Sean Carroll and Carl Zimmer quit Bloggingheads for promoting creationism

September 1, 2009 • 7:28 am

Bloggingheads.tv was founded (and still largely run) by Robert Wright, and was once funded by the Templeton Foundation.  What does that tell you?  For one thing, to expect a lot of faitheism and sympathy for religion — even on Science Saturday, where it doesn’t belong.  But what I didn’t expect was sympathy for creationism.  Although Bloggingheads, which features online discussions between pairs of writers, scientists, or scholars, has featured some really good stuff, it now seems to be tilting dangerously toward woo.

First there was a discussion on Science Saturday between historian of science Ronald Numbers and Discovery Institute young-earth creationist Paul Nelson — a discussion notable for oodles of mutual back-patting but a dearth of criticism of Nelson’s insane views on the age of the earth.  More recently, Bloggingheads featured another amiable chat between ID creationist Michael Behe and linguist John McWhorter.

Listening to the Behe/McWhorter love-fest, physicist Sean Carroll, who runs the superb blog Cosmic Variance, had enough:

I couldn’t listen to too much after that. McWhorter goes on to explain that he doesn’t see how skunks could have evolved, and what more evidence do you need than that? (Another proof that belongs in the list, as Jeff Harvey points out: “A linguist doesn’t understand skunks. Therefore, God exists.”) Those of us who have participated in Bloggingheads dialogues before have come to expect a slightly more elevated brand of discourse than this.

Various bizarre things ensued:  the LoveFest disappeared and then reappeared on the site, unconvincing reasons were given, and finally Carroll and others had a teleconference call with Robert Wright.  As Carroll tells it, things did not go well:

But, while none of the scientists involved with BH.tv was calling for the dialogue to be removed, we were a little perturbed at the appearance of an ID proponent so quickly after we thought we understood that the previous example had been judged a failed experiment. So more emails went back and forth, and this morning we had a conference call with Bob Wright, founder of BH.tv. To be honest, I went in expecting to exchange a few formalities and clear the air and we could all get on with our lives; but by the time it was over we agreed that we were disagreeing, and personally I didn’t want to be associated with the site any more. I don’t want to speak for anyone else; I know that Carl Zimmer was also very bothered by the whole thing, hopefully he will chime in. .

. . .What I objected to about the creationists was that they were not worthy opponents with whom I disagree; they’re just crackpots. Go to a biology conference, read a biology journal, spend time in a biology department; nobody is arguing about the possibility that an ill-specified supernatural “designer” is interfering at whim with the course of evolution. It’s not a serious idea. It may be out there in the public sphere as an idea that garners attention — but, as we all know, that holds true for all sorts of non-serious ideas. If I’m going to spend an hour of my life listening to two people have a discussion with each other, I want some confidence that they’re both serious people. Likewise, if I’m going to spend my own time and lend my own credibility to such an enterprise, I want to believe that serious discussions between respectable interlocutors are what the site is all about.

. . . I understand that there are considerations that go beyond high-falutin’ concerns of intellectual respectability. There is a business model to consider, and one wants to maintain the viability of the enterprise while also having some sort of standards, and that can be a very difficult compromise to negotiate. Bob suggested the analogy of a TV network — would you refuse to be interviewed by a certain network until they would guarantee to never interview a creationist? (No.) But to me, the case of BH.tv is much more analogous to a particular TV show than to an entire network — it’s NOVA, not PBS, and the different dialogues are like different episodes.

And so Carroll, in a gesture I admire immensely, said farewell to Bloggingheads.tv.

I have no doubt that BH.tv will continue to put up a lot of good stuff, and that they’ll find plenty of good scientists to take my place; meanwhile, I’ll continue to argue for increasing the emphasis on good-faith discourse between respectable opponents, and mourn the prevalence of crackpots and food fights. Keep hope alive!

Business model indeed!  It sounds as if Bloggingheads plans more injections of woo, creationism, and goddycoddling, for if Wright had promised an end to that stuff, I doubt that Carroll would have resigned.  At any rate, Carroll’s stance is personal and nuanced, so do read his piece.  He hasn’t called for anybody else to follow him in defection.

But I do. Respectable journalists like Carl Zimmer, John Horgan, and George Johnson have participated in bloggingheads.tv.  I ask them to have the courage of their convictions and resign if they don’t get assurances that Bloggingheads will stop presenting woo.

. . . Just after I wrote this, I learned that Carl Zimmer has indeed pulled out:

As you can see from Carroll’s post, he was not happy with things either. So he and I talked to Robert Wright and other Bloggingheads people today. I had expected that I’d get a clear sense of what had happened over the past month at Bloggingheads, and what sort of plan would be put in place to avoid it happening again. I imagined some kind of editorial oversight of the sort that exists at the places where I regularly write about science. I didn’t get it. . .

. . .My standard for taking part in any forum about science is pretty simple. All the participants must rely on peer-reviewed science that has direct bearing on the subject at hand, not specious arguments that may sound fancy but are scientifically empty. I believe standards like this one are crucial if we are to have productive discussions about the state of science and its effects on our lives.

This is not Blogginghead’s standard, at least as I understand it now. And so here we must part ways.

The loss of Carroll and Zimmer is a real blow to Bloggingheads.tv — and to science popularization in general.  But you can’t pin this one on Dawkins and his atheist pals; blame it instead on the accommodationist Robert Wright.

_____________________________

Note:

In a comment on Carroll’s post, Robert Wright responds:

It’s true that I didn’t give you the pledge that apparently would have kept you appearing on BhTV: No more creationists or Intelligent Design folks ever on Bloggingheads. I said that, for example, I could imagine myself interrogating ID people about their theological motivation. And I said I’d welcome a Behe-Richard Dawkins debate, since Dawkins is a rare combination of expertise and accessibility. But I also said that offhand I couldn’t imagine any other Behe pairing that would work for me (though there may be possibilities I’m overlooking).

The key thing that I tried to underscore repeatedly in our phone conversation yesterday is this: The two diavlogs in question were not reflective of BhTV editorial policy, and steps have been taken to tighten the implementation of that policy so that future content will be more reflective of it. Sean, I wish that in your post you’d conveyed this to your readers, though I realize that you had a lot of other things you wanted to say.

(Read the whole comment; it’s number 37 after Carroll’s post.)  And Wright also takes a lick at yours truly for my critique of his book.  I’m working on a response to him now, which should be up after my trip to Alabama this week.

Sedalia paper: tee-shirt poll Pharyngulated!

September 1, 2009 • 6:03 am

Thanks to alert reader Bryan, who posted this below the fold yesterday, the Sedalia Democrat (which editorially opposed the ban on the evolution tee shirt) has now published an investigative article on the hijacking of their “was the tee shirt appropriate?” poll.

The Sedalia Democrat’s latest reader’s poll has garnered more than 6,600 votes which is 50 times more than average.

According to Editor Bob Satnan, the poll, which is posted weekly about a news topic at http://www.sedaliademocrat.com, normally sees about 150 votes.

The poll sought reader’s opinion on a story about Sedalia School District 200 administrators pulling T-shirts worn by the Smith-Cotton High School band after receiving complaints from parents about an “evolution” theme.

The poll titled, “Band T-shirts,” asks readers “Should the Sedalia school district have pulled the Smith-Cotton High School band T-shirts?” Three percent of voters chose, “Yes, the evolution image was inappropriate” and 97 percent opted for, “No, critics and the district are overreacting.”

As the paper notes correctly, our epic win resulted from the intervention of that shrill and godless old militant uncivil atheist, P. Z. Myers. His reach is global!

The staggering number of votes prompted Satnan to temporarily pull the poll to investigate if the results were authentic. Satnan discovered a link to the poll was placed at http://www.scienceblogs.com/pharyngula by blog author P.Z. Myers, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota Morris. “We had an overwhelming response from people who read scientific blogs,” Satnan said. “The poll may not reflect Sedalia’s viewpoint but it does show the global reading audience’s stance.”

Well, at least those of the “global reading audience” who peruse Pharyngula.

According to http://www.urbandictionary.com, pharyngulate is a word created by Myers meaning to skew results of an online poll, usually having to do with religion, science, or politics, in order to reflect a more rational result or to crash an online poll by publishing its link so that large numbers of blog readers will make their opinions known there, often shifting the results dramatically.

If views continue at the current rate, DeFord said, it will reach 90,406 before the night is done. DeFord said Monday’s views indicate the story is viral, or has become popular in a short period of time.

Of those views, many originated from as far away as London, England; Sydney and Melbourne, Australia; Dublin, Ireland; Stockholm, Sweden; Helsinki, Finland; Oslo, Norway; and Auckland, New Zealand, DeFord reported.

Unsung in this kerfuffle is Abbie Smith, who was not only the first to pick up the item about the banned tee-shirts, but also the first to call attention to the Democrat’s online poll. You go, erv!

Of course the poll is hardly an unbiased sample of reader opinion — no matter who you see as “readers” — but maybe, just maybe, it will awaken the good citizens of Sedalia to the enormous support for evolution out there. It reminds me of how the citizens of Dover, Pennsylvania found themselves unwillingly fixed in the public spotlight after a similarly boneheaded act. One comment already suggests some incipient embarrassment:

Internet polls are statistically meaningless, but a resounding 97% verdict strongly suggests that the school district has a serious problem in the court of world opinion. As far as I can tell, most of the Internet coverage came from blogs (both scientific and religious), but Sedalia was spared the widespread ridicule that would have accompanied mainstream press attention. It should be grateful for that.

(Missourian here, by the way, living far away in Latin America and embarrassed today by my beloved home state. When did we let the loons take over?)

Epic win in Sedalia

August 31, 2009 • 1:53 pm

The Sedalia High School evolution tee-shirt poll is apparently still open, though it was reportedly closed earlier today.  As of a few minutes ago (2:50 pm Monday), a big YAY:

Sedalia pollFig. 1.  The militant Darwinian horde has spoken

Vote here (bottom of right-hand column), and undo the damage that Richard Dawkins has wrought in Missouri.

A day at the museum

August 30, 2009 • 11:08 am

by Greg Mayer

Last Monday I spent a few hours at the Smithsonian‘s National Museum of Natural History (originally known as the United States National Museum, and still known as the USNM to scientists, even after the Smithsonian began collecting art, airplanes, tchotchkes, etc., and thus gave its museums more specific names), and came across WEIT in their gift shop.

 

I moved this copy about two feet to the right to photograph it, because I thought Jerry would appreciate the surroundings: it’s almost a diorama.

The great natural history museums, such as the USNM, are among the world’s premier scientific institutions.  The mission of the Smithsonian Institution, Constitution Ave. entrance to the USNM, August 2009bequeathed to it by its founding benefactor, James Smithson, is the “increase and diffusion of knowledge”, and it is a fitting mission, encompassing both research and education, for not only museums, but also universities. Having been a postdoctoral fellow at the USNM twenty years ago, but not having had a chance for many years to go through the exhibits (which are a chief way in which the USNM diffuses knowledge), I wanted to see how the exhibits had changed.

The old evolution exhibit had been taken down some years ago, and a new Ocean Hall stood in its place; I was anxious to see how the newer exhibits covered evolution and the history of life, which had always been a theme throughout exhibits such as Dinosaurs and Life in the Ancient Seas, and of course are the major themes of the work of the USNM’s researchers. I didn’t think that the Smithsonian would have succumbed to any external pressures: they successfully fought off a creationist legal attack in 1980, eliciting from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals the memorable ruling that the balance between freedom of religion and learning

…was long ago struck in favor of diffusion of knowledge based on responsible scientific foundations, and against special constitutional protection of religious believers from the competition generated by such knowledge diffusion.

I’m happy to report that the presentation of evolution is even more forthright than I’d anticipated.  This sign greets visitors in the Rotunda, at the feet of the USNM’s iconic elephant:Sign in USNM Rotunda

Note particularly the line “Evolution is at the heart of this museum.”

Detail of Evolution Trail sign

Stromatolite in Ocean Hall at USNM In the Ocean Hall, one of the main galleries is devoted to the origin and history of life on earth, including everything from stromatolites, to a very nice exhibit on the origin of whales (see here, too), a story highlighted in chapter 2 of WEIT. Hung from the ceiling are skeletons of  the sea lion-like Maiacetus, and the fully marine, yet hind-legged, Dorudon and Basilosaurus.

Maiacetus at USNMDorudon at USNMBasilosaurus at USNM

There are also two temporary evolution exhibits opening next month. Darwin’s Legacy will be about Darwin and how his “theory soon found supporters at the Smithsonian, including Joseph Henry, the first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and it continues to guide research at the National Museum of Natural History.”  The exhibit Since Darwin: the Evolution of Evolution

focuses on the significant role that Darwin’s theories have played in explaining and unifying all the biological sciences.  Specimens from the Museum’s diverse collections, along with documentation from our ongoing research, illustrate the importance of evolution as a scientific foundation, and how our knowledge of evolution has evolved over the last 150 years.

I was also interested to see how the USNM had fared with regard to two other issues facing modern museums: commercialization and exhibit design.  Museums are under increasing financial pressure, and even publicly supported institutions have had to seek at least supplementary private funding. There are potential pitfalls with such funding though: private funding  might distort the mission or the message of the museum. The USNM had experienced a controversy over this while I was there, when the insect extermination company Orkin sponsored, and had its name put on, the Insect Zoo. There have been other controversies concerning donors since. I found that the named-by-sponsor exhibits were still there, but had not increased substantially.  The new Ocean Hall was named for Roger Sant, a member of the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, and a major donor. And there was a temporary exhibit on forensic anthropology co-sponsored by the History Channel, but the exhibit contents largely allayed my fears that the exhibit might be made to cable TV standards of quality. Most annoying, but not at the USNM, but rather across the mall in The Castle, was a heavily hawked tie-in to the movie Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Night at the Museum prop at the Smithsonian Castle

In its exhibit halls, the USNM seems to have avoided the worst of corporate sponsorship, such as the garish corporate-advertising-masquerading-as-sponsorship I’ve seen in some zoos and even national parks.

As regards design, there has for many years been a tension between exhibits that are rich in the number and diversity of labeled specimens they contain, and those that are “interactive”.  The modern trend in design, as Steve Gould (Natural History, January 1994; see also his “Dinomania” in the NYRB) put it, has been

…fewer specimens, more emphasis on overt pedagogy, and increasing focus on “interactive” display (meaning good and thoughtful rapport of visitor and object when done well, and glitzy, noisy, push-button-activated nonsense when done poorly)…

The former notion of what makes for a good exhibit, which Gould admired and called “cabinet museums”, still informs, if not dominates, most of the USNM’s exhibits, including the newer ones such as Ocean Hall. While not consisting of row after row of specimens in the Victorian model, the newer exhibits continue to be rich in the diversity and number of specimens exhibited, and in the excellence of their labeling. A small exhibit in The Castle harks back to the Victorian model, but the best example of this approach I know of today is the marvelous Sense of Wonder at the Milwaukee Public Museum, a deliberate recreation of the older style. The juxtaposition of specimens is a major intellectual benefit of a such a style: it practically mandates that viewers begin composing “compare and conrast” essays in their heads. Such comparisons are a source of wonder, and an inspiration for systematics, comparative anatomy, and , indeed, much of the whole of biology. As a graduate student, I spent many hours “animalizing” (as we called it) studying the skeletons in the Museum of Comparative Zoology‘s Hall of Mammals (which is also close to the Victorian model). The USNM’s Osteology Hall, with its many vertebrate skeletons, has something of the same flavor.

DSCN4307

My major criticism of the newer exhibits, especially the Hall of Mammals, is that they have largely left out dioramas, which, to me, have always been among the most compelling components of a natural history museum. A late Victorian development of the cabinet style pioneered by Carl Akeley at the Milwaukee Public Museum, and reaching perhaps its apogee at the American Museum of Natural History, a diorama associates animals and plants that live together in a natural setting.  Most suited for exhibits with a biogeographic arrangement, their richness and frequency serve as  a means to distinguish the great, from the merely good, public exhibit museums.

Alligator diorama at the USNM

In the mammal hall, the mammals have been removed from the environmental context provided by the diorama, and presented against stark backgrounds painted in neutral colors, with a minimal or stylized attempt to portray the environment. Glass-panel walls and overhanging girders dominate the main exhibit hall. In part, this separation of organism from environment harks back to the early Victorian cabinet museum, with its unadorned skeletons and taxidermy mounts. These early exhibits are redeemed by the richness and density of the specimens, but this only partly mitigates the present exhibit. I think there are advantages to both the diorama and the starker style evident here, but to give up the one almost entirely is a mistake.  This is seen most clearly in a segment of the mammal hall entitled “Savanna Waterhole“, where a giraffe and zebra stretch to drink, but there is no waterhole, and another zebra looks back at a glass wall.

 

Despite this criticism, there is much to admire in the mammal hall, and much to learn in it. This hall, and the museum as a whole, is a wonder, and one of the nations, and the world’s, scientific and educational treasures. To walk through the USNM’s exhibit halls is a marvelously enjoyable, richly rewarding, and deeply edifying intellectual and aesthetic experience.

Addendum. In response to some of the comments, here are a couple more items.

I just miss hundreds of different birds in a long, long hallway.

It’s a curved hallway, and somewhat obscurely placed outside the Baird Auditorium, but the Birds of DC exhibit is hundreds of birds in a longish hallway.  Here’s the cabinet that contains mostly owls, but also a passenger pigeon and a Carolina parakeet.Pigeons, parakeet, and owls in Birds of DC at USNM

Is the life-size fiberglass blue whale still there??

No, but a life-size northern right whale is, right in the middle of the new Ocean Hall.  It’s modeled after an actual individual whale, named Phoenix, studied by scientists from the New England Aquarium.  The story of its creation is here.Northern right whale in Ocean hall at USNM

I’m not sure where the blue whale is now. It was part of the Life in the Sea exhibit, which was in what is now the Hall of Mammals (I think– I’m trying to recall the hall layout from years ago, and don’t have an old floorplan). It’s story, up to 1996, is told here in Smithsonian magazine.

OMG! Evolution tee shirts banned for violating religious neutrality

August 30, 2009 • 9:50 am

A band at Smith-Cotton High School in Sedalia, Missouri had the cute idea of wearing tee shirts showing a sequence of human evolution that culminated in a trumpet player.  We’re all familiar with these ape-to-human diagrams; Steve Gould even wrote an article about them.  They’re somewhat misleading, implying as they do that evolution is progressive and (sometimes) that we evolved from modern apes. But they don’t really do any harm, and they do promote the fact that humans evolved.

But that’s the rub. As reported in the Sedalia Democrat, some irate parents forced the band to abandon its shirts,

[Assistant Superintendant] Pollitt said the district is required by law to remain neutral where religion is concerned.


“If the shirts had said ‘Brass Resurrections’ and had a picture of Jesus on the cross, we would have done the same thing,” he said.


Band parent Sherry Melby, who is a teacher in the district, stands behind Pollitt’s decision. Melby said she associated the image on the T-shirt with Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.


“I was disappointed with the image on the shirt.” Melby said. “I don’t think evolution should be associated with our school.”



band shirt

Fig. 1.  TIGER SHAME! The offensive and now defunct tee shirt (photo courtesy of the Sedalia Democrat).

I can see a trend coming here:  evolution is said to be a “faith,” same as religion, and thus can’t be presented in the public schools.  Thanks, Michael Ruse!

Thanks to ERV for bringing this to my attention via her post.

NOTE:  erv (see comment below) notes that there is now an online poll about the appropriateness of the tee-shirt.  Go here to vote (right-hand column below the ads).

Is depression an evolutionary adaptation? Part 2.

August 30, 2009 • 9:34 am

In yesterday’s post I laid out an adaptive hypothesis for the evolution of depression — a hypothesis presented in two new papers by Andrews and Thompson.  In short, their “analytical rumination hypothesis” (ARH) proposes that the “malady” we call depression is actually an adaptive behavior built into our ancestors by natural selection.  When facing difficult social problems, selection is said to have promoted behaviors that make individuals withdraw from life, ceasing to engage in formerly pleasurable activities like socializing, eating, and sex.  This is all in the service of rumination: freed from other activities and commitments, the depressed individual is said to analyze the problems that led to depression in the first place, eventually solving them and re-entering society.  This is “adaptive” because individuals who lacked the depressive syndrome would not be able to solve their life problems so easily, and would leave fewer offspring than individuals who shut down and ruminated. In such a way the genes promoting depression increased in our ancestors.

The ARH involves more than just the above, including a hypothesis about the biochemical basis of depression, which involves an excess of the neurotransmitter serotonin.  Do consult the original paper if you want more details.  I also described why the authors saw depression as an adaptation.  Their rationale is quite weak — in essence consisting only of a story of how analytical rumination might have been adaptive in our ancestors. The authors give no cost-benefit analysis for depression, despite the fact that the costs are certainly severe.  At present they include an appreciable frequency of suicide. And, as one alert reader pointed out, a loss of appetite or desire for sex would have been seriously maladaptive in our savanna-dwelling ancestors. Imagine an ancestral H. erectus, curled up on the floor of his cave, ruminating obsessively because he suspects his mate of infidelity.  He doesn’t sleep; he doesn’t eat; he doesn’t have sex or go hunting with his mates.  Does this really give him an adaptive advantage? This scenario is a bit facetious, but the point is serious.

Today I want to briefly examine the evidence proffered by Andrews and Thomson in support of the ARH.  I’ll break it down into a series of questions.

Is depression caused by difficult social problems ? On this crucial point the authors give virtually no evidence. [NOTE: It’s since been called to my attention that there is work suggesting some association between depression and  difficult life situations.  Again, however, there is a cause-and-effect problem here: people with a tendency to be depressed may more often get themselves into difficult life situations.]  People who have experience depression often say that its onset is often mysterious, not associated with an identifiable problem (see, for example, some of the commenters on yesterday’s post). But the authors wave that difficulty away:  “Many people may be reluctant to disclose the reasons for their depression because the problem is embarrassing, reputationally damaging or otherwise insensitive, which is often why depressive episodes may appear to be endogenous. . .”  This is almost Freudian in its hauteur.  Here the authors presume that there is a social reason for depression rather than treating it as a hypothesis.

The authors do note that “interpersonal conflict is commonly associated with depression. . “.  One example is that “in married couples, the risk for major depression is about 40 times greater if the couple is unhappily married.”  Well, you can see the problems with this: what is the cause, and what the consequence?  Perhaps the social problems result from undiagnosed depression. It’s easy to see that being married to someone with incipient or undiagnosed depression could cause unhappiness.  Depressed people are often hard to get along with.

Does depression enhance analytical rumination? Again, the evidence is very, very weak.  The authors cite only one “pertinent mood induction experiment”, which may not be relevant at all.  In this experiment participants (finance and economics students) were offered the chance to buy and sell German marks and Swiss francs (this was before the Euro in Germany), and were given historical information about markets that could help them with their decision.  Success was judged by how much profit was made.

The authors of this study (Au et al. 2003) supposedly created depression-istic conditions in the participants in this way:

Mood was manipulated by providing participants with false feedback on the first round. In the positive mood induction, participants received a high profit for their decision, regardless of what they actually did. In the sad mood induction, participants took a substantial loss. In the neutral mood induction, participants broke even. For all subsequent rounds, participants’ payoffs were determined by their actual decisions and mood was maintained with positive music, sad music, or no music.

Here’s Andrews’ and Thomson’s analysis:

People in positive moods made worse decisions by both standards: They were less accurate, and they lost more because they invested more. Sad participants made the most accurate decisions, but they tended to invest conservatively. Neutral participants were not as accurate as sad participants, but they received a higher profit because they invested more.

This experiment is very much in line with a model of depression’s causes and cognitive effects suggested by Gifford Weary and her colleagues (Weary et al., 1993). Participants experienced an increase in sad affect when they received feedback that their causal understanding of their situation (the trading situation) was
erroneous or in need of modification. Sad affect appeared to have focused their attention on the problem and helped them analyze it so that they could gain control over the situation.

Only in evolutionary psychiatry could a study like this count as “evidence” for the ARH.  All it says to me is that if you lose your shirt when engaging in a financial speculation, you tend to be more cautious. If you gain a lot, you tend to be euphoric and not as cautious.  Surprise! What this has to do with clinical depression is a mystery.

Does depression help people solve their social dilemmas? The authors cite some studies that, they say, support this contention (see p. 634 of the Psychological Review paper).  The one they describe in detail, however, doesn’t inspire much confidence.

In this study pairs of participants played “Prisoner’s Dilemma”. There were three kinds of pairs: depressed people paired with nondepressed people, nondepressed people paired with other nondepressed people, nondepressed people paired with people with “other problems” (e.g. high “fear” tendencies).  “High power” participants were those who made the first choice in the dilemma, “low power” participants went second. Overall, depressed people scored marginally better than “normals”, but the difference isn’t impressive: 97.4 versus 88.5 points, a difference that isn’t reported as statistically significant.  Andrews and Thomson impute the results to the fact that “the behavior of the depressed participants was more sensitive to position. In the high power position, depressed participants tended to defect more; when in the low power position, they tended to cooperate more.

Well, this may be relevant to the problem, but as a strong piece of evidence for depression helping solve thorny social dilemmas, it’s weak. It’s certainly not enough evidence to tell people to go off their meds! Ideally we’d like to examine two groups of people that face similar social dilemmas, such as infidelity.  One group would consist of those who experience post-dilemma depression, the other would not.  Psychologists could then assay whether the depressives had more positive outcomes.

The authors cite one more bit of evidence for the use of depression to solve dilemmas:

That depression may help people solve social dilemmas is also supported by research on real-life dilemmas. When in conflict with close, cooperative social partners, people tend to show more sympathy, more support, and reduced aggression when their partner has depressive symptoms . The supportive response that depressed people get from their close social partners has led some researchers to argue that it reinforces depressive tendencies, which suggests that it may be useful in solving social dilemmas. [References omitted; see original paper.]

Well, this does bespeak the milk of human kindess,but it’s not clear whether sympathy does reinforce depressive tendencies (which the authors see as good), and even less clear that “more sympathy and support” translates into “solved social dilemmas.”

Such is the nature of the evidence in evolutionary psychiatry: tendentious, thin, and highly speculative.  I’m used to that, but not to the prescription that doctors do away with antidepressants:

Our review suggests that medications treat symptoms, whereas psychotherapies are more likely to be treating cause. The analytical rumination hypothesis suggests that psychotherapies are productive when they help depressed people identify and solve important problems in their lives. It also suggests that depressive rumination is useful and that antidepressants may interfere with the ability to ruminate. For these reasons, the analytical rumination hypothesis would place greater emphasis on psychotherapy and less on medications.

The authors suggest that “problem-solving” forms of psychotherapy, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) will be more useful, since they concentrate on having the depressed person solve problems.  I’m not that familiar with CBT, so I don’t know whether the “problems” it helps solve are those identified as precipitating depression in the first place, but data do show that it seems to be effective.  But no more effective than drugs.   The most enlightened treatment of psychiatry today appears to be a combination of psychotherapy and medication.  Before we do away with the latter, we’ll need a lot better analysis than that of Andrews and Thompson.

It may be worth mentioning here that if depression helps you solve life problems, one episode apparently doesn’t do the job. If you’ve had a major depression, the probability that you’ll have another within five years is nearly 80%.  This suggests that the condition is a chronic pathology, although of course Andrews and Thompson might respond that this may just reflect genetic differences between people (but then why aren’t “depression genes” fixed in all humans?), or that some people just have a lot of problems and need to experience recurrent adaptive depressions.

____________________________

Worthwhile books on depression:

There are two superb accounts of depression, both written from the inside, that show the “adaptation” in all its frightening intensity.  One is embryologist Lewis Wolpert’s personal/scientific account, Malignant Sadness: The Anatomy of Depression. The other is author William Styron’s account of his “adaptation,” Darkness Visible:  A Memoir of Madness.

Manic depression is not the same clinical syndrome as depression, but I thought I’d include the following for general interest:

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness and Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, by Kay Redfield Jameson.  Jameson is a clinical psychologist and a superb writer, who also suffers from severe manic depression.  She’s written an engrossing memoir of her illness (now under control with lithium), which shows the difficulty that even a trained mental-health worker has with staying on medication.  Her Touched with Fire is interesting, maintaining as it does that manic depression may be closely connected with artistic genius.  She may well be right, though the book suffers a bit from making a virtue of necessity.

____________

Andrews, P. W. and J. A. Thomson, Jr. 2009.  The bright side of being blue: Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems.  Psychological Review 116(3), 620-654.
Andrews, P. W. and J. A. Thomson, Jr. 2009.  Depression’s evolutionary roots. Scientific American, Aug. 25.

Portrait of a molecule

August 30, 2009 • 6:14 am

Last night I was reading a new book which claimed that we’ve never seen atoms or molecules. The point the author was making is that in evolutionary biology you don’t need to actually see evolution happening, you can infer it — just as we can confidently infer the existence of atoms and molecules.  The point is correct, but the example is not.

We can actually see atoms and molecules.  This morning I awoke to find out that a really spiffy molecule has been visualized using a new type of microscope.

It’s pentacene, with 22 carbons and 14 hydrogens.  The molecule consists of five fused benzene rings, and is used, among other things, in solar panels.

IBM researchers in Switzerland imaged the molecule using a sophisticated new technology that includes a single molecule of carbon monoxide as an imaging device.

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Fig. 1.  Image of pentacene from the atomic force microscope

The AFM [atomic force microscope] uses a sharp metal tip that acts like a tuning fork to measure the tiny forces between the tip and the molecule. This requires great precision as the tip moves within a nanometer of the sample.

‘Above the skeleton of the molecular backbone (of the pentacene) you get a different detuning than above the surface the molecule is lying on,’ Mr Gross said.

This detuning is then measured and converted into an image.

To stop the tip from absorbing the pentacene molecule, the researchers replaced the metal with a single molecule of carbon monoxide. This was found to be more stable and created weaker electrostatic attractions with the pentacene, creating a higher resolution image.

Here’s the conventional molecular representation of pentacene:

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Fig. 2. Pentacene as you might have seen it in O-chem

And, as I say in WEIT, we’ve been able to visualize atoms ever since the scanning tunnelling microscope was created in 1981. (Its inventors got a Nobel Prize five years later.)

Here’s a bunch of atoms, looking like little balls:

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Fig. 3 : A photograph of about 500 atoms of Niobium (41) and Selenium (34) neatly arranged at the surface of a crystal (darker atoms are simply lying lower in the surface).