Skepticblog

For those of us who have spent our lives fighting the never-ending creationism wars, small victories are precious, and give us hope that some day this will all be behind us. The Dover decision in 2005 was decisive, and the Discovery Institute has been ineffective ever since then, with no further school districts adopting “intelligent design” creationism. (Of course, creationism then morphed into the “teach the controversy/strength and weaknesses” strategy, which passed in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky). The clowns like Don McLeroy on the Texas State Board of Education who voted for all sorts of laws favoring creationism and other fundie distortions of science have been voted out of office, although not all their damage has been undone. The fundies in the Kansas State Board of Education were also voted out of office after they had embarrassed the good taxpayers of the Sunflower State enough times.

Likewise, every time another powerful creationist institution or preacher stumbles or declines, it gives us a bit of schadenfreude (“joy at the misfortune of others” auf Deutsch). A few years ago, the Institute of “Creation Research” seemed to be a powerful behemoth, which had a leading role in all the creationism battles of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. But as I discovered when I visited their former headquarters in the suburbs of San Diego, they left their pathetic little “museum” behind (see this post), sold to a Jewish convert to radical Protestant fundamentalism, and relocated to Texas in 2007. Their founder, Henry Morris, died in 2006, and their master debater, Duane Gish, just passed away last week, and the ICR has fallen on hard times. Their efforts to get their master’s program accredited in their new home, fundie-friendly Texas, have failed, and they have vanished from the headlines of the creationism wars after having dominated for years. Many of the “big guns” of ICR have since moved on to other institutions, such as little Cedarville University in Ohio, where they engage in stealth creationism in geology meetings. (continue reading…)

Two years ago this coming Monday (March 11, 2011), the Sendai quake and tsunami struck Japan, and shocked the world. The media gave it saturation coverage for weeks, especially when it appeared that several nuclear reactors were damaged and might leak radiation. It also affected me personally, because my new book Catastrophes! had just been published by Johns Hopkins University Press, and the PR agents for my publisher soon had me talking about earthquakes and natural disasters to every kind of media, from two stints on MSNBC, to radio appearances on BBC, NPR, and many local outlets, to an editorial written for the Los Angeles Times in just 2 hours before deadline (which led to a call from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa). Everyone wanted to hear about the danger of quakes, and I spent most of my time on the air debunking the common fears and misconceptions.

Such fears are particularly common when it comes to earthquakes. People who have never experienced one are deathly afraid of them, even though they are extremely unlikely to kill anyone in the United States thanks to our building codes and construction. (The same is not true of many underdeveloped countries in Asia, where the loss of life can be extreme). I’ve run into all sorts of people terrified of quakes that they have never actually felt, yet they don’t even flinch at deadlier events like hurricanes and tornadoes. There are all sorts of legends associated with quakes, from “earthquake weather” (an urban myth) to the idea that California will fall into the sea (no, it’s sliding north to Alaska at a few cm per year on average) to the myth that fault lines look like huge deep chasms floored with lava as in the first Christopher Reeve Superman movie (no, they just form straight valleys on the ground: chasms are due to landsliding far from the fault). I’ve lived through every Southern California quake since I was born, including the 1971 Sylmar quake, the 1987 Whittier quake, and the 1994 Northridge quake. When I was in New York in August 2011, I even got to experience a rare eastern quake (the Virginia quake that shook the 10th floor of the Frick Wing of the American Museum while I was visiting), then ironically, I had to leave later that week and cancel my talk to NYC Skeptics on “Catastrophes!” because Hurricane Irene was on the way. (continue reading…)

One of the common tropes you hear among modern creationists is the denial of the idea that there is any non-coding DNA, or “junk DNA.” To them, the idea that a large part of the genome is simply unread leftovers, carried along passively from generation to generation without doing anything, is clearly a contradiction with the idea of an “Intelligent Designer.” So the Discovery Institute and numerous other creationist organizations that are actually sophisticated enough to recognize the issue (including Georgia Purdom of Ken Ham’s “Answers in Genesis” organization) keep spreading propaganda that “junk DNA is a myth” or “every bit of DNA has function, even if we don’t know what it is.” Moonie Jonathan Wells, who has written crummy books misinterpreting fossils and embryology, wrote a whole book denying the subject—even though he hasn’t done any research in molecular biology since 1994. Do they actually do any research to explore this topic, or trying to test the hypothesis that all DNA is functional? No, their labs and their “research” are not that sophisticated. Instead, their entire output on the topic (just as in every other topic) is based on cherry-picking statements of the work of legitimate scientists, quote-mined to distort the meaning of the original scientific publication. Either they don’t understand what they are reading and their confirmation bias filters screen out all but a few words that seem to agree with them, or they are consciously lying and distorting the evidence—or both.

First, some background on the issue. Before 1966, nearly all biologists were “panselectionists,” convinced that every part of an organism was under the constant scrutiny of natural selection, even if we couldn’t detect it. Even in the 1970s, I had professors in evolutionary biology at Columbia University who were hard-core panselectionists, and could not imagine the possibility that nature was not very efficient, but could carry along structures from one generation to the next that either had no function, or were suboptimal in their function (as Stephen Jay Gould had been advocating). But as early as 1966, Lewontin and Hubby (using the then-new technique of gel electrophoresis, which has long since been replaced by direct DNA sequencing) showed that the variability in the protein sequences in many organisms was far in excess of what was needed to explain their anatomical complexity, and that there was no correlation between complexity and genetic information: there were simple worms with huge genomes, and complex organisms with small genomes. (continue reading…)

Last Friday we all got a message from space. For weeks, scientists had been talking about the close pass of Asteroid 2012 DA14, and trying to use it as an opportunity to educate the public about the risk they might pose. Then, without any warning, a much smaller piece of rock zipped through the sky above Siberia and left lots of damaged windows and buildings—and a LOT of amazing footage from cameras of every kind (including lots of dash cams, which are the rage in Russia because of all the horrendously scary driving and insurance issues). Immediately, the media and internet was flooded with stories of every kind, from the merely uneducated (typically from mainstream media newspeople who know no science) to the positively weird. Count on an event like this, which grabbed the media’s fleeting attention worldwide for a precious day, to be the source of every bizarre notion you can imagine (and some you can’t).

First, some basics. It was apparent as news people all over the media mangled the terminology that most people don’t know one space object from another. Yet all of these objects in space have distinct names, and it’s not OK to interchange one with another. Thanks to the many crappy sci-fi movies about impacts threatening civilization and requiring Bruce Willis to save President Morgan Freeman and the rest of the world (never mind that none of them are remotely plausible scientifically), some of this misunderstanding is excusable. These mistakes are just symptomatic of the general scientific illiteracy of most people—sadly, even among news media people who should  understand more of the facts behind the news they read than they actually do. (Cue the references to the hyper-smart newsman played by Jeff Daniels in the HBO series “The Newsroom”, who actually knows the facts behind most stories, and can conduct in-depth interviews without cue cards or teleprompters). Just so we’re all clear on these things, a helpful graphic is provided below the fold.

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The spectacular skull and jaws of the extinct Miocene peccary Skinnerhyus shermerorum, on display in the fossil mammal hall of the American Museum in New York.

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

The science of classifying organisms is known as taxonomy (Greek, “laws of order”); any named grouping of organisms (a species, a genus, etc.) is called a taxon (plural, taxa). Deciding how to name a new species and genus may seem to be a highly specialized, legalistic dimension of biology and paleobiology, not nearly as glamorous as ecology or behavior or physiology. But taxonomy is not just naming species, because species and higher taxa reflect evolution. Taxonomists do much more than label dusty jars in a museum. They are interested in comparing different species and deciding how they are related and ultimately in deciphering their evolutionary history. They look at the diversity of organisms in time and space and try to understand the large-scale patterns of nature. They look at the present and past geographic distributions of organisms and try to determine how they got there. In short, they look at the total pattern of natural diversity and try to understand how it came to be. Contrary to stereotypes, they are among the most eclectic of biologists and paleobiologists. (continue reading…)

One of the less appealing aspects of web-based “news” these days is the proliferation of sites which rank “the ten most” or “the ten least” in whatever category they choose to discuss. Such surveys are typically churned out with little or no research, quickly thrown together with more concern about the photo images than the content of the text. We all know that these surveys and rankings are just meant to grab attention. They are usually not conducted rigorously enough to provide any validly researched information worth taking seriously. Sadly, though, lots of people cite these surveys and rankings as if they had real rigor behind them, and think they’ve proven something of value.

The latest example is a ranking of the most and least stressful jobs on the site Careercast.com. Stories like this are usually teasers to get people to sign up for their career-matching services, and are more advertising than they are rigorous research. According to the site, “stress” was measured by a variety of factors: travel, growth potential (never fully defined), deadlines, working in the public eye, competitiveness, physical demands, environmental conditions, hazards encountered, own life at risk, life of another at risk, and meeting the public. Using these criteria, the most stressful jobs are easy to justify: military jobs (enlisted soldier, then officer), emergency workers (firemen, police, paramedics, doctors), journalists and photojournalists, corporate executives, etc. (continue reading…)

The tarbosaur specimen poached and smuggled from Mongolia by Prokopi and his partners, and almost sold at auction back in May.

Back on May 23, I posted about the story of a skeleton of the Mongolian tyrannosaur Tarbosaurus that was about to go up for auction. The specimen was a nearly complete skeleton, mislabeled “Tyrannosaurus” to increase its market value, and a major auction house was served with a restraining order just after it had auctioned off the specimen for over a million dollars. The paleontological community had been in an uproar for weeks when the sale was first announced, since it was clearly a smuggled and illegally poached specimen from Mongolia, where no fossil can be removed for sale legally. The Mongolian government, U.S. Customs and Homeland Security, and many others were investigating the specimen. Both American and Mongolian paleontologists pointed out that this species is only known from Mongolia, and furthermore, the matrix around the specimen and its distinctive bone texture and color demonstrated it came from the Nemegt Formation, the only Mongolian formation where tarbosaurs have been found.

Shortly after the story appeared, the sale was stopped pending further investigation. Then the wheels of justice began grinding slowly along as investigators dug into the data about the fossil, tracked down the anonymous  ”paleontologist” who had procured it, and then supplied the information to our legal system. Just before New Year’s Eve, the story broke that the culprit, poacher Eric Prokopi of Gainesville, Florida, had pled guilty. His sentencing is due in May, and he may get up to 17 years in prison for smuggling contraband into the U.S. (continue reading…)

The published image of the “meteorite”, showing a specimen that looks exactly like a modern freshwater diatom from earth but interpreted as evidence of extraterrestrial life

A few weeks ago, the blogosphere was all abuzz with a report that life had been found in a meteorite. The Huffington Post ran a blurb promoting the claim with no peer review or cross-checking, and there were numerous posts in all the science blog sites giving credence to the claim and pretty much repeating the authors’ arguments without any caveats. But Bad Astronomer Phil Plait immediately ran a post debunking the claim, as did P.Z. Myers from a different perspective. And once you look closer, the evidence falls completely apart.

This isn’t the first time such a claim has been made. Back in 1996, reputable scientists from NASA and Caltech presented arguments about a meteorite derived from Mars and eventually found in Antarctica, the Allan Hills meteorite. It had these tiny microscopic “cell” like objects, some of which were strung along like filamentous beads. The controversy over this discovery was very intense, with some biologists and micropaleontologists arguing that these structures were too small even for a single cell, while others pointing to unique features (such as shape of the oriented magnetic crystals within them that only matched biogenic magnetite) that supported the claim. Although most scientists let the debate drop unconvinced, it was a legitimate scientific claim made through peer-review in top-ranked journals, and every effort was made to be open and careful in the analysis and testing of this idea that was at least plausible. After all, we know Mars had liquid water on it during the past, and maybe some day soon our rovers will find clear evidence of microbial life there. (continue reading…)

We’re all familiar with the crazy ideas of the “9/11 Truthers”, who claim that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were a great conspiracy by the Bush Administration to push their agenda and get public support for invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The entire topic has consumed many blogs on this site, and whole issues of Skeptic magazine, and need not be rehashed here. The simplest retort to the “9/11 Truthers” is the gross incompetence of the Bush Administration, and the fact that they couldn’t get their act together on things we know they were doing. Yet the supposed “Bush conspiracy” worked like a charm (except for the passengers of Flight 93 crashing their plane when they overpowered the hijackers), and not a single leak from all those people allegedly involved in that Byzantine plot has ever emerged. Given how many leaks have occurred since those events on many other failed Bush and CIA policies, it’s impossible to believe that they managed to keep this big a conspiracy secret for over 12 years now.

The same goes in Britain for the “7/7″ bombings of several buses and other sites in downtown London; there is a clique of conspiracy nuts mainly in England who could be called the “7/7 Truthers”. For the same reasons, they claim the “7/7″ bombings were orchestrated by the British government, even though they did not have the motive of Bush and Cheney to push the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. There are actually a wide range of other bizarre conspiracy advocates out there, and they all seem to form a large, poorly organized group of paranoid conspiracy nuts who believe that the U.N./Trilateral Commission/ Illuminati/ Freemasons/whatever big organization is out to get us, with their “black helicopters” and secret sleeper cells, ready to take power in the U.S. when the signal comes. (continue reading…)

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about how creationist “baramin” taxonomy was an example of amateurs aping what scientists do without actually understanding the science, all couched in the trappings of real science and in “sciencey”-sounding language. Almost as soon as that post came out, another example came to light that was noted by bloggers on Panda’s Thumb and Pharyngula and elsewhere. It starts with a silly video (complete with fancy production values and dramatic opening music) featuring ID creation “scientist” Ann Gauger, talking in front of what looks like a conventional biochemistry lab.

As Larry Moran, Ars Technica, and numerous commenters over at Panda’s Thumb pointed out, her discussion is complete gibberish that shows she had no understanding of evolution or genetics. She talks about “population genetics” and “common descent” as if they had something to do with one another. Even a second-year biology undergraduate knows the difference! Population genetics is the field that simulates the changes in gene frequencies through time in natural populations, with models of how changing selection pressures, mutation rates, etc. might affect gene frequencies over time. It is largely a mathematical modeling exercise, although its predictions have been abundantly tested and corroborated by many lab experiments. Population genetics is only a population-level process. It says nothing about the common ancestry of organisms, or their similarity in gene sequences, which is what Ann Gauger seems to think. Apparently, Gauger doesn’t know the difference between population genetics and phylogenetics, the field that does deal with the evidence of common ancestry. What the heck, if it begins with a “p” and ends with “genetics”, it must be the same thing, right? (continue reading…)