Rehabilitating our cousins

The Neanderthals have gotten an undeservedly bad reputation.

"Neanderthal" has become an insult for someone perceived as dumb, crude, vulgar, lacking in any sort of refinement.  This perception wasn't helped any by Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear and its sequels, where the "Clan" (the Neanderthals) are primitive, ugly, brutal people (personified by the violent and cruel Broud), contrasted to the beautiful, heroic, sophisticated Cro Magnons (such as virile, handsome, blue-eyed Jondalar, who is portrayed basically as a prehistoric Liam Hemsworth, only sexier).  The truth is way more complex than that; they certainly weren't unintelligent, and in fact, the most recent Neanderthals had an average brain size larger than a modern human's.  (I'm aware that brain size doesn't necessarily correlate with higher intelligence, but the depiction of them as tiny-brained primitives is almost certainly false.)

They had culture; the Mousterian tool complex, with its beautifully fluted stone arrowhead points, was Neanderthal in origin.  They were builders, weavers, jewelry-makers, and knew the use of medicinal plants.  There's evidence that they made music -- the Divje Babe flute, from 43,000 years ago, was made by Neanderthals from a bear femur, was probably made by Neanderthals.  The structure of the Neanderthal hyoid bone, and the presence of the FoxP2 gene, strongly suggests that they had the capacity for language, although cognitive scientist Philip Lieberman suggests that their mouth morphology would have made it difficult or impossible to articulate nasal sounds and the phonemes /a/, /i/, /u/, /ɔ/, /g/, and /k/, so any language they had probably wasn't as rich phonetically as ours are.  (Although that, too, is an overgeneralization; as I pointed out in a post only a month ago, the phonemic inventory of modern languages varies all over the place, with some only having a dozen or so distinct sounds.)

Another thing that people tend to get wrong is that the Neanderthals were displaced by modern Homo sapiens, and eventually driven to extinction, because we were smarter, faster, and more sophisticated.  Which is not only false, it carries that hint of self-congratulation that should be an immediate tipoff that there's more to it.  It's undeniable that our Neanderthal cousins did diminish and eventually disappear something on the order of forty thousand years ago, but what caused it is uncertain at best.  Other hypotheses regarding why they declined are climatic shifts, disease, and loss of food sources... and, most interestingly, that they interbred with, and were eventually subsumed by, modern humans.  Genetic analysis shows that a great many of us -- including most people of European ancestry -- contain genetic markers indicating Neanderthal ancestry.  Current estimates are that western Europeans have the highest percentage of Neanderthal DNA (at around four percent), while some groups, most notably sub-Saharan Africans, have almost none.

My own DNA apparently has 284 distinct Neanderthal markers, putting me in the sixtieth percentile.  So at least I'm above average in something.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Neanderthal-Museum, Mettmann, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis-Mr. N, CC BY-SA 4.0]

What brings this up is some new research indicating that the overlap between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans may have lasted longer than we thought, and completely upends the picture of hordes of highly-advanced humans (led, of course, by Liam Hemsworth) sweeping over and destroying the primitive knuckle-dragging Neanderthal cave-dwellers.  Archaeologists working in the cave complex Grotte Mandrin, in the Rhône Valley of France, came upon a child's tooth and some stone tools (both of a distinctly modern sort), that date from 54,000 years ago -- a good twelve thousand years earlier than previous estimates.

"It wasn't an overnight takeover by modern humans," said Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum of London, who co-authored the paper.  "Sometimes Neanderthals had the advantage, sometimes modern humans had the advantage, so it was more finely balanced...  We have this ebb and flow.  The modern humans appear briefly, then there's a gap where maybe the climate just finished them off and then the Neanderthals come back again..  [W]e don't know the full story yet.  But with more data and with more DNA, more discoveries, we will get closer to the truth about what really happened at the end of the Neanderthal era."

Human history (and prehistory) are a lot more complex than you'd think on first glance, and it bears keeping in mind that usually when we build up a picture of something that happened in the past, we're working on (very) incomplete data filled in with guesses and surmises.  If a time machine is ever invented, and we can go back and look for ourselves, I think we'd be astonished at how much we missed -- or got flat wrong.

It reminds me of the famous quote by H. L. Mencken -- "For every problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple... and wrong."

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People made fun of Donald Rumsfeld for his statement that there are "known unknowns" -- things we know we don't know -- but a far larger number of "unknown unknowns," which are all the things we aren't even aware that we don't know.

While he certainly could have phrased it a little more clearly, and understand that I'm not in any way defending Donald Rumsfeld's other actions and statements, he certainly was right in this case.  It's profoundly humbling to find out how much we don't know, even about subjects about which we consider ourselves experts.  One of the most important things we need to do is to keep in mind not only that we might have things wrong, and that additional evidence may completely overturn what we thought we knew -- and more, that there are some things so far out of our ken that we may not even know they exist.

These ideas -- the perimeter of human knowledge, and the importance of being able to learn, relearn, change directions, and accept new information -- are the topic of psychologist Adam Grant's book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know.  In it, he explores not only how we are all riding around with blinders on, but how to take steps toward removing them, starting with not surrounding yourself with an echo chamber of like-minded people who might not even recognize that they have things wrong.  We should hold our own beliefs up to the light of scrutiny.  As Grant puts it, we should approach issues like scientists looking for the truth, not like a campaigning politician trying to convince an audience.

It's a book that challenges us to move past our stance of "clearly I'm right about this" to the more reasoned approach of "let me see if the evidence supports this."  In this era of media spin, fake news, and propaganda, it's a critical message -- and Think Again should be on everyone's to-read list.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Artifishal

In the wonderful Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Tapestry," Captain Picard's life is in danger because an accident damaged his artificial heart.  He'd received the biomechanical prosthesis decades earlier, because his original heart was irreparably damaged in a fight he got in when he was a young, cocky student at Starfleet Academy.  The inimitable Q offers Picard a choice -- to go back in time and change the circumstances that led to the fight -- meaning he'd have his own original heart, and the accident wouldn't lead to his death.  But, as such stories usually go, Picard finds out that rectifying one mistake doesn't necessarily lead to his life having a better trajectory -- and that perhaps a shorter, richer life, facing risks head-on, is better than one that lasts longer because of always playing it safe.

The replacement of the human heart by a machine, or by a biological and mechanical composite, is still in its earliest stages, and even a heart transplant from a compatible donor is iffy (although admittedly better than the alternative).  A study in 2013 found that the survival rate for heart recipients past twenty years post-surgery was about 26%, although that number has been rising steadily as the tissue matching protocols and the management of complications improve.  The hitch for heart recipients, of course, is that they have to wait for a matched donor to die; and not only that, to die in such a way that the heart itself isn't too damaged to transplant.

But what if someone who needed a heart could have one grown from the person's own cells?

That's where a fascinating bit of research out of the University of Harvard is pointing.  In a paper published in Science this week, a team led by Keel Yong Lee showed proof-of concept -- by creating an artificial fish made of human heart stem cells.

The "biohybrid" was made by creating a finely-grooved, two-sided scaffolding on which were laid cardiac cells.  The cells aligned themselves with the grooves, growing into a pair of parallel sheets.  Grafted onto this was an autonomous pacing node -- a little like the heart's pacemaker -- which stimulated rhythmic contractions on opposite sides, allowing the "fish" to swim.  Best of all, as the cells matured, the fish got better and better at swimming, eventually reaching speeds and maneuverability comparable to a zebrafish, the species the biohybrid was modeled on.

"Our ultimate goal is to build an artificial heart to replace a malformed heart in a child," said Kit Parker, who was senior author of the paper, in a press release.  "Most of the work in building heart tissue or hearts, including some work we have done, is focused on replicating the anatomical features or replicating the simple beating of the heart in the engineered tissues.  But here, we are drawing design inspiration from the biophysics of the heart, which is harder to do.  Now, rather than using heart imaging as a blueprint, we are identifying the key biophysical principles that make the heart work, using them as design criteria, and replicating them in a system, a living, swimming fish, where it is much easier to see if we are successful."

We are nearing the point where faulty organs in our bodies can simply be replaced by biomechanical devices, not so far away from Jean-Luc Picard's heart.  This would obviate the nerve-wracking trauma of waiting an indefinite amount of time for a donor, and also the potential for tissue compatibility issues, as the organ would be built out of your own cells.

We're still a ways out, though.  The Lee et al. research demonstrates that it's possible to build functional, coordinated contractile tissue -- the first step in generating a working heart -- and, as we've seen so many times before, it's often an amazingly short time between showing that something is theoretically possible and its becoming a reality.

So once again, Star Trek has shown itself to be prescient.  I hope this keeps happening -- communicators (the ones in the original series even looked like flip-phones), voice-activated software, translation programs, and videoconferincing all appeared on Star Trek long before they became household items.  Now, I wish the scientists would get to work on transporters, replicators, and the holodeck.  Because those would be all kinds of cool, especially the holodeck, although I'd stand a significant chance of finding a program I liked better than reality and disappearing permanently.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week combines cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology with razor-sharp social commentary, challenging our knowledge of science and the edifice of scientific research itself: Chanda Prescod-Weinsten's The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.

Prescod-Weinsten is a groundbreaker; she's a theoretical cosmologist, and the first Black woman to achieve a tenure-track position in the field (at the University of New Hampshire).  Her book -- indeed, her whole career -- is born from a deep love of the mysteries of the night sky, but along the way she has had to get past roadblocks that were set in front of her based only on her gender and race.  The Disordered Cosmos is both a tribute to the science she loves and a challenge to the establishment to do better -- to face head on the centuries-long horrible waste of talent and energy of anyone not a straight White male.

It's a powerful book, and should be on the to-read list for anyone interested in astronomy or the human side of science, or (hopefully) both.  And watch for Prescod-Weinsten's name in the science news.  Her powerful voice is one we'll be hearing a lot more from.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Cat's Eyes

This is a piece I wrote a few years ago, based on something that happened to a friend of mine (and scared the absolute bejeezus out of her).  It's more a short vignette than a story, but hopefully it'll give you a nice shudder up your spine.


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Cat's Eyes

Cori turned the corner onto Waltham Street and stopped for a moment, looking up the steep hill to where there was a sprinkling of lights—the college, her dorm, and bed.  It had been a long, exhausting, but exhilarating evening.  Dinner with five friends at Borley’s, which had the best burgers in Colville, and then an evening spent swing dancing.  The dance didn’t end until midnight, and when the doors of the Colville Community Center opened to spill out light and laughing, talking people into the night, Cori said her goodbyes and declined offers of a ride.  She was hot and sweaty and the night air was cool and inviting, and she’d always liked walking.

She followed Waltham for three blocks, and then turned onto Marsh Street.  Marsh skirted Catanic Creek, tumbling and bubbling downhill in its rocky course, but her feet carried her the opposite way, up a punishingly steep hill lined with old shop fronts.

She stopped for a moment in front of Ballechin’s Used Books.  Its windows were dark, but she pressed her nose against the glass.  Old books were a passion, and her choice of English Literature as a major was in part driven by a yearning to be surrounded by them.  Leather bindings held magic.  The crackling, yellowed pages spoke to her of years past and people long dead; and that dusty, old-book smell wasn’t quite like any other smell in the world.  This bookstore had tens of thousands of titles, and in the light from the streetlight, Cori could just barely make out the metal shelves receding backwards into the shadowy interior.

She turned away with a sigh.  A trip to Ballechin’s would have to wait until she had more money, and also, of course, until it was open.

She had walked another block when she saw, in the harsh yellow glare, a figure approaching her, coming down Marsh Street on the same side of the road.  Cori was a confident walker, but like most women, she was never free from the lurking worry of being the victim of violence.  Her heart gave a quick gallop, but then she saw with relief that the person approaching her wasn’t male.  One thing checked off the fear inventory.  She seemed smaller than Cori was—a second thing checked off.  Last, she was walking with the hesitant, shuffling gait of the elderly—fear inventory completed, signed, and filed away.  Cori shivered as the last of the panic left her body.

As the woman approached, she saw that she was dressed in a dark, full-length coat, and was wearing a scarf tied over her head.  This seemed odd, for a mild night in September, but older people frequently felt the cold more keenly than the young, and as the distance between them shortened, Cori smiled at the memory of her own grandmother, who surreptitiously turned up the thermostat whenever she came to visit and she thought no one was looking.

Thirty feet, twenty, ten.  The woman’s face was in deep shadow, but Cori saw she was smaller even than she’d thought at first, barely five feet tall, and hunched over.  Cori felt a sudden desire to see the woman’s face.

Why?  She was probably just some poor old crazy cat woman, out walking to the 7-Eleven to get some canned food for her twenty-eight cats.  The image, which she had thought at first was funny, suddenly struck her as terrifying, and she realized suddenly that she didn't want to see her face.  She didn't want to see it at all…

They passed close, almost brushing elbows.  Cori would have had to step into the street to be any farther away from her.  And as they passed, the woman looked up at Cori, and Cori found that she had to turn toward her.  Her head moved as if it were being pulled by a string.  Unwillingly, Cori looked down at the woman, and for a moment, their eyes met.

The woman had cat’s eyes.

Her lined face was heavily made up, and around her eyes was eye shadow and liner, drawing the shape of her eyes into an almond, feline slant.  The irises were dark, so dark that they looked all pupil.  She looked straight into Cori’s eyes, unblinking, and with an expression of such malignity that it was almost non-human.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Lovecats99, Cat's eye in dark, CC BY-SA 4.0]

Cori gasped, and with an effort continued her forward motion, taking another stumbling step and nearly colliding with the lamp post.  The gaze broke, and Cori’s head snapped around forward.  She continued her walk uphill with a jittering, uneven gait, her heart hammering in her chest.

That woman just stole my soul.

The thought came to her so suddenly that it seemed to come from outside her, in a voice not hers.  Her breath was coming in whistly gasps, and she kept herself from looking back only by main force of will.

She wouldn't follow her.  Cori knew that for certain.  The woman had what she wanted.  She'd got Cori's soul, and now she was taking it away.

The old woman had no use for her body.

She couldn’t help herself.  She slowed her step, turned to look.  Part of her felt terrified that she’d turn, and the old woman would be right there behind her, staring up at her with those baleful cat’s eyes.

But she wasn’t.  She had evidently continued her walk downhill, and her stooped back, swathed in its dark coat, was all she could see in the distance.

Cori’s foot struck a steel grate in the sidewalk with a loud thunk.

And the old woman stopped, then slowly turned.  From fifty feet away, Cori could feel the intensity of those eyes, staring right at her.  That was when Cori’s nerve broke, and she began to run uphill, her breath coming in tight, desperate whimpers.  She only halted when there was a stitch in her side so painful that she couldn’t continue.

She fell, gasping, against the front wall of another old, dilapidated store, and for a few minutes she stood there, breathing hard, trying to massage her side to get the spasm to loosen up.  She turned and looked through the window of the store front, and saw, sitting in the window, the face of a porcelain doll.  She’d noticed this store before—it sold antique dolls to collectors.  The doll in the window was dressed in vintage clothes, and had dark, curly hair.  Its expressionless face stared at Cori blankly.

Cori lifted her eyes, and caught sight of her own reflection in the window, lit by the glare from the street lights.

She was a doll.  A lifelike, beautiful doll, wavy blond hair in a stylish cut around her face, her skin perfect and blemish-free, every feature carved so as to be indistinguishable from the real thing.  She raised a hand to her face, touched her cheek, watched her mouth pull back into a horrified grimace, and then looked into her own eyes.

Her own blank, empty eyes.

She turned away from the window, and looked down the hill toward the corner of Marsh and Waltham, but the woman had already vanished from sight.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week combines cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology with razor-sharp social commentary, challenging our knowledge of science and the edifice of scientific research itself: Chanda Prescod-Weinsten's The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.

Prescod-Weinsten is a groundbreaker; she's a theoretical cosmologist, and the first Black woman to achieve a tenure-track position in the field (at the University of New Hampshire).  Her book -- indeed, her whole career -- is born from a deep love of the mysteries of the night sky, but along the way she has had to get past roadblocks that were set in front of her based only on her gender and race.  The Disordered Cosmos is both a tribute to the science she loves and a challenge to the establishment to do better -- to face head on the centuries-long horrible waste of talent and energy of anyone not a straight White male.

It's a powerful book, and should be on the to-read list for anyone interested in astronomy or the human side of science, or (hopefully) both.  And watch for Prescod-Weinsten's name in the science news.  Her powerful voice is one we'll be hearing a lot more from.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Hypocrites on parade

It's a long-standing tactic in politics to accuse the other side of what you're doing yourself, but sometimes this kind of hypocrisy seems to come so easily that you have to wonder if they're even aware of it.  What brings this up is Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, who tweeted a couple of days ago, "The Left wants to destroy the nuclear family in America."

Even by the usual standards, this is a loony claim.  I know a great many people who are on the left end of the political spectrum and are straight, happily married, and have children.  You'd think that a quick look around would be enough to convince everyone that what he's saying is complete bullshit.  Plus, apropos of the hypocrisy angle -- Cawthorn's own "nuclear family" lasted eight months, ending with divorce, prompting North Carolina congressional candidate Scott Huffman to say, "My nuclear family was established in 2004 and is 18 years strong. Yours lasted 8 months.  You need to shut the frack up."  Liberal commentator Jeff Tiedrich, never without a razor-edged response to this kind of nonsense, tweeted back at him, "Bro.  Your marriage lasted 21 Scaramuccis."

And can I just say, for the record, that what goes on in the bedroom of two consenting adults is (1) no one's business but theirs, and (2) has exactly zero effect on anyone else's relationship?

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Gage Skidmore, Madison Cawthorn crop, CC BY-SA 2.0]

But following another principle of politics -- that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it -- the radical right has been screeching for ages about how the Democrats want to destroy traditional marriage.  Worse; supposedly they want everyone to be gay, or something.  Don't believe me?  Just a couple of years ago, Tomi Lahren, who lost her grip on reality so long ago that at this point she couldn't see reality through a powerful telescope, said, "You can be proud of about anything days, so long as it’s not straight, white, male, or God forbid, conservative... It's open season on straight white men."  And followed it up with a demand for a "Straight Pride Parade."

This prompted a queer friend of mine to respond, "Tomi, we have Straight Pride Parades every fucking day.  It's called 'traffic.'"

The problem is, the people who are falling for this kind of idiocy rarely ever get to see any kind of reasoned response to it.  The news media learned decades ago that polarization gets viewers, and forthwith ceased to care if what they said was fair, or even true.  So Donald Trump can claim that the Democrats are trying to make Christianity illegal and that they want to close all Christian churches, followed by his son Eric saying to cheering crowds that Trump "singlehandedly saved Christianity in America," and it's reported -- without rebuttal -- on Fox News and OAN.

As an aside, if there's one thing in the past ten years that I still don't even begin to understand, it's how someone like Donald Trump -- a thrice-married serial adulterer who has a mile-long list of pending lawsuits involving allegations of shady deals and non-payment of money owed -- has somehow rebranded himself as a devout Christian.  From my perspective, Trump's most outstanding achievement is embodying all Seven Deadly Sins in one individual.

All of this is why, when people ask me what we could do to diminish the partisan rancor that's tearing apart the United States, my answer is always "reinstate the Fairness Doctrine."  The FCC's Fairness Doctrine required all holders of broadcast licenses to (1) present controversial issues, and (2) to do so in a way that reflected both sides of the issue fairly.  The revocation of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 was largely because of pressure by the right, then in a powerful position because of Ronald Reagan, and it paved the way for firebrand political commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter to present their views as if they were the only ones worth listening to -- and tarring the other side as inveterate liars. 

As I've pointed out before, once you can get people to stop looking at the facts, and believe only one source of information, you can convince them of damn near anything.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if the news media on both sides of the political aisle were required to present the facts, and if opinions are involved, to represent all viewpoints fairly?  People like Madison Cawthorn and Tomi Lahren would get shut down instantaneously.  I've heard People Of A Particular Age pining for the days of media pioneers like Walter Cronkite -- what was brilliant about Cronkite was that you honestly couldn't tell what his own political beliefs were.  He presented the news, without spin, and let the viewers make up their own minds.

It's not that I think this would make everyone agree, and turn the whole country into One Big Happy Family.  There are issues, some of them divisive, that will result in people coming to different answers, and defending those answers vigorously.  All of that is okay.  You don't have to agree with me politically; but you do have to (1) listen, and (2) respect the truth.  It's why I have nothing but admiration for former Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois.  Walsh is a staunch conservative, and I suspect that if we sat down and discussed issues, there'd be a lot we'd disagree about.  But he has high integrity, and has unhesitatingly called out the GOP for their willingness to lie for political gain, and their unquestioning obeisance to Trump and his cronies.  He also is willing to discuss issues with liberals -- again, not necessarily to come to an agreement, but to understand that both sides are usually acting from honorable motives, and both sides want the best for the United States as a whole.  As he said himself, "I'll never shy away.  We gotta have the hard conversations."  (If you're on Twitter, you should follow him, regardless of your political views.  Take a look at his feed and you'll see why.)

And this is exactly what we all should be doing.  Look, I'm not saying the liberals are guiltless of this sort of thing; no politics is without the temptation to lie and cheat to gain and retain power.  At the same time, I have my biases, as we all do, and I'm not going to apologize for having beliefs and defending them.  But we've reached a point where the hypocrites are going unchallenged, and worse still, the media are presenting their hypocrisy as the unvarnished truth.

And if we want to keep a functioning democracy, this needs to stop.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week combines cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology with razor-sharp social commentary, challenging our knowledge of science and the edifice of scientific research itself: Chanda Prescod-Weinsten's The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.

Prescod-Weinsten is a groundbreaker; she's a theoretical cosmologist, and the first Black woman to achieve a tenure-track position in the field (at the University of New Hampshire).  Her book -- indeed, her whole career -- is born from a deep love of the mysteries of the night sky, but along the way she has had to get past roadblocks that were set in front of her based only on her gender and race.  The Disordered Cosmos is both a tribute to the science she loves and a challenge to the establishment to do better -- to face head on the centuries-long horrible waste of talent and energy of anyone not a straight White male.

It's a powerful book, and should be on the to-read list for anyone interested in astronomy or the human side of science, or (hopefully) both.  And watch for Prescod-Weinsten's name in the science news.  Her powerful voice is one we'll be hearing a lot more from.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Gut feelings

I used to teach a semester-long introduction to neuroscience course.  It was a popular class; let's face it, the human brain and sensory systems are fascinating.  But the problem was, not only is the topic complex, our knowledge of how our minds work is still in its earliest stages.  One of my mentors, Rita Calvo, professor emeritus of human genetics at Cornell University, said to me that if she were a graduate student today trying to figure out what part of biology to study, she'd pick neuroscience in a heartbeat.  "With neuroscience, we're about where we were with genetics a hundred years ago -- we know what structures are involved, we know a little bit about how they work -- but the underlying mechanisms are still largely a mystery."

It's why so often, when a student would ask me a question, my response started out with "Well, it's complicated."  Even simple questions to ask -- for example, "how does our sense of smell work?" -- get into deep water fast.  And in many cases, the answer is simply that we don't have it completely figured out yet.

One realm of neuroscience where this lack of knowledge is particularly troubling is the treating of mental disorders.  The ones I'm most familiar with, because of suffering from them myself -- depression and anxiety -- can be remarkably difficult to treat effectively.  My psychiatric NP, trying to find a medication that would blunt the edge of my depression, said that there's no good way to predict ahead of time which medication will be effective and side-effect-free -- you just have to try them, monitor the situation, mess with the dosage if necessary, and hope for the best.  I had weird side effects from the first three meds I tried -- Celexa killed my sex drive completely; Lamictal gave me the worst acid reflux I've ever experienced; and (worst of all) Zoloft, which is a wonder-drug for some people, made me feel like I was in the middle of a psychological electric storm, with severe agitation, anxiety, sleeplessness, and suicidal ideation.

They got me off Zoloft fast.

We've finally landed on Welbutrin, which is moderately effective -- it evens out the worst days, and doesn't give me any side effects that I've noticed.  So it's better than nothing, but still, far from a miracle cure.

One of the problems with treating depression is that we really don't know what causes it.  It's known to have some tendency to run in families; my mother was chronically depressed, and several other family members have fought varying degrees of mental illness.  This would suggest a genetic component, and that has been supported by research.  Back in 2005, a research review by Douglas Levinson found that there was a small positive correlation between depression and differences in one of the serotonin transporter promoter regions in the DNA, which are involved in the production and transport of one of the most important mood-altering neurotransmitters.  But there are plenty of people in the study who had depressive symptoms and didn't show the gene alteration, and vice versa.

A paper in 2017 by Niamh Mullins and Cathryn Lewis, of Kings College London, was more hopeful; the researchers found several genes that seemed to track fairly well with major depressive disorder within families, but it bears mention that Mullins and Lewis themselves pointed out that genetics can't be the whole picture -- the most recent estimates, from twin studies, are that depression has a heritability of 37%, suggesting that there are multiple genes at work, along with risk factors introduced with what a person went through as a child.

It's complicated.

The latest twist, which was just published last week in Science, is that there may be a contribution to mood disorders from our gut microbiome.  The role of bacteria (beneficial and harmful) in our overall health is often overlooked; but keep in mind that there are more bacterial cells in and on your body than there are human cells, and a great many of them have unknown health effects.  A study in Finland found a significant correlation between development of depression and the presence in the gut of the bacteria Morganella.

Morganella [Image artificially colorized]

Apparently, Morganella is a gram-negative bacterium that has a role in inflammation.  Chronic inflammation has already been implicated in a number of disorders -- not just obvious ones like ulcers and acid reflux, but heart disease, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, some forms of cancer, and (possibly) Alzheimer's disease.  The inflammation isn't necessarily caused by the same thing in each case, but an increasing body of research suggests that treating the inflammatory response is key to treating the symptoms of some of the most awful diseases humans get.

So, apparently, add depression to the list.  The researchers are up front that this is only a tentative finding; correlation doesn't equal causation, after all.  And even if there was good evidence that Morganella was causing at least some cases of depression, it remains very much to be seen how you'd treat it.  There are (thus far) very few drugs that target only a single pathogen, so the danger is that in trying to eliminate Morganella, you'd simultaneously destroy the healthy part of your gut microbiome -- with highly unpleasant results.

At least this adds another link in the chain.  Diseases as complex as mood disorders are unlikely to succumb to a single treatment strategy.  But as we edge closer to understanding how our own brains work, perhaps we can get a handle on why sometimes they don't -- and perhaps, one day find an approach to treatment that isn't as scattershot and stumble-prone as the one we currently use.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week combines cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology with razor-sharp social commentary, challenging our knowledge of science and the edifice of scientific research itself: Chanda Prescod-Weinsten's The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.

Prescod-Weinsten is a groundbreaker; she's a theoretical cosmologist, and the first Black woman to achieve a tenure-track position in the field (at the University of New Hampshire).  Her book -- indeed, her whole career -- is born from a deep love of the mysteries of the night sky, but along the way she has had to get past roadblocks that were set in front of her based only on her gender and race.  The Disordered Cosmos is both a tribute to the science she loves and a challenge to the establishment to do better -- to face head on the centuries-long horrible waste of talent and energy of anyone not a straight White male.

It's a powerful book, and should be on the to-read list for anyone interested in astronomy or the human side of science, or (hopefully) both.  And watch for Prescod-Weinsten's name in the science news.  Her powerful voice is one we'll be hearing a lot more from.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

New old things

A quick assessment might lead you to think that, at least with stuff down here on Earth, we've discovered about all there is to discover.

We can go pretty much anywhere now, from the tops of the tallest mountains to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.  We've explored all of the continents; even remote places like Antarctica, Siberia, the Yukon, the Amazonian rain forest, and Tibet have been the subject of intensive study.

It's easy for most of us, with our relatively insular lives, to underestimate the size of the planet.  Even those who -- like myself -- have been lucky enough to travel extensively can lose sight of how inaccessible some places are.  Despite technology now allowing us to visit (and live, if we want) pretty much anywhere, there are still huge areas of trackless wilderness out there.

Meaning that huge areas have minimally-studied plants, animals, geological history, paleontology, and -- apposite to today's topic -- archaeology.  So if you're going into science, fret not; it will be a long time before we run out of stuff to explore.

The topic of new discoveries occurred to me when I was reading a couple of articles sent to me by my friend, the outstanding writer Gil Miller, having to do with recent bits of human history that have been uncovered (literally) by researchers.  The first was about the discovery of a previously-unknown two-millennia-old Buddhist temple at a site in Pakistan near the town of Barikot thought to have been completely explored.

The temple, which has been tentatively dated to the second century B.C.E., contains a stupa -- a hemispherical temple, often ornately-carved, used for meditation in the Buddhist tradition -- as well as the bases of several columns, and the foundations of vestibule rooms and a public courtyard.  It's thought to have been constructed during the reign of Menander I, who was Greek by origin, but a Buddhist convert who spent most of his life in what is now India and Pakistan, and who was said to have "conquered more regions than Alexander the Great."  In an all-too-common pattern, the conquests didn't last long after Menander's death; his son, Strato I, and (possible) grandson, Menander II, were plagued by attacks from the Maues, a Scythian tribe that eventually conquered most of what had been Menander I's kingdom.  

Unfortunately, archaeological dig sites often get destroyed by plunderers who have figured out that tombs frequently contain valuables, and this site is no exception.  Apparently there are trenches all over the place, dug by robbers, who tore through and destroyed "worthless" artifacts like walls and floors, but -- fortunately -- the area around the temple was relatively unscathed.

The second study is from halfway around the world, in the Yucatán region of Mexico, where a unique bit of research gave us a lens into the peak of Mayan civilization (on the order of eight hundred years ago).  It's been known that cacao was a sacred plant to the Mayans; they're the ones who started humans consuming chocolate, and we pretty much haven't stopped since.  Cacao is a remarkably tricky plant to grow.  It needs a particular combination of soil chemistry, air humidity, calm, and shade in order to flourish.  The Mayans became experts at finding places to grow cacao -- so the researchers reasoned that where you find abundant wild cacao plants, it might be a good indicator that there were Mayan ruins nearby.

However, cacao plants aren't immortal; the plants cultivated by the Mayans eight centuries ago are long gone.  But researchers from Brigham Young University realized that there might be persistent biomarkers -- like the chemicals theobromine and caffeine -- that might indicate where cacao had been grown historically.

So they started sifting through soil samples.

What they found was that the biomarkers were predominantly found near limestone sinkholes -- nine of the eleven sinkholes tested showed measurable theobromine and caffeine in the soil nearby.  They began investigating the sinkholes themselves, rappelling down the walls to the bottom, and found jade and ceramic artifacts, including some tiny ceramics shaped to look like miniature cacao pods.

"We looked for theobromine for several years and found cacao in some places we didn’t expect," said Richard Terry, the senior author of the paper.  "We were also amazed to see the ceremonial artifacts.  My students rappelled into one of these sinkholes and said,  ‘Wow!  There is a structure in here!’  It was a staircase that filled one-third of the sinkhole with stone...  Now we have these links between religious structures and the religious crops grown in these sinkhole.  Knowing that the cacao beans were used as currency, it means the sinkholes were a place where the money could be grown and controlled.  This new understanding creates a rich historical narrative of a highly charged Maya landscape with economic, political and spiritual value."

The third paper was about a dig site in Italy -- surely a thoroughly-studied place if ever there was one -- where researchers uncovered a trove of helmets and other relics from near the Acropolis of Elea-Velia, in the Cilento region.  Elea-Velia was settled by Greeks in the sixth century B.C.E., and became a major trading center between the resident Greeks, the Etruscans to the north, and the rising Roman republic in the south.  The helmets are thought date from the late sixth century, and to have been part of a ritual of thanks for the victory the Greeks and their Etruscan allies had over the Carthaginians in the Battle of Alalia, off the coast of Corsica.

One of the newly-discovered helmets from Elea-Velia

Also uncovered were a tile floor, various pieces of painted ceramics, and the remains of weapons.

Whenever I read about stuff like this, it always makes me wonder what other amazing finds are waiting to be discovered.  If a trove like the one at Elea-Velia, ritual sites such as the one in the Yucatán, and the Buddhist temple in Pakistan can escape notice for the hundreds of years we've been digging up ancient relics, there has got to be a ton more out there to find.

So we need to keep looking.  Every time we find something like this, it enriches our knowledge of our own past.  It reminds me of the wonderful quote by Carl Sagan -- he was referring to astronomy, but it could equally well be applied to any science -- "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week combines cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology with razor-sharp social commentary, challenging our knowledge of science and the edifice of scientific research itself: Chanda Prescod-Weinsten's The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.

Prescod-Weinsten is a groundbreaker; she's a theoretical cosmologist, and the first Black woman to achieve a tenure-track position in the field (at the University of New Hampshire).  Her book -- indeed, her whole career -- is born from a deep love of the mysteries of the night sky, but along the way she has had to get past roadblocks that were set in front of her based only on her gender and race.  The Disordered Cosmos is both a tribute to the science she loves and a challenge to the establishment to do better -- to face head on the centuries-long horrible waste of talent and energy of anyone not a straight White male.

It's a powerful book, and should be on the to-read list for anyone interested in astronomy or the human side of science, or (hopefully) both.  And watch for Prescod-Weinsten's name in the science news.  Her powerful voice is one we'll be hearing a lot more from.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Right place, wrong time

You know, I am freakin' well fed up with paranormal shit happening when I'm not around.

I live only ten miles from the supposed home of the Connecticut Hill Monster, a Bigfoot knockoff that has apparently been known to terrorize campers.  And there's not just one; the site says it's home to a "migratory pod of Sasquatches."  I didn't know Sasquatches came in pods, did you?  I thought that was whales.  But that does bring up the question of what a group of Sasquatches would be.  A lope of Sasquatches?  A grunt of Sasquatches?  A blur of Sasquatches?

And you have to wonder where they migrate to.  Do they head down to the Keys for the winter, or something?  Heaven knows I would, if I were living outdoors in upstate New York.  But if so, you'd think someone would see them.  A pod of migrating Sasquatches walking down the median of I-95 would be a little hard to miss.

Be that as it may, I've been to Connecticut Hill many times.  In fact, for a while I did landscaping for a really nice lady with an enormous yard and about 438 flower gardens, and my route to get there took me right over the top of Connecticut Hill.  And how many monsters did I see, in all that time?

Zero.

This is adding insult to injury, because I lived in the supposedly Bigfoot-infested Pacific Northwest for ten years, and basically used to spend all summer backcountry camping in the Cascades and Olympics.  Once again, no luck.

Then, there's ghosts.  I grew up in southern Louisiana, surely an atmospheric place if there ever was one.   My grandma lived in a rambling old house surrounded by enormous, Spanish-moss-festooned live oaks, and during the year and a half I lived in the bedroom in her attic, I never saw anything scarier than cobwebs.  (C'mon -- an impressionable nine-year-old boy moves into his grandmother's dusty, creaky-floored attic?  If I'd been a character in one of my own books, I'd have been visited by the ghosts on day one.)

I even went to places that have long-standing reputations for being haunted, such as Oak Alley Plantation, in Vacherie, Louisiana, not far from where my mom was born.  Nothing.

Oak Alley Plantation [Image licensed under the Creative Commons Scott Oldham, Oak Alley Plantation, Louisiana (Scott Oldham), CC BY-SA 2.0]

So it's not like I haven't been trying.  Three years ago I got to tour the Crescent Hotel, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, which is said to be "the most haunted place in the state."  I figured, given my lack of success in the past, it made sense to start from the top of the list.  I did have a moment's uncertainty when I walked by two women in 1920s garb sitting on a bench.  After I passed them, I said to a friend, "Please tell me you saw those women."

She saw them just fine.  Turns out they were tour guides.

So not much luck there, either.  I did, however, get a photograph of a hallway, which -- if you squint at it just right -- shows a pair of spots that look a little like eyes, about a third of the way up from the bottom.

But other than that, nada.  My friend (the one who, fortunately, also saw the women in period dress) said she's had scary and inexplicable experiences in the Crescent, but the ghosts must have all been on holiday when I was there.

I even wrote a couple of years ago about investigating a local underpass where people had supposedly seen a creepy face in the shadows.  All I found was some weird graffiti and a stoned guy who was seriously impressed when I told him I was a paranormal researcher, but no creepy faces.

The latest example of right place, wrong time I found out about just yesterday.  In November Carol and I drove down to the Outer Banks of North Carolina to meet up with some friends who live in Florida (so the place was chosen to split the difference).  Off season, so it was quiet, there were cheaper rates, and much less traffic.  Five days going out on long sandy beaches for early-morning runs, enjoying fresh seafood, lots of down time, and beautiful views of the ocean.  Once again, though, everything was perfectly ordinary while we were there.  Nice, but ordinary.

Well, an article in the Raleigh News & Observer says that just last week, there were UFOs spotted off Nag's Head.  U-F-fucking-Os, and once again, I missed them.  These were apparently pretty eye-opening, too; they left red trails in the sky that lasted over ten minutes and were seen by hundreds of people.  Here's a photograph:

The skeptics say the UFOs were probably military aircraft, although one of the people who photographed the trails, Wes Snyder, said, "I’ve caught thousands of plane trails and never have any of them looked like this, so I’m certain they are not your typical aircraft.  I’ve caught these trails before in several other time lapses, but I have yet to figure out what kind of plane possibly has these capabilities. ...  Whatever they are, they have some incredible maneuverability."

Well, all I can say is, I am sick unto death of always being left out.  You'd think the aliens, ghosts, cryptids, and whatnot would seek out people like me, because we scoffers would be awfully fun to surprise.  But no.  I've actually been out looking for weird stuff, pretty much my whole life, and found zip.

A little off-putting, that.

So anyhow, I'm issuing a challenge to any paranormal ghosties and ghoulies and assorted hangers-on.  Here I am!  Come and get me.  I live in a big old house out in the middle of nowhere.  I'm home alone most of the time, unless you count the dogs, which you probably shouldn't, because (and I mean this with all due love and affection) Guinness the Fearsome Pit Bull is actually a giant wuss who is terrified of anything bigger than a woodchuck, and the jury's still out on whether Cleo actually has a brain.  So they're sweet and cuddly and wonderful, but as protectors of house and home, they're kind of non-starters.

So like I said: I'm a sitting duck.  Totally defenseless, and honestly, kind of a big chicken.  When it comes to self-defense, my most outstanding skill is that I can run away really fast.

Any ghosts or cryptids or whatever want to take the bait?  *drums fingers on table*  I'm waiting.

*********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week combines cutting-edge astrophysics and cosmology with razor-sharp social commentary, challenging our knowledge of science and the edifice of scientific research itself: Chanda Prescod-Weinsten's The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.

Prescod-Weinsten is a groundbreaker; she's a theoretical cosmologist, and the first Black woman to achieve a tenure-track position in the field (at the University of New Hampshire).  Her book -- indeed, her whole career -- is born from a deep love of the mysteries of the night sky, but along the way she has had to get past roadblocks that were set in front of her based only on her gender and race.  The Disordered Cosmos is both a tribute to the science she loves and a challenge to the establishment to do better -- to face head on the centuries-long horrible waste of talent and energy of anyone not a straight White male.

It's a powerful book, and should be on the to-read list for anyone interested in astronomy or the human side of science, or (hopefully) both.  And watch for Prescod-Weinsten's name in the science news.  Her powerful voice is one we'll be hearing a lot more from.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]