The Destin Log is the twice-weekly newspaper devoted to covering the crown jewel of the Emerald Coast.
The slacktivist blog and commenters discuss a recent science study that indicates dogs have a sense of fairness: If one dog is seen receiving better treats for the same trick, the other dog will stop doing it.
There is much discussion of alternative interpretations and the significance of multiple newspaper stories saying the refusenik dog is acting out of “envy” rather than “justice.”
It took me a while to figure out why I kept reading this book by Richard Fortey — the “trilobite man” at Britain’s Museum of Natural History — when it’s not really that absorbing, and I have a pile of books I could move on to.
Finally I realized it’s because of Fortey’s sheer enthusiasm for natural history — the old style of science where going out in the field and studying animals and classifying them was what naturalists did. Fortey has a tremendous respect for the kind of scientific work involved in, say identifying all the different species of carpenter ant or bombadier beetle, even though it’s the kind of technical, detail-oriented work most people would dismiss as tedious — and certainly not something a first-rate mind would be involved in. Fortey, on the other hand, sees that being the world’s greatest expert on fleas or screwflies is something to be proud of, and does a good job explaining why it can matter to the rest of us (the usefulness of science) and why it’s exciting to the researchers.
It’s very much the kind of mindset I had as a kid. I was going to study animals, I knew that from pretty much childhood, and this is the sort of research I think I dimly fantasized about. Didn’t turn out that way, obviously … But I can’t but respond to Fortey’s enthusiasm.
Warning Labels Mandated by 20th Century Physics
Written by Susan Hewitt and Ed Subitzky
From the Journal of Irreproducible Results, 1991
As scientists and concerned citizens, we applaud the recent trend towards legislation that requires the prominent placing of warnings on products that present hazards to the general public. Yet we must also offer the cautionary thought that such warnings, however well-intentioned, merely scratch the surface of what is really necessary in this important area. This is especially true in light of the findings of 20th century physics.
We are therefore proposing that, as responsible professionals, we join together in an intensive push for new laws that will mandate the conspicuous placement of suitably informative warnings on the packaging of every product in every category offered for sale in the United States of America. Our suggested list of required warnings follows.
WARNING
This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.
WARNING
This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them.
CAUTION
The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE
This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles per Hour.
CONSUMER NOTICE
Because of the “Uncertainty Principle,” It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving.
ADVISORY
There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Known as “Tunneling,” This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your Neighbor’s Domicile. The Manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result.
READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE
According to Certain Suggested Versions of a Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting This Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years.
THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT
In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result.
PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW
Any Use of This Product, In Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.
NOTE
The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a “Gluing” Force About Which Little Is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.
ATTENTION
Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer Is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists of 99.99999999999% Empty Space.
NEW GRAND UNIFIED THEORY DISCLAIMER
The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled To Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are “Rolled Up” Into Such a Small “Area” That They Cannot Be Detected.
PLEASE NOTE
Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
COMPONENT EQUIVALENCY NOTICE
The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied.
HEALTH WARNING
Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User.
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS
The Entire Physical Universe, Including This Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Reemerge, the Existence of This Product in That Universe Cannot Be Guaranteed
Opening line on livescience.com: “Birth-control pills could screw up a woman’s ability to sniff out a compatible mate, a new study finds.”
The gist of the article is that women normally prefer mates whose body scent includes different MHC genes (which apparently results in kids with stronger immune systems), and that on the pill, women turn to guys whose scents are more similar. Which could be bad, according to the scientists quoted because “it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the contraceptive pill.”
However, this seems to be pure speculation, based on anything in the article.
Another however: According to the article, while women on the Pill did swing to men who had similar MHC smells, women not on birth control showed no preference. Which would seem to contradict the point of the article (and maybe the study—I don’t know where the fault lies).
I really love science, which is why the tendency to stretch results into the most spectacular news reports possible really, really torques me off.
echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com and her commenters speculate a little on what the effect might be if a reliable male equivalent to the Pill developed:
•It can’t in any way be accused of causing abortions, so that argument of the religious right against contraceptives would no longer hold water.
•If a man’s taking contraceptives, then getting pregnant requires both partners be on the same page.
•It eliminates the risks of impregnating a one-night stand, which might encourage men to have more of them.
This is a topic echidne has discussed before and one argument some people raise is that men won’t want to take birth-control, period, regardless of the benefits. True? False? Your thoughts?
In tomorrow’s paper: “Evolutionists should welcome creation science … If creation is proven wrong like the article says, let’s put the two side by side and compare.”
Been there, done that. Creationism lost.
“If we take your position to the fullest extent, we must conclude your ideas are not the product of intelligent design.”
Since intelligent design is a myth, it’s safe to say that nothing on Earth results from ID. So we’re in agreement.
According to the article, Pearcey believes ID vs. evolution should be viewed as philosophy vs. philosophy, rather than religion against science.
Wrong. Evolution is science, and ID is religiously based (as I noted in my Wednesday column) so science vs. religion pretty much sums it up.
Then come the usual arguments that if behavior is based on evolution, immoral acts are not immoral they’re hardwired into us, and with “true Darwinism there can be no room for free will, love or human dignity.” (this is phrasing from the article and may not be a direct quote from Pearcey).
Tommy rot. In the first place, while there are evolutionary theories for much of human behavior, many of them are also hotly contested. Pearcey mentions, for instance, the idea men rape because it’s an efficient way to spread their genes, but that’s always struck me as a feeble argument since it ignores the many nonreproductive rapes: Anal, oral, rape with blunt instruments, homosexual rape, rape of children, rape of post-menopausal women, spousal rape, rape-murder. That’s not much of a reproductive strategy (it does serve conservatives who want to imagine that rape is caused by women dressing too sexy, going out to bars and generally stimulating the male’s uncontrollable lust, but that’s a topic for another day).
And even if we were biologically programmed for rape, that wouldn’t mean the impulse was uncontrollable. It is controllable: That’s why rapists wait until their victim is alone. That’s why most men don’t rape at all. We have a choice about rape, just as we have a choice about where we urinate and whether we steal food when we’re hungry, and if we can choose, we can make moral choices. There is nothing about evolution that negates free will or morality.
And if we’re going to go with a “by their fruits you will know them” argument — evolution has to be wrong because the implications are unpleasant — I could just as easily argue that Christianity has to be wrong because it condemns virtuous non-Christians to eternal damnation. Or because it has led to Christians committing discrimination, pogroms, holy wars, genocide and other abominations, and has had more blood on its hands than any other belief system. I wouldn’t make that argument — the truth of Jesus’ words doesn’t depend on whether his followers actually paid attention to “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek” — but it’s certainly comparable with Pearcey’s line of reasoning.
Perhaps it’s unfair to judge Nancy Pearcey’s Thursday-night presentation on intelligent design by an article in the Daily News, but I’m going for it anyway:
•Will creationists/IDers ever get it through their heads that evolutionary theory is not “Darwinism?” I presume their choice of the word is to make it sound more like the religion they claim it is (comparable to Christianity or “Mohammedanism”) but the term makes no more sense than calling relativity “Einsteinism” or quantum mechanics “Bohrism.” Plus, of course, the theory we have today differs a lot from Darwin’s original concept, since Charles D. had no knowledge of genetics (if a creationist ever points out that many scientists don’t believe Darwin’s theories can explain all of life, that’s the reason—it would be several decades before even basic genetic theory became well known).
•Pearcey argues that since we can look at Mt. Rushmore and know for certain it’s the product of design, we can do the same with living things—in other words, if something looks like it’s been designed, it has been.
The flaw in this argument is that people see designs that don’t exist: Remember the claims that the image on Mars resembling a giant face was, in fact, a carved giant face? Or the countless times an image of Jesus or the Virgin Mary has appeared in some odd place? Either Pearcey believes every one of these examples is true, or we can’t spot design as well as she thinks.
For that matter, conspiracy theory is a form of design: People look at the supposedly random events of 9/11, for instance, and conclude that our government engineered the entire thing. Is Pearcey signing off on that theory?
Even if we stick to biology, Pearcey’s argument is disprovable. Biochemist Michael Behe listed several had-to-be-designed biological features in his book “Darwin’s Black Box.” Scientists subsequently found random, simple genetic shifts and mutations that could explain all of them.
