evolution by throwing away all his notes from the previous year’s lecture and rewriting his spiel.  This is how fast things change, particularly now that Paabo and colleagues pioneered the study of hominin fossil DNA.

One question remains:  if modern H. sapiens really did leave Africa between 370,000 and 100,000 years ago, what happened to them?  One thing we do know for sure from copious DNA and skeletal and artifact dating is that all modern humans descended from a group of ancestors that left Africa around 60,000 years ago. There’s very little doubt about that.

This means that those earlier migrants didn’t leave descendants; they went extinct and are ex-hominins, singing with the choir invisible. What happened? The article suggests that “African populations built up cultural knowledge that led them to make new inventions, like arrows, and adapt to new places more successfully.”  The older H. sapiens then would have been outcompeted or even killed off by the new arrivals. As usual, we don’t know, nor do we know why the Neanderthals and Denisovans (or, for that matter Homo erectus) went extinct.

It’s a good thing I’ve stopped teaching my lecture on human evolution (I got only 1.5 hours on this in my short Evolution segment), as I’d have trouble keeping up with these changes.  There are few human remains and dating is imperfect, so what’s sure to happen is that the story above is likely to be revised—except for the part that all living humans are brothers and sisters who evolved from a band of ancestors who left Africa a few tens of thousands of years ago.

*********************

Here’s a “classic” Neanderthal skull from Wikipedia, labeled this way:

La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 (“The Old Man”) is an almost-complete male Neanderthal skeleton discovered in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France by A. and J. Bouyssonie, and L. Bardon in 1908. The individual was about 40 years of age at the time of his death. He was in bad health, having lost most of his teeth and suffering from bone resorption in the mandible and advanced arthritis.

Neanderthals didn’t live very long. Poor guy!

Luna04, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In Science, fifteen New Zealand researchers criticize the initiative to teach indigenous “ways of knowing” as science

July 12, 2024 • 9:30 am

Two letters have just been published in Science signed by a total of 15 scientists, all criticizing the first article below (published in Science last February), a piece arguing for teaching indigenous knowledge (including N.Z.’s version, Mātauranga Māori) alongside science in the science classroom. (Click to read.)  Now the authors, after being criticized, denied that they really meant what they argued in this paper:

I also published a post in February criticizing Black and Tylianakis’s paper, and was pretty hard on their claims, which deserved such criticism. Science clearly published their article as part of the performative wokeness infecting major science journals, and it was full of assertions and short on facts. It was, in reality, an attempt to sacralize indigenous knowledge—a dangerous gambit.  Some quotes from my critique:

In the end, this article appears to me to be a DEI-ish contribution: something published to advance “the authority of the sacred victim” by arguing that indigenous knowledge and ways to attain it is just as good as modern (sometimes called “Western” ) science, and that teaching it will empower the oppressed. Here’s one line from the paper supporting my hypothesis:

In addition to a suite of known benefits to Indigenous students, we see the potential for all students to benefit from exposure to Indigenous knowledge, alongside a science curriculum, as a way of fostering sustainability and environmental integrity.

In other words, the argument here is really meant to buttress the self image of indigenous people, not to buttress science. You can see this because there are hardly any examples given to support their thesis. Instead, there is a lot of palaver and evidence-free argument, as well as both tedious and tendentious writing.

The publication of this paper is somewhat of a travesty, for it shows that the AAAS is becoming as woke as New Zealand, where the claim that you should NOT teach MM in the science classroom can get you fired!  If this kind of stuff continues, the authoritarians will eventually shut down anybody who makes counterarguments, as is happening in New Zealand, where counterspeech against the “scientific” nature of MM is demonized and punishable.  Did the AAAS[ The American Association for the Advancement of Science] even get critical reviewers for this piece?

But it’s especially important for Kiwis themselves to push back on this paper, for authors Black and Tylianakis are both from New Zealand, and their paper could be seen as supporting the widespread but misleading idea that indigenous knowledge, at least in New Zealand but probably everywhere else, is coequal to modern science.

The first paper pushing back, which you can access by clicking the screenshot below, has fourteen authors, including all but one of the Auckland University researchers who signed the Listener Letter on science—the letter that ignited this conflagration. In fact, that letter, which argued that indigenous knowledge in NZ had a place in the classroom, but not the science classroom, is quite similar to what you’ll read below (click headline to read). But you can’t attack this stuff too often, for the postmodern-derived claim that “all ways of knowing are equal” must be debunked before it destroys New Zealand science (it’s already done a job on social science and the humanities).

Here’s Ahdar et al.’s argument against what Kiwis, in their drive to sacralize Māori language, call mana ōrite, defined below. An excerpt (I’ve highlighted the money quote):

We agree with A. Black and J. M. Tylianakis (“Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science,” Policy Forum, 9 February, p. 592) that the arguments of those supporting the “mana ōrite” policy (translated as “equal status” or “equal value”) between Indigenous knowledge and science are largely based on ethics and morals; that science is typically considered discrete from nonscience academic disciplines, whereas Indigenous knowledge lacks such divisions; and that science and Indigenous knowledge systems are distinct in “methodologies, philosophies, worldview, and modes of transmission.” However, such distinctions (1, 2) are precisely why Indigenous knowledge—although it contains empirical and cultural knowledge of great value—should be taught as a distinct subject or as aspects of other subjects, not “alongside” science in science classes, as Black and Tylianakis suggest.

Black and Tylianakis fail to consider how to resolve conflicts between science and Indigenous knowledge in empirical content or methodology in the classroom. In Indigenous knowledge, empirical observations generally merge seamlessly with, and gain an authority not to be challenged from, spiritual and religious beliefs (3–5). Therefore, incorporating such observations into science curricula has led to, and will continue to lead to, the use of spiritual concepts in science classrooms (6).

Placing science and Indigenous knowledge alongside each other does disservice to the coherence and understanding of both, and leading Māori scholars have cautioned against such comparisons (7, 8). Black and Tylianakis do not explain how science students might reconcile content from these two very distinct systems when taught as being of “equal value,” nor do they acknowledge that teaching Indigenous knowledge alongside science greatly limits the delivery of science curricula that meet international academic disciplinary standards.

 

Note how the authors use the Dennett-ian strategy of first showing where they agree with the paper they’re criticizing before they start hurling the brickbats.

And indeed, as I’ve written before, attempts to equate MM with science has lead to confusing lessons incorporating Māori myths and the concept of “mauri”, or vitalism, into the science classroom (see here, here, and the many posts here). What’s new in this letter is the authors’ digging for the roots of mana ōrite, which, they say, lie in social constructivism (my bolding):

The mana ōrite policy (9) states that Indigenous knowledge and science should be given equal status, but equating such vastly different systems is meaningless and based on the relativist concept of social constructivism. This ideology posits that all knowledge depends entirely on its cultural context, which it cannot transcend, and therefore epistemic claims from one culture cannot challenge claims from another. This is inherently antiscience; science is open to all to pursue and critique, and it depends on every claim being open to challenge. Framing the mana ōrite policy in terms of “relative value” or “relative status” is the problem, not the solution, because it tips the discussion into an emotive moral judgment that purports to say something about the merit of cultural differences. Under this view, the contest of ideas becomes a battle of cultural and political power rather than a matter of empirical evidence and theoretical coherence.

Their letter goes on to say that because science is based on testing factual claims, but indigenous knowledge, in contrast, comes with a heavy dose of spirituality and other nonfactual stuff, it shouldn’t be taught in the science class, or construed as a form of “knowledge”.  This parallels the Listener letter, but this and Matzke’s letter are more important because they are peer-reviewed letters in one of the world’s most prestigious science journals. It goes without saying that the letter could not have been publishe in New Zealand, and that’s very sad.

There’s another critique as well: a single-authored paper written by American Nick Matzke, now working at Auckland Uni. Nick may be familiar to you as a prolific author on The Panda’s Thumb website, and as a fighter against creationism as a member of the National Center for Science Education. Nick is now battling the Kiwi version of creationism: the spiritual/religious aspects of MM.  He’s argued against the vitalism of MM (“mauri“) in a video (see here), but in this letter, again peer reviewed, he criticizes the vitalism of New Zealand’s indigenous “ways of knowing”. Letters in Science have considerable clout, though of course Nick and the other 14 authors are up against powerful ideological and political forces in their own country and university. (Click to read.)

Nick points out several examples where vitalism (“mauri“), a supernatural concept, remains in the Kiwi science curriculum—at the behest of NZ’s Ministry of Education:

A. Black and J. M. Tylianakis (“Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science,” Policy Forum, 9 February, p. 592) give an overly rosy picture of New Zealand’s policy of “mana ōrite,” or equal status for mātauranga Māori, in science education, which they say teaches Indigenous knowledge “alongside” science rather than “as” science. They suggest that this policy avoids problems such as teaching creationist myths in science class. However, the New Zealand Ministry of Education placed supernatural content directly into science and math curricula with no clarification that it was nonscientific material.

The chemistry curriculum required students to “recognise that mauri is present in all matter which exists as particles held together by attractive forces” (1), with a glossary that defined mauri as “[t]he vital essence, life force of everything.” This concept, known as vitalism, has long been debunked (2). Teaching concepts that directly conflict with empirical evidence undermines the goals of science education. Dozens of science teachers opposed the inclusion of mauri in the chemistry curriculum, but the Ministry steamrolled their objections, citing “the requirement for mana ōrite” (1). The objective was only removed after 18 months of controversy, at a time when the 2023 election was looming. The Ministry, ignoring vitalism’s evidentiary flaws, claimed the reversal occurred because inserting concepts such as mauri into science curricula ran the “risk of recolonisation” (3), despite the fact that mana ōrite’s entire rationale was decolonization.

Problems remain in 2024. Despite its removal from exam objectives, mauri remains in the chemistry curriculum, in which students are told, “Revisit the concept of mauri” (4). This learning can sit beside learnings in atomic theory” (5), and the Gulf Innovation Fund Together website (4) says that mauri is “the force that interpenetrates all things to bind and knit them together.” A math qualification on practical problems of “life in… the Pacific” asks trigonometry students to calculate how much flaxen rope the demigod Maui made to lasso the Sun, slowing it to lengthen the day (6). The text of the exercise is studiously agnostic about the literal truth of this story, describing it as a “narrative.” Black and Tylianakis might categorize this as teaching Indigenous knowledge alongside math, but teachers face the prospect of strife among students over whether it is appropriate to call it knowledge or myth and if students of various backgrounds are expected to defend or disclaim its verity.

The letter (limited to about 300 words) goes on to emphasize that the Ministry’s current policy puts supernatural content in the science classroom, and suggests, as is only sensible, that MM, if it’s to be taught as a whole, has to be in a “nonscience class or unit” that discusses the content and diversity of Māori beliefs.  Nick also wrote a brief backstory about this on The Panda’s Thumb website and makes two minor corrections of his letter.

Now of course the original authors, Amanda Black and Jason Tylianakis, got to respond, and they were given more words than the critics.  Click below to see their reply:

I’m biased, of course, but I consider this response very weak, as it continues to defend the nonscientific aspects of MM, including mauri, as forms of “knowledge”.  In fact, I don’t think that they realize that all verifications of truths about the world, whether they come from science or sociology, are examples of what I call “science construed broadly”.  Here are some statements that weaken their response (my own comments are flush left):

Indigenous knowledge must retain its integrity as a separate, parallel knowledge system. Analogous to philosophy, Indigenous knowledge should be taught alongside science as a separate form of knowledge, not within the science curriculum.

Indigenous “ways of knowing” such as MM are not “parallel knowledge systems”. In fact, MM is not a “knowledge system” at all, for, although it does contain some empirical knowledge, it’s also laden with religion, tradition, superstition, ethics, social strictures, legend, vitalism, and so on.  This gemisch cannot be a knowledge system, though later on the authors try to argue that, for example, vitalism is also “knowledge.” Further, philosophy, a useful discipline when applied to real issues, is not a “way of knowing” but a “way of thinking”.  Philosophers can verify what’s true about the world only in the same way scientists do: via observation, replication, hypothesis testing, pervasive doubt, experiments, and so on, And that’s part of science, not philosophy. But wait! There’s more!

Matzke demotes Indigenous knowledge to a “belief system” rather than knowledge, and Ahdar et al. dispute the idea that “epistemic claims from one culture cannot challenge claims from another.” Philosophy, arts, and other social sciences and humanities are all valuable forms of knowledge that sit alongside science in the curriculum without positivist science proofs of their “verity,” as Matzke requires of Indigenous knowledge. We thus agree with scholars who have cautioned against using science to test nonscience concepts from other knowledge systems (2). (Ahdar et al. claim to agree with such scholars as well but contradict themselves.)

No, philosophy, art and much of the humanities are “ways of seeing,” not “ways of knowing”. Knowledge or empirical truth, defined as “justified true belief” accepted by most rational people, cannot be attained without using the methods of science. If you make a claim about what’s true in the world, then yes, you need science construed broadly to test that claim.  These authors are so immersed in their “all knowledge systems are true in their own way” mantra that they don’t seem to even know what science is.

Here they try to shoehorn mauri, indisputably a form of vitalism and supernaturalism, into science:

 The concept of mauri, a key feature in the Māori worldview, has been frequently explored within the peer-reviewed scientific literature as a measure of ecological resilience (2) without being absorbed by or undermining science. Similar to the concept of health (4, 5), mauri is not directly measurable, but both health and mauri can be operationalized through quantifiable indicators, and both concepts are useful for communicating societal and environmental well-being to the public. Nonscience concepts (assuming that they are not presented as science) can have value for connecting with communities.

I’m not sure what the sweating authors are trying to say here. What do they mean by “operationalizing vitalism through quantifiable indicators”? If they mean that, then yes, the concept of mauri is testable in the same way that intercessory prayer as a way to cure disease is testable (and of course it’s failed: prayer doesn’t work). I’d put up many dollars if they could find a way to test whether vitalism was operating in nature. The authors’ last statement, that supernaturalism can be valuable in “connecting with communities”, is undoubtedly true, but irrelevant to the argument of these letters.

Here’s another example of their relative ignorance about indigenous knowledge. If they mean what they say below, let them give just ONE EXAMPLE:

Matzke’s concern about “whether it is appropriate to call it knowledge or myth” fails to acknowledge that Indigenous knowledge systems can encode knowledge within apparent myth (2), so neither English term may fit perfectly. Education on Indigenous knowledge would avert such misunderstandings.

Yes, true. Separate the empirical wheat from the supernatural chaff, and then plant the wheat alongside science.  But teaching myths that mix both empirical knowledge and superstition can only confuse students. Are the authors suggesting that teachers tell students that part of MM isn’t really true?  If so, they should admit that (this would get them into big-time trouble), but they should also clarify what they mean by this:

We believe that harm arises when nonscience is presented as science, and we remain unconvinced that the intent of the mana ōrite initiative (8) is to present Indigenous knowledge and culture as science or to compete with scientific concepts in science classes.

Well, ante up, Drs. Black and Tilianakis! MM is in fact being funded and taught as science, and there are personal penalties levied on those who criticize it.  In the end, Black and Tilianakis admit that MM, which is largely nonscience, should not be “presented as science”. So far, so good. But it’s clear that the mana ōrite initiative is indeed presenting myth and tradition as science and is pitting MM and other forms of indigenous “knowledge” against science.

Kiwis really need to debate this issue: in fact, this is the most important of aspect of science that needs discussing in New Zealand right now.  What a pity it is that this discussion has effectively been banned. Remember Auckland Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater’s promise to hold such a debate three years ago—a promise she never kept?

Readers’ wildlife photos

July 12, 2024 • 8:15 am

Well, I have two new batches of photos, plus one for Sunday that I hope John Avise will send today. But the situation remains desperate: please send in your good wildlife photos.

Today ecologist Susan Harrison helped us out with a new batch of bird photos from Oregon. Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them:

Is it OK to play the call of the wild?

Earlier this summer on Mt. Ashland in Oregon, I heard the distinctive low booming of a male Sooty Grouse (Dendragapus fuliginosus) advertising for a mate.   Having never seen one, I followed the sound until it came from close by—yet he remained invisible.   Finally it dawned on me that the booms came from high above.   These birds, it seems, sing from well-hidden perches atop tall conifers.

What could I do but return at dawn the next day and play the whinnying sound of an interested female Sooty Grouse?   A crashing sound then announced the male’s sudden descent to a lower branch, where he stared at me, booming and puffing out his yellow air sacs and red eyebrows, for several minutes.   Wow!!!

Displaying male Sooty Grouse:

This was my first time using a small portable loudspeaker to “play back” a bird’s sounds, as guides have done on the guided bird trips I’ve taken.  Playback is debated in the birding community.  Some believe it should be avoided entirely because it’s stressful to birds, while others advocate using it judiciously – for example, not using it in heavily birded areas, too close to the bird’s nest, or too loudly or incessantly.  For now I’ve adopted the latter approach, consistent with the American Birding Association’s Code of Birding Ethics.

Here are some other birds I photographed this summer in Oregon with the help of judicious playback.   Some of these species are pretty elusive.

Mountain Quail (Oreortyx pictus):

MacGillivray’s Warbler (Geothlypis tolmei):

Black Rosy-Finch (Leucostricte atrata):

Yellow-breasted Chat (Icteria virens):

Canyon Wren (Catherpes mexicanus):

Rock Wren (Salpinctes obsoletus):

Golden-crowned Kinglet (Regulus satrapa):

Hutton’s Vireo (Vireo huttoni):

Lazuli Bunting (Passerina amoena):

Steens Mountain, OR, the scene of some of these photos:

Friday: Hili dialogue

July 12, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday July 12, 2024, and National French Fry Day. When you want fries, you want a LOT of fries.  Here’s a big cone of fries (it’s actually a “small” one) of “patats” that I got not long ago in Amsterdam. I ordered mayo, the traditional topping as the sauce.  If you haven’t tried fries with mayo, do make an effort. I used to think the combination would be disgusting, but it’s delicious!

It’s also National Michelada Day (beer and tomato juice; don’t knock it till you’ve tried it), National Pecan Pie Day (the BEST pie!), World Kebab Day, and National Eat Your Jell-O Day (when’s the last time you had Jell-O?).

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first, and this is a sad one. Shelly Duvall died at 75.

Shelley Duvall, whose lithesome features and quirky screen personality made her one of the biggest film stars of the 1970s, appearing in a string of movies by the director Robert Altman and, perhaps most memorably, opposite Jack Nicholson in “The Shining,” died on Thursday at her home in Blanco, Texas. She was 75.

A family spokesman said the cause was complications of diabetes.

Ms. Duvall wasn’t planning on a film career when she met Mr. Altman while he was filming “Brewster McCloud” (1970); she had thrown a party to sell her husband’s artwork, and members of his film crew were in attendance. Taken with her, they introduced her to Mr. Altman, a director with his own reputation for oddball movies and offbeat casting. He immediately asked her to join the cast, despite her lack of training.

She said yes — and went on to appear in an unbroken string of five more movies directed by Mr. Altman: “McCabe and Mrs. Miller” (1971), “Thieves Like Us” (1974), “Nashville” (1975), “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson” (1976) and “Three Women” (1977). She also starred as Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams in “Popeye” (1980).

“I thought: boy, if it’s this easy, why doesn’t everybody act?” she told The New York Times in April.

Her work with Mr. Altman cemented Ms. Duvall’s career; with her gossamer frame and toothy smile, she was the go-to actress for any role that called for an out-of-the-ordinary performance.

She dated Paul Simon and Ringo Starr. She hosted “Saturday Night Live” in 1977. Photos of Ms. Duvall, often wearing a draping, sheer dress and holding a cigarette almost as long and thin as she was, became an enduring image of 1970s celebrity life.

But it was her appearance as Wendy Torrance in “The Shining” (1980) that, for many viewers, remains her most memorable role. In that movie, she and her husband, Jack (Mr. Nicholson), along with their son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), move into a mountainside hotel as caretakers while it is shut down for the winter.

Here’s director Robert Altman explaining the casting. There was NOBODY more suited to play Olive Oyl (note that Gilda Radner was the first choice). Sound up.

@shelleyduvallxo

Shoutout to Robert Altman for pushing Shelley to be Olive Oyl, which turned into the role of a lifetime! 👏🏻 #shelleyduvall #moviefacts #cinema #movieclips #popeye #helloimshelleyduvall #interview

♬ original sound – Shelley Duvall Archive

*This was a predictable NYT op-ed by the editorial board (not that I disagee): “Donald Trump is unfit to lead” (archived here).

The Republican Party once pursued electoral power in service to solutions for such problems, to building “the shining city on a hill,” as Ronald Reagan liked to say. Its vision of the United States — embodied in principled public servants like George H.W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney — was rooted in the values of freedom, sacrifice, individual responsibility and the common good. The party’s conception of those values was reflected in its longstanding conservative policy agenda, and today many Republicans set aside their concerns about Mr. Trump because of his positions on immigration, trade and taxes. But the stakes of this election are not fundamentally about policy disagreements. The stakes are more foundational: what qualities matter most in America’s president and commander in chief.

Mr. Trump has shown a character unworthy of the responsibilities of the presidency. He has demonstrated an utter lack of respect for the Constitution, the rule of law and the American people. Instead of a cogent vision for the country’s future, Mr. Trump is animated by a thirst for political power: to use the levers of government to advance his interests, satisfy his impulses and exact retribution against those who he thinks have wronged him.

He is, quite simply, unfit to lead.

The Democrats are rightly engaged in their own debate about whether President Biden is the right person to carry the party’s nomination into the election, given widespread concerns among voters about his age-related fitness. This debate is so intense because of legitimate concerns that Mr. Trump may present a danger to the country, its strength, security and national character — and that a compelling Democratic alternative is the only thing that would prevent his return to power. It is a national tragedy that the Republicans have failed to have a similar debate about the manifest moral and temperamental unfitness of their standard-bearer, instead setting aside their longstanding values, closing ranks and choosing to overlook what those who worked most closely with the former president have described as his systematic dishonesty, corruption, cruelty and incompetence.

That task now falls to the American people. We urge voters to see the dangers of a second Trump term clearly and to reject it. The stakes and significance of the presidency demand a person who has essential qualities and values to earn our trust, and on each one, Donald Trump fails.

This is also a call for Biden to step down, of course, something the NYT has already called for.

*You’ve probably heard that actor Alec Baldwin is on trial for shooting two people (and killing the cinematographer) during the filiming of the movie “Rust.” He was handed a gun that the armorer assured him it was not loaded. It was.  Now he’s on trial for involuntary manslaughter. I never understood why, since the responsibility for making sure the gun wasn’t loaded was not his. At first they weren’t going to try him, but now he faces jail time (the armorer got only 18 months).  Over at the Free Press, Kat Rosenfield explains why this trial is misguided.

What happened that day, in October 2021, was a horrible tragedy, but also unambiguously an accident—and yet, Baldwin has been subjected to an unusually zealous prosecution by New Mexico authorities. It’s a case that illuminates just how complex things can get when criminal justice intersects with a person’s celebrity status.

The prosecution’s motivations in the case are myriad, including a grudge on the part of the district attorney who initially brought charges against Baldwin. In a recent New York Times deep dive, Mary Carmack-Altwies said her decision was influenced by the fact Baldwin gave an interview to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in December 2021 to share his side of the story. She told the Times she found it enraging: “This guy, how dare he?”

If the man on trial were not a celebrity, we might recognize the gross authoritarianism of this: a tragic but accidental death escalated to a felony trial, just because the prosecutor took exception to the defendant’s exercise of his First Amendment rights.

Baldwin may, in fact, still serve jail time, depending on whether a jury finds that he was grossly negligent in his handling of the prop gun. It’s a tenet of basic firearm safety to never point a weapon at anyone, loaded or not. But some movie scenes require guns to be plausibly aimed at people, so it’s also a tenet to have a crew member on set whose sole job it is to make sure none of the weapons contain live ammunition.

On the set of Rust, that person was armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed—who first allowed real bullets to be mixed with the set’s dummy rounds, then allowed one of those bullets to make it into the chamber of the revolver she handed to Alec Baldwin, assuring him as she did that it wasn’t loaded.

This spring, Gutierrez-Reed was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to 18 months in prison, but the media’s treatment of her has been tempered with sympathy, invariably mentioning how inexperienced she was, how overworked and underpaid. But Gutierrez-Reed wasn’t famous. Alec Baldwin is, which puts him at a disadvantage in a world where celebrity trials are treated like a spectator sport.

I still don’t see why aiming a gun that someone is paid to ensure is unloaded can be considered a felony, especially because guns are aimed in movies all the time. Perhaps some lawyer can explain.

*John McWhorter’s new op-ed explains: “What a linguist hears when Biden speaks.” (h/t Peggy).

Biden has never been the most starchy of orators, but many observers, myself included, were struck by how far his sentences had strayed from the complexities and subtleties he once controlled effortlessly. It is alarming to see someone who is asking to be elected president of the United States — someone who already serves as president of the United States — communicate in such an ineffective manner. But what is actually going on there, linguistically? One way to understand what is happening is to think of it as unraveling.

For all of the attention that the shaggy text flow he slips into at times gets, such as when he seemed to say that he was the first Black vice president, it’s not pidgin-like, and needn’t be alarming. Such a lack of elocution — which Donald Trump is also quite given to — is mainly a symptom of casualness, not pathology. We tend to underestimate the extent to which context, facial expression and intonation clarify the words we speak, including when we are addressing two or three topics at a time within the same stretch of speech.

Other aspects of his speech are more suggestive of unraveling. In his interview last week with George Stephanopoulos, Biden repeatedly used verbless chunks in the place of sentences, with utterances such as “No indication of any serious condition,” “Nobody’s fault, mine” and “Large crowds, overwhelming response, no slipping.” This is hardly unknown in casual speech, but Biden leaned on it a lot given the gravity of the interview. The linguist Ljiljana Progovac has described such inert word sequences as “living fossils” of earlier stages in the development of human language, before people combined those chunks into the flowing, complex sentences we are familiar with.

In other words, Biden is linguistically de-evolving. A bit more:

Biden’s control of suffixes also appears to be slipping. Most discussed has been his “I did the goodest job as I know I can do,” which suggested that he had forgotten that “good” does not take the superlative suffix but rather the modifier “best.” I’m pretty sure I hear him early in the interview saying “preparance” rather than “preparation.” That, too, made me think of pidgins, which have very few or even no suffixes.

Added to this is Biden seeming more generally to lose sight of the social levels of the language. Pidgins do not usually have “high” and “low” vocabulary or sentence styles. In the same interview Biden tossed off “Whatever the hell it is,” while in another interview he said “I’ll be damned if I let this S.O. — excuse me, this president …” Yes, Trump lets off the occasional cuss word, and public language these days is much less buttoned up than it used to be. But imagine Barack Obama using this kind of language in such interviews, or, if we grant Biden his salt-of-the-earth Scranton guy image, Bill Clinton.

McWhorter’s summary:

Any one of these examples would have been unremarkable on its own. The issue is that they piled up to such a degree, in contexts in which a more considered style of expression is the order of the day. In particular, they are occurring at the very moment that the president is trying to reassure the nation that he is in complete control of his verbal faculties. Biden was never exactly Churchillian, but even in interviews as recent as four years ago, the contrast to the present is striking.

In the end, informality and a messy imagination are one thing. The rapid decline of complex sentence structure into something even distantly resembling pidgin is another. Pidgins do a basic job but aren’t designed for detail, grace or suasion. Increasingly, Biden’s speech submits to an alarmingly similar judgment.

It’s hard to find any expert: doctor, political observer, and now a linguist, who isn’t worried about Biden’t mental acuity.

*From Bill: A video of a neurologist who assesses Biden’s mentation. She’s very careful and gives lots of caveats, but does conclude that she’s very concerned, that Biden should have a full several-day cognitive test, and that “she wouldn’t be surprised if Biden had a neurocognitive disorder.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,

Hili: When I was little there was a huge old apricot tree here.
A: Unfortunately, we had to cut it down because it was rotten.
In Polish:
Hili: Jak byłam mała to tu była ogromna, stara morela.
Ja: Niestety, trzeba było ją ściąć, bo uschła.

And Szaron, the world’s most affectionate cat, though somewhat blurry:

*******************

From Malcolm; note the grammatical error (it could be remedied by adding “do” to the end of the sentence).

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor via Haiasi Sötnás. It’s an excellent meme:

From Masih: a woman sanctioned for singing:

From Barry: Kay and Peel on advice for a gay wedding:

From Malcolm; miners escape danger. Judging by the jubilation, I think they all escaped.

From my feed. First, look at that proud tail! It must be a Maine Coon:

Watch till the end:

From Bill; have a gander at what Palestinian kids learn in UNRWA schools. And yet the whole world funds UNRWA!

From the Auschwitz Memorial: 7,000 gassed to death in 3 days:

Two tweets from Matthew. The first one shows how diligent he is writing his Crick biography. He paid £8 to get this magazine on eBay, and it was disappointing:

I love these “scale” videos:

How to massage your opossum

July 11, 2024 • 12:30 pm

To end a rough week on a high note, here is  “Crazy Opossum Lady” showing you how to massage your marsupial.

Reader Rosemary sent me this video made by M. E. Pearl. It’s hilarious!  She does this tongue in cheek, of course, but her devotion to these lovely creatures is genuine, and she has many funny videos on possums, always emphasizing that they are harmless (indeed, helpful) and should not be killed.  There are dozens of possum videos on her website.

Do note that opossums do not live very long: as Wikipedia notes:

The Virginia opossum has a maximal lifespan in the wild of only about two years. Even in captivity, opossums live only about four years. The rapid senescence of opossums is thought to reflect the fact that they have few defenses against predators; given that they would have little prospect of living very long regardless, they are not under selective pressure to develop biochemical mechanisms to enable a long lifespan.

Of course, there might be selection to increase the lifespan by evolving antipredator defenses, but given that reproductive senescence may have already evolved, so they lose their ability to reproduce by a certain age (viz,. menopause in human females), those defenses might not include a longer life.

This is one compliant possum.  I hope it enjoyed the massage!

h/t Rosemary

Disgusting capitulation of the year: The University of Windsor gives away the store to pro-Palestinian encampers

July 11, 2024 • 11:15 am

Canada has been proving itself the most spineless country in the world when it comes to dealing with illegal campus activism (or other performative activism). Take, for example, The University of Windsor in Ontario, which until now I thought was a respectable university. They’ve had an encampment for two months, and the students, as usual, made a number of demands before they’d take it down.  But in a sickening display of cowardice, Windsor University made a deal with the students, one in which the University capitulates to a number of ridiculous demands. I receive a copy of what is purported to be the agreement, and will send it to you if you ask (it’s too long to reproduce here). But I’ll put some of the agreements below.

UPDATE: I now realized that the agreement is linked to in the CBC report (here), so I don’t need to send it to you. But the copy I received is very slightly different from that at the CBC link (the latter, for example, calls for an academic boycott of Israel, while that bit has been crossed out in what I received.)

First, though, here’s an article from the CBC news site that describes the agreement. Click headline to read:

And the story.  I’ll put below the specifics from the agreement that i was sent. Bolding is mine.

The University of Windsor says it’s reached a deal with students with a pro-Palestinian encampment that began in mid-May, and all tents will be removed from the southwestern Ontario campus within 48 hours.

“This includes peacefully ending the encampment,” the school said in a news release.

The school says the deal also includes more anti-racism initiatives, support for students impacted by the crisis in Gaza, “responsible” investing, and annual disclosures of direct and indirect public fund investments.

The agreement also involves boycotting institutional partnerships with Israeli universities until the “right of Palestinian self-determination has been realized.”

It’s the “most comprehensive and far-reaching” agreement to come out of Canadian encampment negotiations addressing issues like divestment, academic boycott and anti-Palestinian racism, the protesters said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.The encampment has been in front of the former Dillon Hall since May 13.

Negotiations between the two sides have been going on for four weeks, the group says.

“This deal presents to the students, staff, faculty and community as a whole that the university is willing to take solid steps towards a more transparent and just investment system, and rebuilding Gaza,” said Jana Alrifai, a spokesperson for the protest.

“It is a recognition of its past shortcomings and a commitment to betterment. Most importantly, this would have never happened without the fight and steadfastness of the student movement.”

Here are some other details in the agreement:

  • The university will establish anti-Palestinian racism training and education, which will be recommended for faculty, staff and students. The training will be mandatory for the leadership team and board of governors.
  • The university has 30 days to set up an anti-oppression website, which will include third-party information and resources on anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia.
  • Students who part of the encampment won’t get any academic or employment sanctions for participating in or supporting the encampment.

The protesters will hold a 5 p.m. ET news conference on Wednesday.

Their encampment is among numerous ones set up on Canadian campuses since April, related to the Israel-Hamas war that began in October. Most of the encampments have since come down.

On Wednesday, an encampment at Montreal’s McGill University was dismantled as police, some wearing riot gear, and others on bicycles and on horseback, descended near the campus after the university served two eviction notices to protesters.

But we’re talking not about McGill but about Windsor.  As I said, I was sent a copy via an email that said this was the agreement signed by both sides, and will show you a bit of what is in it. If you want to see the whole agreement, go here.

Clicking on the heading will take you to the agreement linked to the CBC report, but the quotes I give below come from what I was sent—with the exception of the call for an academic boycott of Israel (it’s in the CBC linked copy but not in what I got). I cannot vouch for which copy of the agreement is the final one, but there’s almost no difference between them.

And some stuff they agreed on.  CONTENT WARNING:  ARRANT COWARDICE BY CANADIAN ADMINISTRATORS:

The University of Windsor is in the process of developing its first-ever anti-racism policy. A central feature of the policy will be a focus on identity-based oppression, including anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. The University will use its best efforts to complete the process by December 31, 2024. The University commits to including Palestinian, Arab and Muslim voices as part of the policy consultation. Regular updates will be provided on the Vice-President, People, Equity andInclusion’s website.

The University commits to establishing an anti-oppression website within 30 days of the ratification of this agreement, which will include institutional and third party information and resources on anti-Arab racism, anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, linked for the benefit of students, faculty, staff and community members

The University agrees to establish anti-Palestinian racism training and education, which will be recommended for faculty, staff and students. The training and education will be mandatory for the Executive Leadership Team and the Board of Governors members.

The University agrees to make internal research grants available for application by students and faculty on the topic of Palestine in all of its dimensions.

The University agrees that students will not receive any academic or employment sanctions for their participation in, or support for, the encampment, bearing in mind the broad protections provided by the freedoms of expression, association, and assembly

No punishments, as usual!

The University agrees to remove the Aspire Anti-Racism information sheet from its website. [JAC: I don’t know what this website said.]

The University will invest funds as required to extend the Scholars at Risk program for an additional year (to end in 2025). Future institutional support for the program beyond 2025 will be reviewed annually by the University based on the availability of funding. The University will make the securing of funding for the continuation of the Scholars at Risk program a priority in its future financial planning. The University will make special efforts to recruit Palestinian scholars who have been impacted by the occupation of Palestine and the scholasticide in Gaza.

Scholasticide!

The University will endeavour to support students impacted by global conflicts and humanitarian crises, including Palestinian students, who have demonstrated urgent housing needs during the Intersession/Summer term with residence housing.

Provide counselling services for Palestinian, Muslim and BIPOC students which will address the rise of racism and Islamophobia. Ensure the necessary resources to ensure counselling is delivered by racial-trauma-focused therapists

The university will facilitate mental health support groups for students experiencing trauma related to the ongoing occupation of Palestine, not less than quarterly.

Anything about helping Jews or Israelis, or Jewish students affected by the war or antisemitism? I don’t see it. But wait—there are TEN PAGES OF THIS STUFF. And of course Windsor has to change its investment policies to the liking of the encampers:

The University administration agrees to propose to the Board investment committee an expansion of its RI Policy to include a new section on Human Rights and International Law. The section would be modeled after Section C. Climate Change. The section would include a commitment to review the weapons manufacturing industry, with particular attention on companies involved in manufacturing arms used in conflict zones where UN human rights mechanisms or resolutions have determined that serious violations of international human rights, humanitarian or criminal law have occurred. The section would provide an opportunity for the University to develop an operational procedure for its RI Policy based on human rights and international law. This operational procedure would be grounded in United Nations resolutions on human rights situations, and the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the United Nations Special Procedures and United Nations human rights commissions of inquiry as well as decisions of domestic legal bodies.

The University will prepare an annual responsible investing report, disclosing all investments in indirect, direct and pooled funds held in its Pension Fund, Endowment Fund and Working Capital Fund. The report shall be made publicly available. The first report will be published by December 31, 2024. The annual disclosure will provide a list of public companies within the indirect,direct and pooled funds and the amount of investments in each fund The annual disclosure will explain the application of the RI Policy, including the ESG factors and human rights, to the University’s investment decisions.

The University acknowledges the dire situation faced by Palestinian universities under Israeli occupation. This includes the destruction of the Palestinian universities in Gaza and the unjustified restrictions and frequent closures faced by Palestinian universities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The University commits to establishing or reestablishing institutional relationships with Palestinian universities, which will include research partnerships and scholarly exchanges. Within its resources, the University will assist with, and support, the restoration of post-secondary education in Gaza.

The University will recommend to the Senate that it explore the feasibility of implementing a Palestine Studies minor under the Interdisciplinary and Critical Studies Department. Courses under this program will aim to explore Palestine in all of its dimensions.

Finally, the encampers have forced the University to violate institutional neutrality and agree with the UN’s demonization of Israel.  Windsor has no fricking business to weigh in on the war or politics, for it violates institutional neutrality by taking an official University position on the war. That, of course, chills the speech of those (presumably many) who disagree with the agreement and the stuff that Windsor will say in its capitulation:

Within 72 hours of the ratification of this agreement, the University will send a letter to the Government of Canada calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. In the letter, it will also urge the Government of Canada to include anti-Palestinian racism within its Anti-Racism Strategy. Further, it will request that the Government of Canada should be generous in the humanitarian aid that it delivers to Palestine in order to enable Gaza to engage in reconstruction for its people, and to assist the Palestinians to realize their right to self-determination. The University will post the letter on its website.

This is in the document linked to at the CBC site, but is crossed out in the copy I was sent. If it really was agreed on, it calls for an academic boycott of Israel.

The University does not hold any active institutional academic partnerships with Israeli institutions. Because of the challenging environment for academic collaboration the University agrees to not pursue any institutional academic agreements with Israeli universities until the right of Palestinian self-determination has been realized, as determined by the United Nations, unless supported by Senate. This does not prevent individual academics at the University of Windsor from working (or collaborating) with academics in Israel.

Finally, there’s this—more taking sides in a conflict and more chilling of speech at Windsor:

For the purposes of the application of its RI Policy, the University recognizes that the United Nations, through its various bodies – including the Secretary General, the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council, the International Court of Justice and human rights commissions of inquiry – has found Israel, the occupying power, to be in serious violation of international law and human rights in the conduct of its occupation of Palestinian territory. It also recognizes that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has established an active database of companies whom it has identified are engaged with the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Of course there’s bupkes about Hamas violating international law.

This whole document is simply reprehensible, a sickening display of cowardice (and antisemitism) on the part of Windsor University, which commits itself to taking the side of Hamas in the war and providing resources to Palestine and Palestinian students that aren’t offered to Israeli or Jewish students. There are plenty of initiatives against “Islamophobia,” but I don’t see a single one against antisemitism. Does Windsor do all this stuff for Israeli academics, professors, and students? Perhaps they already have similar policies in place with respect to Israel (extra counseling for Jewish students, etc.), but I doubt it.

Again, if you want to see the whole nauseating agreement, click here.

A letter to Nature affirming the reality of biological sex

July 11, 2024 • 9:40 am

On June 11, there was a special issue of Nature with several articles devoted to sex and gender.  In general the two terms were conflated (often used in the phrase “sex and gender”), and most of the issue was an example of a scientific journal being ideologically captured by gender activists. For example, on this site I criticized one of the articles, “Beyond the trans/cis binary: introducing new terms will enrich gender research“, which, as so often happens in science journals, introduces new and “inclusive” terms that, in the end, turn out to be confusing and useless. As I wrote at the time

Nowhere is this more obvious than the essay below, which is not only science-free, but wholly about semantics.  And useless semantics to boot, at least to my eye.  The whole purpose is to introduce a new term, “gender modality,” which, the authors say, will be of great help to people who don’t identify as “male” or “female”, and keep them from being “erased”.  The thing is, the other terms that fall under this rubric already exist, so grouping them as aspects of “gender modality,” a term whose definition is confusing, adds nothing to any social discourse that I can see.

To be sure, a couple of the articles emphasized that in biomedical studies one should be aware of separating males from females when that’s relevant. But if researchers don’t know that by now, I feel sorry for them. And one of the article that scientists should also take gender into account in biomedical research, something that baffles me.  To wit (my emphasis)

For Alzheimer’s and many other diseases that are common causes of death, including cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory conditions and diabetes, a person’s sex and gender can influence their risk of developing the disease, how quickly and accurately they are diagnosed, what treatment they receive and how they fare.

If you’re a tomboy (a female with male-like behaviors), which one can consider a gender identity, does this really affect your chances of getting cancer? If so, I don’t know about it. In fact, I’m not aware that gender can influence any diseases, and no references are given, but I doubt it. (Gender may be important in psychological maladies like gender dysphoria, but that’s not what the authors mean.) This paper is one example of sex and gender, two very different things, being lumped together.  Do not fall into that semantic conflation!

Perhaps it was this mixing up of sex and gender that prompted two researchers to write this newly-published letter in the journal: 

In the main I agree with them, but their arguments don’t really avoid the ‘sex binary,” which is simply the observation that there are two sexes: reproductive systems that are “male” and “female”, with the definitions based on gamete size and mobility, as well as the developmental apparatus that produces eggs and sperm. There are only those two types of gametes, and that’s the case for all animals and nearly all vascular plants.

In animals, which of course include humans, sex is as close to binary as you can come, with only 0.018% of individuals being neither male nor female, but intersex. Yes, some species can change sex, as in clownfish, and some can be hermaphroditic, an individual that is both male and femal at the same time.  But even functional animal (or plant) hermaphrodites still produce only the two types of gametes. And intersex individuals in humans are not a “third sex”, because they don’t produce a third type of gamete.  (In our species, there has never been a case of a hermaphrodite producing both sperm and eggs.)  As Griffiths and Davies wrote in 2020:

The biological definition of sex is not based on an essential quality that every organism is born with, but on two different strategies that organisms use to propagate their genes.

The Griffiths and Davis paper, by the way, is a very good resource for understanding biological sex, though I think it gives away too much to those who claim that they are really members of their non-natal sex.

As for pipefish and seahorses gestating eggs (true), that is a difference in sex ROLES, not sex itself. The same goes for female hyenas that have penis-like structures: they still produce eggs and produce offspring (through that penis-like structure!), but they remain female.  The sex/gamete binary is real, and it’s important because gamete size differences, universal among animals and nearly all plants, produce a whole world of evolutionary differences, the most important being sexual selection based on differences in reproductive investment. And that helps us understand the evolution of genetically-based differences in morphology and behavior between males and females. (Sexual selection also operates in plants.)  The biological definition of sex is important because it’s both universal and evolutionarily enlightening, similar to the biological definition of “species” (see Chapter 1 of Speciation by Coyne and Orr).

Remember, there’s a difference between the DEFINITION of sex (given above) and the ASCERTAINMENT of sex, with the latter made using secondary sexual traits like genitalia. Importantly, the traits used for ascertainment, which include chromosome complement, aren’t always a perfect correlate with biological sex. Still, those traits are used to ASCERTAIN sex, not to “assign” it, as in the ludicrous phrase “sex assigned at birth” or worse, “gender assigned at birth”. Those phrases should be completely eliminated because they’re a sop to the ignorant.  Gender, which involves how a person identifies vis-à-vis sex, and can involve a mixture of male and female traits, non-natal traits, or even nonhuman traits, is completely different from biological sex, and cannot be assigned at birth.

I sent my comments to Matthew, who added this:

The key point, of course, is that the vast majority of people are only interested in humans, where we cannot switch the kind of gametes we produce. There are no cases of this ever recorded, nor will there ever be. People can now do all sorts of things to alter their secondary sex characteristics, and – much more easily – to change their sex roles, but they can’t change the gametes they are born to produce, nor, in the case of people with disorders of sexual development, change their particular fundamental sex characteristics.

And although some species can change sex, either naturally (clownfish), or by being manipulated (crabs with parasites), they are extremely rare and I don’t know of any mammals that do this.

QED

(h/t to Matthew for finding the letter and for his comments)