ScienceWeek Editorials

Psycho-Babble on the Right: David Brooks and Twisting Science

Dangerous Frames: What Scientists Risk by Scientific Framing -- And Why

On Librarians and Scrotums

History Denied: The Central Failure of Evolutionary Psychology

Moral Monsters and the Shame of Baylor University

Siientists, the Public Good, and Conservatives

Frankenstein, Faraday, and The Nation Magazine

The New Anthropology, Happy Darkies, and the National Review

Evolutionary Psychology: Science or Pseudoscience?

Brain Size and the National Review

Creationism vs. Sanity

Harvard, Women, and Science

April 22, 2007

Psycho-Babble on the Right: David Brooks and Twisting Science

David Brooks, Op-Ed columnist at the NEW YORK TIMES, persistently promotes the idea that not only the grand schemes but also the details of human behavior are derived from Darwinian natural selection.

You can find the latest statement of his ideas in a column called "The Age of Darwin", NEW YORK TIMES, April 15, 2007.

In brief, these words from that column seem to summarize his views:

"Human beings, like all other creatures, are machines for passing along genetic code... The logic of evolution explains why people vie for status, form groups, fall in love and cherish their young. It holds that most everything that exists does so for a purpose..."

The politically conservative line of Brooks and others is that if you oppose these ideas you must be anti-biology, anti-evolution, and a Creationist. Well, I'm a professional neuroscientist, biophysicist, and psychologist, and I'm pro-biology, pro-evolutionary biology, and definitely not a Creationist -- and I think these ideas of David Brooks and his crowd are dangerous poppycock and need to be argued against and countered with science and reason any time the public is exposed to them.

David Brooks (born in 1961 in Toronto, Canada) grew up in New York City. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1983 with a bachelor's degree in history. He was a reporter and later Op-Ed editor for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, and a senior editor at William Kristol's conservative THE WEEKLY STANDARD from its inception. He's been an Op-Ed columnist at the NEW YORK TIMES for a number of years, since conservative William Safire retired. He's also a commentator on National Public Radio and the Jim Lehrer television News Hour. He has no professional qualifications in either psychology or biology or any science. As far as I know, he has no graduate degree in anything.

The ideas of David Brooks, proposed in America's most influential newspaper, the NEW YORK TIMES, have important implications and corollaries.

Since Darwinian natural selection is a natural selection of genes, the Brooksist idea is that the details of human behavior are genetically determined.

This in turn means the details of human behavior are inherited from parents, grandparents, and so on. In the short term, these people are the origins of our genes.

And this means, according to Brooks and his cohort, that the elite of a society, in their places of privilege because of their behavioral talents, have inherited those behavioral talents, and their behavioral talents and consequent privileges are fixed by biology -- ordained by Darwinian evolution. The general idea is that behavioral talents are genetically derived, and not derived from developmental or cultural influences.

In other words, what is implied by Brooks, is that the elite have "good" genes responsible for their high social status. And this in turn implies there are "bad" genes responsible for low social status.

If the details of human behavior are inherited, then according to this idea criminal behavior must also be inherited -- criminality must be genetically determined and run in families.

How long will it be before David Brooks suggests to us that criminal rehabilitation is senseless because criminality is inherited and runs in families? Will he suggest the only way to eliminate criminality is to eliminate the criminal families? Sterilize the criminal element, maybe? We have traveled this miserable road before, in the social Darwinism of a hundred years ago and in the eugenics movement of the 1920s. Brooks, it seems, would like to return our thinking to the era of the Jukes and Kallikaks.

The Jukes and the Kallikaks were pseudonyms for two families used as examples during the late 19th century and early 20th century to argue for the existence of a genetic disposition toward anti-social behavior or low intelligence. The arguments were used to bolster advocacy of eugenics, or the pseudo-scientific breeding of human beings, by demonstrating that traits deemed socially inferior could be passed down from generation to generation.

Has David Brooks ever heard of the Jukes and Kallikaks?

Brooks never uses the term "social Darwinism". He's educated enough to know it's a ridiculed idea in the intellectual community. What he does in his columns is dance around the term, presenting the tenets of the doctrine and its social conclusions -- all without reminding readers that what they're hearing is a repetition of an old fallacy.

He also never uses the term "instincts", although when he proposes that the details of human behavior are genetically determined by natural selection he's proposing that such behaviors are indeed "instincts". But "instincts" is another term castigated as useless by researchers and intellectuals -- and so it's not part of the Brooks vocabulary.

Let's think about some other corollaries.

If the details of human behavior are already present in the genes at birth, then the details of the human mind are already present in the genes at birth: what is behavior but the output of mind? (If you're a Monist, what is human behavior but the output of the human nervous system?) So what, please, is the purpose of education, lower, middle, or higher? According to the Brooks view, there's no reason for education, since everything important in the mind is already ordained by the individual's genes.

Maybe Brooks is unaware that the human cerebral cortex, that part of the brain primarily concerned with the intellectual faculties, is almost totally undeveloped (unwired) at birth, and that its future wiring is heavily dependent on input from the outside world: language, family, education, social environment, cultural environment, and so on.

Another corollary concerns free will and personal responsibility. Brooks has a problem here, since a conservative mantra is that individuals must accept personal responsibility for their actions and for their lives. But according to the idea of genetics determining the details of human behavior, free will and personal responsibility are either absent or reduced to insignificance. According to Brooksism, we behave the way we do because of the genes we've inherited.

Political conservatives have a problem here: they call for individual responsibility, but at the same time they tell us it's not possible, that human behavior is determined by an individual's genes.

Another corollary is the existence of a "natural superiority" that differentiates some people from others, a natural superiority beyond mere talents. The idea is that this superiority exists according to genetic makeup, and therefore according to birth and family and even ethnic heritage. What a wonderful rationalization for social and economic and political inequities, injustices, discriminations, and ultimately genocide.

First genes, then genocide, a goose-stepping parade to a Darwinian utopia.

Evolutionary psychologists counter that they're not proposing any particular politics, just stating obvious evolutionary realities.

The late evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould lambasted evolutionary psychologists and called their "realities" Just-So Stories about the evolution of human behavior.

Evolutionary geneticists H. Allen Orr, Richard Lewontin, and a host of other biologists have said the same about evolutionary psychology.

Me, I call it junk science and pseudo-science, but I'm a late-comer to the name-calling.

My purpose here is not to present the scientific evidence against the ideas of Brooks or evolutionary psychology. I've done some of that elsewhere, and other psychologists and neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists past and present have done it better than I have and in more detail.

My only purpose here is to point out the political implications of the twisting of behavioral science that has become so common in the pages of the NEW YORK TIMES. The twisting is insidious and does the public a great disservice.

When faced with the obvious importance of culture in driving human affairs, evolutionary psychologists and the journalists who puff that field say "genes have culture on a leash".

Oh yes, no argument there -- but the leash is extremely long.

What Brooks and his social Darwinist conservative friends fail to understand is that if a leash is long enough it gets hidden in the grass and the dog on the end of the leash effectively runs wild.

The leash by which genes constrain modern culture is so long it's a waste of time and effort to be so excited about the leash that we forget the cavorting dog.

By all means, study the leash, but for the sake of sanity stop pretending the cavorting dog has no existence!

Anyway, in this case there's an additional problem: Not only is an obsessive focus on the leash a waste of time and effort, it's also politically dangerous when spewed out in an influential newspaper as scientific gospel.

It's unfortunate how many people think they're being educated about the origins of human behavior by the NEW YORK TIMES.

The NEW YORK TIMES has yet to publish a science-based Op-Ed piece countering its apparent obsession with the genetic roots of human behavior. The objections of professional psychologists, sociologists, and biologists to the doctrines of evolutionary psychology are hardly ever mentioned in its pages.

The sloppy pop psycho-biology currently appearing in the pages of the NEW YORK TIMES is a disgrace and an insult to the public.

Dan Agin

dpa@scienceweek.com

April 8, 2007

Dangerous Frames: What Scientists Risk by Scientific Framing -- And Why

by K. S.

Given recent news media and the political climate, it has become increasingly apparent that scientists are struggling with how to effectively and accurately communicate their work to a variety of audiences. In a recent Policy Forum piece in Science (316:56), authors Matthew Nisbet and Chris Mooney argue that the pre-established contextual "frames" held by these audiences predispose them to either narrowly interpret or, in the more extreme cases, wholly disregard scientists’ messages. The authors assert that scientists need to "learn to actively ‘frame’ information to make it relevant to different audiences," arguing that scientists’ recent struggles over issues of climate change, evolution, and embryonic stem cell research are the result of unsuccessful "framing" that led to misinterpretations of scientific research (both intended and inadvertent) and fundamentally unpersuasive argumentation causing audiences to "tune out these…messages".

To assuage these issues, Nisbet and Mooney suggest that scientists should emphasize "frames" of economic impact, societal progress, or global competitiveness to pique the public’s interest in scientific issues.

Plenty of scientists, including myself, would wholeheartedly agree that we’d do well to expend more effort in getting the public actively interested and involved in science. And indeed, deemphasizing the technical details and improving our "framing" may provide viable means of doing so. But what the authors fail to note is that scientists are highly trained to talk specifically and accurately about their data and its immediate impacts. Being forced to unnaturally extend scientific implications via extensive "framing" to a variety of non-scientific areas requires not only a substantial investment of time away from the lab, but places the scientist at greatly increased risk of making inaccurate assertions in a field of peripheral interest and applicability. This lays the groundwork for two potentially serious problems.

First, any "framing" efforts that are slightly off-base, albeit well-intentioned, will be pounced upon by critics, partisans, and anyone else who might capitalize on the vulnerable underbelly of over-extended conclusions. Non-science friendly, partisan and special-interest groups (including, most publicly, select political and religious groups) already use the guise of science to help legitimize their claims and further their pet platforms. Those who intentionally misuse science will unfortunately continue to do so, and the "reframing" of scientific issues may not only remain irrelevant to these groups but instead unwittingly supply further fodder to be misused and misinterpreted. If, as the authors astutely observe, scientific "facts will be repeatedly misapplied and twisted in direct proportion to their relevance to the political debate and decision-making," wouldn’t it be preferable to maintain objective scientific rationale, rather than increasing the complexity of the issue by forcing our facts into an assortment of "frames"? The problem of scientific misuse is systemic and ideological, and framing may not solve it.

Second, those who don’t consciously misuse science but are simply and chronically misinformed, as Nisbet and Mooney argue, have already selected media outlets that closely reflect their perspectives. Thus, these groups may benefit from frames that appeal to their particular interests and perspectives. So, given this context, how much "framing" is too much? Is it appropriate or ethically admissible for scientists to apply a religious or spiritual "frame" when presenting their research to a religious media outlet? While religious framing actually worked for climate change (via arguments for protecting and respecting "God’s earth", for example), I doubt that anyone would argue that such special-interest framing provides a strategic standard that is universally applicable or appropriate. The authors themselves admit that framing may not provide an effective tool for reaching the ideological or religious; perhaps, then, framing is most successful with a responsive, reachable audience. But isn’t this audience the one that is listening, at least half-heartedly, to science in the first place?

What is -- and will remain -- so contentious about scientific framing is that it seems antithetical to the core of science itself. Science subsists on quantitative analyses, informed methodology, and grounded conclusions, attributes that garner fierce loyalty from most scientists. In 1942, in an effort to describe the institutionalized norms upheld by the scientific community, Robert K Merton defined science as promoting both universalism (supporting objective critical standards to be applied consistently to all scientific work) and disinterestedness (absence of personal motivation). While any scientist can tell you that science is often neither universal nor disinterested (and indeed, Merton’s norms have been heavily criticized over time), I’d assert that scientists still strive to uphold values of objectivity and neutrality when conducting and presenting their research. Do scientists often have specific agendas to advance? Of course. But the scientific community continues to support research conclusions that are factual, logical, objective, and reasoned. This is -- and must remain -- the fundamental nature of science itself.

If science is explained clearly, concisely, and with relevance, I think that a public educated in how to comprehend and think about science will appreciate the solid explanation of the data and its relevance more than if any filter was imposed upon it. Framing, on the other hand, may require extrapolations and interpretations beyond the immediate impacts of the data, and imposing an audience-specific filter would almost positively require substantial steps away from the data itself. While we may help policymakers, science writers, journalists, and others to most accurately frame scientific data and understand the most appropriate, logical conclusions stemming from that data, perhaps that role isn’t an appropriate one for the scientists themselves. For if framing science requires any departure from this familiar and well-established heart of science by pandering to special-interest groups and selective media outlets, scientists risk not only their integrity and accountability, but also permanently redefining how science is perceived and used by the public.

Which is quite opposite of the purpose of scientific framing in the first place.

--------------------------------

Nisbet MC, Mooney C (2007) “Framing Science.” Science 315:56

Merton, RK (1942) “The Normative Structure of Science.” in: 
Storer, N.W. (1973) The Sociology of Science. Chicago: U of Chicago Press.

February 22, 2007

On Librarians and Scrotums

It seems there are some school librarians in this country who think children are better off not knowing much about human anatomy. Or even a dog's anatomy. The male human has a scrotum. The male dog also has a scrotum. A new children's book, which has already won an award, starts out by describing how a snake bit someone's pet dog in the scrotum. The appearance of the word "scrotum" in the first line of the book has caused an uproar among some librarians and parents. The book is for 9- to 12-year-olds, and they don't want children that age to know the name for the scrotum.

Now a ten-year-old boy, when he goes to the toilet or bathes, knows very well he has a scrotum, and his eleven-year-old sister knows damn well he has a scrotum. But people in places like Louisville, Kentucky don't want these children to know what it's called.

One librarian from Louisville sniffs in a letter to the New York Times: "Given the conservative nature of the families of my patrons, why would I seek to offend them by offering them children books that are not age-appropriate?"

My dear, the reason you want to offend them is that they need to be educated away from their 17th century Calvinist stupidities about sex.

Will a ten-year-old child be corrupted by knowing the English names for scrotums, vaginas, and penises?

Maybe in Louisville when a child asks its mother where babies come from, the mother says. "Out of my ear, honey."

"Which ear, Mommy?"

"My right ear, honey. Only Communists have babies out of their left ears."

The Louisville librarian says the book is not "age-appropriate". She thinks children need to be prevented from reading words that are labels for the "private parts". She doesn't say why because maybe she doesn't know why. What she knows is that a "children" book with the word scrotum in it will offend her patrons.

The idea of a representative democracy in a land of boobs is maybe ridiculous. But we need to try. We need to keep pushing to get people to understand that the idea that what they have between their legs is filthy is a crazy idea thought up by crazy people with sexual problems. Babies do not come out of anyone's ear. We should not tell our children lies. It's time to stop destroying American children in the name of holy stupidity.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

January 16, 2007

History Denied: The Central Failure of Evolutionary Psychology

One of the major premises of evolutionary psychology is that if any human behavior pattern is universal across cultures, the behavior pattern is most likely derived from Darwinian evolution, i.e., from biological evolution by natural selection.

It's an interesting idea, and considerable effort has been expended to find such behavior patterns and construct Darwinian explanations for them. Since Darwinian evolution can only work across enormous ("geological") time scales, which means nothing much has probably happened in the way of Darwinian human evolution during the past 100,000 years, the focus of such explanations of universal behavior patterns across cultures is the struggle for existence of the human species during the Pleistocene era.

On close examination, it becomes apparent that the central failure of evolutionary psychology as an effort to understand human behavior is that it essentially ignores two important corollaries of this major premise concerning universality of behavior across present-day cultures. The first corollary is that any behavior pattern that is NOT universal across cultures is NOT derived from Darwinian evolution, but probably derived from cultural evolution plus individual learned experience. The second and more important corollary is that any behavior pattern within a culture that is not universal across decades, or generations, or centuries, or even millennia is also NOT derived from Darwinian evolution, and more likely derived from cultural evolution plus individual learned experience. On these small time scales, Darwinian evolution just doesn't have enough time to work and cannot be responsible for any behavior changes within a culture.

Thus the central failure of evolutionary psychology is the failure to recognize that universality across both time AND geography are necessary to identify a behavior pattern derivable from Darwinian evolution.

Let's consider some concrete examples. We all understand that the "old brain", the primitive part of the brain involved in basic drives such as hunger, thirst, and sexual pleasure (e.g., the hypothalamus), is a region of the nervous system whose wiring is most certainly for the most part derived by Darwinian evolution, probably going back to animals more primitive than mammals. Every human being is constructed with a hunger drive, a need to relieve hunger once a state of hunger is recognized, but the way the hunger drive is satisfied varies between individuals, between groups, between cultures, across geography, and throughout written human history. What is universal is the drive, not the behavior, and since the behavior, in this case the manner of satisfying the hunger drive, is NOT universal, we conclude this behavior is NOT derived from Darwinian evolution.

A similar observation can be made about the drive for sexual pleasure. The drive itself is most certainly derived from Darwinian evolution, the anatomy and physiology of sex are derived from Darwinian evolution, but the myriad ways in which the sex drive can be satisfied -- never universal across geography and history -- are NOT derived from Darwinian evolution, but are instead products of cultural evolution plus individual experience.

For example: Between 1950 and 1970, a period of only 20 years, Americans changed their sexual behavior so radically that the change is known as the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s. Consider the important fact that if we want to understand this change, the last sensible place to look is Darwinian evolution. Twenty years, less than a generation, is not even time enough for a hiccup in the natural selection of genes. In general, evolutionary psychology can tell us almost nothing about changes in human behavior throughout written history.

And now a corollary of my argument: To the degree that evolutionary psychology operates as a discipline independent of history and archeology -- thus ignoring universality of behavior, or the lack of universality of behavior, across time -- to that degree the central failure of evolutionary psychology will not be remedied.

Addendum (March 16, 2007) in response to some comments on the Web:

Just to clarify:

Before one proposes that a varying trait is merely a phenotypic variation of a Darwinian adaptation, one should demonstrate a proof of mere phenotypic variation before a wholesale proposal that the trait is Darwinian. Some varying traits are variations of genetic imperatives and some are not, and particularly where behavior is concerned, I suggest we be careful in just ignoring cultural and developmental determinants, which we already know are important for behavior. If the focus is behavior as a Darwinian adaptation, we need extra care -- not less care.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

January 19, 2006

Moral Monsters and the Shame of Baylor University

The medical ethical situation is simple:

A 27-year-old woman, dying of cancer, is being kept alive on a ventilator in the Regional Medical Center of Baylor University at Plano, Texas. The young woman has no health insurance. The hospital authorities decide they will no longer accept the burden of the cost of care, and they inform the young woman's relatives that unless they find another facility to accept the patient, they will unplug the ventilator in ten days. The young woman is fully conscious and she says she does not want to die yet. The relatives are unable to arrange for care in another medical facility, and the hospital staff unplugs the ventilator, which quickly kills the woman.

The patient's name was Tirhas Habtegiris, a legal immigrant, killed by Baylor University on December 12, 2005, the authorities invoking a law signed in 1999 by George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, the law relieving doctors of an obligation to provide life-sustaining treatment 10 days after providing formal notice that such treatment is found to be medically "inappropriate".

This is not a case of a brain-dead patient in a long-existing coma. This is a case of a fully conscious and cognizant young woman who says she does not want to die yet, but who does not have the money to pay what the hospital charges her to run the ventilator that keeps her alive.

Medicine is applied biology, biology is one of the sciences, and our view is that there is not a single scientist working on this planet, at least not anyone who calls himself or herself a "scientist", who is not involved in this case. The hospital, the medical staff, the nursing staff, every piece of medical equipment in the hospital, including that ventilator, are all products of science and scientific labor and the minds and talents of scientists -- and for what? To place in the hands of "authorities" the power to kill people who are unable to pay their medical bills?

Never mind the mirage of "cost-benefit" calculations. No such calculation can withstand rigorous analysis, for the simple reason that costs and benefits cannot be rigorously quantified, and in general the behavior of the "economic individual" is a shaky abstraction in economic theory. There is really no rational justification for killing a human being in such circumstances.

If this is the best our society can do, then our society is broken, corrupted, and hardly a model for societies anywhere at any time or place. And to the extent that scientists in America are part of the scientific enterprise, and the scientific enterprise in turn the basis of the medical enterprise, every scientist needs to devote a few minutes to contemplating this moral monstrosity perpetrated by a major university and medical installation.

What can be done? Endless yakking about these problems apparently gets us nowhere. Maybe what is needed is some vigorous signaling that the biomedical sciences community does not approve. Maybe what is needed is that the entire scientific, medical, and relevant student communities at Baylor University let the "authorities" know that killing people, people who don't want to die, killing them by disconnecting ventilators whose bills are not paid is not condoned by science and medicine -- the science and medicine from which these "authorities" derive their paychecks.

Really, some people in and out of government need to be told to empty out their desks.

Meanwhile, Tirhas Habtegiris, age 27, is dead, and all of us are shamed.

And Baylor University? They bill themselves as the "largest Baptist Christian university in the world".

Pax vobis, Tirhas.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

Addendum 2/6/06: Baylor University has provided the following explications of this case:

http://www.baylorhealth.com/articles/habtegiris.htm 

http://www.baylorhealth.com/articles/habtegiris/response.htm 

In contrast with the position of Baylor University as given in the above links, our position is as follows:

There are two situations to consider:

1) If the patient is terminal and permanently comatose, the patient is certainly not feeling any pain, so patient-pain is not a reason (as suggested by Baylor University) for deliberate life termination, and the option to disconnect life-support belongs to the family and not to anyone else.

2) If the patient is conscious, transiently or constantly, irrespective of whether the patient is terminal or feeling pain, the option to disconnect life-support, if it belongs to anyone, belongs to the patient and not to anyone else. If in such a condition, the patient is not capable of making a decision, the option to disconnect life-support belongs to the family and not to anyone else.

Our position is that under no circumstances should health insurance or other financial considerations play a role in deliberate life termination. In this case, we understand the family was told to move the patient out of the Baylor hospital within ten days. The question remains: Why? Would forced removal be for the benefit of the patient or for the benefit of Baylor University? According to the information provided by Baylor University itself, such forced removal could not possibly be for the benefit of the patient.

In summary, despite the explications of Baylor University, we disagree with the management of this case by the people responsible for such management.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com 

January 5, 2006

Scientists, the Public Good, and Conservatives

Are scientists answerable for the public good?

In a review of Chris Mooney's book The Republican War On Science, the review appearing in the January 2006 issue of the conservative magazine Commentary, Kevin Shapiro, billed as "a research fellow in neuroscience and a student at Harvard Medical School", concludes his critique with the following remarkable words: "Deserving as they may be of respect for their work, scientists, unlike politicians, are not answerable for the public good."

Shapiro's declaration, conservative mantra though it may be, is remarkable for the implication from a scientist that certain segments of modern society are beyond responsibility to anyone but themselves.

Think of it: We come together and form a society that provides us as individuals with various protections, conveniences, educational facilities for our children, roads on which to travel, and so on, but some of us are here merely to take and give nothing in return. Some of us, according to Shapiro, are statutory free-riders.

Is that the game? If it's a game, it's a lovely shell game, and the American taxpayer is the victim.

Shapiro is at Harvard University. That particular university is a "private" university, and it does have the largest "private" endowment of any university in the country, but it's also the largest research university in terms of taxpayer funding, which means in particular that the facilities of Harvard Medical School, and of all the laboratories and personnel in the biomedical sciences, receive a substantial part of their funding (salaries, research costs, overhead) from the federal government -- i.e. from the public. So here is neuroscientist Shapiro receiving his scientific and medical education substantially funded by the public telling us that as a scientist and prospective physician he's not answerable for the public good at all. According to Shapiro, the public may owe him respect, but he owes the public nothing in return.

It's an old melody, one that tracks at least all the way back to Edmund Burke, that half-besotted fop who had such great admiration for the French court and aristocracy that he considered the French Revolution a tragic error that ended the "Age of Chivalry". Yes, what a delicious age that was -- at least for the knights and their ladies. But since nearly everyone else lived with filth, hunger, and misery, maybe the Age of Chivalry had a few large and ugly knots in its fabric that Burke chose to ignore.

Well, never mind Edmund Burke, our current lovers of aristocrats enjoy their comforts too much to be dissuaded by any rational arguments about society and the public interest. The issue here is Shapiro's idea that scientists are not answerable for the public good. Is the idea valid?

We think Shapiro's idea, an idea no doubt approved by the editors of the conservative magazine Commentary, is both simplistic and silly. Our own view is that everyone in our lovely, chaotic, unjust, almost-broken society is answerable for the public good, each of us with a part of the public good already in our pockets, but unfortunately too many of us without any thought of the public good in our hearts and brains.

What a mockery of reason it is for conservatives in and out of science to take hand-outs from the public and then claim they owe nothing back. 

Since scientists are trained and treated as an elite group in society, they must be at least as answerable for the public good as any other elite group -- and maybe more so. Eighteenth century aristocrats may have thought their privileges a product of divine sanction, but the world has moved on, and in our century no one merits that claim.

In case you haven't had a look at Chris Mooney's book, The Republican War on Science, the title of the book says it all. As a journalist, Mooney is a credit to his profession, an investigative reporter with an understanding of how politicians distort science for their own ends. Unlike the free-rider rightists who have criticized his book, Mooney understands that we're all answerable for the public good, and that the political twisting of science rampant these days is a serious public danger.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

December 29, 2005

Frankenstein, Faraday, and The Nation Magazine

First, John Derbyshire of the rightist National Review magazine called us "leftist-fascist" for criticizing his ideas about biological justifications for social inequality.

Then Andrew Sullivan of the New Republic magazine called us "liberal snobs" for the way we criticized Derbyshire.

Now maybe we'll soon be called a few names by the leftist The Nation magazine.

On the cover of the January 9/16, 2006 issue of The Nation, you will find a pretty blonde model, appropriately sad-looking, with her blonde head morphed into a Medusa-like entanglement of electronic and electrical cables and connectors, all of it as come-on bait for the lead article entitled "Brave Neuro World".

Inside the magazine article, you find boxed marquee anxiety-producing blurbs: "Neurotechnologies threaten to violate the freedom to have our own personalities and control our inner lives."

Or another: "Neuroenhancement could make it not merely difficult but biologically impossible for the poor to compete with the wealthy."

Hot dog, guys, we have a winner here, scare the hell out of 'em on the newsstand and we'll sell more copies!

The gist of the article is that current research in neuroscience, particularly research involving magnetic resonance imaging techniques, coupled with development of neuroactive pharmaceuticals, may be dangerous because it may allow control of the brain, or alterations of mood and personality, and of course if any good at all may come of that, the rich may deprive the poor of such benefits.

In other words, knowledge can be dangerous.

One can imagine a Pleistocene conversation:

     "Hey, this here thing about us making fire could be dangerous."
     "So far it's only an idea. So far we have no way to do it and we have to wait for lightning."
     "Sure, but it's real enough and the idea for making it is here."
     "But it cooks meat, the meat tastes better, and I think it's safer to eat."
     "But the fire burns. Maybe it'll burn our hands. Maybe it'll burn the huts down."
     "So we'll be careful."
     "Maybe that's not good enough. Maybe we need to prevent it being used. Or at least think about regulating it."
     "But we're not using it yet. It's not here yet."
     "I say we need to think about regulating it before it gets here."

In general, that's the problem with this modern neurological luddism (or with any sort of proactive neo-luddism): The technology for controlling the brain is not here yet, not even close, and if the technology is not yet present, the only way to "regulate" it is to prevent it.

Do we really want that sort of intellectual tyranny in our society?

Rightists rant about preventing research on stems cells and cloning because of possible dangers to the social order, and now Leftists give us a rant about preventing research in neuroscience because of possible dangers to the "free" exercise of personality and mood.

Are they serious or merely selling magazines? No matter which, the public receives twisted information about science and is ill-served.

The fundamental idea behind this sort of magazine pop-science journalism is to use the verbal qualifiers "could", "might", "possible", and the like to conjure a scenario that shivers the guts of readers, because you learned in journalism classes that if you shiver their guts they're more likely to buy the magazine. 

Of course, people don't really need to read the article to be misinformed, all they need to do is pass the magazine on the newsstand and they get the message: They remember the picture of that blonde model with the crazy Medusa-head of electrical wires and cables and the cover headline "BRAVE NEURO WORLD".

So goes twisting science against the interests of the public.

Twenty years ago, newsstand magazines pulled the same trick about genetically modified food products with covers blaring alarm about "Frankenstein Foods". The idea is the same: scare the hell out of the public and you sell more magazines. It may be good business, but it's not good for the public, and coming from the Left, the corner of supposed public interest, it's a travesty.

Is the problem structural? Modern higher education is partitioned into science versus non-science, and after completing their higher education, maybe too many of the voices of the media are non-science people whose views of science and technology are close to Mary Shelley's view of Doctor Frankenstein in her novel Frankenstein, first published in 1818.

Frankenstein, you remember, was fond of electricity and used electricity to create and energize his monster. It's an irony that while the 19th century public was busy shivering over Frankenstein, another fellow with an interest in electricity, a blacksmith's son named Michael Faraday, was busy providing the understanding of electricity necessary for the future provision of electric lights, telephones, tram-cars, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, washing machines, and so on that essentially liberated people everywhere.

Maybe journalists on the Right and Left need to spend less time reading Burke and Marx and more time cracking a few books on the history of science and technology.

Maybe the free-lance author of The Nation article was pushed by the editors to slant the article in a specific direction. We don't know. We fault both the author of the article and the editors of The Nation for presenting this twisted rant to the public when they had the chance to offer the public a reasonable account of current research in neuroscience and how such research might impact society.

As it stands, The Nation has done a disservice to the public whose interest it purports to maintain.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

December 13, 2005

The New Anthropology, Happy Darkies, and the National Review

You might think that these days racism in the American establishment is muted, coded, or expressed with a quiet smile or raised eyebrow at handsome cocktail parties. You might also think that the sons and daughters of the establishment, who move in and out of academies like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, might have by this time learned enough biology, sociology, and anthropology to understand a few things. Unfortunately, if this is what you think, your thoughts are denied by reality.

Writing in the December 19, 2005 issue of the rightist National Review magazine, the "Special Anniversary" Issue (50 years), Senior Editor Richard Brookhiser (Yale University, 1977) ruminates about the novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), calls Waugh an "anthropologist", and says that Waugh taught him, or confirmed in him, a belief in "happy darkies".

And pray, what's that? Who are they? So Brookhiser enlightens us: 

"Happy darkies are most of the world: people with skins generally darker than mine, who live in Africa, most of Asia, and much of the Americas. Sometimes they start at Calais. These days they certainly inhabit every restaurant kitchen in New York. It seems paradoxical to call them happy. They are poor, numerous, and pregnant; if they work, it is to little purpose; their religions span a simple spectrum from witchcraft to wrath, and their societies alternate between tyranny and chaos; they beat their wives, scarify their daughters, and occasionally eat their enemies; they have never read (if they can read) a book that was not holy, or heard a piece of music unrelated to copulation."

So there it is. If you want to know the state of higher education in America today, what the sons and daughters of privilege have learned in the elite academies, what rightists want to hear in their magazines, this is it: the anthropology of Happy Darkies.

Oh, these poor twits of advantage, these pale gnomes who pass their lives nursing on the rot of disdain!

Brookhiser writes with a hint that he wants to improve the lot of the Happy Darkies. Does he? He writes of possibilities of "mobility", but what he proposes is not clear. An extended mission to save the heathen? We do think his idea that the "multicultural left" wants to maintain the status quo is sophistic nonsense.

In sum, we find the Waugh-Brookhiser view of the world disgusting. But we're thankful that at least this "new anthropology" is now public. Really, the National Review has done us all a great service by at last nailing its creed to the post.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

December 3, 2005

Evolutionary Psychology: Science or Pseudoscience?

The field of evolutionary psychology is now decades old and some people believe it's here to stay. We don't think so. In fact, we think the general method constitutes a pseudoscience.

A typical "proof" paradigm in evolutionary psychology might be as follows (constructed by us for this text):

Because hoarding food would have increased chances for survival in lean times, our Pleistocene ancestors should have developed by natural selection an adaptive tendency to hoard food. Since the modern era is too close to the Pleistocene for any substantial biological evolution to have occurred, modern behavior should have strong Pleistocene adaptive components. One assumption is that universality of a behavior constitutes evidence of a biologically evolved adaptation. A current survey of 10,000 households in 50 states shows that on average, when economically possible, people tend to store excess food in quantity in kitchen cupboards. The hypothesis of evolution of this adaptive behavior by natural selection is thus considered to be confirmed.

Problems: Do we know enough about Pleistocene behavior to say that a survey of current behavior confirms anything about any Pleistocene evolutionary scheme? Are the conclusions here already implicit in the premises? Is universality of a behavior pattern evidence of biological evolutionary adaptation? Is this science or rhetoric?

Aside from questions about "confirmation", how is this game played? Apparently, the first thing is to do a small pilot survey of maybe 100 households. If one obtains results that contradict the hypothesis, one either puts the hypothesis in a drawer for "future study" and moves on to another proposed evolved Pleistocene adaptive behavior, or one looks for "faults" in the details of the survey sample or data gathering and repeats the study. The probability is high that eventually some behavioral survey will be made that "confirms" some Pleistocene evolutionary adaptation scheme. A much larger study is then designed and hopefully funded, and the general outcome is that advocates of the theoretical approach of evolutionary psychology will tend to publish research papers supporting their formulated hypotheses, and tend not to publish research papers that contradict biological determinism of particular behavior patterns.

The larger the survey that's published, the more likely, because of time and expense, that it will not be repeated or redesigned by others. Certainly at least not for a few years, often not for a decade or more. Meanwhile, the large study is touted in college courses and in the media as "evidence" for biological determinism of such things as human mating behavior, marriage relations, altruism, parenting, homicidal tendencies, gender-based social inequalities, and so on. 

Another approach, even more egregious, is to first do a pilot survey, get a small-sample determination of universality of some current behavior, call it an evolutionary "adaptation", concoct a Pleistocene story that explains why the behavior would evolve by natural selection, then do a larger sample study to "confirm" the evolutionary hypothesis.

As expected, at a number of campuses in the US, platoons of evolutionary psychology doctoral students are busy constructing evolutionary adaptation stories of human behavior as a prelude to designing their pilot thesis surveys. Or maybe in some cases some pilot thesis survey to identify the presence of a universal behavior pattern comes first and the evolutionary adaptation story follows.

A usual commentary is to emphasize the heuristic value of the general scientific approach, i.e., the approach at least produces new research. But is that enough? During the 50-year period 1920-1970, a similar research paradigm produced thousands of studies "derived" from psychoanalytic theory in psychology, the number of such studies dwindling to a trickle only after psychoanalytic theory went out of fashion. Yes, such heuristic approaches do produce new research and keep people busy and on salary. The question is, after the fashion passes and the sand is sifted, are we left with any substantive and enduring new knowledge?

Various proponents of evolutionary psychology talk of hypotheses "derived" from Darwinian theory. But there are really no derivations in any rigorous sense, merely speculations suggested by what are often simplistic Darwinian ideas.

The scientific problem here is that our ability to concoct a speculation about the behavior of Pleistocene humans that can be argued as consistent with biological determinism is not evidence of either Pleistocene behavior or biological determinism, but evidence only of our imaginative abilities to concoct such speculations, and studies of current human behaviors that are supposedly extensions of Pleistocene behavior add no substance to the mix of speculation, since the idea that any current behavior is an extension of Pleistocene behavior is also a speculation. In sum, evolutionary psychology is not even a "soft" science, it's a pseudoscience that endures as a fashion.

The main offering of evolutionary psychology consists merely of arguments that are plausibly consistent with elementary Darwinism coupled with simplistic speculations about Pleistocene adaptations. It's not enough. And the bleat that human behavior is complex provides no remedy for a pseudoscience of human psychology.

The idea that the social sciences can potentially benefit from more attention to human biology is valuable and should definitely be encouraged, especially in the training of social scientists. Whether or not some or all aspects of human behavior are the result of evolution by natural selection (as opposed to cultural consequences or some combination of the two sources of variables) is still an open question not yet handled adequately by any rigorous scientific approach. Certainly, applications of any current "results" of evolutionary psychology to public policy-making are at present not justified and potentially dangerous to society.

In addition to generating technological and public progress, science has always been a source of public confusions. From one academic enclave or another, gas-filled balloons are sent out to be caught by the media, who in turn do a wonderful job of confusing the public. It's unfortunate that currently in the social sciences evolutionary psychology is a prime source of confusions about the links between biological evolution and human behavior.

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Addendum (12.04.05):

Evolutionary psychology has been vigorously criticized by others over the years, and the ideas above are nothing new. What prompted this editorial were some queries from readers concerning the origins of human behavior, and a desire to clarify our views.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

October 30, 2005

Brain Size and the National Review

When politics makes an incursion into science, a common result is distortion and a misinformed and ill-served public. Of course, some people don't care much about the public. In the November 7, 2005 issue of the National Review magazine, a frequent repository of right-wing propaganda, an article touts two papers that recently appeared in a scientific journal (Science September 9, 2005 309:1717,1720). The major point of the National Review article is that the two scientific papers present evidence that different human groups may have different gene frequencies influencing brain development, one consequence of which is that "our cherished national dream of a well-mixed and harmonious meritocracy with all groups equally represented in all niches, at all levels, may be unattainable." The title of the National Review article is "The Spectre of Difference". The interest of a self-proclaimed arch-conservative magazine like the National Review in this idea needs no explication.

The two scientific papers concern two genes, one called "microcephalin", and the other gene called ASPM (abnormal spindle-like microcephaly associated). Both genes may contribute to the regulation of brain size, since mutations of either gene cause pathological microcephaly. Both papers are from the research group of Bruce T. Lahn, a human geneticist at the University of Chicago. The first paper purports to present evidence that a genetic variant of microcephalin in modern humans that arose 37,000 years ago increased in frequency too rapidly to be compatible with neutral genetic drift, and thus must have spread under strong positive natural selection, which in turn suggests the ongoing evolutionary plasticity of the human brain. The second paper, concerns the gene ASPM , and here also the authors interpret their analysis as suggesting that the human brain is still undergoing rapid adaptive evolution.

All of which is politically neutral, except that the authors also present arguments that the frequencies of these two genes are undergoing adaptive evolution that varies with different geographical populations. In plain words, the data are presented as suggesting that the brain size of different ethnic groups and races (and dependent cultural outputs of such brains) are evolving (and have evolved) at measurably different rates.

Unequivocal in the two scientific papers is the idea that brain size is related to culture

Such is the gist of what the National Review picks up for its readers, the article proposing that "results like these out of the human sciences should prompt us to begin some hard thinking about our society, and about what we can reasonably expect social policies to accomplish."

But maybe before we get to hard thinking about social policies we need some hard thinking about evidence and conclusions.

Let's consider the two scientific papers.

In the first paper, the demonstration of evolutionary selection is inferential and not definitive. The authors state, "Our data on haplotype 49 are consistent with these signatures of selection."

Yes, consistent only: no anthropological conclusions are justified, and the so-called "signatures" of selection are provisional.

In the first paper, the anthropological statements are essentially speculations, to wit: "Such population differentiation may reflect a Eurasian origin of haplogroup D, local adaptation, and/or demographic factors such as a bottleneck associated with human migration 50,000 to 100,000 years ago."

Again, speculation: "may reflect". In translation: "We think this work may be related to demographic anthropology, but we don't know."

In the second paper, concerning the proposed adaptive evolution of the gene ASPM, the authors conclude: "Although the age of haplogroup D and its geographic distribution across Eurasia roughly coincide with two important events in the cultural evolution of Eurasia -- namely, the emergence and spread of domestication from the Middle East ~10,000 years ago and the rapid increase in population associated with the development of cities and written language 5000 to 6000 years ago around the Middle East -- the significance of this correlation is not yet clear."

Exactly so. The coincidence is rough, the significance unclear, and the authors nowhere discuss the important fact that within and across present human populations, studies of brains without pathology show no evidence of correlation of brain size with brain function or cultural "achievement". Certainly, if the authors are working on genes apparently associated with brain size, and the authors are also interested in relating their work to current anthropology, one would expect some discussion of their problem, to wit: If greater human brain size is still undergoing evolutionary selection, how come we have no strong correlations between brain size and important functional attributes of the human nervous system? If the brain is still evolving in size, what are the conceivable selection pressures, given no apparent correlation between non-pathological brain size and function? We're unhappy that the authors were not urged by the referees to make some statements about these questions.

We're also fascinated by the opening sentence of the first paper: "The most distinct trait of Homo sapiens is the exceptional size and complexity of the brain (1,2). That's good, but the problem is the two references are 46 years old and 32 years old, respectively, and we're trying to imagine why anyone would choose these particular references for a report of such research. If we're to choose old references, why not choose von Bonin? But maybe that would be against the approach of these authors. Consider, for example, the following quotation from von Bonin:

"The results of our inquiries into the brains of fossil men are somewhat meager: we cannot deduce any details about their mental life, whether they believed in God, whether they could speak or not, or how they felt about the world around them... That the brain increases in size as we go from the Australopithecinae to modern man -- or to the Upper Paleolithics, for that matter --is quite obvious and, of course, gratifying. But the meaning of the increase is again not quite clear because, as we all know, brain size as such is a very poor indicator of mental ability. This has been shown best perhaps by Pearson (1925) some years ago. In his series, very gifted persons, such as Leon Gambetta, Anatole France, or Franz Joseph Gall, had very small brains, of about 1100 grams. Other equally gifted persons had very large brains; thus Byron and Dr. Johnson had brains of about 2000 grams. And, of course, some very ordinary persons had equally large brains. So brain size was certainly not very important, and the correlation between brain size and mental capacity was insignificant. But whether this argument can be extended to an evolutionary series is again another matter. For one thing, we know far too little about the bodily proportions of fossil forms. Obviously, the brain stands in a certain relation to the rest of the body, and this rest is still largely hidden from us. Brain size as such is none too meaningful. Moreover, mere size completely leaves out of account the inner structure of the brain, which may be different in different forms and which may determine to a great extent what the brain can do." Gerhardt von Bonin: THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN BRAIN University of Chicago Press, 1963, p.76

So why cite Spuhler (1959) and Jerison (1973) rather than von Bonin (1963)?

Our final comment is that human brain size, as a phenotype, has important determinants arising from epigenetics, fetal environment, and postnatal environment, in addition to the probable involvement of many gene networks, and at the present level of our ignorance, any attempt to lock in brain size to the activity of a few genes is most likely an exaggeration. We would especially emphasize that whatever genes or gene complexes may have been involved with the marked increase in brain size apparently associated with our split from the great ape line, the same genes or gene complexes may not at all be involved with any apparent changes in brain size during the Holocene.

There is certainly no reason to believe that the human brain has stopped evolving, and certainly brain size is a biological parameter that may indeed be changing, but we don't think this work is of much particular anthropological significance. We would say the work needs to be done (and supported), but we are not at the point yet of making important conclusions from such studies.

And finally there is this: Is it total brain size that's important or the surface area and depth of neocortex? With an increase in total brain size may come an increase in subcortical structures and not necessarily a concomitant increase in neocortex at all, given the existing foldings of neocortex. In plain words: Could evolution be dumbing down the brain? (What an idea!)

In general, if there are any anthropologists and psychologists listening, we would urge them not to jump to any conclusions on the basis of this work alone or on the basis of any work like it. We certainly need to identify the critical neurobiological variables that may be associated with individual psychological performance and with cultural change, but our view is that we're not there yet, not even close.

As for the National Review, we suggest they do more homework. The author of the article (John Derbyshire) calls himself "a simple Darwinian rightist". 

Indeed.

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Addendum (11/09/05):
Following the appearance of this editorial, John Derbyshire, author of the National Review article, called us "leftist-fascist". Whatever that means, we assume it's meant to be pejorative. But what is it that makes us "leftist" or "fascist" or some oxymoronic combine? Is it our call for more caution in political interpretations of scientific observations? Who knows?

Addendum (11/13/05):
The complete National Review article is at NR-Derbyshire.
For Derbyshire's responses to our editorial, see D1 and D2.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

January 23, 2005

Creationism vs. Sanity

One grows tired of the recurring efforts of inadequately educated religionists to base the teaching of science in schools on biblical passages written during a time when civilization and understanding of the natural world were both primitive.

In a country of nearly 300 million people, there will always be some people who, because of "religious" conviction, believe the Earth is as flat as a pancake, a few thousand years old, and resting on the backs of four giant elephants. Their belief is unfortunate. What is even more unfortunate is teaching our children that such beliefs, because they are "religious", deserve respect.

Creationism and its latest effluvium, intelligent design, are not science, not evidentiary, not even close to science, and do not deserve respect as material to be taught to children in public schools. The idea of imposing one's religious views on others via public education is totally un-American, and the people who promulgate that idea need to be called that -- un-American.

Religionists who accept the work of their God as revealed by science, and who understand that creationism is blasphemy, need to come out into the arena and be heard.

Scientists who devote their lives to science and scientific attitudes and scientific truths also need to come out into the arena and be heard with their strongest voices.

Science teachers who find these creationist crusades obnoxious and potentially damaging to the children they teach also need to come out into the arena in droves and wage the battle of their intellectual lives.

It is time. We are nearly 150 years after Darwin's Origin of Species, and it is time for the United States, the foremost scientific enterprise on the planet, to deal firmly with this issue. People are free in the US to practice any particular religion. They are not free to impose that religion on others, and they are certainly not free to force the teaching of their religious beliefs in the public schools.

We call for an end to stickers on textbooks telling children that evolution is only a "theory". We call for an end to mandated teaching of creationism or intelligent design or any other attempt to subvert the public school teaching of science as it is currently understood by the scientific community. We call for all scientists, educators, and thinking Americans to raise their voices in a decisive confrontation against insidious and un-American anti-scientific dogma.

The US Supreme Court owes the American people a unanimous and unambiguous rejection of religionist attacks on science education.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com

January 19, 2005

Harvard, Women, and Science

The recent comments by Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard University, suggesting that biological differences between the sexes may be one explanation why fewer women succeed in mathematics and science careers, is evidence of at best a sophomoric understanding of the professions of science and mathematics, and at worst possible evidence of brain damage. Dr. Summers is an economist, not a scientist and not a mathematician. At the present time, approximately half the graduating PhDs in chemistry and MDs in medicine are women, and more than a third in the biological sciences, particularly in molecular biology. One can assume that any of these new women graduates knows more science and mathematics than Dr. Summers, and in addition one suspects that any of these new women graduates knows more about the problems of women in science and mathematics than Dr. Summers does.

If Dr. Summers is really interested in understanding the present situation of women in science and mathematics, he ought to have a serious look at the history of his own university. In general, Harvard University has never been known as a leader in the intellectual emancipation of women, and throughout most of its existence, Harvard was an all-male college that frowned on the idea of women in intellectual pursuits. In the early years of stellar spectroscopy at the Harvard Astronomical Observatory, for example, nearly all the data were catalogued and analyzed by female astronomers, called "computers", who were trained professional astronomers but forbidden because of their sex to use the telescopes. Women astronomers at Harvard were not allowed routine access to the telescopes until the 1950s. It is an irony of the social history of science that the work of such female astronomers as Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1928) and Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) came to be of greater significance than the work of many of the male astronomers who considered these female astronomers to be no more than menial assistants.

If understanding of women in science is the objective, after an examination of the history of women at Harvard, we suggest to Dr. Summers that he start thinking about attitudes rather than biological differences, attitudes of men in science toward women in science, and attitudes of university presidents who are supposed to lead forward rather than backward.

In truth, this problem of attitudes toward women of accomplishment is so old it feels trite. Plato, after all, that old Greek so clever with his words, already pointed out in his time that wasting women, wasting the intellectual capabilities of half the population, was a stupid strategy for any society.

As always, in science or anywhere else, "old-boy" attitudes are the attitudes of old boys.

Dan Agin
ScienceWeek
dpa@scienceweek.com