Biographies of scientists are often deadly dull.  Most famous scientists lived rather uninteresting lives apart from their work, and biographers often fail to convey the excitement of that work.  A notable exception to the dull-existence rule was evolutionary geneticist J.B.S. Haldane,  a real character (check out the poem he wrote about his rectal cancer) who had a terribly exciting life; but his biography, JBS by Ronald Clark, doesn’t really lay out why he’s famous.  Or, when biographers try to do that, the writing is turgid.  I’ve dutifully endured many deadly scientific biographies, including the acclaimed Subtle is the Lord: the Science and Life of Albert Einstein, by Abraham Pais. I even had trouble finishing the Pulitzer-winning biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

Until now, the only biography that I thought combined great writing and a full and accurate account of scientific achievement was Janet Browne’s magisterial two-volume life of Darwin.  (This isn’t just my pro-evolution bias: it really is a scientific page-turner.)  But now I’ve found another.

I’m giving two thumbs up to a splendid new life of P. A. M. Dirac (1902-1984) by Graham Farmelo: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom.  Yes, the title is a bit wonky, for Dirac was no mystic (he was in fact a militant atheist), but he was a strange and brilliant character who, along with Heisenberg, was a major architect of quantum physics.  Dirac’s life was hardly exciting: he was a laconic, antisocial man, and even his physics colleagues couldn’t pry more than a few words out of him.  He had a tyrannical father, a fawning mother, and his brother committed suicide, all of which may account for Dirac’s asociality.  His real life was in his head, but what a head!  Somehow Farmelo manages, without burdening the reader with equations, to convey the wonder of Dirac’s accomplishments and turn his life into a triumph of the ill.

For me, the high point of Farmelo’s tale is Dirac’s prediction, from first principles, of the existence of antimatter.  It turned out that one of his quantum-mechanical equations, the famous “Dirac equation,” predicted the existence of antimatter: particles the size of electrons but with a positive charge.  For several years Dirac’s colleagues poo-pooed this prediction, for there was no evidence of antimatter.  Dirac even thought that his equation might be wrong.  But cloud-chamber experiments conducted by Carl Anderson at Caltech finally confirmed the existence of the predicted “positrons.” In 1933, at the age of only 31, Dirac shared the Nobel Prize in Physics with Erwin Schrödinger.

Throughout his life, Dirac insisted that the truth about nature was approached better through equations than experiments, and it still amazes me—in fact, I find this unbelievable—that Dirac accepted the existence of antimatter simply because it was demanded by his equations.  The notion that, with minimal input from observation or experiment, equations themselves can tell us what is real about the universe is something completely alien to a biologist.

Get this book; you won’t be disappointed.

Below is one of my favorite science photos. It shows Dirac (left) having a “conversation” with Richard Feynman at a relativity meeting in Warsaw in 1962.  The lanky Dirac, with an impossibly small head atop a stretched-out frame, leans back as the garrulous Feynman gesticulates.

And a Dirac anecdote:

At the question period after a Dirac lecture at the University of Toronto, somebody in the audience remarked: “Professor Dirac, I do not understand how you derived the formula on the top left side of the blackboard.”

“This is not a question,” snapped Dirac, “it is a statement. Next question, please.”

I’ve read only a few biographies as engrossing as Farmelo’s, and none (except for Browne’s) dealing with scientists.  Just to note my favorite non-scientific biographies: two are by Robert Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, and his still-in-progress biography of LBJ, The Years of Lyndon Johnson ( The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, and Master of the Senate).  And my all-time favorite biography is a real masterpiece, and, sadly, will always be unfinished: William Manchester’s The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill.  There are two volumes, Visions of Glory, 1874-1932, and Alone, 1932-1940.  It’s a great tragedy that Manchester died before finishing the third (and probably not the last) volume, one that would have described Churchill’s greatest achievement, shepherding Britain through World War II.

The Australian atheists meetings were ok, but over at Greta Christina’s column you’ll find an announcement for the biggest atheist meeting yet, taking place in 2011 at a location yet to be determined.  Sadly, I wasn’t considered important enough to speak, but I’m going nonetheless.  The snacks and dinners look especially cool: P.Z. is hosting a cheese and “crackers” social, and there’s a conference dinner featuring roasted babies in kitten sauce.

I haven’t posted anything on this, as it’s been amply covered on other websites, but I’ve followed it keenly.  Two years ago, science writer Simon Singh was sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association for having written a Guardian column in which he asserted that chiropractic “happily promotes bogus treatments” for ailments like asthma, colic, and ear infections.  Last May, a judge ruled that Singh intended the “bogus treatments” characterization as “statement of fact,” which implied that the BCA was being deliberately and knowingly dishonest in promoting some treatments.  Singh, with the support of many scientists and the English PEN, appealed this judgment.

Today, Singh won his appeal. A British justice ruled that Singh’s statement was not a statement of fact but “fair comment”:

. . the material words, however one represents or paraphrases their meaning, are in our judgment expressions of opinion.  The opinion may be mistaken, but to allow the party which has been denounced on the basis of it to compel its author to prove in court what he has asserted by way of argument is to incite the court to become an Orwellian ministry of truth.

Singh isn’t out of the woods yet, but this goes a long way towards extricating him from the forest of insanity that is British libel law.  And it’s a great victory for freedom of speech in the UK, especially the freedom to question quackery and pseudoscience.

If you’ve followed this case, you’ll want to read the full judgment (10 pages) here.

h/t: Ray Moscow

Courtesy of the Jesus and Mo artist.

Obama is a smart man, smart enough to know that unless he pretends to the trappings of faith, he has no credibility with the American people.  I’ve long thought that he was an unbeliever, and this was confirmed yesterday in an interview Obama had with NBC’s Matt Lauer. I saw this on the news last night; you can read the transcript at MSNBC.

Turning to personal matters, Lauer asked the president why he has yet to choose a regular church to attend.

“We’ve decided for now not to join a single church. The reason is because Michelle and I have realized we are very disruptive to services,” Obama replied. “We occasionally go across the street to St. John’s, which is a church that a lot of presidents traditionally have gone to. We love the chapel up in Camp David. It’s probably our favorite place to worship because it’s just family up at Camp David. There’s a wonderful chaplain up there who does just a great job. So usually when we go to Camp David we go to church on Sundays there.”

Obama also revealed that he avails himself of modern technology in his spiritual life.  “I get a daily devotional on my BlackBerry, which is a wonderful thing,” Obama said.

Instead of going to church in Washington he gets a daily devotional on his BlackBerry? Who is he kidding? The man’s an atheist

The 1.5-million-dollar Templeton Prize that the John Templeton Foundation awarded Francisco Ayala was a fantastic investment.  For one thing, it’s bought the Foundation an article by Yudhijit Bhattacharjee in the new issue of Science, “Latest prize bolsters Templeton’s shift to mainstream.” The title alone shows you the JTF’s long-term strategy.

Bhattacharjee describes how Templeton used to support the Discovery Institute and its intelligent-design activities. (They gave grants, for example to William Dembski and Guillermo Gonzalez for work on ID.) Subsequently, however, Templeton “disavowed support for the ID movement, allaying the fears of many critics.”

Templeton pulled their support of the DI, of course, because they finally realized that while the DI did adhere to Templeton’s mission of uniting science and faith, supporting that Institute would ultimately cost Templeton all credibility with mainstream scientists.  If Templeton had any interest in supporting real science, they never would have funded the Discovery Institute in the first place.  The withdrawing of their support was a tactical rather than a principled decision.

Templeton is good at tactical decisions: that’s why they pay their management team big bucks.  And now, after years of giving Templeton Prizes to religious figures (like Billy Graham and Mother Teresa) or woo-laden theologian/philosophers (like John Polkinghorne and Charles Taylor), they’ve finally realized that the direct road to credibility is this: give prizes to mainstream scientists who believe that both science and faith are valid ways of apprehending truth, and that each has something to contribute to the other. Ayala was a brilliant choice.

But their mission remains the conflation of science with faith.  Dan Dennett, quoted in the article, recognizes this:

“They are using the prestige and authority of science to improve the prestige and credibility of theology,” says Daniel Dennett, a philosopher at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. In his opinion, Templeton-funded discussions between scientists and religious figures do for religion what debates between ID proponents and evolutionary biologists would do for ID: “They create the perception that scientists and theologians are academic co-equals, which they are not.”

Physicist Steven Weinberg (surprisingly, in view of his past writings on religion) is not as critical:

“I am not enthusiastic about the message they seem to be selling to the public—that science and religion are not incompatible; I think there is real tension between the two,” says Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Prize winning physicist at the University of Texas, Austin, who has been an outspoken critic of religion. “But for an organization with a message, they are pretty good at not being intrusive in the activities they fund. I don’t wish them well, but I don’t think they are particularly insidious or dangerous.”

Dennett objected to Templeton’s award of several million dollars to Notre Dame for a “Science of Generosity” initiative, studying, among other things, “how empathy affects charitable donation” and “how generosity spreads through social networks.”  Dennett’s take: “What they are trying to do is paint certain topics with a holy glow.”

Bhattacharjee also quotes molecular biologist Matthew Gibson, who got a Templeton grant to study cell division:

Gibson says he decided to accept the foundation’s money “after poking around and finding nothing fishy.” Now a researcher at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, Gibson admits that he may have been influenced by need. “At the time, I don’t think anybody else would have funded what we were doing.”

How many scientists aren‘t influenced by need? We’re always chasing scarce bucks to fund our research.  Science have the need; Templeton has the bucks.  That’s how they buy respectability.

I’ll stop carping at Templeton when they stop pretending that science and religion have something to say to each other beyond this:  there is no empirical evidence for the tenets of religion.

It’s become increasingly clear that the Pope cannot claim that he was insulated from the child-rape scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church.   He had personal knowledge of the transfer of a pederast priest, Peter Hullermann, from one diocese to another after that priest underwent psychiatric counseling.  And of course Hullermann started up his depredations in the new parish.  The Vatican, of course, claims that the memo that the Pope may have seen was “routine.”

On Sunday, Ratzinger dismissed his critics, saying that his faith in God helped him “toward the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.”

Petty gossip?  What world is Ratzinger living in?

Over at Slate, Christoper Hitchens continues his exposé of Ratzinger’s sleaziness.

This is what makes the scandal an institutional one and not a matter of delinquency here and there. The church needs and wants control of the very young and asks their parents to entrust their children to certain “confessors,” who until recently enjoyed enormous prestige and immunity. It cannot afford to admit that many of these confessors, and their superiors, are calcified sadists who cannot believe their luck. Nor can it afford to admit that the church regularly abandoned the children and did its best to protect and sometimes even promote their tormentors. So instead it is whiningly and falsely asserting that all charges against the pope—none of them surfacing except from within the Catholic community—are part of a plan to embarrass him.

This hasn’t been true so far, but it ought to be true from now on. This grisly little man is not above or outside the law. He is the titular head of a small state. We know more and more of the names of the children who were victims and of the pederasts who were his pets. This is a crime under any law (as well as a sin), and crime demands not sickly private ceremonies of “repentance,” or faux compensation by means of church-financed payoffs, but justice and punishment. The secular authorities have been feeble for too long but now some lawyers and prosecutors are starting to bestir themselves. I know some serious men of law who are discussing what to do if Benedict tries to make his proposed visit to Britain in the fall. It’s enough. There has to be a reckoning, and it should start now.

If the Pope were a Japanese businessman, and running a firm that was corrupt, he’d be forced to step down in humiliation. But Ratzinger is infinitely worse: he presided over an institution that bills itself as a paragon of moral guidance, and yet systematically and institutionally raped its charges and covered up its crimes. And, more and more, we see that Ratzinger was not ignorant but complicit.  In a just world, he  would resign.  Do Catholics have the moral backbone to force him out?

A few days ago I posted about neurobiologist Colin Blakemore’s thesis that, about 200,000 years ago, human brain size underwent an instantaneous increase in volume by 30%.  Blakemore suggested that this was the result of a macromutation sweeping to fixation, but not through natural selection (he suggests no alternative, but perhaps he meant genetic drift).

Over at john hawks weblog, Hawks shows that there was no sudden increase in human brain size. Here’s the chart that Hawks provides which plots brain volume over time (the data appear to come from Lee and Wolpoff, 2003, but I haven’t checked):

Fig. 1. Change in hominin brain size over time.  Time (thousands of years before present) on x axis, brain volume (cc) on y axis.

Now none of us have done any statistics on the supposed 30% “leap” 200,000 years ago, and I haven’t fitted a line to this to see if the increase has accelerated over time.  Hawks says that this:

As you can see, there’s no sudden jump 200,000 years ago, or at any other time. The data, such as they are, are consistent with a single pattern of increase over time, as pointed out by Sang-Hee Lee and Milford Wolpoff (2003).

Well, yes, there is certainly a “single” pattern of increase (whatever that means), but perhaps a hint that the rate of change became a bit faster 200,000 years ago. But it certainly wasn’t an instantaneous increase, as one would expect with the rapid fixation of a macromutation that increased brain size by 30%.  There seem to be a fair few intermediates!

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Lee S-H, Wolpoff MH. 2003. The pattern of evolution in Pleistocene human brain size. Paleobiology 29:186-196.