Bush Science or Clerical Error?

In Tuesdays Chronicle for Higher Education, Sam Kean reports on a curious omission from a list of majors qualifying for a new Federal grant program meant to provide support for students in important scientific, technological and language areas. Apparently students majoring in evolutionary biology, are not eligible for this program. In the classification system used at the department of education evolutionary biology is shown, but it is absent from the list of eligible majors. Hmm let's not reward people for majoring in the cornerstone of modern biology. To be fair, according to the article related majors are covered and a spokesperson for the Department of Education says that the omission is probably a clerical oversight.

But it is interesting that the only major with evolution in the title is not on the list. Supporting the clerical error idea is the fact that exercise physiology and behavioral sciences are also missing.

Tip of the antennae to Liz Craig for this one.

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Father Coyne Replaced

Update at http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2006/08/funes-speaks-about-vatican-appointment.html

According to the Religion News Service and beliefnet(see also this), Pope Benedict has replaced Father George Coyne as head of the Vatican observatory. Father Coyne is a strong critic of intelligent design and supporter of modern evolutionary biology. The Vatican has not stated why, but the timing of this close to the Pope's weekend seminar on evolution is interesting. The article notes that speakers at the seminar will include several prominent Catholic critics of evolution.

Coyne is known to be critical of Cardinal Chrisoph Schönborn who is known to have indirect ties to the Discovery Institute which has been pushing intelligent design. According to the Boston Globe, Schönborn was urged by the head of the Discovery Institute to publish an article critical of evolution and that publication was facilitated by the Institute's PR department.

Coyne's replacement is Argentine Jesuit Astronomer, Father Jose Gabriel Funes, whose astronomy interests include the formation of stars and galaxies. It is not clear where he stands on evolution so it could be coincidence that Coyne is being replaced at this time. I hope, given the controversy about Dr. Coyne's replacement, more information will be coming from the Vatican perhaps after the Pope's seminar on evolution.

8/24 Update from the Catholic News Service!

As far as I can find, Father Funes (but see this) hasn't dealt with evolution so it's possible the Pope thinks that evolution can be isolated from the rest of science. If so, that is one hypothesis which is incorrect. Father Coyne said it quite eloquently when he visited Lawrence KS in 1999, when he observed at a talk I attended that we see evolution in action at all scales in the universe, so why should we doubt evolution at the level of biology?

Where is Benedict going to head? One thing I have noticed about this Pope is that he really hates disorder much more so than Pope John Paul II, whether it is ecclesiastical or scientific. For instance he is quoted as saying:

"How many of these people are there today? These people, fooled by atheism, believe and try to demonstrate that it's scientific to think that everything is free of direction and order."

Also see this article from Catholic News in which he clearly is concerned about the diffusion of power in the Catholic Church after Vatican II.

Further, he is seems to be content with the possibility that the Church will become smaller as its positions become less and less accepted by secular Western Society. See for instance the assessment of Benedict in Time(http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1051616,00.html)

Given these tendencies of the Pope I am not surprised that he is susceptible to the Sirens of Intelligent Design. I just hope the Church doesn't get crushed on the rocks of irrelevancy.



Other links(You connect the dots):

Father Coyne on thcompatibilityty of Science and Religion:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0504505.htm

Father Coyne Clashes with Cardinal Schönborn:
http://www.cathnews.com/news/508/46.php

Schönborn lecture on Creation and Evolution:
http://stephanscom.at/edw/katechesen/articles/2005/10/14/a9347/

More on the Pope's Seminar from EWTN:
http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=70150

Benedict is considered to be conservative-but not every conservative Catholic is happy:
http://www.christorchaos.com/UnambiguouslyHarmful.htm

Update from Catholic News Service 8/24


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Pseudoscience Kills! HIV and Mr. Johnson.

Just ask the people fighting HIV in South Africa:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060819/sc_nm/aids_safrica_dc_1

Consider this little tidbit from the article:

"Mbeki's government first denied that the HIV virus causes AIDS and then resisted offering HIV drugs to its people, calling them expensive and potentially dangerous.
The government bowed to public outcry in 2003 and launched a public antiretroviral (ARV) drug program which officials now call one of the biggest in the world.
But Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang still questions ARVs and instead promotes home-grown remedies such as olive oil, beetroot and garlic. She says they boost nutrition and immune response but activists say her prescription leads to thousands of unnecessary deaths every year."

Pseudoscience does kill: olive oil and garlic??? These may be good for you but empirical evidence suggests that the HIV virus doesn't care and will evolve within the host to defeat any such folk remedy. People get upset at science when it doesn't give easy answers or when the answers it gives suggests a strategy at odd with one's moral framework.

Is it any coincidence then that Phillip Johnson of Intelligent Design fame was a dissenter early on with regards to the cause of AIDS?

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/index/pjohnson.htm

Notice Johnson's Logic here:

"Warning signs that Gallo's virus might not be the cause of AIDS were abundant. Why wasn't the virus itself found in quantity in all of the AIDS patients? How abundant and active was the virus? Mightn't the presence of antibodies imply that the patients had developed immunity to the virus, rather than that the virus was destroying their immune systems? Above all, by what observable mechanism was this retrovirus not only destroying the immune system, but also causing such disparate conditions as Kaposi's sarcoma (hereafter KS) and dementia? The mystery was all the deeper because the virus was supposed to perform its destructive work many years after infection and after being reduced to near non-existence by the very antibodies that provided the evidence of infection."

Raise some good questions and then use it to trash the scientific consensus on HIV:

"Serious questions are met with frivolous answers, because HIV science is practiced by people like those domineering jurors, who made up their minds before all the facts were in and then stopped listening. The HIV theory has become axiomatic, and so even patently question-begging answers will suffice to explain away disconfirming evidence. The HIV scientific establishment gets away with this unprofessional behavior because AIDS research is tightly controlled from the top, and because acquiescent science reporters and editors have allowed themselves to be bamboozled by self-serving propaganda. The HIV scientists claim that it is somehow "homophobic" to question the HIV theory, or that reporters who publicize the mounting reasons for doubt will be responsible for furthering the spread of the epidemic. Few voices in the biomedical research community, which depends on HIV money for its funding, are raised in protest. The example of Peter Duesberg, who lost virtually all his funding as a consequence of his dissent, stands as a warning to all the others. "

Of course time and research has proven Johnson wrong. Certainly he and Duesberg were free to dissent, but clearly Johnson is playing some sort of victimology game and the way he characterizes HIV scientists is eerily similar to the way evolutionary biologists are characterised as being dogmatic. Sure scientists are human and sometimes vested interests to come into play but I wonder how many people are being discouraged from going into science because of the mistrust of science foisted on our civilization by Mr. Johnson and other pseudoscientists disquising themselves as "critical thinkers".

How many deaths have been caused by this sort of pseudoscience thinking about HIV? How many deaths are going to indirectly be caused by pseudoscientific thinking in the realm of intelligent design?

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Gregor Mendel at the Field Museum

The Field Museum in Chicago is having an exhibit on Gregor Mendel from September 15 2006 to April 1st 2007. Sounds like theforce will need to get on the road!

http://www.fieldmuseum.org/mendel/

Supposedly the exhibit was to be followed by a one day exhibit about creation science including intelligent design on April 1 but the curators couldn't find any creation science (tongue firmly planted in cheek).

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Mendel's Garden #4 is up!

Go on over to the Inoculated Mind for some great genetics gardening at http://www.inoculatedmind.com/?p=58!!

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Kansas Board of Education-What's Next?

There is a good analysis in the Lawrence Journal World of what is likely to happen in Kansas this fall with the board of education elections. Of course the conservatives are putting on their best spin on their defeat and arguing that the remaining conservatives are probably pretty safe from the moderates.

Conservative education activist Cindy Duckett claims for instance that “the pendulum will swing in two years.” I hope not, but the issue will not be settled until the public develops a better understanding of science and true critical thinking as opposed to the pseudocritical thinking pawned of on unsuspecting Kansans by creationists and their 'teach the controversy mantra.'

And I really love her other comment:

“...The primary elections were really about competence.”

She's absolutely right; those candidates that were least competent in their understanding of science tended to loose!

But the fall election will be decided, as are so many Kansas elections, by which relatively small group can best motivate their followers. Sad. Also I wonder where this conservative vs moderate controversy will spill over next.

By the way Pat Hayes at Red State Rabble is really on top of all this stuff so make sure you check his blog for the latest information about Kansas politics. Plus, I see he has a great article about Biblical sex, if Kansas Politics isn't your cup of Java.

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Other Links

John Altevogcommentarytary on media coverage of the Kansas Science Standards:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/4189gc1-5-2000.asp

Kansas Alliance for Education
http://www.ksalliance.org/articles/latesteditorials.htm

Another analysis of the Kansas Situation
http://foi.missouri.edu/polinfoprop/battleevol.html

Poetry Thursday

July 2000

The first time I wanted to have this conversation,
I was eight, listening to Father Finn
Rail against what was happening then
In 1959 to our Country and I had been watching
My sister and her friends sneak down the isle
Kleenex bobby pinned to their hair and how mad
My mother was that they did not wear their hats
And the Father went on in the background
Until suddenly I heard the phrase 'sex change'
And he was talking about how shameful that was.
I wanted then to tug at my father and ask
What is wrong with Christine Jorgensen;
Why was she so wrong to want to be a woman?
But I knew the script already:
Be constructive; these things go away.
So the conversation was put aside,
Until Rhonda took my bearded face
In her large hands,
Looked me in the eye and asked the question,
What brings you here?
And everything around this moment whorled
Pieces of feeling snapping into place
So I could start this conversation
With myself
And come out into world
As the fireworks crackled all around.

Actually this is for last week's 'assignment' and it is quite autobiographical. This was a difficult poem to write because I wanted to deal with the sorts of unfunished conversations that people have as they are growing up, conversations about sex, gender and identity because of the way we socialize kids. I think things are a bit better today than in the 1950's and early 1960's, but as I look around at society today, kids, especially boys are still socialized in the same sort of way-don't cry like a girl, that (insert your favorite stereotypical behavior) is for sissies, don't cry or show any emotion. Girls too are under great pressure it seems to conform to binary gender stereotypes-at least I see that having raised a daughter but there is greater scope for gender expression allowable for women.

I was amused the other year with the television show "He's a Lady", where men made themselves up as women. On the one hand I thought that this was a positive show and done very tastefully-plus I did get some tips on passing. But on the other hand the there were segments in the show where the men had to be shown doing all sorts of macho things. That's OK to a point if it shows that people are comfortable with their gender, but often it struck me as overdone and saying: "no way am I feminine, it's all outside. I am still a square peg in a square hole and all of you round pegs need to get with the program"

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Thanks for the Private Sector!

Elsewhere I have argued that the Bush Administration has been gutting those aspects of science that it does not like for political and ideological reasons and embryonic stem cell research is yet another example. Normally I am suspicious of privately funded research, but this is a case where privately funded research, especially through foundations, may be crucial if our country is to maintain it's scientific edge.

This seems to be the message in an article in the online edition of Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/2006/08/16/cz_mh_rl_0816mag124.html?partner=yahootix).

The article observes:

" Since the ban, federal funding of embryonic stem-cell work has risen to all of $40 million a year, just one-fifth of the money for other kinds of stem cells and a pittance in the $20 billion research budget of the government's National Institutes of Health. But Eli Broad and a few other billionaires--some of them from President Bush's own Republican Party--and a number of states and private foundations have stepped into the gap. They have funneled three times as much as the federal government into embryonic stem-cell research."

This is really unusual since in these sorts of areas of basic research the NIH typically supplies most of the funding.

Now granted, the anti abortion folks think that embryonic stem cell research is murder since you have to destroy embryos to get at the cells, and they also like to point to the potential for using adult stem cells. But there is not consensus in this country about whether or not these embryos are human. Indeed in practice we do not treat such embryos with the same moral worth as independent humans. If we did, then we would be spending millions of dollars to prevent early miscarriages which cost thousands of embryo lives each year! In fact according to the March of Dimes (http://www.marchofdimes.com/professionals/681_1192.asp ), perhaps 50% of all pregnancies including those before a woman recognizes she is pregnant end in miscarriage.

Furthermore, even if adult stem cells do ultimately prove to useful on a broad scale, we do need to understand the triggers for cell differentiation and there really is only one system for doing that- human embryos. Yes of course we can use other animals including other primates, but ultimately our understanding has to tested in human systems. examined in human embryos.

And yet our country is faced with attempts to criminalize embryonic stem cell research, such as recent initiatives in California. Should research with human embryos be regulated? Sure, just as we have regulations regarding the use of human subjects. But these regulations need to be crafted carefully to allow research into human development and cellular differentiation, and therapies and yet prevent cloning of human beings (as opposed to human cells).

While other countries have resisted the politicalization of research in the name of "morality" the Bush administration has so restricted NIH funding of embryonic stem cell research that, according to the Forbes article, one researcher has gone out of his way to prevent the mixing of NIH funding and private funding for embryonic stem cell research:

"At Memorial Sloan-Kettering, stem-cell biologist Lorenz Studer ... Cautiously puts yellow stickers on every piece of equipment used for banned experiments to inoculate his operation from any NIH contact. His grad students put stickers on wastebaskets to mock the NIH."

When are we going to wake up to the games being played by our Federal Government in the name of ideology?

Other links:

Testimony of Dr. John Kessler before the US Senate HHS Committee on the need for embryonic stem cell research: (http://www.appropriations.senate.gov/text/hearmarkups/record.cfm?id=204163)

Ethics and Politics of Stem Cell Research:
(http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1447568)

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