Pseudoscience roundup: Guerrilla Skeptics mock Sheldrake’s paranoia; Tedx fails to keep its videos of Sheldrake off YouTube, and BBC criticized for giving “equal time” to climate-change denialists

November 8, 2013 • 6:49 am

Rupert Sheldrake has been whining everywhere, including on the BBC, that his Wikipedia page has been doctored by a group called the Guerrilla Skeptics (or rather, a branch called the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia (GSoW), once again suggesting there’s a conspiracy to cover up his marvelous findings on morphic resonance and telepathy in dogs.

In a post a few days ago, I gave evidence debunking Sheldrake’s claims: the GSoW has never had anything to do with his page. Rather, Sheldrake’s supporters, who loaded the original page with his loony theories, were simply displaced by more sensible editors following to Wikipedia‘s own policies, which forbid presenting pseudoscience as if it were an equally valid alternative to mainstream science.

This was supported by “Julie,” a member of GSoW, who left this humorous comment after my post on Sheldrake:

Picture 2

I love the “we didn’t touch his page, even with our minds” bit.

The Beeb has promised to give a “balanced” response to Sheldrake’s rant on its airwaves, but I’m not aware that this has yet happened.

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Tedx, responding to criticisms of myself and others that they presented Sheldrake’s woo as “science” in one of their events, pulled the Sheldrake Tedx video off their site and put it in a separate place. They also promised me that they’d keep his Tedx video off of YouTube, as this was Tedx’s property and it was a copyright violation to repost it.  They asked me specificially to report any YouTube violations to them. For a while I did report these violations, and finally the people at Tedx started getting angry at me for doing so. Apparently they’ve taken so much flak from Sheldrake supporters (a nasty and vociferous pack, to be sure) that they just decided to let the videos go viral.  In other words, Tedx lied to me, failing to do what they promised. If you want to see the banned Sheldrake videos, just go to YouTube and search for “Rupert Sheldrake Science Delusion Tedx.”  I’ve lost considerable respect for Tedx after this, as I consider them gutless.

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Meanwhile the “Beeb” has been criticized on another front besides giving undue airtime and credibility to pseudoscientists like Sheldrake. This time it involves climate-change denialism. An Oct. 1 article in the Guardian reports that, despite overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming, the BBC continues to present climate-change skeptics as credible experts. This is one of their misguided efforts (perhaps born of an ignorance of how science is done) to “let a hundred opinions blossom.”

First a bit of background. Two years ago, British geneticist Steve Jones, collaborating with a research group at Imperial College London, produced a comprehensive report on the Beeb’s coverage of science: “BBC Trust review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC’s coverage of science” (free pdf at link). The main problems highlighted in the report were these:

1. An at times “over-rigid” (as Professor Jones describes it) application of the Editorial Guidelines on impartiality in relation to science coverage, which fails to take into account what he regards as the “non-contentious” nature of some stories and the need to avoid giving “undue attention to marginal opinion”. Professor Jones cites past coverage of claims about the safety of the MMR vaccine and more recent coverage of claims about the safety of GM crops and the existence of man made climate change as examples on this point. He suggests that achieving “equality of voice” may be resolved by the new 2010 Editorial Guidelines which incorporate consideration of “due weight” in relation to impartiality. A more common-sense approach to “due impartiality” would also help, he believes.

2. Underdeveloped links between science programme makers across the BBC’s divisions. This he recommends might in part be addressed by establishing a regular cross-division science forum and appointing a Science Editor for BBC News to work across a range of output.

3. Too narrow a range of sources for stories and a tendency to be reactive rather than proactive, particularly in news coverage. Professor Jones recommends that this might be remedied by better use of external electronic databases that draw from a wide variety of science publications. He further recommends working to improve – and share – BBC contacts with the science community.

Apparently the BBC took this report seriously and implemented several changes to deal with the report’s criticisms (n.b.: I haven’t read the full report, which is nearly 90 pages long).  But, according to the Guardian, the Beeb recently failed when it came to covering the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a consortium of the world’s leading climate scientists.  Last week the IPCC published its conclusions:

On Friday the IPCC, which represents the world’s leading climate scientists, produced a landmark report on the state of knowledge of global warming.

The IPCC said it was unequivocal that warming was occurring and that the dominant force behind it was human activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.

The report, the first from the UN-convened body since 2007, and only the fifth since 1988, was the starkest warning yet of the dangers of climate change.

Apparently the BBC decided to give undue coverage to the skeptics:

But in the BBC’s coverage of the report’s release in Stockholm, which was attended by several BBC science journalists, the voice of climate-change sceptics, who do not accept the IPCC’s core findings, got considerable airtime.

Complaints focused on the World at One programme on Radio 4 on Friday, which featured the Australian sceptic Bob Carter. A retired geologist, he leads a group called the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, and is funded by US libertarians. His words also dominated several subsequent news bulletins.

Criticism immediately came from John Aston (the former top official on climate change in Britain’s Foreign Office), who said that the BBC’s coverage of the IPCC report was “a betrayal of the editorial professionalism on which the BBC’s reputation has been built over generations.” He added: “The BBC should now explain how its decision to give a platform to Carter serves the public interest. Otherwise, it will be undermining its friends when it needs them most and throwing the scavengers a piece of its own flesh.”

Jones also chimed in:

The biologist Steve Jones, who reviewed the BBC’s science output in 2011, told the Guardian he was concerned that the BBC was still wedded to an idea of “false balance” in presenting climate sceptics alongside reputable scientists.

He said: “This goes to the heart of science reporting – you wouldn’t have a homeopath speaking alongside a brain surgeon for balance, as that would be absurd. It’s just as absurd to have a climate sceptic for balance against the work of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists.”

And in this case, the BBC disregarded Jones’s recommendations. David Jordan, head of editorial standards of the BBC, told members of Parliament that Jones “made one recommendation that we did not take on board. He said we should regard climate change as settled. . . .we should not hear from dissenting voices on the science.” Jones denies this:

Jones told the Guardian that this was misquoting him; rather, he had recommended to the BBC not to show “false balance” by presenting climate sceptics as having equal scientific weight as mainstream climate researchers.

He said: “Science turns on evidence. Balance in science is not the same as balance in politics where politicians can have a voice however barmy their ideas are. They’re not taking this on board. Why, I don’t know.”

In response, the BBC defended its coverage:

The BBC responded: “[We] covered the IPCC report on climate change and its conclusions very fully on all outlets with analysis from our specialist journalists. The bulk of interviews on the subject were with climate scientists, many of whom had contributed to the IPCC report. We reject the suggestion that global warming sceptics were given too much time in our overall coverage of the IPCC report.

“As part of the BBC’s commitment to impartiality a small number of global warming sceptics were also interviewed. This is consistent with our response to the Jones report in which we said we would take care to reflect all viewpoints in the debate about the science and policy.”

But what does it mean to be “impartial”—to “reflect all viewpoints”—with respect to an overwhelming scientific consensus? When there’s a report on evolution, should the BBC present “a small number of creationists” to “reflect all viewpoints”?  The consensus on anthropogenic global warming is now so strong that it is no longer “impartiality” to pretend that they have credible alternative views. When the BBC presents an article on medical advances, should they allow homeopaths to weigh in? What about astrologers when there are programs on psychology? After all, astrologers and their followers are numerous, and have an alternative theory of human behavior—it’s guided by the configuration of stars and planets when you were born.

I didn’t hear the BBC show, so I can’t weigh in personally.  But there are so many critics of their coverage that one wonders if the Beeb (taking into account its sympathetic and erroneous portrayal of Rupert Sheldrake) has simply decided that the scientific issues are too hard for them to fathom.

But climate-change denialism is a far greater danger to our planet than is creationism. After all, creationism threatens science education in the U.S. and some countries in the Middle East. Global warming threatens the whole planet and all its species. Here the BBC has extra responsibility to get it right. The consequences of getting it wrong, and giving people false ideas about science, are extremely serious here.

The Beeb apparently didn’t get it right.  As Ashton noted,

“In particular, the World At One on Friday provided a stunning display of false balance when it devoted less airtime to IPCC scientists than it did to Bob Carter, a sceptic who is funded by a free-market lobby group in the US, the Heartland Institute. Carter was allowed to make a number of inaccurate and misleading statements unchallenged.”

“In science, those viewpoints that are supported by robust reasoning and evidence are accorded greater weight, but the BBC does not always reflect this.

“Listeners to the World At One on Friday would not have gathered that there is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is driven by greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. More than 99% of journal papers and all major scientific organisations around the world are part of this consensus.”

As a scientist, 99% is good enough for me.  Our ancestors probably developed extra wariness about weird noises and sounds in their environment, because the cost of getting it wrong, and thinking a predator was merely rustling leaves, was too high.  The situation is identical with global warming.  While the critics stall progress with their quibbling and pseudoscience, the earth is warming beyond repair. The global fitness will, like that of too complacent hominins, drop to zero.

Friday: Hili dialogue

November 8, 2013 • 4:27 am
A: Hili, what’s this new fad of climbing on the roof of the verandah and getting down again?
Hili: A genuine alley cat* has to wander on roofs.
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* “alley cat” is called “roofer” (dachowiec) in Polish

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In Polish:

Ja : Hili, co to za nowa moda włażenia i złażenia z dachu werandy?
Hili: Prawdziwy dachowiec musi chodzić po dachach.

Tiger swim test, part 2

November 7, 2013 • 1:41 pm

In a comment below, reader Michael calls attention to two YouTube videos of the D.C. zoo’s tiger-cub swim test, and I thought I’d post them for grins (and education, but mostly grins):

This shorter clip shows the underwater view of poor Bandar being heaved into the drink. It’s clear that this animal, like so many mammals, clearly has an instinct to dog-paddle when first hurled into water. While that might be simply a natural reaction to being in an aqueous medium, I can’t help but speculate that it’s at least partly the result of natural selection: those ancestors that dog-paddled in such situations were the ones that survived.

The test of this would be to take a cat (or other mammal) which never could have experienced a fall into water, either in its present form or recent ancestry, and see if it still dog-paddles.  But I know of no such mammals. (Maybe desert rodents? For I know that other rodents dog-paddle too.)

How do you piss off a baby tiger?

November 7, 2013 • 12:12 pm

Answer: Throw it into the water.

MSNBC’s Photo Blog has an incredibly endearing series of photos of two young Sumatran tiger cubs undergoing their requisite swimming tests. The explanation?

Two Sumatran tiger cubs born Aug. 5 took a swimming test to show their ability to keep their heads above water, navigate the shallow end of the moat, and climb onto dry land.  The cubs had to pass before they could go on exhibit at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. At least one of the cubs didn’t look too happy about the experience. The two will be on public display Nov. 18.

By all means, if you’re near D.C. go see these cubs after Nov. 18.  And if anybody out there can somehow provide me with the opportunity to pet or hold a tiger cub (a lion cub will do as well), remember that that is my fondest dream: the one thing I desperately want to do before I die.

Now, check these photos out (captions from the MSNBC piece):

Tiger 1
Male Sumatran tiger cub Bandar is tossed into a moat by Smithsonian National Zoo curator of great cats and bears Craig Saffoe for a swim test in Washington, D.C., Nov. 6, 2013. Photo: Gary Cameron / Reuters
Tiger 2
A three-month-old Sumatran tiger cub named Bandar shows his displeasure after being dunked in the tiger exhibit moat for a swim reliability test at the National Zoo. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP
Tiger 3
Male Sumatran tiger cub Bandar crawls out of a moat at the Smithsonian National Zoo after a swim test. Photo: Gary Cameron/Reuters
Tiger 4
A female Sumatran Tiger cub named Sukacita is dried off by biologist Leigh Pitsko after her swim test in a moat of the Great Cats exhibit at the National Zoo Nov. 6, 2013.Photo: Win McNamee / Getty Images

h/t: Michael

A guest post for Wallace Day

November 7, 2013 • 8:16 am

This guest post is required reading for everyone here, as today is a special day, creating what they call a “teachable moment” about the history of biology.

For today marks the 100th anniversary of the death of Alfred Russel Wallace, which means there are people still alive who were his contemporaries. He is, of course, best known as the man who came up with the idea of natural selection at about the same time Darwin did. But Wallace was also a great biologist and naturalist in his own right, and the father of biogeography.

In honor of Wallace’s life and accomplishments, I asked my friend Andrew Berry, a teacher at Harvard and a Wallace expert (see his book in the references below), to give us a brief overview of Wallace. He kindly obliged, and added a link at the end to a wonderful animation of Wallace’s life that recently appeared in the New York Times. Andrew also provided a list of the major works by and about Wallace that would interest our readers.

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ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE: AN ANIMATED LIFE

by Andrew Berry

Alfred Russel Wallace died 100 years ago today, just shy of his 91st birthday.  Wallace, as all regular readers of WEIT will know, is best known for discovering the theory evolution by natural selection during his biological explorations of Southeast Asia and then co-publishing the idea, under unusual circumstances, with Charles Darwin in 1858.  He is also, these days, famous for being not famous: the other thing everyone knows about Wallace is that he has been overlooked by posterity.  Wallace fans in particular object to the way that their man has been relegated to footnotes in textbooks while Darwin becomes ever more prominent in the public sphere as both thinker and icon.

The reasons for Wallace’s relative obscurity are many and complex but it’s worth noting two things.  It started early: his eclipse by Darwin is not solely a function of hindsight’s preference for one over the other.  During the years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, when Darwin was at the height of his powers and Wallace was scientifically at his most productive, it was Darwin, and Darwin alone, who was co-identified in the public eye with the theory of evolution.  A survey of contemporary cartoons and caricatures lampooning the idea reveals a plethora of Darwin-themed (or Darwin-apeing) images, and none—zero—that feature Wallace.

Second, Wallace himself was partially responsible for this.  His wonderful account of his 8 years in Southeast Asia, The Malay Archipelago, which recounts what he did and what he saw in some considerable detail (a contemporary review in The Atlantic Monthly  put it a little unkindly, “Mr. Wallace apparently exhausts a very copious diary in the production of his book, and seems almost to have made it a point of conscience not to leave anything out”), does not mention, even in passing, the events surrounding his evolutionary discoveries.  In The Malay Archipelago Wallace refers repeatedly to the idea of natural selection, but always calls it “Mr. Darwin’s theory”.  There is something pathologically modest about Wallace.

Wallace was an extraordinary man, and his was an extraordinary story.  I have previously told the tale here of what I consider to be the most poignant episode in all of the history of science: Wallace’s loss of his Amazon specimens, living and dead, in a fire in the middle of the Atlantic.  After such a crushing experience, to be able to pick himself up, as he did, and head off within a couple of years on his eight year journey through Southeast Asia is evidence of almost superhuman resilience.  That he was able to make any significant collections at all under extremely trying circumstances—he was frequently sick, suffered wildly frustrating logistical nightmares, and had to contend with endless pests and distractions as he tried to prepare his specimens—is impressive enough, but it is the scale and scope of his collecting that is truly mind-blowing.

Take birds.  This is arguably the best described taxonomic group on the planet. Finding a new species of bird, even in Wallace’s day, was a challenge (unlike, say, finding a new species of weevil).  In a retrospective paper published in 1865 (Wallace, A. R. (1865) Descriptions of New Birds From the Malay Archipelago. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1865: 474-481) on his bird collections, he notes that he had collected 212 new species.  Given that there are approximately 10,000 species of birds, this means that, in eight years, Wallace discovered 2% of all known bird species!

But, of course, Wallace’s years in Southeast Asia are best known not for the collections but for the grand ideas they inspired.  His discovery of evolution by natural selection was a two step process: his first evolutionary paper, his “Sarawak Law” (1855), recognized the genealogical nature of evolutionary change (what Darwin would call “Descent with Modification”), and the second, his “Ternate Paper” (1858), supplied a mechanism (“natural selection” being Darwin’s term that Wallace objected to) to entrain that generation to generation change to adaptive ends.  But it was not just evolution: Wallace, always interested in the geographic distribution of plants and animals, identified what was subsequently dubbed “Wallace’s Line”, the boundary between Asian and Australasian biogeographic realms.  The journey was a scientific tour de force. In 1863, shortly after Wallace’s return to England, T H Huxley, never one to be extravagant with praise, summarized it:

“Once in a generation, a Wallace may be found physically, mentally, and morally qualified to wander unscathed through the tropical wilds of American and Asia; to form magnificent collections as he wanders; and withal to think out sagaciously the conclusions suggested by his collections.”  —Huxley, T. H. (1863) Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature. London: Williams & Norgate.

Sharon Shattuck and Flora Lichtman, Brooklyn-based filmmakers, have created a brief animated tribute to Wallace that is available through the New York Times [disclaimer: I was involved with the project]. Do take 7 minutes on the centenary of his death to appreciate this lovingly-crafted appreciation of a brilliant, quirky, and humble man.

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Further reading:

By Wallace 

See two excellent and comprehensive websites for Wallace material (here and here).

The Malay Archipelago; The Land of the Orang-utan and the Bird of Paradise; A Narrative of Travel With Studies of Man and Nature. 2 volumes. Macmillan & Co., London, 9 March 1869. A wonderful account of Wallace’s journeys.  A true travel writing classic.

My Life; A Record of Events and Opinions. 2 volumes. Chapman & Hall, Ltd., London, Oct. 1905. A sprawling and engaging autobiography.

About Wallace

Berry, Andrew, ed., 2002. Infinite Tropics: An Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology. London & New York: Verso. 430 pp. Provides a (hopefully) representative sample of Wallace’s copious writings on a huge range of subjects.

Costa, Jim, 2013.  On the Organic Law of Change: A facsimile edition and annotated transcription of Alfred Russel Wallace’s Species Notebook of 1855-1859.  Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press.  573pp. Just out.  A scholarly dissection of the notebook that Wallace kept in the field in mid-1850’s — when he was thinking about evolutionary ideas.

Quammen, David, 1996. The Song of the Dodo; Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. New York: Scribner. 702 pp. An introduction to biogeography and conservation, but there is a lot of Wallace in there too.

Raby, Peter, 2001. Alfred Russel Wallace, A Life. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press; London: Chatto & Windus. 340 pp. The most readable of the recent biographies.

Slotten, Ross A., 2004. The Heretic in Darwin’s Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace. New York: Columbia University Press. 602 pp. The most comprehensive of the recent biographies.

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Wallace young and old. The first picture was taken in Singapore at the end of his time in Southeast Asia, the second when he was a venerable doyen of biology.

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alfred-russel-wallace

Wallace’s Standardwing (Semioptera wallacii), a bird of paradise he discovered:

Wallace's Standardwing

A “flying” frog he also discovered; illustration from The Malay Archipelago derived from Wallace’s sketches:

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Christian runner drops out of race rather than wear Satan’s number

November 7, 2013 • 6:24 am

Codie Thacker, a high-school athlete in Kentucky, dropped out of a regional championship race because she was assigned The Number of the Beast.  When she opened her race envelope, this is what she got (screenshot from the video mentioned below):

Picture 2

According to Yahoo News (where you should watch the video about this), Thacker wouldn’t accept the number because it was Satan’s number and running while wearing it would jeopardize her relationship with God:

“I didn’t want to risk my relationship with God and try to take that number,” Thacker told LEX18. “I told them to mark out my name because it makes me sick just thinking that my name is associated with that number.”

The result was a third straight season when the cross country runner has fallen just short of the state meet, even though she had aggressively trained for the regional championship race since June. Thacker had hoped to earn headlines for her performance on the trails. Now she’s getting attention for something else entirely.

Perhaps the only person who wasn’t stunned by Thacker’s exit from the regional meet was her coach, Gina Croley, who was the first person to see the number assigned to the runner.

“I saw it and I was like, ‘whoa,'” she said. “I don’t think she will wear that number.”

. . . As reported in depth by Lexington NBC affiliate LEX18, Whitley County High (Whitley County, Ky.) cross country runner Codie Thacker voluntarily forfeited her spot in a regional championship race after her coach drew bib No. 666 for the runner. Thacker and her coach argued that she should be allowed to switch her number, but race officials refused the request.

Thacker has insisted that she made it clear to race officials that wearing “666” violated her religion, but the race officials say otherwise—that she just asked for a new number.  If you believe them, then their denial was fine.  But if you believe Thacker, I’m not sure why they just didn’t give her another number and let her run.

Granted, she is delusional, and it’s almost laughable to see her claim that God would frown on her if she ran with that number. On the other hand, what’s the harm in catering to her delusion? I see no First Amendment violations here, and I feel sorry that she couldn’t run.  I do hope she gets over her literalism, but it seems unlikely. I’ve spoken in Kentucky twice before (and will do so again in two weeks, at Murray State), and I know what a hotbed of religious fervor it is. (That is, by the way, why I want to speak there.)

But readers, do weigh in. If Thacker did have a religious objection to wearing the number, and the officials knew it, did they have any reason to deny her request?

Here’s Thacker (center) praying before a race:

Prayer

By the way, although the number 666 appears in Revelation, there is a scholarly controversy about whether the number might really be 616, which appears in some of the earliest versions of that text. See Wikipedia for further discussion.

I want to mention one more thing. To all those Sophisticated Theologians™  or Faitheists like Frances Spufford, R. Joseph “Look at Me” Hoffmann, Karen Armstrong, and so on, who claim that a. nobody takes most of the Bible literally, and b. atheists like Richard Dawkins are attacking a strawman when going after religion as literalism—you people need to get out more. Spend some time in the American South, where you’d get big horselaughs trying to explain Sophisticated Theology, God as a Ground of Being, or Apophatic theology.  There many people take the Bible with a strong draught of literalism rather than a grain of salt.

Or you could spend some time in the Middle East.  In many Muslim countries it is impermissible to even think of the Qur’an as metaphorical.  If Karen Armstrong preached apophatism on the steps of the Great Mosque of Isfahan, she wouldn’t last long.

h/t: Todd, Chris