In yesterday's post, I scoffed at the tendency of some people to jump to a supernatural answers when there is a perfectly reasonable natural answer at hand. In particular, I made reference to the foolishness surrounding crop circles, which are variously attributed to alien intelligences, evil spirits, and "plasma vortexes."
Note that my disdain for supernatural solutions doesn't mean that all natural solutions are created equal, nor that a given natural solution is necessarily correct. Witness, for example, the article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in June 2009, brought to my attention yesterday by a former student of mine, which attributes crop circles to Tasmanian wallabies on dope. (To prove that I am not making this up, read the entire article here.)
If you'd prefer the condensed version, the article tells the story of the Tasmanian poppy farms that supply half of the legally-produced opium in the world (used in making morphine, codeine, and other medically useful opiate drugs). Given its capacity for being stolen, and either used illegally or sold, security around poppy farms is pretty high, which is why it came as some surprise when crop circles started showing up in poppy fields.
The reason for bringing all this up is that one person has proposed a solution to the Tasmanian crop circle problem, and it has nothing to do with aliens. Lara Giddings, attorney general for the state of Tasmania, blames the phenomenon on stoned wallabies.
"The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Giddings said, in a parliamentary hearing. "Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high."
My first reaction was, "You're kidding, right?" But Giddings was apparently completely serious. She thinks that crop circles in poppy fields are really being caused by wallabies eating poppy plants and then jumping around in circles.
Now, I will state up front that I couldn't find any photographs of the Tasmanian crop circles, and that I don't know what caused them. But if they're really what we've come to call crop circles -- arrays of sharp-edged geometric shapes -- then I will bet my next month's salary that they weren't caused by a drugged wallaby hopping about.
So to clarify my assertion from yesterday; just because I think that supernatural answers are wrong doesn't mean that I think that every natural answer has to be right.
And it doesn't even have to be that far-fetched, either. Even the scientists are sometimes off base, because let's face it -- nature can be pretty weird, sometimes. Consider the interesting case of the ether.
When it was discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries that light had a lot of wave-like properties, a natural question to ask was, "what is waving?" Waves have to travel in a medium -- a wave is a regular disturbance in some substance or another. (This is why in science fiction movies, when a spaceship blows up, and you hear "BOOM," someone didn't pay attention in physics class -- because space, being generally devoid of matter, would have no medium through which sound waves could propagate. Explosions in space would be completely silent.)
So scientists naturally wondered what medium light was traveling in -- i.e. in a light wave, what is "waving?" Since light, unlike sound, travels just fine in a vacuum, there must be something there through which the wave is passing. Pretty logical, right? Scientists decided that there was a medium that simply couldn't be detected with the equipment they had, and named this medium "ether."
So, for decades, "ether" was a scientific fact -- until the nifty little Michelson-Morley experiment happened, disproving the existence of the ether, and set the stage for Einstein to explain what was actually happening -- and for Schrödinger to finally pronounce that what was waving was a probability field. (And if that sounds a little too close to Douglas Adams' "Infinite Improbability Drive" to be possible, allow me to say that it strikes me that way, too, and yet it's been experimentally supported every which way from Sunday.)
Nature can be bizarre, weird, counterintuitive. However, it does act in a regular fashion, which is why the scientific method works. The bottom line, as always, is: show me the goods. If you think you have an explanation for something, provide hard evidence. That is the strength of science; everyone, and every theory, is held up to the gold standards of evidence and replicability. If you want me to believe in something -- the ether, light being a probability wave, or stoned wallabies causing crop circles -- you better have something better up your sleeve than "because I'm the attorney general, and I said so."
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Crop circles, sciencey words, and easy answers
One of the things that bugs me the most about the supernatural view of the world is that it's taking the easy way out.
Natural, scientific explanations are hard. That's why people study all their lives to learn how to do good science. Even to read one of the popular journals about science -- Discover, say, or Scientific American -- means you have to commit yourself to exercising your brain a little, training yourself to think critically, learning a few new vocabulary words.
The woo-woos of the world take the easy way. They specialize in a lexicon that I call "Sort Of Sciencey Or Something." The words sounds scientific enough -- energy, field, vibration, frequency, dimension -- but when you press them, it turns out that even they aren't able to give a good definition of what they mean by these terms. They throw in glancing references to actual science (quantum mechanics is a particular favorite) and it gives them the good, glowing feeling of being Sort Of Sciencey Or Something, which is often enough to sell whatever product they're hawking to the gullible.
Natural explanations aren't always technical and hard to understand, mind you; but they do require you to look beyond the easy answers of attributing things to Psychic Vibrational Energy Fields, and force your brain to think skeptically. Witness, for example, the crop circle that appeared in Wiltshire (England) last week.
Visitors to the site generally attributed the latest addition to the Crop Circle Artists' Portfolio to the usual things -- mostly aliens. Janet Ossebaard, a Dutch crop circle woo-woo extraordinaire, stated, "This wasn’t made by people, otherwise you’d see damage from board marks. It’s been hit by a plasma vortex. You can see the burn marks on the crops and cavities. We also found a half-fried caterpillar. This is a vortex that has been intelligently guided — and not by hoaxers."
Well, Ms. Ossebaard, I'm afraid that you might want to reconsider your "plasma vortex" theory.
Professor Richard Taylor, a physicist at the University of Oregon, was able to replicate exactly this sort of damage -- and mimic crop circle patterns -- using a magnetron, a device made from the innards of a microwave oven, and powered by... a 12-volt battery!
In an article in Physics World, Taylor describes how he used a magnetron to "cook" the bottom of plant stems, causing them to fall over and cool in place -- creating the "bent, not broken" hallmark of crop circles that woo-woos have made such a fuss about. With a magnetron and a hand-held GPS, Taylor says, you could make a crop circle of a size and level of complexity that would only be limited by the number of hours in a night.
So, there you have it, folks: a nice, plausible, natural explanation, with no recourse necessary to "plasma vortexes" or the like.
Note that I'm not saying that every crop circle was made this way. But that's the great thing about scientific explanations; you find a straightforward, plausible explanation, that accounts for all of the known facts in a given case, with the full knowledge that the next case might require a different explanation. The woo-woos' determination to make things like this into some huge mystical deal (The Aliens Are Trying To Communicate With Us) leaves them instead having to answer a number of troubling questions, the most important of which is: Why would an alien intelligence using a "plasma vortex" to carve an image into a wheat field choose to depict an alien smoking a pipe?
Natural, scientific explanations are hard. That's why people study all their lives to learn how to do good science. Even to read one of the popular journals about science -- Discover, say, or Scientific American -- means you have to commit yourself to exercising your brain a little, training yourself to think critically, learning a few new vocabulary words.
The woo-woos of the world take the easy way. They specialize in a lexicon that I call "Sort Of Sciencey Or Something." The words sounds scientific enough -- energy, field, vibration, frequency, dimension -- but when you press them, it turns out that even they aren't able to give a good definition of what they mean by these terms. They throw in glancing references to actual science (quantum mechanics is a particular favorite) and it gives them the good, glowing feeling of being Sort Of Sciencey Or Something, which is often enough to sell whatever product they're hawking to the gullible.
Natural explanations aren't always technical and hard to understand, mind you; but they do require you to look beyond the easy answers of attributing things to Psychic Vibrational Energy Fields, and force your brain to think skeptically. Witness, for example, the crop circle that appeared in Wiltshire (England) last week.
Visitors to the site generally attributed the latest addition to the Crop Circle Artists' Portfolio to the usual things -- mostly aliens. Janet Ossebaard, a Dutch crop circle woo-woo extraordinaire, stated, "This wasn’t made by people, otherwise you’d see damage from board marks. It’s been hit by a plasma vortex. You can see the burn marks on the crops and cavities. We also found a half-fried caterpillar. This is a vortex that has been intelligently guided — and not by hoaxers."
Well, Ms. Ossebaard, I'm afraid that you might want to reconsider your "plasma vortex" theory.
Professor Richard Taylor, a physicist at the University of Oregon, was able to replicate exactly this sort of damage -- and mimic crop circle patterns -- using a magnetron, a device made from the innards of a microwave oven, and powered by... a 12-volt battery!
In an article in Physics World, Taylor describes how he used a magnetron to "cook" the bottom of plant stems, causing them to fall over and cool in place -- creating the "bent, not broken" hallmark of crop circles that woo-woos have made such a fuss about. With a magnetron and a hand-held GPS, Taylor says, you could make a crop circle of a size and level of complexity that would only be limited by the number of hours in a night.
So, there you have it, folks: a nice, plausible, natural explanation, with no recourse necessary to "plasma vortexes" or the like.
Note that I'm not saying that every crop circle was made this way. But that's the great thing about scientific explanations; you find a straightforward, plausible explanation, that accounts for all of the known facts in a given case, with the full knowledge that the next case might require a different explanation. The woo-woos' determination to make things like this into some huge mystical deal (The Aliens Are Trying To Communicate With Us) leaves them instead having to answer a number of troubling questions, the most important of which is: Why would an alien intelligence using a "plasma vortex" to carve an image into a wheat field choose to depict an alien smoking a pipe?
Friday, August 5, 2011
Flower power
In yesterday's post, I commented on the peculiar practice of yoga for dogs, and made the comment, "What next? Flower essences for dogs?"
If I was expecting everyone to say, "Ha-ha, what a silly thought, no one could be that gullible," I was sadly mistaken. Several of my readers sent me links showing that there is already a thriving business in selling people flower essences to treat their dogs.
If you're wondering what a "flower essence" is, then allow me to explain. A flower essence is made by floating flowers in water, and exposing them to the light of the sun, moon, or stars, so that the water is "potentized" -- the "energy vibrations" of the flowers are "transferred to the structure of the water." This then creates a "mother tincture" that can be used to treat physical or emotional problems.
If you can stand to take a swan dive into a great big pond of pseudoscience, take a look at this explanation of how flower essences work (here). If you understandably would prefer not to risk valuable brain cells by reading the whole thing, I present here a few highlights:
1) How do you make an "essence" of a celestial phenomenon? "Here, have a few drops of Lunar Eclipse?" Making an "essence" of an animal is even more problematic, and if anyone tried to dose me with Essence of Weasel, I wouldn't be happy about it. And I don't even want to know how they make an essence of an "Ascended Master."
2) If you are giving your pet something that is completely safe and non-toxic, can't be overused or misused, is compatible with all other treatments, and can be given to the wrong animal at the wrong time with no effect, isn't it safe to assume that the treatment itself is worthless?
3) Lastly, who comes up with this stuff? I mean, come on. How on earth would putting the reproductive organs of a plant into water and exposing it to moonlight "imprint vibrational energy" into the water? (Whatever "imprinting vibrational energy" is supposed to mean.) If you want me to believe this blather, then design me an Vibrational Energy-o-Meter, and show that the needle pegs when you put the sensor in flower essence water, and doesn't respond with plain old tap water. Until then, this just strikes me as a way to rip off the gullible.
And believe me, it's not that I wouldn't welcome such a thing, if it worked. I own two dogs, who between them are a walking encyclopedia of canine neuroses. One of my dogs, Grendel, is a tough-looking, barrel-chested mutt whose appearance has "junkyard dog" written all over it, but whose personality has resulted in our giving him a variety of nicknames, including "CreamPuff," "Mr. Fluffums," and "WussieDog." He's a cuddler, not a fighter. Plus, he's terrified of nail clippers, squirt bottles, and other hand-held devices, and runs and hides if we are holding one. Our other dog, Doolin, is a border collie/coonhound mix, and is a nervous wreck most of the time because the two sides of her personality are constantly at war. Her coonhound side chases the cats, steals food from the counter, and dumps the trash, and then the collie side feels intensely guilty about it. If there was a way to sooth her aura, I'd jump right at it. Her aura probably resembles the little lightning bolts generated by the Tesla coils that were in the background of all of those bad 1960s science fiction movies.
However, even given our dogs' rampant mental issues, I'm not going to waste my time and money messing around with flower essences. For one thing, they're not cheap -- in the sites I looked at, small bottles of essences start at $15.99. For another thing, I'm not eager to support people who are hoodwinking the public with pseudoscientific nonsense for which there is not a shred of hard scientific evidence.
For another thing, Grendel would probably be afraid of the dropper bottle.
If I was expecting everyone to say, "Ha-ha, what a silly thought, no one could be that gullible," I was sadly mistaken. Several of my readers sent me links showing that there is already a thriving business in selling people flower essences to treat their dogs.
If you're wondering what a "flower essence" is, then allow me to explain. A flower essence is made by floating flowers in water, and exposing them to the light of the sun, moon, or stars, so that the water is "potentized" -- the "energy vibrations" of the flowers are "transferred to the structure of the water." This then creates a "mother tincture" that can be used to treat physical or emotional problems.
If you can stand to take a swan dive into a great big pond of pseudoscience, take a look at this explanation of how flower essences work (here). If you understandably would prefer not to risk valuable brain cells by reading the whole thing, I present here a few highlights:
"Flower essences (remedies) are specially prepared extracts of the flowering parts of certain plants. They work through energy fields to heal stress and disease from the inside."This, of course, brings up a few questions in my mind:
"Many other essences have been created around the world, not only from flowers, but also from gems, minerals, animals, butterflies, lakes, sacred earth sites, stars, celestial phenomena, and Ascended Masters. Many of them are very useful in helping our animal companions recover from trauma, injury, and stress. These non-flower essences are often referred to as 'energy' or 'vibrational' essences."
"Essences heal underlying negative emotional states by 'flooding' the patient with the opposite, positive quality. For example, the essence of Holly is love. Use Holly in any situation where there is a lack of love, such as anger, jealousy, or rage. Similarly, the essence of Rock Rose is courage; it is helpful in cases of deep fears, panic, and terror."
"Since essences act energetically, not physically, they are completely safe and non-toxic. They cannot be overused or misused, and they are compatible with all other treatments, including drugs, surgery, and holistic treatments like herbs and homeopathy. Even if you give the wrong remedy, it will not have any negative effects, but simply no effect."
1) How do you make an "essence" of a celestial phenomenon? "Here, have a few drops of Lunar Eclipse?" Making an "essence" of an animal is even more problematic, and if anyone tried to dose me with Essence of Weasel, I wouldn't be happy about it. And I don't even want to know how they make an essence of an "Ascended Master."
2) If you are giving your pet something that is completely safe and non-toxic, can't be overused or misused, is compatible with all other treatments, and can be given to the wrong animal at the wrong time with no effect, isn't it safe to assume that the treatment itself is worthless?
3) Lastly, who comes up with this stuff? I mean, come on. How on earth would putting the reproductive organs of a plant into water and exposing it to moonlight "imprint vibrational energy" into the water? (Whatever "imprinting vibrational energy" is supposed to mean.) If you want me to believe this blather, then design me an Vibrational Energy-o-Meter, and show that the needle pegs when you put the sensor in flower essence water, and doesn't respond with plain old tap water. Until then, this just strikes me as a way to rip off the gullible.
And believe me, it's not that I wouldn't welcome such a thing, if it worked. I own two dogs, who between them are a walking encyclopedia of canine neuroses. One of my dogs, Grendel, is a tough-looking, barrel-chested mutt whose appearance has "junkyard dog" written all over it, but whose personality has resulted in our giving him a variety of nicknames, including "CreamPuff," "Mr. Fluffums," and "WussieDog." He's a cuddler, not a fighter. Plus, he's terrified of nail clippers, squirt bottles, and other hand-held devices, and runs and hides if we are holding one. Our other dog, Doolin, is a border collie/coonhound mix, and is a nervous wreck most of the time because the two sides of her personality are constantly at war. Her coonhound side chases the cats, steals food from the counter, and dumps the trash, and then the collie side feels intensely guilty about it. If there was a way to sooth her aura, I'd jump right at it. Her aura probably resembles the little lightning bolts generated by the Tesla coils that were in the background of all of those bad 1960s science fiction movies.
However, even given our dogs' rampant mental issues, I'm not going to waste my time and money messing around with flower essences. For one thing, they're not cheap -- in the sites I looked at, small bottles of essences start at $15.99. For another thing, I'm not eager to support people who are hoodwinking the public with pseudoscientific nonsense for which there is not a shred of hard scientific evidence.
For another thing, Grendel would probably be afraid of the dropper bottle.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Downward-facing dog
New from the Bizarre Ways To Spend Your Time And Money department, we have: yoga classes for dogs.
Predictably named "doga," this trendy practice is apparently catching on like crazy. Suzi Teitelman, a doga instructor from Florida, offers classes, DVDs, and a training manual, and has trained over a hundred people to be doga instructors themselves.
"We chant together to feel the vibrations, then we start moving into twists and turns," she said. "The person takes dog deeper into a stretch, and the dog takes the person deeper. If you have a dog on your arm in a standing posture it helps balance and strength."
Note the dog breeds in the above photograph. All of the photos I've seen show people holding small port-a-dogs like miniature dachshunds, Pekinese, Pomeranians, and toy poodles. No one ever seems to be holding, say, a rottweiler, which I think would be a much greater challenge to your balance and strength.
Teitelman believes that there are benefits to the practice for both human and dog. "You're moving their body. They're getting touched, they're getting love," she explained, "and everybody needs to be hanging upside down."
And yes, that is a direct quote, the last part of which leaves me at a loss as to how to respond.
Dr. Robin Brennen, a New York City veterinarian, is an enthusiastic supporter of doga, and notes that in a class she attended, by the end of the class all the dogs were in savasana (the final resting pose). I.e., they were asleep. My dogs would probably fall asleep, too, if they were stuck for an hour in a room with a bunch of people chanting and stretching and assuming weird poses, and not engaging in any sensible kind of activity, such as throwing a frisbee or tennis ball or playing tug-of-war with a rope toy.
Teitelman states that the practice isn't just helpful for dogs, but can be applied to other kinds of pets, too.
"It definitely works with cats," she said, "and when I do 'downward dog' my bird comes over."
I'm skeptical about the cats, frankly. I've witnessed my own cats doing a special solo feline yoga pose, the Lick-Your-Own-Butt asana, but it's hard to imagine them cooperating with a human + cat yoga routine. I can't see myself trying to hold on to one of them while, for example, standing on one leg. And hanging one of my cats upside down would be a recipe for a trip to the emergency room for stitches.
Please note that I have nothing whatsoever against yoga, per se. It's a wonderful regimen for toning, stretching, and building stamina, even if I don't exactly subscribe to a lot of the spiritual trappings that tend to surround it. But dogs? Really? It makes you wonder what the next pet-related woo-woo fad will be. Homeopathy for dogs with illnesses? Using crystals and flower essences to assuage your dog's anxieties? Astrology for dogs? I bet there are people out there who would happily buy into any or all of these.
The possibilities are limitless, as long as the money is.
Predictably named "doga," this trendy practice is apparently catching on like crazy. Suzi Teitelman, a doga instructor from Florida, offers classes, DVDs, and a training manual, and has trained over a hundred people to be doga instructors themselves.
"We chant together to feel the vibrations, then we start moving into twists and turns," she said. "The person takes dog deeper into a stretch, and the dog takes the person deeper. If you have a dog on your arm in a standing posture it helps balance and strength."
Note the dog breeds in the above photograph. All of the photos I've seen show people holding small port-a-dogs like miniature dachshunds, Pekinese, Pomeranians, and toy poodles. No one ever seems to be holding, say, a rottweiler, which I think would be a much greater challenge to your balance and strength.
Teitelman believes that there are benefits to the practice for both human and dog. "You're moving their body. They're getting touched, they're getting love," she explained, "and everybody needs to be hanging upside down."
And yes, that is a direct quote, the last part of which leaves me at a loss as to how to respond.
Dr. Robin Brennen, a New York City veterinarian, is an enthusiastic supporter of doga, and notes that in a class she attended, by the end of the class all the dogs were in savasana (the final resting pose). I.e., they were asleep. My dogs would probably fall asleep, too, if they were stuck for an hour in a room with a bunch of people chanting and stretching and assuming weird poses, and not engaging in any sensible kind of activity, such as throwing a frisbee or tennis ball or playing tug-of-war with a rope toy.
Teitelman states that the practice isn't just helpful for dogs, but can be applied to other kinds of pets, too.
"It definitely works with cats," she said, "and when I do 'downward dog' my bird comes over."
I'm skeptical about the cats, frankly. I've witnessed my own cats doing a special solo feline yoga pose, the Lick-Your-Own-Butt asana, but it's hard to imagine them cooperating with a human + cat yoga routine. I can't see myself trying to hold on to one of them while, for example, standing on one leg. And hanging one of my cats upside down would be a recipe for a trip to the emergency room for stitches.
Please note that I have nothing whatsoever against yoga, per se. It's a wonderful regimen for toning, stretching, and building stamina, even if I don't exactly subscribe to a lot of the spiritual trappings that tend to surround it. But dogs? Really? It makes you wonder what the next pet-related woo-woo fad will be. Homeopathy for dogs with illnesses? Using crystals and flower essences to assuage your dog's anxieties? Astrology for dogs? I bet there are people out there who would happily buy into any or all of these.
The possibilities are limitless, as long as the money is.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
The myth of certainty
Tropical Storm Emily is currently spinning in the Atlantic Ocean near the Grenadines, and in a few days may be a threat to the coastal United States. The various computer models used to predict the formation and movement of storms show an uncertain forecast, both in trajectory and strengthening; landfall is predicted to be anywhere between North Carolina and south Florida, and in fact some models show it veering off into the open ocean and not hitting the mainland at all. And depending on its path, it could weaken (especially if if makes a direct hit on the Dominican Republic) or strengthen (if it lingers over the warm waters of the Caribbean).
For some people, this kind of uncertainty is distressing. A commenter on an online news story about Emily posted, "I should become a weather forecaster. It's the only job where you can admit that you are as likely to be right as a flip of a coin (50% chance of rain) or talk on and on about the fact that you really don't know where a hurricane is going to go, and you still get paid."
Meteorology is especially open to these kinds of criticisms -- despite vast improvements in weather and climate modeling, the Earth's weather is a tremendously complex system, sensitive to large numbers of initial conditions, and models are still fraught with inaccuracies. However, you hear the same kind of accusations levied against science in general. I've had students ask me why we are bothering to learn science "when it could all be proven wrong ten years from now." The findings of nutrition scientists are ridiculed as summing up to "everything you eat can kill you." Evolutionary biologists are dismissed as not knowing what they're doing when a new discovery changes our understanding of the relationships between prehistoric species. Physicists, especially those who study quantum phenomena, are the worst; their models, so counterintuitive to what we see in the macroscopic world, have generated comments such as the one I saw appended to an article on the Large Hadron Collider, that "these guys spend billions of taxpayer dollars to play around and then write science fiction."
All of this comes, I think, from three problems with the public perception of science.
The first is its portrayal in the media, an issue with which I dealt in a recent post, and which I will not go into any further here.
The second is how science is taught in public school. It is regrettably uncommon to see science taught as a process; that it is a cumulative, and changing, way of understanding based upon the total mass of data we have at present. Too often, science is taught as lists of vocabulary words and mathematical equations -- neither of which portray science accurately, as a fluid, responsive way of modeling the world. Most people, therefore, grow up with the idea that scientific understanding shouldn't change, any more than the definition of "dog" should change, or the solution to an algebraic equation should change.
The third reason, however, is the one I want to look at more carefully. It's the myth that science should provide certainty. The resentment of people against weather forecasting comes, I think, from the idea that knowledge should be certain. You either know something, or you don't, right? Either Tropical Storm Emily will hit Charleston, South Carolina, or else it won't; and if you're smart enough, you should be able to figure that out. And if you meteorologists can't figure that out, then what the hell are we paying you for?
It's this attitude that generates my student's frustration, that science could change enough that our current textbooks could be entirely wrong ten years from now. And this brings me to the crux of the matter, which is that people don't understand the idea of "levels of confidence."
How confident are scientists in various models or theories? Well, it varies, and it's not an either/or matter (either it's all right, or it's all wrong). Some models have very high levels of confidence. The atomic theory (the basis of chemistry) and evolutionary theory (the basis of biology) are supported by such vast mountains of data that their likelihood of being substantially wrong is nearly zero. Any changes to be made to either of those models will be at the level of details. Other models, such as climate modeling and weather forecasting, are still subject to considerable uncertainty even as to the rules by which the system interacts and responds; predictions made here are made with less confidence, and the rules of the science could well change as we gather more data. Finally, some models, for example string theory, are still only interesting proposals, and there is not nearly enough data yet for a determination to be made. In ten years, it could be that physics textbooks will include whole chapters on string theory and the studies that validate it, or it might have gone the way of the ether and be relegated to the scrap pile of ideas that went unsupported by the evidence. It's simply too early to tell.
The problem is, that's not enough for a lot of people. They want certainty, as if it's honestly even possible. To them, even the uncertainties inherent in the best-supported models are unacceptable; if there are any questions left, then it means that "scientists don't really know." And for the models lower on the confidence-level scale, the whole thing appears like nothing more than guesswork. Never mind that our improved ability to forecast hurricane trajectories has saved thousands of lives -- compare our current knowledge of storm tracks to what happened in Galveston in 1900, when a hurricane barreled into the coast, seemingly out of nowhere, costing more than 8,000 lives.
Uncertainty at some level is built into science as a way of knowing; there's no escaping the fact that new data can trash old theories. But "uncertainty" doesn't imply that scientists don't know what they're doing, or that tomorrow we'll be throwing away all the chemistry texts because they suddenly decided that the alchemists were right, after all. As more data is collected, and models and theories are refined, the uncertainty diminishes. And even though it can never reach zero, it can reach low enough levels that a model becomes "robust" -- able to make accurate predictions in almost all cases.
And even if meteorology hasn't quite gotten there yet, it's still a damn sight better than it was a hundred years ago, when hurricanes could hit coastlines before warnings could be issued. The people who believe in the myth of certainty in science might do well to consider the difference between our understanding now and our understanding a century ago -- before they make proclamations about scientists not deserving to get paid for what they do.
For some people, this kind of uncertainty is distressing. A commenter on an online news story about Emily posted, "I should become a weather forecaster. It's the only job where you can admit that you are as likely to be right as a flip of a coin (50% chance of rain) or talk on and on about the fact that you really don't know where a hurricane is going to go, and you still get paid."
Meteorology is especially open to these kinds of criticisms -- despite vast improvements in weather and climate modeling, the Earth's weather is a tremendously complex system, sensitive to large numbers of initial conditions, and models are still fraught with inaccuracies. However, you hear the same kind of accusations levied against science in general. I've had students ask me why we are bothering to learn science "when it could all be proven wrong ten years from now." The findings of nutrition scientists are ridiculed as summing up to "everything you eat can kill you." Evolutionary biologists are dismissed as not knowing what they're doing when a new discovery changes our understanding of the relationships between prehistoric species. Physicists, especially those who study quantum phenomena, are the worst; their models, so counterintuitive to what we see in the macroscopic world, have generated comments such as the one I saw appended to an article on the Large Hadron Collider, that "these guys spend billions of taxpayer dollars to play around and then write science fiction."
All of this comes, I think, from three problems with the public perception of science.
The first is its portrayal in the media, an issue with which I dealt in a recent post, and which I will not go into any further here.
The second is how science is taught in public school. It is regrettably uncommon to see science taught as a process; that it is a cumulative, and changing, way of understanding based upon the total mass of data we have at present. Too often, science is taught as lists of vocabulary words and mathematical equations -- neither of which portray science accurately, as a fluid, responsive way of modeling the world. Most people, therefore, grow up with the idea that scientific understanding shouldn't change, any more than the definition of "dog" should change, or the solution to an algebraic equation should change.
The third reason, however, is the one I want to look at more carefully. It's the myth that science should provide certainty. The resentment of people against weather forecasting comes, I think, from the idea that knowledge should be certain. You either know something, or you don't, right? Either Tropical Storm Emily will hit Charleston, South Carolina, or else it won't; and if you're smart enough, you should be able to figure that out. And if you meteorologists can't figure that out, then what the hell are we paying you for?
It's this attitude that generates my student's frustration, that science could change enough that our current textbooks could be entirely wrong ten years from now. And this brings me to the crux of the matter, which is that people don't understand the idea of "levels of confidence."
How confident are scientists in various models or theories? Well, it varies, and it's not an either/or matter (either it's all right, or it's all wrong). Some models have very high levels of confidence. The atomic theory (the basis of chemistry) and evolutionary theory (the basis of biology) are supported by such vast mountains of data that their likelihood of being substantially wrong is nearly zero. Any changes to be made to either of those models will be at the level of details. Other models, such as climate modeling and weather forecasting, are still subject to considerable uncertainty even as to the rules by which the system interacts and responds; predictions made here are made with less confidence, and the rules of the science could well change as we gather more data. Finally, some models, for example string theory, are still only interesting proposals, and there is not nearly enough data yet for a determination to be made. In ten years, it could be that physics textbooks will include whole chapters on string theory and the studies that validate it, or it might have gone the way of the ether and be relegated to the scrap pile of ideas that went unsupported by the evidence. It's simply too early to tell.
The problem is, that's not enough for a lot of people. They want certainty, as if it's honestly even possible. To them, even the uncertainties inherent in the best-supported models are unacceptable; if there are any questions left, then it means that "scientists don't really know." And for the models lower on the confidence-level scale, the whole thing appears like nothing more than guesswork. Never mind that our improved ability to forecast hurricane trajectories has saved thousands of lives -- compare our current knowledge of storm tracks to what happened in Galveston in 1900, when a hurricane barreled into the coast, seemingly out of nowhere, costing more than 8,000 lives.
Uncertainty at some level is built into science as a way of knowing; there's no escaping the fact that new data can trash old theories. But "uncertainty" doesn't imply that scientists don't know what they're doing, or that tomorrow we'll be throwing away all the chemistry texts because they suddenly decided that the alchemists were right, after all. As more data is collected, and models and theories are refined, the uncertainty diminishes. And even though it can never reach zero, it can reach low enough levels that a model becomes "robust" -- able to make accurate predictions in almost all cases.
And even if meteorology hasn't quite gotten there yet, it's still a damn sight better than it was a hundred years ago, when hurricanes could hit coastlines before warnings could be issued. The people who believe in the myth of certainty in science might do well to consider the difference between our understanding now and our understanding a century ago -- before they make proclamations about scientists not deserving to get paid for what they do.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Grin and bare it
Yesterday, a bunch of people in New York City took all their clothes off in front of the Stock Exchange Building as a protest/piece of performance art.
The naked protest was staged by artist Zefrey Throwell, who organized the event to make a point about "transparency in US financial dealings." He was, he said, inspired by the plight of his mom, who had lost most of her retirement savings in the financial crash three years ago, and was forced to return to work.
The whole thing recalls the antics of Dutch animal rights activist Peter Janssen ("The Vegan Streaker") who a while back ran onto the set of live TV personality Paul de Leeuw wearing only a thong, and the words "Stop Animal Suffering" painted on his bare chest. Under the fairly liberal laws for showing skin in the Netherlands, Janssen could not be charged with indecency, so he was charged (I couldn't possibly make anything this weird up) with carrying a concealed weapon, a thought that leaves me torn between guffawing and gagging.
It brings up the question, however, of what the point is to such theater. If I'd been in New York City yesterday and witnessed the naked people walking around in front of the Stock Exchange, it's not like I would have suddenly said, "Wow! This makes me realize that the US financial system seriously needs to be overhauled RIGHT NOW!" It's much more likely that I would have said, "Dear god, why are all of those people naked?" Or, given that it was New York City, maybe I would have just ignored it and continued to look around for the nearest Starbucks.
So, why? Why do people do such things? It may be a facile explanation that they are simply attention seekers. I know that must be part of it; heaven knows there can be little other explanation for someone stripping on the streets of New York City. I'm forced to the conclusion, though, that people who engage in such behavior really think that they're accomplishing something. They believe that their antics are somehow going to bring enlightenment to the masses, to bring their cause to the forefront, to create some sort of epiphany in the minds of the onlookers.
And it's not limited to the financial mess, nor to the animal-rights issue; the same arguments could be used for the pro-choice/pro-life debate, gay marriage, the anti-immigration controversy, the tax-reduction issue, and a variety of others. How many people have honestly had their minds changed by someone waving a placard that says, "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?" I suspect that the main effect of protests and controversial t-shirt slogans and bumper stickers (and naked people in public) is to make half of us go, "good job! I agree completely!" and the other half to go, "wow, what a bunch of idiots." In other words, all that it accomplishes is to crystallize the opinion we already had. Which, when you think about it, is not all that useful.
In my more optimistic moments, I'd like to believe that the only way to change people's minds is through well-reasoned argument, but I suspect that's not true, either. I think that large-scale, rapid changes -- those epiphany moments I mentioned earlier -- only come when something big happens. Our whole view of the Middle East changed on 9/11. Whatever our views of what came afterward, none of us wil ever look at that region in the same way. My Lai did the same a generation earlier, and Pearl Harbor a generation before that. Sea changes, for good or evil, don't come easily.
That's not to say that things can't change gradually. Our view of race equality, gender equality, and (probably to a lesser extent) our attitudes toward homosexuality, have been improving slowly but steadily for several decades. When I was in high school, it was unheard of for a mixed-race couple to date; now it's commonplace. I can't think of a single gay or lesbian teenager in my high school who was out until years after graduation; there are several in last year's graduating class at the high school where I teach. None of these changes came about with some kind of sudden shift, and none of them happened because of someone with a placard jumping about in front of the school screaming and shouting. They were incremental, ground-level changes, which actually may be the only way to have any sort of long-lasting effect.
The flashy antics of some protest-types may make the news, but chances are, they and their causes will be forgotten within a week or two. It might be entertaining to bare it all in public for the cause of your choice, but you should be aware of the fact that other than being brought up on public indecency charges (and hopefully not concealed-weapon charges, as well) you will probably have negligible effects on anything. Slow, dogged persistence by committed individuals, changing one mind at a time, is the only way to make any real headway in altering attitudes. It may not make headlines, but if you're looking for deep, substantive shifts, it's the only game in town.
The naked protest was staged by artist Zefrey Throwell, who organized the event to make a point about "transparency in US financial dealings." He was, he said, inspired by the plight of his mom, who had lost most of her retirement savings in the financial crash three years ago, and was forced to return to work.
The whole thing recalls the antics of Dutch animal rights activist Peter Janssen ("The Vegan Streaker") who a while back ran onto the set of live TV personality Paul de Leeuw wearing only a thong, and the words "Stop Animal Suffering" painted on his bare chest. Under the fairly liberal laws for showing skin in the Netherlands, Janssen could not be charged with indecency, so he was charged (I couldn't possibly make anything this weird up) with carrying a concealed weapon, a thought that leaves me torn between guffawing and gagging.
It brings up the question, however, of what the point is to such theater. If I'd been in New York City yesterday and witnessed the naked people walking around in front of the Stock Exchange, it's not like I would have suddenly said, "Wow! This makes me realize that the US financial system seriously needs to be overhauled RIGHT NOW!" It's much more likely that I would have said, "Dear god, why are all of those people naked?" Or, given that it was New York City, maybe I would have just ignored it and continued to look around for the nearest Starbucks.
So, why? Why do people do such things? It may be a facile explanation that they are simply attention seekers. I know that must be part of it; heaven knows there can be little other explanation for someone stripping on the streets of New York City. I'm forced to the conclusion, though, that people who engage in such behavior really think that they're accomplishing something. They believe that their antics are somehow going to bring enlightenment to the masses, to bring their cause to the forefront, to create some sort of epiphany in the minds of the onlookers.
And it's not limited to the financial mess, nor to the animal-rights issue; the same arguments could be used for the pro-choice/pro-life debate, gay marriage, the anti-immigration controversy, the tax-reduction issue, and a variety of others. How many people have honestly had their minds changed by someone waving a placard that says, "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?" I suspect that the main effect of protests and controversial t-shirt slogans and bumper stickers (and naked people in public) is to make half of us go, "good job! I agree completely!" and the other half to go, "wow, what a bunch of idiots." In other words, all that it accomplishes is to crystallize the opinion we already had. Which, when you think about it, is not all that useful.
In my more optimistic moments, I'd like to believe that the only way to change people's minds is through well-reasoned argument, but I suspect that's not true, either. I think that large-scale, rapid changes -- those epiphany moments I mentioned earlier -- only come when something big happens. Our whole view of the Middle East changed on 9/11. Whatever our views of what came afterward, none of us wil ever look at that region in the same way. My Lai did the same a generation earlier, and Pearl Harbor a generation before that. Sea changes, for good or evil, don't come easily.
That's not to say that things can't change gradually. Our view of race equality, gender equality, and (probably to a lesser extent) our attitudes toward homosexuality, have been improving slowly but steadily for several decades. When I was in high school, it was unheard of for a mixed-race couple to date; now it's commonplace. I can't think of a single gay or lesbian teenager in my high school who was out until years after graduation; there are several in last year's graduating class at the high school where I teach. None of these changes came about with some kind of sudden shift, and none of them happened because of someone with a placard jumping about in front of the school screaming and shouting. They were incremental, ground-level changes, which actually may be the only way to have any sort of long-lasting effect.
The flashy antics of some protest-types may make the news, but chances are, they and their causes will be forgotten within a week or two. It might be entertaining to bare it all in public for the cause of your choice, but you should be aware of the fact that other than being brought up on public indecency charges (and hopefully not concealed-weapon charges, as well) you will probably have negligible effects on anything. Slow, dogged persistence by committed individuals, changing one mind at a time, is the only way to make any real headway in altering attitudes. It may not make headlines, but if you're looking for deep, substantive shifts, it's the only game in town.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Arguing over Archaeopteryx
I have written before (perhaps ranted would be a better word) about the fact that the anti-evolution crowd claims to "disbelieve" in evolution, when amazingly few of them actually seem to understand the what it is exactly that they're disbelieving in. This is why they are still launching the same pseudo-arguments that they were using fifty years ago, and generating the same weary responses on the part of the evolutionary biologists, leading me to speculate that whatever else you can say for the anti-evolutionists, they are not particularly good listeners:
"Famed Fossil Isn't a Bird After All, Analysis Says."
"Flap Flop: First Bird Isn't a Bird After All."
"Ancestor of All Birds Knocked From Its Perch."
It turns out that if you read the story, it has to do with the classification of Archaeopteryx, the famous proto-bird/feathered reptile whose fossil was discovered about 150 years ago. The gist is that a group of Chinese scientists have used an analysis of Archaeopteryx and a related, and recently discovered, species (Xiaotingia) to support a fairly minor shift of Archaeopteryx from one branch of the bird/reptile clade to another. Further along in the article, the writer quotes evolutionary biologist Julia Clarke (University of Texas - Austin), as saying, "moving it a couple of branches isn't a huge change, and whether it's considered a bird or not is mostly a semantic issue that doesn't greatly affect larger questions about the origin of flight." Lawrence Witmer (Ohio University) states, "The proposed reclassification of Archaeopteryx wouldn't change the idea that birds arose from this part of the tree, but it could make scientists reevaluate what they think about evolution within the bird lineage itself."
And finally, the writer of the article states, "The Chinese scientists acknowledge they have only weak evidence to support their proposal."
Note that I take no issue with any of what the scientists have said; such questioning, reevaluation, and tentative proposals of new ways of thinking are what science is about. Some of those weakly supported hypotheses have later gone on to win widespread support, and others have been disproven and shelved. That's how the scientific process works.
What bothers me here is that the headlines give people who are uninformed about how evolution works more fodder for claiming that "those idiot scientists in their labs have no idea what they're doing." If you only read the headlines (which, sadly, a lot of people do), what do you come away with? "They've been telling us for years that this thing is a bird, and now they say it isn't!"
Never mind that the reality is, early birds basically were feathered reptiles; any distinction you make between them is semantics. Many people never delve deeply enough, or think deeply enough, to realize this.
I know that it is not incumbent upon reporters to educate the ignorant, but I think they should at least take it as their responsibility not to deliberately mislead. And such headlines are, by their nature, misleading. I realize that a headline of "Archaeopteryx Classification Shifted Slightly" doesn't sound nearly as sexy as "The First Bird Wasn't Actually a Bird!" But it sure as hell gives people a better idea of what is really going on - and I thought that was what the purpose of media was?
- If humans came from apes, why are there still apes? (My ancestors came from France. Why are there still French people?)
- Why aren't there any transitional fossils? (There are. Thousands of them.)
- Organs like the eye are irreducibly complex; they won't work if all of the parts aren't created simultaneously. (Actually, the evolution of the eye is quite well understood, and even in today's animals you can see a progression from the flatworm [which has a light-sensing membrane] to the chambered nautilus [in which the membrane has curved into a sphere with a hole in the front, acting like a pinhole camera] to the vertebrate eye [in which the sphere has closed and various types of lenses have evolved].)
- Radiometric data, such as carbon-14 dating, is inaccurate. (Prove it.)
- Dinosaurs and humans coexisted. (Prove it.)
- And anyway, evolution is only a theory. (They call it "music theory," and that's not because they think that music may not exist.)
"Famed Fossil Isn't a Bird After All, Analysis Says."
"Flap Flop: First Bird Isn't a Bird After All."
"Ancestor of All Birds Knocked From Its Perch."
It turns out that if you read the story, it has to do with the classification of Archaeopteryx, the famous proto-bird/feathered reptile whose fossil was discovered about 150 years ago. The gist is that a group of Chinese scientists have used an analysis of Archaeopteryx and a related, and recently discovered, species (Xiaotingia) to support a fairly minor shift of Archaeopteryx from one branch of the bird/reptile clade to another. Further along in the article, the writer quotes evolutionary biologist Julia Clarke (University of Texas - Austin), as saying, "moving it a couple of branches isn't a huge change, and whether it's considered a bird or not is mostly a semantic issue that doesn't greatly affect larger questions about the origin of flight." Lawrence Witmer (Ohio University) states, "The proposed reclassification of Archaeopteryx wouldn't change the idea that birds arose from this part of the tree, but it could make scientists reevaluate what they think about evolution within the bird lineage itself."
And finally, the writer of the article states, "The Chinese scientists acknowledge they have only weak evidence to support their proposal."
Note that I take no issue with any of what the scientists have said; such questioning, reevaluation, and tentative proposals of new ways of thinking are what science is about. Some of those weakly supported hypotheses have later gone on to win widespread support, and others have been disproven and shelved. That's how the scientific process works.
What bothers me here is that the headlines give people who are uninformed about how evolution works more fodder for claiming that "those idiot scientists in their labs have no idea what they're doing." If you only read the headlines (which, sadly, a lot of people do), what do you come away with? "They've been telling us for years that this thing is a bird, and now they say it isn't!"
Never mind that the reality is, early birds basically were feathered reptiles; any distinction you make between them is semantics. Many people never delve deeply enough, or think deeply enough, to realize this.
I know that it is not incumbent upon reporters to educate the ignorant, but I think they should at least take it as their responsibility not to deliberately mislead. And such headlines are, by their nature, misleading. I realize that a headline of "Archaeopteryx Classification Shifted Slightly" doesn't sound nearly as sexy as "The First Bird Wasn't Actually a Bird!" But it sure as hell gives people a better idea of what is really going on - and I thought that was what the purpose of media was?
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