Anthropology's troublesome arguments

By Anne Buchanan and Ken Weiss

These last few months have been strange ones for anthropology.  So much linen being aired so prominently, dirty and otherwise.  First we had a best-selling book by science journalist Nicholas Wade that in effect defines the field as the science of genetically determined traits, declaring among other things that there are five human races and that anyone who doesn't accept the biological basis of race is motivated not by science but by politics -- unlike his own stance. Then we had two papers (here and here) in PNAS suggesting that one of the now extinct short people on the Indonesian island of Flores had Down syndrome. And now we have a paper, albeit in a less visible journal than PNAS, but nothing's invisible to Twitter, declaring that premenstrual syndrome evolved to keep women from staying with partners with whom they are infertile.

The Wade book, of course, has gotten a lot of press, both positive and negative, including a letter in the New York Times last week refuting Wade's use of population biology by a long list of population biologists, many of whom are authors of the work Wade cites in support of his own political views, although of course he doesn't see it that way.  The PNAS papers got huge amounts of publicity around the world, but very accepting, none that we saw questioning the hypothesis. The PMS hypothesis, on the other hand, has been critiqued as nicely as 140 characters allow (including by Holly, who red-inks it below (it's a Twitter thing), and blames PLS (pre labor syndrome) for any perceived snark).

Each of these publications happens to bring up deep and long-standing issues in anthropology.  The issues involve the usual scientific food fights, but over and above the specific details, there are problems, and it's these that we want to discuss today.

Troublesome arguments
We'll take these issues one at a time.  Enough has been written about Wade's book that there's no need to look at the specific arguments again.  It's a continuation of retailing Just-So stories and selective reporting and misreporting, that he's been doing for many years; it sells well and he serves a surreptitious audience that includes various shades of racist enmity, as well as readers who have no way to know better, including many anthropologists.

Fine.  What's interesting to us, in terms of the broader field of Anthropology, is that it has clarified how deeply politics affects what we all make of scientific 'facts'.  You've got your genetic determinists on the right and your gene/environment interactionists on the left, and if you know how someone feels about genetic determinism -- that what and who you are is basically set the moment you are conceived -- then you know a lot about how s/he feels about IQ, scientific racism, natural selection vs drift, the importance of adaptation in evolution, and indeed about immigration, Obama, economic inequality, and so much more.  Sociopolitical views are correlated with what one seeks, accepts, or promotes when it comes to science -- not just some purportedly objective truth.

Genetic determinism is an interesting hot button issue.  Too often, people believe either that it explains virtually all traits or explains none, but of course it's some of both.  Some diseases, e.g., are caused with high predictability by a genetic variant, some diseases are due to gene/environment interaction, and some 'causal' variants are fairly useless for disease prediction.  Even infectious diseases that can affect almost anyone, that is, almost any genotype, do so in concert with genes.  Genes contribute to every trait, directly or indirectly: without genes we would not be here, and genetic variation can affect almost anything.  But that is not the same as saying that they determine, or specify, every trait.

There are academics who have trouble accepting strongly genetic arguments, because they believe they are, as the phrase goes, 'politically incorrect'.  But behind the political incorrectness smear is of course a dark history of eugenics, lynchings, the slaughter of 11 million people during World War II, including Jews, homosexuals, disabled people, and more.  But further, even if all of genetic-deterministic arguments were fully supported by the science, and we all were to accept that, for example, 'race' is a clear-cut biologically determined category of humans, why would that justify unequal, and worse, treatment of groups we (those in decision-making positions) deem unequal to ourselves?  Unequal because science tells us so.  Science doesn't make value judgements -- people do.  That is why the assertion of such points, or even the funding of studies to find them, is itself a political act.

To the people whose politics are supported by the new 'genomic' version of scientific racism (the latter term, we think, was invented in pre-Nazi Germany), of course, those arguments are 'politically correct' and their generally left-leaning proponents are just idiotic know-nothings.  Not in science, but in scientific racism, it's perfectly fine to cherry-pick the data when making an argument -- and the argument is supported by white supremacists, people who see genes behind everything, people who believe that every trait is here because it was naturally selected, and so on.  Genetic determinism and other labels have become code for accepting inequality, for hording resources, for rationalizing us having and them not having, and this often goes hand-in-hand with racism and hate (often not openly stated, of course, but sometimes it is). It's hard to argue that's science, not politics.  And, the disagreement won't be solved by science.

The problem here is simply the facile telling of stories without anything close to a sufficient understanding of the available information, the mixing of how things are today with how they got here, the assumption that how they are today is driven by genes rather than by much stronger and more ephemeral cultural factors, and the simple assumption that everything simply must be simply explained by genetic natural selection above other evolutionary paths.  In these conditions, a measured discussion of the issues is not possible -- and by the conflicting parties with their agendas, perhaps not even desired.

Getting to now may have nothing to do with then
The PMS paper is interesting for a number of reasons.  First, the author is a biologist who, at least judging from his web page, works on genetic variation in non-human organisms.  Mostly not even mammals.  So it's curious that he's decided to, er, wade into the evo psych realm.  Evo psych can be troubling enough when the arguments are coherent, so this one is particularly troublesome. In "Were there evolutionary advantages to premenstrual syndrome?" Gillings repeats and then discounts a number of previous evolutionary arguments about PMS, and then argues that premenstrual syndrome or premenstrual dysphoric disorder are essentially universal and experienced by all women, so there must be an adaptive explanation for such a maladaptive trait.  And of course it has a genetic basis.

Ongoing bonding between humans is complex, depending on sexual and nonsexual behaviours, and on previous experience in the relationship. Where such relationships do not result in pregnancy, premenstrual hostility may cause varying degrees of rejection, both sexually and of the relationship in more general terms. It might then be conjectured that infertile pair bonds are more likely to break down, freeing both partners to pursue fertile mates (Morriss and Keverne 1974).

Women suffering from PMS are likely to direct their anger at current partners, Gillings suggests, but most often it is when they have no children, that is, when one of the pair is infertile (or the pair, together, is infertile), that this will result in the dissolution of the pairing.

So, PMS evolved to dissolve infertile couplings.  But Gillings then says that this wasn't a problem in hunter gatherer times because women then weren't cycling nearly as frequently as women today -- they were pregnant or lactating, or poorly enough nourished that they didn't menstruate.  In that case, it's hard to understand how this evolved.  Gillings argues, though, that modern cycling is maladaptive, and that it causes health problems, as well as disrupts family dynamics with this genetically driven monthly bearishness of women.  He goes on to suggest that women should consider using cycle-stopping contraception (rather than, say, suggesting men should offer chocolate and not take it so personally).

But wait a minute.  First, a trait can only be selected if it's visible to natural selection.  It has nothing to do with whether people are paired up or happy (unless these are requirements for reproductive success, and the former is, according to some widely held evo psych-type assumptions), and it must be based on genetic variation, not cultural patterns.  If women weren't cycling regularly, and there's a lot of evidence that they weren't until modern times, how could PMS adaptively evolve if it didn't exist in any significant form?  And second, as Ken pointed out in his series a few weeks ago on the mythology of natural selection, there are many other ways that traits can evolve, including a series of reasons we might have no ability to guess, and including by drift relative to any Just-So story we reconstruct as if we got here in a straight adaptive line from then to now.

Like Wade's book, this paper makes the all-too-frequent mistake, in evo psych yes, but in anthropology -- and increasingly in other fields as well -- of assuming that every trait is adaptive, is here because of natural selection, and is thus genetically determined.  And that if we can build a plausible argument, it must be true.  And that the way it functions today is the reason for its evolution.  But, let's call this the geodesic fallacy.

SpaceTime trajectory real and imaginary (modified from GoogleImages)

See Ken's final post on the mythology of natural selection for the details, but here's the gist:

Even if the implicit complete determinism of Darwinian assumptions were true, the complex dynamic nature of earthly ecologies means that an evolutionary geodesic need not follow a retrospectively reconstructable path from then to now. A species or trait need not have evolved 'for' its current use, not even in stages aimed in a particular direction, not with its various components evolving synchronously or even sympatrically. Indeed, if and where ecologies are complex and dynamic, the meanderings of our object--a trait or species--may be essentially indistinguishable from random movement relative to any long-term 'purpose'.

It's very easy to make up adaptive scenarios.  That's why they are called Just-So stories.  And they are seductive.  But elegance or cleverness doesn't make them right.  Indeed, most often we have no idea if they are right, or even how to test them.

Again, the problem here is simply the facile telling of stories without anything close to a sufficient understanding of the available information, the mixing of how things are today with how they got here, the assumption that how they are today is driven by genes rather than by much stronger and more ephemeral cultural factors, and the simple assumption that everything simply must be explained by genetic natural selection.

Lumpers and splitters
The Flores controversy, of course, well-known in anthropology, has been ongoing since the first report of the findings of bones in Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores ten years ago.  The bones were from individuals obviously much smaller than other known hominids of the time, prompting the discoverers to declare them to be representatives of a species of human new to science.  The authors of the current re-interpretive papers on Flores at the time argued that no, these bones didn't represent a new species, but instead at least the one intact skull that was found represented an individual with microcephaly.  Now, it's an individual with Down syndrome.

LB1 skull: Wikipedia
 (associated postcranial remains can be seen here)

However, the argument is based on assuming that it's possible to definitively diagnose Down syndrome in a skeleton (among the many possible skeletal indicators of Down syndrome, most are not found exclusively in people with DS)  and that the asymmetry in the skull was present before the individual died, and not the result of thousands of years of burial, that this individual reached adulthood, and without modern medical care, that's less likely, all at least questionable assumptions.

But suppose LB1 really did have Down syndrome, then what?  Then it is completely irrelevant to any population or evolutionary argument.  One can argue about the Down diagnosis, a subject best left to actual experts of which there are many, but it matters not to the issue of whether the population experienced the very commonly observed evolutionary phenomenon of island dwarfism.

Cave where the bones were found: Wikipedia

This then gets into a very long-standing argumentation between those who tend to name each new fossil with a separate species designation (often called 'splitters' in evolutionary biology), and those who see a range of variation within species and argue that what we have found in the fossil record are representations of that variation, not of different species.  The latter are the 'lumpers'.  The snide and over-puffed Flores papers seem to be at heart a jab at those who see the Flores specimens as representative of a different species from the southeast Asian mainland.

Of course, 'species' is itself a largely subjective subject.  Even the idea of reproductive isolation is very hard to prove.  How many matings does one need to try to show that they never produce fertile offspring?  Usually, of course, and certainly with fossils we cannot do that directly!  The species problem has been debated for more than a century.

Were Neanderthals and early 'modern' Homo sapiens separate species?  Many would say so.  Are the recently prominent 'Denisovans', fossils from a region in Northwest Asia, a separate species?  They have separate names, after all!  Yet because they are recent enough, and perished under fortuitously helpful conditions, we have DNA from them.  And to date, the evidence suggests admixture between them (with remnants of both in modern humans today).  So: separate species, or not?

The arguments are heated among anthropologists about these sorts of issues and the more-heat-than-light regarding the Flores material reflects that.  There is, after all, a whole lot of publicity in the media for stories that sell, like tales of human fossils.  Anthropologists, whose field is often not all that rigorous given the problems of reconstructing the past, are particularly vulnerable to promoting their finds as different, or blasting their peers for doing so.  The media circus loves anthropologists, and anthropologists love it!

In these areas, the controversy is stirred up by the journals and the media.  Every week outrageously poorly supported evolutionary stories appear in journals and are eaten up by media reporters who either don't know the science, don't probe as they should, or don't care to be informed because the objective is to sell copy, and to do that content must be found.

Whether we'll see a day when appropriately measured questions can be asked and discussed, even if they can't really be 'answered', isn't clear.  Probably not in our lifetimes.

Let's put this subject to bed...

Our Monday post raised quite a stir.  It was triggered by a Science paper about a large mega-study on the genomics of educational achievement, and a subsequent blog post by geneticist Dan Graur.  An issue that we suggested would come up was what we felt was an inevitable interest in using this GWAS result specifically to look for group differences (i.e., especially including 'race' differences) in intelligence.  Even such super-minimal results as reported in the Science paper--trivial genetic contributions to the chosen outcome, educational attainment--can be easily used to justify such purposes.

Our 'policy' on vitriol
Sure enough, we got a few comments expounding upon exactly that point of view, some rather virulently.  You won't see these here, because, for one thing, we didn't want to let that thread get started.  And we don't publish comments that attack individuals in ad hominem ways, nor take blatantly racist stances.  While we don't block disagreement, we do exercise what does amount to a form of censorship.  Those views have plenty of other places to be aired, but not here. 

It is fair enough to disagree, and the blogosphere is a place for opinions to be aired and discussed.  There are few other venues with so wide and fast a reach, a wonderful thing.  Indeed, we use much of our post-space to critique areas in which we feel evolutionary concepts, or genetics and related topics could be differently considered.  We try to do it in the context of the science itself, pointing out issues as we see them.

Of course each study is done by people, and we criticize the 'system' for the various vested interests that drive it.  But we rarely if ever knowingly aim this directly at individual authors in a personalized sense, even if we can and will say when we think someone should know better than to say what he or she said.  We're all human and fallible, however, so it is the issues that are important, not the individuals in our context.

Racism and 'IQ' (here used to represent the panoply of intellectual achievement measures and concepts) have a nasty history.  Polarization is deep and the issues--for those who want to take science seriously--are complex, and the science can and will be used by both those who believe that inequality is justified, and those who believe it's not.

Taking the science seriously
What about intelligence differences, for example?  Are they real, or are they only social constructs by right-wingers?   From a genetic and evolutionary point of view, if you do an IQ study comparing any two individuals, or two groups (say, the left and right sides of a class, two random individuals, two populations you choose to sample--even identical twins) and you find no difference between them, then there is something wrong with your study!  Because of existing variation and new mutational variation, every pair of individuals, and hence every set of indigenous, geographically separate populations that you sample, will differ genetically, and differences will be found across the genome.  Even identical twins are not genomically identical, because every cell division during each twin's life involves the occurrence of some new mutation.

At the moment, we're not considering the manifestly important 'environmental' effects.  But a reductio ad absurdem is that if you don't go to school or can't read you can't score high on a school IQ test.  So, because evolution is the process that got us where we are and is a population process of sorting through variation, you cannot expect exact identity between any two people.  So a study that finds nothing is not done right, uses inaccurate methods of testing for differences, etc.

GWAS knowingly bury genome sites whose differences between cases and controls, for example, are not statistically 'significant', reporting only what passes a specified statistical test.  This is essentially what must be done if one takes a sampling and statistical approach to the subject, as is current standard practice.  We think it's not good science, but that's beside the point.  The point is that when only a few small effects are reported, this does not mean there are no other genomic effects even in that study's data.  Indeed, the idea that most of the heritability--the aggregate genetic effects we find by using trait comparisons in relatives, for example--is 'hidden', really refers to the problem of statistical testing and the intentional ignoring of effects that must be there but don't individually pass a statistical significance test.

To do the science right, or at least in a better way, is a difficult challenge.  Serious issues that may not be compatible with a steady stream of hypothesis-free mega Big Data projects, studies too large and too costly to terminate so the funds can go more productively elsewhere, should be but too often aren't addressed.  But the issues are known, and they are subtle.  These facts are not secret, known only to science critics.  Everyone who cares to think about them, can know them.

An example we mentioned in a response to a comment on Monday's post is this.  In its effort not to be flooded with false positive test results, GWAS buries small, non-statistically significant effects.  The larger the study (assuming properly informed design) the smaller will the undetected effects be, even if they are there in aggregate and indeed are the bulk of the causal variation.  But GWAS and similar findings are widely presented as being far more definitive than they usually are.  For example, not only do genomewide association types of study bury, for practical reasons, the bulk (usually the vast bulk) of genomic effects, but typically many or most or even all clear, previously documented effects are not found in even huge GWAS reports.  How can that be, if the study is so huge?  For example, there are, as we noted on Monday, tens or even hundreds of rather clear-cut genes that when mutated in some ways cause serious IQ impairment.  Yet virtually none of them were found in the large educational achievement study.  Were previous studies wrong?  Are these genes not involved after all?

One answer is that causal mutations simply were not present in those genes in the  specific study sample.  They do exist, at low frequency, in the population, but not in the sampled 'normal' part of the population going to regular schools. The point is that even such huge studies do not represent genomic effects on a trait, nor even those in the population, in a very clear way.  Other samples, in other populations, will (as we know and should expect from what we understand about evolution) typically find other 'hits'.  And this without considering environment.  This is poor epistemology for understanding traits, and it's poor science; or at least, we should be thinking hard about better conceptual ways to understand what genomes do.

Why it's so hard to put this subject to bed!
Well, what about environment?  Reflecting the obvious, if not even perhaps rather ridiculous, state of things, the BBC posted a story yesterday on the major effects on education achievement of going to bed late.  This study was a mere 11,000 strong (compare to the genome mapping study's mega design), yet it easily found substantial achievement effects--far bigger in that sense than the Big Data study.  And it was also clear that they were partly reflective of socieoeconomic status.

Now since most genes--80%, according to gene expression results from the Allen Brain Atlas--are known to be expressed in the brain at some point, they all become potential candidates, and many or most are affected by various environmental conditions (including bedtime, or breast feeding as we described on Monday?).  This means that in any given study only some few genes have statistically detectable effect, and that means the study only reflects its particular sub-sample of the population.  It misses the effects, genuine and present, of countless other gene regions.  At best, it means that such genes did not vary in relevant ways in one's sample, but that does not mean the gene isn't contributing to the trait, just not to its variation in the sample. 

One of the legitimate problems, as well as keep-funding-me rationales for Big Data studies, is that after collecting the gobs of proposed data, later one inevitably learns of things that weren't measured or flaws in the measurement methods.  The investigators then say they 'must' go back and re-contact, re-interview, or re-test all the subjects to add this bit of new vital information.  It is not entirely unrelated that  this is a justification for further funding, and this suggestion is reflected in the fact that rarely (if ever) does the investigator say they need no further work or funds.

So, if breast feeding and bedtimes weren't measured in the current study we've been discussing, and yet they've been demonstrated by other studies to have effects on educational attainment, the results are almost literally worthless.  One might assume that breast feeding could be interacting with the few minor hits that were found, and taking that into account might un-hit those genome sites (and just as likely up the test score for others).  The point is easy to see and is a very serious one.

Beyond the principles, of course you can't practicably recontact everyone in a mega-study (many original subjects will have died and new potential subjects born since the first data acquisition--so the routine ploy is to say we 'need' to study the next generation, etc.).  And environments we live in are very rapidly changing, in literally unpredictable ways and amounts, as lifestyle and medication (and education) fads and fashions come and go faster than a video game.  It's a moving target and this is one reason we think that such massive can't-be-terminated database or survey studies are often not a good way to spend huge amounts of public funds.  They entrench diminishing returns.  There are many such studies that are decades old, well past their proper sell-by dates.

The issues as well as the very ways they are studied, are not being given their due consideration, and in this case interpretation, even by scientists who don't think about these issues very carefully in the rush to do more and larger studies and the like.  We are not working with well-posed questions.  When that is the case, then our epistemology--theory, study designs, and inference--is ripe for questioning.

Science as politics
The key issues here are the epistemic ones of how to identify or even just to define causation, how causation works, and what causal effects are important.  These are fundamental questions in science generally, not just with respect to the study of intelligence.  These aspects of science are inherently subjective.  We have to make judgments about them, no matter how causation really works.  When we make judgments, and the work that leads to them, or follow-up work, or implications of the work involve public policy and the like, then the science is necessarily political.

To accuse a scientist of being just political because of his/her views on a subject--like looking for genomic effects on IQ--is to misunderstand the very nature of the enterprise.  To act as if history provides no guide to understanding the nature or use of science is naive, if not downright societally dangerous.  But often, the right and left wings of our political spectrum accuse science they don't like of being 'just political' and thus dismiss it. Think of 'evolution' or 'climate change'--or IQ.

The truth is that today much of science today is political in this unavoidable sense.  We all pay for it, and what is studied and what is done with the results affect us.  It is, and it should be political.  This is not to say (as some science-studies critiques seem to) that the real world is all imagined and doesn't exist and is a plot by the intellectual elite.  The point is that the real world exists, but how we respond to it, or what we choose to study, as a society are affected by considerations other than scientific study design or analytical methods and other related decisions and techniques.  And we also affect what we learn by how we choose to study it.  Objectivity is our stated goal but is often quite elusive and subtle to achieve.  But nobody seems to want to think about this seriously.  Leave us alone, trust us: we'll do the science right.

The societal decisions we make and what we fund are not just how to respond to curiosity about the world, but to decide which subjects are important enough to us to invest in, or how much to invest.  These are not easy, and we freely express our views here on this blog.  They are subjects that should be taken seriously. It is perfectly legitimate to say that this or that kind of investigation are not in society's interests to support, or even to allow (we don't allow torturing of prisoners for research purposes, for example, and institutional review boards are charged with making decisions about whether other less obviously egregious but potentially problematic studies should be allowed).

So we certainly do color our own MT blog posts with considerations that we think are relevant in this respect.  These considerations, such as where funds should be spent, are openly, not deceptively, political.  Obviously, vested interests, cultural practices, professional needs, careerism, desire to improve society, and genuine quest for knowledge are all at work.  Rather than energetic but reflexive reactions, much less vitriolic responses, what we try to urge is that we take nature more seriously in our attempt to understand how she works.  That's a lot harder than just business as usual.

Evolution's got a P.R. problem

People aren't just anti-evolution, evolution-averse, or pro-"teaching the controversy" because they're clinging to supernatural explanations that help them identify with a tribe. Culture is mighty powerful but it's a lot more complex than stubborn beliefs in the supernatural as deciphered from, and reinforced by, an ancient text.

Evolution's got a public relations problem that spans beyond fundamental Creationism. It's not exactly looked upon favorably by many non-fundamental yet kind, open-minded, and educated folks either! Here I've jotted down a few thoughts about why...

1. Who cares about evolution? Sheesh, what's the big deal?
Evolution doesn't appear to matter to so many people. And getting frothy over evolution can certainly spark interest but it can also, in gut reaction, intensify the apathy. We love to go on and on about how "human" it is to wonder where we came from or to wonder how the world works. Well, it's not exactly a species-wide phenomenon, at least acting on that wonder isn't. With these folks, we can just keep doing what it is that we do and hope that they will come around to see why evolution matters and hope that until then they don't influence others to be as tuned out or turned off.   People are less likely to voice apathy about knowledge that they're accustomed to like biology, history, chemistry, geology, physics, literature, English, composition, mathematics. I think this attitude about evolution will go away once biology becomes a synonym for evolution in K-12 classrooms and beyond. 

2. Mystery is mystical by default. 
It's still acceptable to fill-in ignorance about biology with the supernatural. This is not as much the m.o. with chemistry or physics, but we tend to do it there too (like with quantum mechanics). I couldn't explain how the Internet works but I assume it's not magic and I don't know anyone who thinks it is either. Yet, missing pieces of understanding in biology are not, as default, just missing pieces of understanding. We jump automatically to magical thinking rather than assume that we just don't know and that maybe someone already does! Unfortunately, gaps in our biological knowledge don't always spark us to take more classes, to read, or to watch videos to see that many of those mysteries aren't mysteries to anyone who's studied them. Gaps in our knowledge don't always spark us to undertake controlled observation or to devise experiments at home. For some reason, instead... and I think it's the Bible and other powerful cultural influences, and also the way that the history of science unfolded ... biology's mysteries are comfortably cloaked in magic. If biological mystery is mystical, then it's easier to uphold allegiance to Creationism, or to maintain intellectual empathy with fundamentalists who ask that we simply "teach the controversy." 

3. It takes quite a bit of study, observation and life experience to understand evolution. 

Evolution is a complex, multi-disciplinary matter that few people can master in one semester of study. You need anatomy, physiology, genetics, behavior, comparative anatomy, zoology, ecology, geology, history, math, philosophy, etc. But you need only dabble a few toes in those areas to begin to form the picture. Because the e-word is so often left out of K-12 classrooms, students don't realize that they're learning it all along, in all its bits and pieces as they advance year to year. When they finally do get to a classroom that uses the e-word, they think it's a whole new subject matter and that's actually quite an obstacle. Plus, that evolution takes a while to understand in any sort of useful way means we have an under-informed population full of people who, at best, had one year of solid evolutionary exposure in high school...one year of learning our one natural explanation for all of biology. That's evidently not enough to bring everyone far enough along to overcome #1 and #2. 

4. Evolution's not even well-understood by those who claim to. 
It's not. There's a lot we don't know about evolutionary history, about how it unfolded, and that means there's a lot that we are earnestly trying to figure out. And it's clear that public patience for science is lacking and that's rooted in a lack of appreciation for how science is done, how knowledge is formed, and how the truth changes. On the one hand there are those who know full well that feeble, foibly humans are devising this knowledge and on the other hand are those who've got far too much respect for "KNOWLEDGE." (The latter is revealed on the petrified faces of my students when I announce they're "creating knowledge" by doing a laboratory assignment.) Both perspectives are working against science every time something pops up in the press as being "debated" or "overturned." Every piece ends with "more research is needed." No wonder patience is running thin. The skeptics think science is fraught with fraud because it's done by people. The others flirt with thinking (or do literally think) that knowledge comes from on high, or from Revealed Natural Truths, and not possibly from mere humans. And then there are those who study evolution who are not earnestly trying to  understand it better. They're using a half-baked tool that they call "evolution" to do their work or to advocate for evolution education. And often when their views get in the popular press they're parroted or presented uncritically by writers with an equally non-nuanced understanding of evolution, who are equally oblivious to it. 

5. Evolution is being pushed by so many unhuggable atheist intellectuals. 
This has to do with what many public intellectuals like to call "tribalism" and in-group, out-group identity. Aligning yourself with professors or intellectuals is social and political suicide for many. Aligning yourself with the godless can be even worse. Of course there are lots of folks who retain their beliefs and accept evolution, but there are fewer of them (at least in the limelight) than us who eschew or reject the supernatural.  We need more huggable atheists. We need more huggable intellectuals. We need fewer anti-intellectuals. We need fewer anti-atheists. Lack of belief in the supernatural needs to be seen as a legitimate way to be a friend, a parent, a child, a relative, a neighbor, a community member, a leader, a teacher, a human.  

6. People don't want to be animals.
With education, people come to accept reality. And they accept what they cannot change. Right?

7. Evolution seems to support racism, sexism, (and atheism, intellectualism, evolutionism, vegetarianism,) and every other -ism that's wrong with humanity.  
But it doesn't. There's too much to unpack here in this small space, but this is a huge problem contributing to the aversion to evolution out there. Evolution isn't just subversive because it goes against established religious dogma. It's subversive because it, as completely misunderstood and misapplied, supports racism and sexism and murder and warfare and rape and infanticide, etc etc etc... Understood well, or even just a little bit well, evolution cannot be used in those ways and then, as a result, avoided by those who are afraid to align with such an unsavory worldview. Evolution is just generation to generation change in lineages that have shared ancestors in the past. Evolution describes how everything depends on what came before. That is all. Evolution requires no differential value placed on one species over another (human exceptionalism). Evolution requires no differential value placed on one skin color over another (racism).  Evolution requires no differential value placed on one sex over another (sexism). Those are human inventions. Culture is powerful.  

8. Evolution tells me I'm going to die when I die. 

This is the human condition. Belief in the supernatural or not, acceptance of evolution or not, this is what we're all dealing with. We often lament how, "evolution reduces the meaning of life to survival and reproduction." Well, if it does, is that so bad?

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Evolution's got a lot more than fundamental religious beliefs working against it.  As an educator, I can't help but think that, first and foremost, a clear understanding of what evolution is (and isn't) is key to addressing all of these issues contributing to evolution's P.R. problem.  Yesterday's post was my attempt to help provide that clear understanding: 

Evolution is the only natural explanation. And it's all we need.

Neonicotinoids and colony collapse disorder - err on the side of caution, or just a distraction??

The cause of colony collapse disorder (CCD) in honey bees is not yet understood, but even so the European Commission decided on Monday to ban the use of neonicotinoid insecticides starting in December, for at least the next two years.  This past winter was particularly hard on bees in the US, even given the losses over the last 10 years or so since CCD was first described, with 40 to 50 percent and more decline in the bee population around the country, and the EPA is being asked to reconsider the use of these compounds in the US as well.

CCD, the sudden disappearance of worker bees from a beehive or colony, is characterized by little or no build-up of dead bees in or around the affected hives, and by the early death of adult worker bees away from the hive, leaving affected hives populated primarily by young adults.  The queen is usually still there, but without worker bees the colony can't sustain itself, and the remaining bees eventually die.

Varroa mite on honeybee larva;
Wikimedia

It's possible that a build-up of factors causes CCD. Mite and parasite infestation seems to contribute, as do viral infection and the widespread use of pesticides and fungicides, and there's some thought that the stresses involved in frequently moving hives used for pollination of commercial crops might also contribute.  Bees might be able to survive just mites or a viral infection, but if they are already weakened by one or more stressors they are more likely to succumb when more are piled on. 

A third of everything we eat depends on pollinators, so the losses are significant commercially, with the potential to become even more significant.  Many people are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of CCD on the world food supply.  Just this spring California almond growers have had to scramble to find enough bees to pollinate their crop, after a particularly hard winter for bees, but additional crops worldwide are at risk.   

It was to prevent agricultural losses that the European Commission decided to act. “I pledge to my utmost to ensure that our bees, which are so vital to our ecosystem and contribute over 22 billion Euros [$29 billion] annually to European agriculture, are protected,” said European Union Health Commissioner Tonio Borg.

Do they or don't they?
Neonicotinoids, as we wrote in a recent post, are the newest class of insecticides in use today, and the most widely used.  They affect insect nervous systems, though are less toxic to mammals than older classes of insecticides.  Derived from nicotine and developed 2-3 decades ago, seeds are coated with these compounds and they remain within the plant as it grows, or they are sprayed on fields.

More than 30 studies have demonstrated a connection between bee deaths and neonicotinoid usage.  Two high profile studies determined that they are likely to have a negative effect on bees.  A paper published online in Science March 29, 2012 (Whitehorn et al.) reported growing evidence that neonicotinoids are involved.  Researchers exposed bees in the laboratory to levels of insecticide that mimicked what bees would encounter in the field, and found reduced growth rates and an 85% reduction in new queens produced.

A second paper published in Science at the same time  (Henry et al.) found effects of a sublethal dose of a neonicotinoid on the homing behavior of honeybees.  One of the hallmarks of CCD is that whole hives empty out, suggesting that bees might be disoriented and unable to retrace their flight paths home. 

The definitive role of neonicotinoids in CCD has not been demonstrated, but the evidence seems to be mounting.  Pesticides are at "unprecedented levels" in honeybee colonies, and because neonicotinoids are the most frequently used pesticide today, and are applied on "approximately 75 percent of the acres devoted" to the most important fruit and vegetable crops grown in the US, their role has to be considered. 

On the other hand, these compounds are in widespread use in Canada and Australia, and CCD is not nearly the problem in these countries as it is in the US and Europe, though mites are not a problem in Australia either, so it's impossible to know which essential variable in the CCD equation is missing.  Indeed, a number of studies have not shown a definitive link, or suggest other causes (e.g., this paper reporting that metals in the soil, due to vehicle exhaust, might be the cause.)  

Manufacturers maintain that neonicotinoids are safe if used as directed -- applied to seeds, in small amounts.  They will break down as the plant develops, and no longer be biologically active when pollinators are visiting the plants.  But two nicotinoids have been found in the pollen and nectar of flowers of squash plants after being applied to soil as directed, and they've been found on riverbanks as well, suggesting that the compounds aren't breaking down as supposed.

To some, there is enough evidence of the detrimental effects of neonicotinoids on bees that it is time to ban their use.  Several European countries had already done so before the European Commission banned them through the EU, and the EU ban is welcomed by many.

To others, there is insufficient evidence that these compounds are a core cause of CCD, and this ban is premature and even detrimental because it means that farmers will now have to use older insecticides, whose effects on bees have not been studied.  It's no surprise that neonicotinoid manufacturers lobbied hard against the ban and are among those most vociferously protesting it.

Win-lose or lose-lose?
The New York Times reports that worldwide sales of neonicotinoids is in the billions of dollars.  Bayer CropScience and Syngenta are two European companies that make these compounds.  The Times reports their representatives saying:

“The proposal is based on poor science and ignores a wealth of evidence from the field that these pesticides do not damage the health of bees,” John Atkin, Syngenta’s chief operating officer, said Monday in a statement. “Instead of banning these products, the commission should now take the opportunity to address the real reasons for bee health decline: disease, viruses and loss of habitat and nutrition.”

Bayer CropScience called the commission’s plan “a setback for technology, innovation and sustainability,” and warned of “crop yield losses, reduced food quality and loss of competitiveness for European agriculture.”

The view of the industry, and their interpretation of the science of CCD, and in particular the role of neonicotinoids, is of course colored by their vested interests.  But, the view of the European Commission and agribusiness is also colored by their vested interests.  They just happen to be diametrically opposed to those of the neonicotinoid industry.
 
In all of this, it is rather surprising that something that seemed to have come on suddenly just a few years ago and hence might be expected to have a rather simple, strong cause, is so hard to understand, despite many large, carefully designed studies.  A lot of the evidence we just mentioned would indeed suggest that neonicotinoids really are not the cause, or even a cause, of CCD (whether or not they should be used, based on other considerations).  Erring on the side of caution, which is what the ban is doing, may be risky because of the other costs that entails, but the problem is so serious that any chance of improving it is probably worth taking.  This is another instance of the elusive problem of identifying natural causation, and as so often happens, the evidence is largely statistical and hence difficult to interpret.

As with climate change, this has become not a strictly scientific decision but a political decision driven by business interests.  The science is rather more equivocal than with climate change, but still the approach should be the same.  When the stakes are so high, and perhaps even irreversible, the precautionary principle, erring on the side of caution, should drive decision making.  Which is just what happened with this ban.  Whether or not a two year ban is enough time to pin down the science is certainly a question, but if neonicotinoids might be part of the problem, they should be banned.

A modest proposal: Please make us teach creationism

Many of you want us to teach other theories alongside evolution in science classes.

No problem!

We agree whole-heartedly and apologize that we have appeared to resist you, causing such consternation and turmoil.

Evolution is fundamentally important to teaching the natural sciences (as you've probably heard us say a million times), but teaching other theories alongside it can be extremely effective. So we are blushing with embarrassment that this curricular adjustment continues to be thwarted at the local, state, and federal levels.

Granted, there's a deep history of strife and for good reason. In order to get evolution into science classes, we demanded that creationism be taken out. But now with all that behind us and with evolution in the science classes where it belongs, not only are we cool with including the other theories, but we want you to know that we need them!

See, those of us who teach from an epistemological perspective try our best to convey to students not just what we know but more importantly how we know what we know. This is an eye-opening and empowering way to learn which is why we try to create this experience for students. The only way to do that is to teach about evolution now--how scientists have come to understand it--compared to how people used to explain the natural world, which greatly influenced unscientific beliefs about nature that people still hold today. This epistemological approach means that we strive for a non-dogmatic and non-indoctrinating presentation of the material, upholding prized scientific ideals that aren't shared by many of those who support creationism. 

Here's a taste of the experience. 

Look around the world. (You don't have to go anywhere. Click here, arkive.org, and look at pangolins, cuttlefishes, polar bears, wolverines, belugas, aye-ayes, gorillas, etc.) Now that you've made observations, what can you make of all those common traits, features, trends, behaviors, that we see among all living things?

With generations upon generations of humans making these observations, there are still only two main theories for explaining them: 

1. At some point in history, a divine or supernatural force created all the living things exactly as we see them today. Patterns of similarity among groups are only the whim of the creator, nothing more: CREATION.

2. Similarities among groups indicate shared ancestry, just like family resemblance but on a larger scale. Any two living creatures on Earth share a common ancestor at some point in history. And so on. If you trace all lineages back far enough, everything alive today shares a common ancestor. Organisms did not always look as they do now because over deep time, all lineages have accumulated changes generation after generation: EVOLUTION.

For #2 there is a subset of important and exciting theories--some more popular and better supported than others--as to how evolution unfolds and how separate lineages arise. And that's partly because there is more than one way to evolve. Darwin's adaptation by natural selection is a good example of a process that's got lots of supporting evidence. Lamarck's ideas, which aren't so different but receive less support, are also useful in the classroom for contrasting with natural selection, for putting modern genetics in context, and for introducing our burgeoning understanding of epigenetics. Mutation, genetic drift and gene flow are some other processes that are fundamental to evolution, so are concepts of deep time, competition, cooperation, symbiosis, and metabolic and developmental constraint.  

But given all those scientific theories, creation theory is the most effective way to put evolution in scientific context. It's a perfect foil for evolution, illuminating the scientific nature of evolutionary theory by demonstrating what science is not and what the scientific method cannot address.

It's not just hand-waving, creation theory is also arms-in-the-air-tossing and shoulders-shrugging. To apply such a dead-end theory to all lines of inquiry would prevent all science, not just the natural sciences, from advancing with our young people. This is powerful stuff that students can appreciate when we're free to be open about creationism during evolution lessons.  

So, again, we're really embarrassed that it's come to such political fisticuffs. There's really no need for all this fighting because we're all on the same side. Please sign those scientific curricular demands into laws. We want you to force us to teach creationism and intelligent design in science classes. Being not only free but legally required to cover competing theories will only strengthen science education!

Thanks for all your efforts to strengthen science education.

Note:  "We" refers to Holly Dunsworth and anyone else who supports her by commenting here or elsewhere.

Eugenics, or a new regime for beneficent science, or the fox in the henhouse once again?

Finally we return to a subject we promised months ago to write a bit more about.  It's an issue that pervades much of what we write about here on MT much of the time, but that we don't often address specifically.

Like it or not, we're in an age of genetic determinism, from the promises that risk of disease is readily predictable from genes to the easy way people have of, metaphorically or not, talking about traits that are "in my DNA".  Even in a nation's DNA.

Of course, few acknowledge that they are genetic determinists, because that sounds a lot like the bad old days of eugenics, when you were what your genes made you, inescapably and inherently.  If society could identify that, then it could do something about it.  It could be clothed in, and even to a great extent be, attempts to better mankind or even you as an individual.  But it had its very dark side.

Determinists of course acknowledge that evidence about genetic effects is statistical: few genotypes perfectly predict traits--they're generally not completely 'penetrant' they way Mendel's pea traits were.  But if you listen to how this is often expressed, you can tell that the underlying belief often is that if we identify a manageably small number of genetic variants our predictive power will be great....that in the main genotypes really do determine traits.

Today, there is a fervor for genetic Gotcha! like we have not seen since about 1945 (in case that year might ring a bell).  It starts with medicine, perhaps archetypically with Francis Collins' promise of 'personalized' genomic medicine. But it's spilling rapidly into the social sciences, where how you vote and whether you're in a gang or tolerate child abuse or make retirement investments well is going to be pronounced by your genome--indeed, by a few simple tests. We've been posting about this recently.

Once genome sequencing and testing become inexpensive, and because of their technological flash irresistible, there are many interests (besides professors needing grants or to be seen as deep thinkers revealing the true nature of Nature) who will want to know your genomic Destiny.  What will they do with that information?  Who will be given access?  Will they have your, or their, interests at heart? Will you know about it?

It is mistaken to take the spirit behind our asking these kinds of questions as merely reflecting our politics.  They do that, certainly.  But that's because science in areas like this is politics.  We've had two centuries of innocent proclamations that "we're just trying to understand how the world really is, regardless of human (i.e., religious etc.) illusions.  We scientists don't control what the world does with this knowledge!"  But anyone paying attention knows what society can do and has done with this kind of knowledge.  Some of it is good, surely, such as using knowledge to develop better medical care.  But that is for people who voluntarily show up at doctors' offices asking for help.  Other uses are not so good, as when people are typed genetically by others, such as government, insurers, schools, employers, the military or police, and so on.  Then, there is less control over what is good and what is bad for the people being categorized by their genes.

Maybe those with the information won't misuse it for selfish gain.  But the opportunity that they might do so is sufficient to make it so that they can't do so.  Why we have to learn this lesson again, or what those with good intentions can do about it, are serious questions.   But one thing needs to be understood: the logic of the reasoning in this area, and its implications.....and its history.  This will require understanding what 'determinism,'  invoking 'Darwin' or 'evolutionary' mean in this context.   And whether investigators' intentions matter in terms of the broader issues.

In fact, the lurking potentially ominous nature of these  issues can be readily seen in the resurgence of a classical view--going back centuries--that we should not help the unworthy, because they're that way inherently and thus the attempt is a waste of time and money.  In Britain, there was an effort to  use genetics to identify immigrants from a particular African region.  In Germany, the Chancellor declared multiculturalism dead on arrival, and pointed fingers at non-assimilating Muslim immigrants.  Jim Watson made the statement that it's wasting money to give foreign aid to Africans because they simply aren't capable of living up to standard and we've read that he also said that anyone who has employed African Americans knows what he's talking about.  In the US the Tea Party doesn't like helping those who over-borrowed for their mortgages (but they aren't as mad at the banks that lured people to make the loans).  Growing since Reagan and Thatcher is resentment against welfare-queens.  Why should my hard-earned money go to pay for some wastrel's health care?

These things are relevant because they involve, enable, or incite anger of groups against each other, and the classificatory nature of the accusations that goes with a deterministic view of human inherent value, or selfish retrenchment often couched in religious terms.  And this is without the intervention of actual genetic knowledge--but the easy way in which genetic claims are bought by the public these days reveals the mood, and the possibility that we're about to revisit a grievous history, including two chapters of opposite kinds, known as eugenics and Lysenkoism.

But it is easy to rant against this and one (we) must keep aware of the risk that we just do that without attempting to address the issues, carefully, themselves.  We'll try in the next post.